Carleton squeaked, but it sounded like, “Don’t!” and Crag grinned and relaxed pressure on his throat a little.
“Trap?”
“Yes. It’s booby-trapped. We’ll both die if we’re standing here. I’ll open it. Let me open it.”
Crag let him open it. Besides ledgers and tapes there were two money boxes in the vault. “Which?” Crag asked. The strangling manager pointed weakly at one of them. “That one. It’s mine. The other’s hotel money.”
Crag held onto the neck. “Pick them both up. Carry them to your desk and open them there.”
He waited until the second box was opened and the lid thrown back. Then gently, very gently, he tapped the manager behind the ear with his metal left hand. It would have given Crag pleasure to strike harder, but it was not in his nature to kill unnecessarily. He lowered Carleton into his chair, ripped off part of his clothing and bound and gagged him securely with it.
He took the large denomination bills out of both boxes; he didn’t count them but obviously there was considerably more than the four hundred thousand dollars which had been his. He went back through the panel, closing and locking it behind him, and back up the stairs, counting flights again.
The three people he’d left in his suite—Bea, Gert and Hauser—had followed him through the broken mirror and were standing watching events through one of the one-way panels, the one where the blonde-brunette-redhead trio were operating. “Come on,” he told them. “We’ve got to get out of here fast.”
They didn’t argue. They followed him back into the suite, out into the corridor and up to the roof via the elevator.
“Shovels?” he asked the attendant.
“In the aircar, sir. And—”
“Thanks, I see where it is.” He ran toward it, the others following. He got in and made a fast takeoff.
“What did you mean asking him about shovels?” Bea asked him. He saw she’d brought an open bottle with her, and took it firmly from her and threw it out the window of the aircar. He said, “No more drinking till we’re through. We’ve got work to do—if you want me to get Gardin out of there.”
“But—shovels! You can’t dig him out of the top floor of a twenty-story building.”
Crag didn’t answer. He was getting every mile of speed possible out of the aircar, heading south of the city. He didn’t speak again, even to answer questions, until they were an hour away. Then he told Bea, “Get Gardin on that two-way of yours. Tell him we can make it in a few hours, if he can hold out that long.”
“But we’re heading away from Mars City, Crag. How can—?”
“Never mind. Do what I told you.”
Bea took out the box, talked into it briefly, and listened. “He’s doing fine, says he can hold out as long as he has to. But he can’t believe there’s any way you can get him out of there. He says there are at least two hundred cops, and six helis overhead. They can shoot down anything—”
“Tell him not to worry, just to hold out.”
She talked briefly again and then closed the box. She turned in the seat to face Crag. “All right,” she said, “I told him. But why can’t you tell us and him what you’re going to try? We’re all in this.”
“All right,” he said. “I’ve got a spaceship hidden. We’re going to get it. We rescue him in it. I can put it so he can step right from the window into the port.”
“My God, a spaceship right down in Mars City. That’s—” She laughed suddenly. “I started to say that’s illegal, but—” She hesitated. “It might work, Crag. But why can’t I tell Gardin? It’ll make him feel better if he knows you’re going to try something that’s got a chance of working?”
“It’s got better than a chance of working. But the cops may have tapped that beam by now and be monitoring it. Then they’d be ready for us and it wouldn’t work. Nothing those helis can throw can touch a spaceship, nor anything they’ve got there for the siege, on the ground or in the building. But if they knew in advance, they could have a bigger spaceship waiting for us. Or an atomic cannon or two ready to shoot us down.”
“But they’ll get ships from the spaceport, Crag.”
“And we’ll be to hell and gone off Mars by the time they get one off the ground. Now shut up. I’m hedge-hopping this aircar and that takes concentration at night.”
Two hours later he put it down. He pointed in the dim light of Phobos and Demos to a dune of sand ahead. “The ship’s in that,” he said. “Hauser, bring those shovels out of the back and—”
“Shovels?” There was horror in Hauser’s voice. “It’ll take us months to shovel all that sand. Why don’t we go and get a sand-cat?”
“That’s the way I buried it. But it’ll take hours to get one and drive it here. And we don’t have to uncover the ship, damn it; all we have to do is to get a trench through to the port, and it’s dead center on this side. Once I get in the ship I can rock it on the antigravs and most of that sand will roll off by itself and we can lift out of what’s left.”
They started shoveling. Crag worked continuously and made Hauser do the same, although after a while Hauser had to stop and rest on his shovel once in a while. The two women took turns with the third shovel; Crag hadn’t known when he’d bought only three that there’d be a fourth in the party.
Hauser was panting. “My God, Crag,” he said. “This is still going to take hours. Didn’t you bring any grub? I’m getting hungry.”
“Dig faster then,” Crag told him. “There’s food in the ship. Can you pilot one of these things?”
Hauser wiped sweat from his forehead and then shook his head. “Gardin can, though. Where we going in it? Venus?”
“We’ll decide that when we get Gardin.”
Even with three of them shoveling at a time, it was a longer and harder job than Crag had estimated it to be. It was dawn when they finally uncovered the port of the spaceship and got it open. Bea had wanted several times to call Gardin on the two-way, but Crag had forbidden it, since if the police had found the beam and were monitoring it, they could trace it directionally and the spaceship would never get off the ground.
Once in the ship, it was a tougher job than Crag had realized to use the antigravs to get rid of the rest of the sand. At first it seemed too solidly embedded for him to rock even a fraction of an inch. But finally he could rock it an inch, and then inches, and at last it was free, and rose.
He hedge-hopped it back to Mars City and because he couldn’t use full speed at so low an altitude, it took almost an hour. En route Hauser and the two women gorged themselves with food from the ship’s food locker—but drank nothing because Crag had taken the key from the locker that contained bottled goods and told them that no one would have another drink until they were safely away with Gardin—and then, exhausted from the digging, they slept.
Crag called out from the control panel and woke them when he was only a few minutes away from Mars City. He told Bea to get Gardin on the two-way and tell him to be ready near the center on the north side of the building.
It went like clockwork. Due to Crag’s skill in jockeying the ship into exact position, the actual rescue was so easy that after their long labor in getting and freeing the ship, it was almost anticlimactic. From the ground, from windows and roofs of other buildings and from helicopters hovering overhead the police poured fire at them from every available weapon. But the fire which would have melted an air car within seconds barely warmed the thick and insulated hull of a spaceship. And the instant Gardin was inside and the port had closed, Crag flashed the ship upward, set a course and locked the controls.
“Safe now,” he said. “They’ll have ships after us within minutes, but they won’t catch us.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yes. We can’t fight back because this baby doesn’t carry armaments, but because of that it’s faster than anything that does.”
“But where are we going?” Gardin asked. “They’ll have tracers on us; we can’t land on Mars without their knowing wh
ere. Venus?”
“Cragon,” Crag said.
“Cragon! Nothing can land on Cragon. Not even the whole space fleet.”
Crag grinned at him. “That’s why we’ll be safe there.”
CHAPTER TWELVE
THERE was argument, even after he had explained. But all of them and especially the two women, at first thought Venus was a better idea.
A new, raw planet, they argued, wasn’t civilization. On Venus they’d all be rich. Gardin had brought a bag of fabulous jewels with him from the rescue; he’d had plenty of time while under siege to pick them out. Their value was anybody’s guess, but it couldn’t be less than a million dollars, even sold through a fence; and Gardin was willing to split with the rest of them for having rescued him.
Of course there’d be a risk to landing on Venus; they’d have to land in a remote spot and hide the spaceship, as Crag had done on Mars. But once they got into a city and cashed in some of the jewels, they’d be safe enough. Even if identified, they’d be rich enough to buy immunity from extradition and still have plenty left.
“What good will jewels be on Cragon?” Bea wanted to know.
“You can wear them,” Crag told her. “You’ll be the best dressed women on the whole planet.”
But Crag won, gradually talked them over. Gardin came to his side first, then Hauser; finally the women assented.
Two days later they approached Cragon. Crag took over the controls. Because the others wanted him to, remembering what had happened to the atmosphere inside the scoutship which had made the first landing attempt, Crag lowered very slowly, ready to raise ship fast if any of them started to experience difficulty in breathing. But none of them had, so he set the ship down in a gentle, perfect landing.
Just as the ship touched surface a voice in Crag’s mind said, “Welcome, Crag.” He answered mentally, not aloud, and looked quickly at the others to see if they had received any equivalent message; obviously none of them had.
Crag opened the port without bothering to check the atmosphere outside. He knew it would be good Earth-type air, and it was. It had a clear, cool sweetness that made the breathing of it almost a caress for the lungs. The others stepped down after him.
“Well, we’re here,” Gardin said. “Now what?”
“A drink,” Bea suggested. “A lot of drinks.”
Crag hesitated, then handed her the key to the locker. “All right,” he said. “Break it out and we’ll celebrate.”
Bea went inside the ship and came out again shortly with an open woji bottle. She looked disgusted. “Big deal, that liquor supply,” she said. “Ten bottles, two apiece. What are we going to do when they’re gone?”
“Do without,” Crag said. “Or find some equivalent of wild grapes and learn how to make our own.”
“Damn it, Crag,” Bea said. “If you knew when we were leaving Mars, why didn’t you stock up the ship? After we picked up Gardin we could have raided some outpost station and—well, at least have stocked up on liquor, enough to last us a while.”
Crag shrugged. Actually he’d thought of doing just that and had decided not to; the ship couldn’t have carried enough liquor to have lasted five of them for their lifetimes anyway and so the sooner they learned to do without or to make their own the better.
He took the bottle when it was passed to him but took only a sip from it. He was more interested right now in looking around him and planning. He’d brought the ship down near a clear, gently meandering stream. He had no doubt that it was clean sweet water. A grassy plain sloped down to it. Beyond the stream was forest; some of the trees looked familiar to him, others strange. But no doubt they’d find edible things, good things. Everything they needed. Meat? As though in answer to his unspoken question—although he knew the alien who had made all this wasn’t invading his privacy by listening in his mind—he heard the far cry of an animal of some kind. And in the stream a fish leaped. Yes, everything they needed. And probably dangers, too. He’d bet odds that there were predators there, hunters as well as hunted. Well, that was to the good. Nothing that is easy is fun; he’d learned that lesson at the Luxor.
A bottle was being handed to him and he saw that it was a fresh one. Again he took a sip, but as he passed it on he held out his hand toward Bea. “The key,” he said. “That’ll be enough for now. We’ve got work to do.”
“Work? Already? We just got here. You mean you’re not going to let us hang one on, to celebrate?”
Crag hesitated, and then shrugged. Why not? He’d landed on the day side but near the twilight zone; it would soon be evening. Why not let them hang one on, and himself with them; in the morning would be time to start planning and working. Besides, the five of them, all heavy drinkers, would probably kill the ten bottles and that would end the problem of liquor rationing. Why not get rid of it all at once?
“All right,” he said. “We’ll have a party. But first let’s gather a lot of wood for a fire. It’s cramped for us in the spaceship; we’ve had enough of that for a while.”
“But why a fire?” Hauser wanted to know. “It’s not cool.”
“Probably will be after dark and it’ll be too late to get wood then. Besides—” Crag gestured toward the forest across the stream. “—we don’t know what might come out of those woods after dark. If something does come out, we want to be able to see it.”
Hauser frowned. “What makes you think there might be anything dangerous, Crag? According to you, this—alien made this world to please you. Why’d he put anything in it that could hurt you?”
Crag said grimly, “Because he knows me and did make it to be the way I’d want it to be. Which would not be all lambs and no lions. Would you want it that way, Gardin?”
Gardin grinned. “Maybe not, but neither would I want it all water and no woji. Well, we haven’t looked very far yet. Maybe there are streams that run woji. All right, gang, let’s gather sticks.”
Sticks were easy to find, just across the stream. Crag stationed Hauser to mount guard with a heatgun while the other four did the gathering; within an hour, just about as the sun was going down, they had an ample supply to keep a fair-sized fire burning through the night, in case they spent the whole night in the open.
And within another hour they admitted it had been a wise precaution—at least as far as warmth was concerned; otherwise the cool evening would have forced them back into the crowded quarters of the ship. Thy drank a bit, then brought out food from the ship and ate, then started in on their celebration, heavy drinking.
All but Crag, that is. For a while he took drink for drink with the others and then found himself taking more and more time between drinks, and not minding it. He told himself that one of them—and it might as well be he—should stay nearly enough sober to be sure the fire was kept going, and to be able to guard the others. But there was also the fact that he found himself wanting each drink less than the preceding one.
He’d never especially liked the taste of liquor; he’d drunk for effect, escape. And here….
By midnight—and Cragon had a period of rotation, of night and day, almost exactly the same as Earth’s—all the liquor was gone and the others were drunk. And it was getting quite cold by then and Crag helped them help one another back into the ship and into bunks.
Then he went back outside, replenished the fire and sat in front of it. Alone. He didn’t dare sleep, so he didn’t. He could have, of course, in the ship, with the port shut, but he didn’t want to have to go back in there, even for a few hours. It was better to be out here, alone, even if he had to stay awake. He could stay awake for days on end if he had to; and he often had.
In the morning—after the most beautiful sunrise he had ever seen—he was a little tired. But felt better than the others looked as though they felt, when he’d routed them out. Gardin admitted to a bad hangover, but didn’t show it. The others admitted to hangovers and showed them.
They were moody over breakfast.
“Well, Boss,” Bea asked, “what are
our orders for today? Or are we going to vote on what to do? Is this a democracy, or are you running it?”
“We’ll vote if you want,” Crag said. “But vote or no vote, there are certain things we’ve got to do ahead of other things. We need living quarters. That ship’s too crowded and has too little privacy for five people to live in long. It’s crowded, even for four. We’ve got to start on some adobe huts—small ones will do at first; we can build decent ones later.”
“What’s adobe?” Hauser wanted to know.
“Clay shaped into bricks and left to dry in the sun. If we scout both ways along that creek we’ll find some clay.”
“Mud huts? We’re going to live in mud huts?” Gert sounded horrified.
Crag looked at her. “If you’ve got any better ideas—outside of five people trying to live in that ship—let’s have them. And there’s the question of food. I’d guess there’s enough in the ship for five of us for another few days, a week if we go on rations. But we’ve got to learn how to hunt and fish, and start that right away. Gardin, you’re a good shot, aren’t you?”
Gardin nodded.
“Then here’s my suggestion for today. Try that forest and see what you can find. Go heavily armed and don’t go in too deep, because we don’t know what we’ll run into there. We want to learn the dangers gradually, not by one of us getting killed the first day. If you want me to go with you I will, but—”
Gardin said, “I won’t need help. But what do you have in mind for yourself?”
“To scout along the stream for some clay. I once knew a little geology, not much, but I can probably recognize the kind of stuff we need better than any of the rest of you. If I find a deposit near, okay. If I find one but too far to carry bricks, we’ll move headquarters, move the spaceship nearer to it. Hauser, have you ever done any fishing?”
“No.”
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