“There's no question about it,” Kennon said. “You're becoming more human every day."
He chuckled as he slid over the edge of the pit following the path Douglas had taken a moment before. He found him sitting on a pile of ashes, shaking his head.
“What happened?” Douglas asked querulously. There was fear in his voice.
“Copper hit you on the head with a rock,” Kennon said as he bent over and retrieved the torch, still burning near Douglas’ feet.
“The Lani?” Douglas’ voice was incredulous.
“Not a Lani,” Kennon corrected. “She's as human as you or I."
“That's a lie,” Douglas said.
“Maybe this spacer's a lie too. Her ancestors came in it—a pair of humans named Alfred and Melissa Weygand. They were Christian missionaries from a planet called Heaven out in Ophiuchus Sector. Went out to convert aliens and landed here when their fuel ran out.” Kennon paused. “That was about four millennia ago. Their descendants, naturally, reverted to barbarism in a few generations, but there's enough evidence in the ship to prove that the Lani were their children."
“But the tails—the differences—the failure of the test,” Douglas said.
“Mutation,” Kennon replied. “Those old spindizzy converters weren't too choosy about how they scattered radiation. And they had come a long way.” He paused, looking down at Douglas, feeling a twinge of pity for the man. His world was crumbling. “And there was no other human blood available to filter out their peculiarities. It might have been done during the first couple of generations, but constant inbreeding fixed the genetic pattern."
“How did you discover this?” Douglas asked.
“Accident,” Kennon said briefly.
“You'll never be able to prove they're human!” Douglas said.
“The ship's log will do that."
“Not without a humanity test—they can't pass that."
“Sorry to disappoint you. Your grandfather used the wrong sort of sperm. Now if there had been a Betan in the crew—"
“You mean she's pregnant!"
Kennon nodded. “There's been mutation on Beta,” he said. “And it's apparently a similar one to hers. Betan-Lani matings are fertile."
Douglas's shoulders sagged, and then straightened. “I don't believe it,” he said. “You're just a damned sneaking spy. Somehow or other you got a spacer in here after you wormed your way into Cousin Alex's confidence—and now you're going to space out with the nucleus of a new farm. Just wait. When Alex learns of this the galaxy'll be too small to hold you."
“Don't babble like a fool!” Kennon said with disgust. “How could I land a spacer here without being spotted? You sound like a two-credit novel. And even if I did—would it be a can like this?” Kennon played the torch over the blue-black durilium protruding from the ashes.
Douglas’ eyes widened as he took in the details of construction. “What an antique!” he blurted. “Where did you get this can?"
“I found it here."
“Tell me another one."
“You won't believe,” Kennon said flatly, “because you don't dare believe. You have a mental block. You've killed, maimed, tortured—treated them like animals—and now your mind shrinks from admitting they're human. You know what will happen if the old court decision is reversed. It will wreck your little empire, dry up your money, break you—and you can't stand the thought of that. You don't dare let us leave, yet you can't stop us because I have your blaster and I'd just as soon shoot you as look at your rotten face. Now get on your feet and start climbing if you want to stay alive. We're getting out of here, and you'll fry inside this pit."
“Where are you taking me?"
“Back to your airboat. I'm going to tie you up and set you off on autopilot. You'll be able to get loose quickly enough but it'll be too late to stop us. We'll be gone, and you can think of how you'll manage to face the human race."
“I hope you blow yourself and that antique clear out of space."
“We might. But you'll never know for sure. But mark this—if I live I'll be back with the Brotherhood. You can count on it."
They struggled up the side of the pit and halted, panting, on the rim. “How much radiation was down there?” Douglas asked worriedly.
“Not enough to hurt you."
“That's good.” Douglas accepted the statement at face value, a fact which failed to surprise Kennon. “You know,” he said, “I've been around Lani all my life. And I know that they're not human. No self-respecting human would take a tenth of what they put up with."
“Their ancestors didn't,” Kennon said. “They fought to the end. But your Grandfather was a smart man even though he was a Degrader."
“He wasn't!” Douglas exploded. “No Alexander is a Degrader."
“He realized,” Kennon went on, “that he'd never succeed in enslaving the Lani unless he separated the sexes. And since women are more subjective in their outlook—and more pliable—he picked them for his slaves. The males he retired to stud. Probably the fact that there were more women than men helped him make up his mind.
“In every society,” Kennon went on inexorably, “there are potential freeman and potential slaves. The latter invariably outnumber the former. They're cowards: the timid, the unsacrificing—the ones that want peace at any price—the ones who will trade freedom for security. Those were the ones who hid rather than risk their lives fighting the aggressor. Those were the ones who survived. Old Alexander had a ready-made slave cadre when be finished off the last of the warriors. For four centuries the survivors have been bred and selected to perpetuate slave traits. And the system works. The men don't want freedom—they want liberty to kill each other. The women don't want freedom—they want males. And they'd serve them precisely as the Sarkian women serve their menfolk. You've killed any chance they had to become a civilization. It's going to take generations perhaps before they're reoriented. There's plenty you Alexanders should answer for."
“If there's any fault, it's yours,” Douglas snarled. “We were doing all right until you came here. We'd still be doing all right if I had shot you both.” His shoulders sagged. “I should have killed you when I had the chance,” he said bitterly.
“But you didn't,” Kennon said, “and to show my gratitude I'm letting you get away with a whole skin. I don't expect you to be grateful, but at least you'll not be on my conscience. I don't enjoy killing, not even things like you."
Douglas sneered. “You're soft—a soft sentimental fool."
“Admitted,” Kennon said, “but that's my nature."
“Yet you'd destroy the family, wreck Outworld Enterprises, and throw a whole world into chaos over a few thousand animals. I don't understand you."
“They're human,” Kennon said flatly.
“Admitting they might once have been, they're not now."
“And whose fault is that?"
“Not ours,” Douglas said promptly. “If there is any fault it's that of the court who decided they were humanoid."
“You didn't help any."
“Why should we? Does one treat a shrake like a brother?—or a varl?—or a dog? We treat them like the animals they are. And we've done no worse with the Lani. Our consciences are clear."
Kennon laughed humorlessly. “Yet this clear conscience makes you want to kill me, so you can keep on treating them as animals—even though you know they're human."
“I know nothing of the sort. But you're right about the killing, I'd kill you cheerfully if I had the chance. It's our necks if you get away with this. Of course, you probably won't, but why take the chance. I like my neck more than I like yours."
“You're honest at any rate,” Kennon admitted. “And in a way I don't blame you. To you it's probably better to be a rich slaver living off the legacy of a Degrader than a penniless humanitarian. But you've lost your chance."
Douglas screamed with rage. He whirled on Kennon, his face a distorted mask of hate.
“Hold it!” Kennon barked. �
��I don't want to kill you, but I'll burn a hole clear through your rotten carcass if you make another move. I have no love for your kind."
Douglas spat contemptuously. “You haven't got the guts,” he snarled. But he didn't move.
“Just stand still—very still,” Kennon said softly. The iron in his voice was not hidden by the quiet tone.
Douglas shivered. “I'll get you yet,” he said, but there was no force in the threat.
“Here's the rope you wanted,” Copper said as she emerged abruptly from the darkness. “I had a hard time finding it."
“You haven't been too long,” Kennon said. “Now tie Douglas’ hands behind him while I keep him covered."
“It's a pleasure,” Copper murmured.
* * *
CHAPTER XVIII.
“I'm frightened,” Copper said, twisting uncomfortably in the shock chair beside Kennon's.
“After you have been so brave?” Kennon asked. “That's nonsense. It's just nervous reaction. Now web in like I showed you. It's time for blast-off. We don't dare wait much longer."
“All right—but I have a feeling that this isn't right. Something is going to go wrong."
“I hope you don't have precognition.” Kennon smiled. “I've checked everything. The ship is as good as she'll ever be. There's nothing more that we can do."
“There's one consolation,” Copper said wanly. “At we'll die together."
“There's a better chance that we'll live together."
“I hope so."
“Ready?” Kennon asked.
She nodded.
He flipped the switches that would send the fuel rods into the reactor. Below them a soft, barely audible whine ascended the sonic scale to a point of irritating inaudibility. Kennon smiled. The spindizzy was functioning properly. He flipped a second bank of switches and a dull roar came from the buried stem. Ashes and pumice heated to incandescence were blown through the air. Molten drops of radioactive lava skittered across the durilium hull as Kennon advanced the power. The whole stem of the ship was immersed in a seething lake of bolling rock as the Egg lifted slowly with ponderous dignity into the night sky.
“Hang on!” Kennon said. “I'm going to hyper.” His hand moved a red lever and the Egg shimmered and vanished with a peculiar wrenching motion into an impossible direction that the mind could not grasp. And the interceptor missile from Otpen One nosed through the space the Egg had occupied.
* * * *
“We made it!” Kennon said, looking across the writhing semifluid control board, shifting oddly in the harsh yellow monochromatic light that pervaded the cabin. The screens were leaking like sieves, but they were holding well enough to keep Cth yellow from being anything more than an annoyance. He glanced over at Copper, a fantastically elongated Copper who looked like a madman's dream of chaos.
And Copper screamed! The sound echoed and re-echoed, dying away with a lingering discordant reverberation that made his skin tingle.
“Copper! It's all right! It's all fight! Stop it!"
Copper screamed again and her elongated figure suddenly foreshortened and collapsed into a small writhing ball from which two small pink hands emerged clutching at a gelid mass of air that flowed sluggishly around them.
And Kennon knew what he had forgotten! Hyperspace with leaky screens was nothing to inflict upon an unprepared mind. It is one thing to endure partial exposure after months of training, with experienced medics standing by to help you through the shock phase, but quite another to be thrust from a safe and sheltered existence into the mind shattering distortions of the Cth continuum.
The Egg was old. Her screens, never good at best, were hardly more than filters. Through the hull, through the drive lattice, the viciously distorted Cth environment seeped into the ship turning prosaic shapes of controls and instruments into writhing masses of obscene horror that sent extensions wiggling off into nothingness at eye-aching angles. A spaceman could take this—knowing it wasn't real—but a tyro could not.
Copper collapsed. Her mind, assaulted by sensations no untrained person should experience, went into shock. But she wasn't granted the mercy of unconsciousness. Terrified by a pseudo reality that surpassed her wildest nightmares, she stared wide-eyed at the control room and the thing that had been Kennon. She screamed until her throat was raw, until the monster beside her touched her with Kennon's hands. Then, mercifully, she felt a stinging in her arm and all sensation ceased.
Kennon stared glumly at the controls. Fleming alone knew how many objective years were passing outside as they hurtled through four-space. Subjectively it would only be hours aboard the Egg, but a decade—or maybe a century—might pass outside this mad universe where neither time nor speed had meaning. The old ships didn't have temporal compensators, nor could they travel through upper bands of Cth where subjective and objective time were more nearly equal. They were trapped in a semi-stasis of time as the ship fled on through the distorted monochromatic regions that bypassed normal space.
The Egg slipped smoothly out of the hyper jump, back into the normal universe. Beta floated above them, the blue shield of her atmosphere shining softly in the light of Beta's sun.
“Couldn't hit it that good again in a hundred tries,” Kennon gloated. “Halfway across the galaxy—and right on the nose.” He looked at the shock chair beside him. Copper was curled into a tight ball inside the confining safety web, knees drawn up, back bent, head down—arms wrapped protectingly around her legs—the fetal position of catatonic shock.
He shook her shoulder—no response. Her pulse was thready and irregular. Her breathing was shallow. Her lips were blue. Her condition was obvious—space shock—extreme grade. She'd need medical attention if she was going to live. And she'd need it fast!
“Just why, you educated nitwit,” he snarled at himself, “didn't you have sense enough to give her that injection of Sonmol before we hypered! You haven't the sense of a decerebrate Capellan grackle!"
He turned on the radio. “Emergency!” he said. “Any station! Space-shock case aboard. Extreme urgency."
“Identify yourself—give your license. Over."
“What port are you?"
“Hunterstown—will you please identify? Over."
“Your co-ordinates,” Kennon snapped. “Over."
“280.45-67.29 plus. Repeat—request your identification."
“Pilot Kennon, Jac, Beta 47M 26429. I have no I.D. for the ship—and you'll see why when I land. Over."
“Hunterstown Port to Kennon. You are not—repeat not-cleared to land. Go into orbit and report your position. Over."
“Sorry, Hunterstown. You wouldn't have checked in if you didn't have room, and a hospital. This is an emergency. I'm setting down. Out."
“But—” The words got no farther. Kennon was already spinning the ship.
“All right—we have you on the scope. But this is a class one violation. You may come in on Landing Beam One."
“Sorry. I have no GCA."
“What?—what sort of ship are you flying?” The voice was curious.
“I'm matching intrinsics over your port. Talk me in when I break through the overcast."
“Talk you in?"
“That's right. My instruments are obsolete."
“Great Halstead! What else?"
“I have an Ion drive. Plus two radioactive."
“Oh no!—And you still want to come in?"
“I have to. My passenger's in shock. She's going to have a baby."
“All right—I'll try to get you down in one piece."
“Have an ambulance ready,” Kennon said.
Kennon lowered the Egg through the overcast. Ground control picked him up smoothly and took him down as though it had been rehearsed. The Egg touched down in the radioactive area of the port. Decontamination jets hissed, sluicing the ship to remove surface contamination.
“Ochsner! what sort of a ship is that?” Ground Control's startled voice came over the annunciator.
“It's an old on
e,” Kennon said.
“That's a gross understatement. Stand by for boarders. Ambulance coming up."
Kennon opened the airlock and two radiation-suited men entered. “At least you had sense enough to wear protective clothing in this hotbox,” one said as they carefully unwebbed Copper and carried her out of the lock. “You wait here. The Port Captain wants to see you."
“Where are you taking her? What Center?” Kennon asked.
“What should you care? You've nearly killed her. The idea of taking a pregnant woman up in this death trap! What in Fleming's name's the matter with your brain?"
“I had to,” Kennon said. “I had to. It was a matter of life and death.” For once, he thought wryly, the cliche was true.
The Betan's face behind the transparent helmet was disgusted and unbelieving. “I hear that sort of thing every day,” he said. “Am I supposed to believe it?"
“You'd believe it if you'd have been where I was,” Kennon muttered. “Now—whe're are you taking her?” he demanded.
The man arched blond eyebrows. “To the local Medical Center—where else? There's only one in this area."
“Thanks,” Kennon said.
He watched the ambulance flit off as he waited for the Spaceport Patrol. There was no further need for the protection suit, so he peeled it off and hung it in the control-room locker. Copper was right, he mused. It did itch.
The Port Captain's men were late as usual—moving gingerly through the radiation area. A noncom gestured for him to enter their carryall. “Port Captain wants to see you,” he said.
“I know,” Kennon replied.
“You should have waited upstairs."
“I couldn't. It was a matter of medicine,” Kennon said.
The noncom's face sobered. “Why didn't you say so? All you said was that it was an emergency."
“I've been away. I forgot."
“You shouldn't have done that. You're a Betan, aren't you?"
Kennon nodded.
They drove to the Port Office, where Kennon expected-and got—a bad time from the port officials. He filled out numerous forms, signed affidavits, explained his unauthorized landing, showed his spaceman's ticket, defended his act of piloting without an up-to-date license, signed more forms, entered a claim for salvage rights to the Egg, and finally when the Legal Division, the Traffic Control Division, the Spaceport Safety Office, Customs, Immigration, and Travelers Aid had finished with him, he was ushered into the presence of the Port Captain.
Three Classic SF Novels: Plague Ship; Operation Terror; The Lani People Page 34