by Isaac Asimov
“More closely guarded, of course,” amended Aratap politely.
Rizzett cried out, “Believe him, and you’ll but add treason to treason and be killed for it in the end.”
The guard stepped forward, but Biron anticipated him. He flung himself upon Rizzett, struggling backward with him.
“Don’t be a fool,” he muttered. “There’s nothing you can do.”
The Autarch said, “I don’t care about my Autarchy, or myself, Rizzett.” He turned to Aratap. “Will these be killed? That, at least, you must promise.” His horridly discolored face twisted savagely. “That one, above all.” His finger stabbed toward Biron.
“If that is your price, it is met.”
“If I could be his executioner, I would relieve you of all further obligation to me. If my finger could control the execution blast, it would be partial repayment. But if not that, at least I will tell you what he would have you not know. I give you rho, theta, and phi in parsecs and radians: 7352.43, 1.7836, 5.2112. Those three points will determine the position of the world in the Galaxy. You have them now.”
“So I have,” said Aratap, writing them down.
And Rizzett broke away, crying, “Traitor! Traitor!”
Biron, caught off balance, lost his grip on the Linganian and was thrown to one knee. “Rizzett,” he yelled futilely.
Rizzett, face distorted, struggled briefly with the guard. Other guards were swarming in, but Rizzett had the blaster now. With hands and knees he struggled against the Tyrannian soldiers. Hurling himself through the huddle of bodies, Biron joined the fight. He caught Rizzett’s throat, choking him, pulling him back.
“Traitor,” Rizzett gasped, struggling to maintain aim as the Autarch tried desperately to squirm aside. He fired! And then they disarmed him and threw him on his back.
But the Autarch’s right shoulder and half his chest had been blasted away. Grotesquely, the forearm dangled freely from its magnetized sheath. Fingers, wrist, and elbow ended in black ruin. For a long moment it seemed that the Autarch’s eyes flickered as his body remained in crazy balance, and then they were glazed and he dropped and was a charred remnant upon the floor.
Artemisia choked and buried her face against Biron’s chest. Biron forced himself to look once, firmly and without flinching, at the body of his father’s murderer, then turned his eyes away. Hinrik, from a distant corner of the room, mumbled and giggled to himself.
Only Aratap was calm. He said, “Remove the body.”
They did so, flaring the floor with a soft heat ray for a few moments to remove the blood. Only a few scattered char marks were left.
They helped Rizzett to his feet. He brushed at himself with both hands, then whirled fiercely toward Biron. “What were you doing? I almost missed the bastard.”
Biron said wearily, “You fell into Aratap’s trap, Rizzett.”
“Trap? I killed the bastard, didn’t I?”
“That was the trap. You did him a favor.”
Rizzett made no answer, and Aratap did not interfere. He listened with a certain pleasure. The young fellow’s brains worked smoothly.
Biron said, “If Aratap overheard what he claimed to have overheard, he would have known that only Jonti had the information he wanted. Jonti said that, with emphasis, when he faced us after the fight. It was obvious that Aratap was questioning us only to rattle us, to get us to act brainlessly at the proper time. I was ready for the irrational impulse he counted upon. You were not.”
“I had thought,” interposed Aratap softly, “that you would have done the job.”
“I,” said Biron, “would have aimed at you.” He turned to Rizzett again. “Don’t you see that he didn’t want the Autarch alive? The Tyranni are snakes. He wanted the Autarch’s information; he didn’t want to pay for it; he couldn’t risk killing him. You did it for him.”
“Correct,” said Aratap, “and I have my information.”
Somewhere there was the sudden clamor of bells.
Rizzett began, “All right. If I did him a favor, I did myself one at the same time.”
“Not quite,” said the Commissioner, “since our young friend has not carried the analysis far enough. You see, a new crime has been committed. Where the only crime is treason against Tyrann, your disposal would be a delicate matter politically. But now that the Autarch of Lingane has been murdered, you may be tried, convicted, and executed by Linganian law and Tyrann need play no part in it. This will be convenient for–”
And then he frowned and interrupted himself. He heard the clanging, and stepped to the door. He kicked the release.
“What is happening?”
A soldier saluted. “General alarm, sir. Storage compartments.”
“Fire?”
“It is not yet known, sir.”
Aratap thought to himself, Great Galaxy! and stepped back into the room. “Where is Gillbret?”
And it was the first anyone knew of the latter’s absence.
Aratap said, “We’ll find him.”
They found him in the engine room, cowering amid the giant structures, and half dragged, half carried him back to the Commissioner’s room.
The Commissioner said dryly, “There is no escape on a ship, my lord. It did you no good to sound the general alarm. The time of confusion is even then limited.”
He went on, “I think it is enough. We have kept the cruiser you stole, Farrill, my own cruiser, on board ship. It will be used to explore the rebellion world. We will make for the lamented Autarch’s reference points as soon as the Jump can be calculated. This will be an adventure of a sort usually missing in this comfortable generation of ours.”
There was the sudden thought in his mind of his father in command of a squadron, conquering worlds. He was glad Andros was gone. This adventure would be his alone.
They were separated after that. Artemisia was placed with her father, and Rizzett and Biron were marched off in separate directions. Gillbret struggled and screamed.
“I won’t be left alone. I won’t be in solitary.”
Aratap sighed. This man’s grandfather had been a great ruler, the history books said. It was degrading to have to watch such a scene. He said, with distaste, “Put my lord with one of the others.”
And Gillbret was put with Biron. There was no speech between them till the corning of space-ship “night,” when the lights turned a dim purple. It was bright enough to allow them to be watched through the tele-viewing system by the guards, shift and shift about, yet dim enough to allow sleep.
But Gillbret did not sleep.
“Biron,” he whispered. “Biron.”
And Biron, roused from a dull semi-drowse, said, “What do you want?”
“Biron, I have done it. It is all right, Biron.”
Biron said, “Try to sleep, Oil.”
But Gillbret went on, “But I’ve done it, Biron. Aratap may be smart, but I’m smarter. Isn’t that amusing? You don’t have to worry, Biron. Biron, don’t worry. I’ve fixed it.” He was shaking Biron again, feverishly.
Biron sat up. “What’s the matter with you?”
“Nothing. Nothing. It’s all right. But I fixed it.” Gillbret was smiling. It was a sly smile, the smile of a little boy who has done something clever.
“What have you fixed?” Biron was on his feet. He seized the other by the shoulders and dragged him upright as well. “Answer me.”
‘They found me in the engine room.” The words were jerked out. “They thought I was hiding. I wasn’t. I sounded the general alarm for the storage room because I had to be alone for just a few minutes–a very few minutes. Biron, I shorted the hyperatomics.”
“What?”
“It was easy. It took a minute. And they won’t know. I did it cleverly. They won’t know until they try to Jump, and then all the fuel will be energy in one chain reaction and the ship and us and Aratap and all knowledge of the rebellion world will be a thin expansion of iron vapor.”
Biron was backing away, eyes wide. “You did t
hat?”
“Yes.” Gillbret buried his head in his hands and rocked to and fro. “We’ll be dead. Biron, I’m not afraid to die, but not alone. Not alone. I had to be with someone. I’m glad I’m with you. I want to be with someone when I die. But it won’t hurt; it will be so quick. It won’t hurt. It won’t hurt.”
Biron said, “Fool! Madman! We might still have won out but for this.”
Gillbret didn’t hear him. His ears were filled with his own moans. Biron could only dash to the door.
“Guard,” he yelled. “Guard!” Were there hours or merely minutes left?
Twenty-One: Here?
THE SOLDIER CAME clattering down the corridor. “Get back in there.” His voice was sour and sharp.
They stood facing one another. There were no doors to the small bottom-level rooms which doubled as prison cells, but a force field stretched from side to side, top to bottom. Biron could feel it with his hand. There was a tiny resilience to it, like rubber stretched nearly to its extreme, and then it stopped giving, as though the first initial pressure turned it to steel.
It tingled Biron’s hand, and he knew that though it would stop matter completely, it would be as transparent as space to the energy beam of a neuronic whip. And there was a whip in the guard’s hand.
Biron said, “I’ve got to see Commissioner Aratap.”
“Is that what you’re making a noise about?” The guard was not in the best of humors. The night watch was unpopular and he was losing at cards. “I’ll mention it after lights-on.”
“It won’t wait.” Biron felt desperate. “It’s important.”
“It will have to wait. Will you get back, or do you want a bit of the whip?”
“Look,” said Biron, “the man with me is Gillbret oth Hinriad. He is sick. He may be dying. If a Hinriad dies on a Tyrannian ship because you will not let me speak to the man in authority, you will not have a good time of it.”
“What’s wrong with him?”
“I don’t know. Will you be quick or are you tired of life?”
The guard mumbled something and was off.
Biron watched him as far as he could see in the dim purple. He strained his ears in an attempt to catch the heightened throbbing of the engines as energy concentration climbed to a pre-Jump peak, but he heard nothing at all.
He strode to Gillbret, seized the man’s hair, and pulled his head back gently. Eyes stared into his out of a contorted face. There was no recognition in them, only fear.
“Who are you?”
“It’s only me–Biron. How do you feel?”
It took time for the words to penetrate. Gillbret said, blankly, “Biron?” Then, with a quiver of life, “Biron! Are they Jumping? Death won’t hurt, Biron.”
Biron let the head drop. No point in anger against Gillbret. On the information he had, or thought he had, it was a great gesture. All the more so, since it was breaking him.
But he was writhing in frustration. Why wouldn’t they let him speak to Aratap? Why wouldn’t they let him out? He found himself at a wall and beat upon it with his fists. If there were a door, he could break it down; if there were bars, he could pull them apart or drag them out of their sockets, by the Galaxy.
But there was a force field, which nothing could damage. He yelled again.
There were footsteps once more. He rushed to the open-yet-not-open door. He could not look out to see who was coming down the corridor. He could only wait.
It was the guard again. “Get back from the field,” he barked. “Step back with your hands in front of you.” There was an officer with him.
Biron retreated. The other’s neuronic whip was on him, unwaveringly. Biron said, “The man with you is not Aratap. I want to speak to the Commissioner.”
The officer said, “If Gillbret oth Hinriad is ill, you don’t want to see the Commissioner. You want to see a doctor.”
The force field was down, with a dim blue spark showing as contact broke. The officer entered, and Biron could see the Medical Group insignia on his uniform.
Biron stepped in front of him. “All right. Now listen to me. This ship mustn’t Jump. The Commissioner is the only one who can see to that, and I must see him. Do you understand that? You’re an officer. You can have him awakened.”
The doctor put out an arm to brush Biron aside, and Biron batted it away. The doctor cried out sharply and called, “Guard, get this man out of here.”
The guard stepped forward and Biron dived. They went thumping down together, and Biron clawed up along the guard’s body, hand over hand, seizing first the shoulder and then the wrist of the arm that was trying to bring its whip down upon him.
For a moment they remained frozen, straining against one another, and then Biron caught motion at the corner of his eye. The medical officer was rushing past them to sound the alarm.
Biron’s hand, the one not holding the other’s whip wrist, shot out and seized the officer’s ankle. The guard writhed nearly free, and the officer kicked out wildly at him, but, with the veins standing out on his neck and temples, Biron pulled desperately with each hand.
The officer went down; shouting hoarsely. The guard’s whip clattered to the floor with a harsh sound.
Biron fell upon it, rolled with it, and came up on his knees and one hand. In his other was the whip.
“Not a sound,” he gasped. “Not one sound. Drop anything else you’ve got.”
The guard, staggering to his feet, his tunic ripped, glared hatred and tossed a short, metal-weighted, plastic club away from himself. The doctor was unarmed.
Biron picked up the club. He said, “Sorry. I have nothing to tie and gag you with and no time anyway.”
The whip flashed dimly once, twice. First the guard and then the doctor stiffened in agonized immobility and dropped solidly, in one piece, legs and arms bent grotesquely out from their bodies as they lay, in the attitude they had last assumed before the whip struck.
Biron turned to Gillbret, who was watching with dull, soundless vacuity.
“Sorry,” said Biron, “but you, too, Gillbret,” and the whip flashed a third time.
The vacuous expression was frozen solid as Gillbret lay there on his side.
The force field was still down and Biron stepped out into the corridor. It was empty. This was space-ship “night” and only the watch and the night details would be up.
There would be no time to try to locate Aratap. It would have to be straight for the engine room. He set off. It would be toward the bow, of course.
A man in engineer’s work clothes hurried past him.
“When’s the next Jump?” called out Biron.
“About half an hour,” the engineer returned over his shoulder.
“Engine room straight ahead?”
“And up the ramp.” The man turned suddenly. “Who are you?”
Biron did not answer. The whip flared a fourth time. He stepped over the body and went on. Half an hour left.
He heard the noise of men as he sped up the ramp. The light ahead was white, not purple. He hesitated. Then he put the whip into his pocket. They would be busy. There would be no reason for them to suspect him.
He stepped in quickly. The men were pygmies scurrying about the huge matter-energy converters. The room glared with dials, a hundred thousand eyes staring their information out to all who would look. A ship this size, one almost in the class of a large passenger liner, was considerably different from the tiny Tyrannian cruiser he had been used to. There, the engines had been all but automatic. Here they were large enough to power a city, and required considerable supervision.
He was on a railed balcony that circled the engine room. In one corner there was a small room in which two men handled computers with flying fingers.
He hurried in that direction, while engineers passed him without looking at him, and stepped through the door.
The two at the computers looked at him.
“What’s up?” one asked. “What are you doing up here? Get back to your p
ost.” He had a lieutenant’s stripes.
Biron said, “Listen to me. The hyperatomics have been shorted. They’ve got to be repaired.”
“Hold on,” said the second man, “I’ve seen this man. He’s one of the prisoners. Hold him, Lancy.”
He jumped up and was making his way out the other door. Biron hurdled the desk and the computer, seized the belt of the controlman’s tunic and pulled him backward.
“Correct,” he said. “I’m one of the prisoners. I’m Biron of Widemos. But what I say is true. The hyperatomics are shorted. Have them inspected, if you don’t believe me.”
The lieutenant found himself staring at a neuronic whip. He said, carefully, “It can’t be done, sir, without orders from Officer of the Day, or from the Commissioner. It would mean changing the Jump calculations and delaying us hours.”
“Get the authority, then. Get the Commissioner.”
“May I use the communicator?”
“Hurry.”
The lieutenant’s arm reached out for the flaring mouthpiece of the communicator, and halfway there plummeted down hard upon the row of knobs at one end of his desk. Bells clamored in every corner of the ship.
Biron’s club was too late. It came down hard upon the lieutenant’s wrist. The lieutenant snatched it away, nursing it and moaning over it, but the warning signals were sounding.
Guards were rocketing in upon the balcony through every entrance. Biron slammed out of the control room, looked in either direction, then hopped the railing.
He plummeted down, landing knees bent, and rolled. He rolled as rapidly as he could to prevent setting himself up as a target. He heard the soft hissing of a needle gun near his ear, and then he was in the shadow of one of the engines.
He stood up in a crouch, huddling beneath its curve. His right leg was a stabbing pain. Gravity was high so near the ship’s hull and the drop had been a long one. He had sprained his knee badly. It meant that there would be no more chase. If he Won out, it was to be from where he stood.
He called out, “Hold your firer I am unarmed.” First the club and then the whip he had taken from the guard went spinning out toward the center of the engine room. They lay there in stark impotence and plain view.