At this point she turned abruptly to him and sought his arms. "Oh God, Danny! Before we can live, there has to be security and hope!"
He didn't follow up the chance to caress her. He was thinking: "chastity belt." For her the child symbol was the Earth dream of the world, too precious to be contaminated by futility.
"You want hope, doll?" he said suddenly. "How about looking behind the scenes?"
That was when he opened up on his theory about the Pit flashes. At first she was amazed, even scientifically fascinated. But when the implications began to focus, suggesting that somebody like the Duke could have been brainwashed, she tightened up again.
"What about Tallullah?" she challenged. "Do you think she could be trapped like that, I mean brainwashed by any method?"
"Baby, let's face it. On the Council she could be a tool without knowing it. She's like a clucking mother hen, as vulnerable as any of us."
Freddie's great amber eyes flashed sudden defiance. She stiffened angrily, taking her old white-smock stance. "If anybody's brainwashed, or if anybody's waving a secessionist flag, it's your tyrannical Skipper and his chief butcher, Major Pike!" He tried to hold her and calm her down but she whirled away from him furiously. "How do you know you haven't been hypno-strobed? Do you know what you're doing or saying, Captain Troy?"
He firmed up his voice. "Freddie, I want your monitor tapes."
She glared at him in outraged disbelief. Her face reddened in mortification. "So that was all you wanted of me! You and your love and kisses and your Earth dreams! That's worse than attempted rape!" She slapped him hard. "You and your runty Khan can go to hell!"
He stared at her, but before he could think of a follow-up, Foxy came running out on the terrace and grabbed his arm urgently.
"You gotta see something, Danny. Come on!"
As he went away with his stubble-haired little friend, hardly hearing his excited babble at first, he was thinking: her chastity belt had something more than chastity behind it. He couldn't fathom it at the moment, but the "feint and fend" was back. The tapes would have to wait, but for how long? Time was running out.
It was a cage. It was made of native duraca poles and sturdily bound with metal strap clamps. It stood on the edge of the square near the security hut, brightly illuminated under the field lights.
"They say it's for Jerry, a substitute for execution," said Fitz angrily. "What the hell. They know the lad'll die in a cage!"
A small crowd of sympathizing dissenters surrounded him and Fitz and Foxy. The tyranny was getting out of hand. Could the Duke or the Skipper possibly sanction this, or was it only Pike's taunting sadism? It was too late to see Lyshenko that night, and early next day he was ordered to pilot an urgent survey flight. A rich iron deposit had been located. High on priority lists were basic materials now, to begin the long cycle of the industrial buildup.
* * * *
The next afternoon, Boozie found him in the shower module on board the life-pod. The frail Belgian's blue eyes gleamed in triumph.
"I did it!" he exclaimed. "You were right, Danny, about those monitor tapes. The flashes were only hash from overload, but when I slowed everything down with a delayed playback, the words were there on those flickers! They're loaded with hypno-signals. You know – like give up, all is futility, the Jumper route is the only way to go, et cetera. We were had, my boy!"
Danny stepped under the drying blower but stared at him. "How the devil did you get Freddie to–"
"We didn't. Foxy stole a couple of tapes from her lab."
He knew that could really get his face slapped, but the damage was done. Or maybe the battle was won. He wasn't sure. If Boozie actually could show this proof– His racing thoughts were interrupted by Boozie's report on the insurgents. The underground plan was bursting at the seams, only waiting for Ravano's decision.
"If you're going to make a case, buddy," urged Boozie, "you'd better head for Top Deck and see the Skipper!"
Danny finished drying and slipped his clothes on hurriedly. He knew the time had come for a showdown, now or never.
* * * *
"A Forum hearing is a serious thing, Captain," said Alonso. "And your charge has dangerous ramifications."
"Especially now," grunted Lyshenko irritably, "when we're getting rumors of all kinds of subversion. Your timing stinks, Danny!"
He couldn't tell them that time was going up in smoke. He had stuck to his guns, knowing his rights according to the Charter and as a staff officer in Flight Command. He had requested the closed meeting in the staff room and had told them the whole story about the Pit strobings, in spite of the presence of Philo Bates and his eternal log transcorder. He failed to notice at first that P.Q. Bates had become unusually nervous.
The Duke smiled at him with a touch of grim assessment. "How do you know, Danny, that you haven't walked into the lion's den? We could be your so-called Master Minds...!"
"It's like the World Bank," said Danny. "If that goes under, who's to worry? It's over with. Look, sir, my only route to keep from flipping has been the law." He knew he was withholding information about the underground plot, but he was fighting it, wasn't he? He was trying to stop it by lancing the root of the problem. "I'm loyal," he asserted firmly. "I serve the mission the ship was assigned to. I've volunteered for hiber. I'm still answerable to both of you. Until somebody tells me differently, I'm going by the book. That's why I'm here."
At this point, Philo Bates hastily excused himself. He looked genuinely ill, which was his excuse. No one seemed to consider his absence a loss. Lyshenko took over the transcorder.
Alonso went on to say that the evidence, even if valid, might only imply that Sergeant James Frater was psycho-phasing, probably with some of the more fanatic Jumpers. He repeated that the subject was extremely dangerous, perhaps for Danny himself. There could be unexpected repercussions.
"For a Forum decision I want more Council backup," declared Lyshenko. "Let's get Al in here!"
Danny didn't like it. Alfred Poyntner could be the Master Mind, but there was nothing he could do about it. Poyntner came in swiftly, his sharp face set for a battle. When he heard the whole story about the alleged secessionist plot and the alleged evidence of the tapes, he sneered sarcastically.
"You've obviously jumped the gun, little captain. Don't you see the implications if such a Forum were to be heard? The whole thing would be a serious reflection on Madrazo and Lyshenko." As the Duke and the Skipper exchanged significant glances he delivered his coup de grace. "Or are you implying, perhaps, that these two gentlemen have been brainwashed?"
There was only a distant gleam in the Duke's dark-brown eyes, but Lyshenko impaled Danny with a Mongoloid glare of sudden challenge and suspicion.
"Frankly, I thought of it," said Danny. "Pointed Head" had touched his temper button. He might as well play the whole hand, straight out.
"You what?" bellowed Lyshenko.
"Yes sir. Pike is getting away with murder. That's not like you or the Duke. Jerry Fontaine is the best example."
The Skipper banged a fist on the table. "You're damn right he's the best example! When I said there'd be no independent action I meant exactly everything he's done!" He went on furiously, adding up all of Jerry's violations including the fermented liquor.
"We can't execute a man with his knowledge," said the Duke. "He's too valuable to the colony. In ancient tradition, you know, public censure was often achieved through use of the pillory. So the next best thing is the cage, since he gets sick in the brig. He goes into it tomorrow as a lesson to everybody."
"But that's the same as execution!" Danny argued.
"And why not?" said Poytner cuttingly. "Knowledge or no knowledge, my vote was for execution!"
"The hell you say, Poyntner!" Danny knew he wasn't going to hold it all in much longer. "You'd kill a man for a little native moonshine?"
"Hardly!" snapped Lyshenko. "But for the deaths of others as a result of insubordination and irresponsibility, yes, damn it!
He's a danger to the colony. Holberg died because of him, and now Zeb Kane!"
Danny stared at him. So Kane had died and Jerry was getting the blame. The poor devil did have a jinx.
Just then the stormy session was interrupted from an unexpected source. The room swayed and a deep rumble of thunder shook the great sphere of the life-pod. The thunder came from the ground.
"Earthquake!" shouted Lyshenko. He turned swiftly and struck an alarm button behind him. The alert horns started their clamor, but they were drowned in a sound like Doomsday. This was a big one. Danny remembered falling twice before he got out of the wildly gyrating life-pod, caught in a panic where personalities were reduced to arms and legs and shouting faces.
Outside the sky was on fire. The southern horizon was ablaze with exploding streamers of lava. The ground jerked ruthlessly and virtually swelled before their eyes as cracks appeared among the paving stones. As he lay on his face with the rest of the crowd he could hear the frightened shrieks of jungle creatures in the night. The trees and the tall, graceful ferns whipped back and forth as if a hurricane had struck the forest.
Time seemed to be running out in more ways than one. A falling toolbox had caused the only casualty, Philo Bates. The Skipper would have to get somebody else for his incessant log entries now. The massive temple had withstood the heavy earth shocks remarkably well, which said much for pyramidal design. The only damages had been caused by short-circuit fires. However, the near catastrophe launched some emergency planning. The star ship's life-pod was to be kept on operational standby at all times. In case of a really "bad one," all hands could be lifted off on the gravitrons.
"Which is a dandy excuse for Fitz and me and Foxy to stay close to the ship," said Boozie the next morning. "Besides, I need the electronics lab. I haven't given up on the space communication project."
The latest underground word from Nolokov was that Akala had been triggered off religiously by the quake. "She reads it as a sign from Ramor, their local deity," the Monk explained. "According to her, the Talavats have got to get off the land and go north."
"Except that the sea is the barrier," added Boozie.
Ravano was still the key standoff in the breakout plan. What was needed was one final trigger to make him attempt the escape.
"Noley, you tell your boys to hold off," Danny argued.
"The Forum hearing is tomorrow. If I can get the Top Deck to do a Watergate on the hard heads, we won't need a revolution."
The Monk smiled cynically. "If I had time I'd give you a 'yabbut' on that Forum idea. You may be putting your head in the dragon's mouth."
All day long, Danny had Nolokov's cryptic remark to worry about, until they locked Jerry up in his outdoor case. This was a third test for his conscience. The tyrannical aspects of such an inhumane move increased his internal tug of war. There were dark moments when he stood there in the crowd, watching Jerry's abject misery and hearing sadistic taunts about liquor and rape from the garbage elements of the "safe-side" slavery endorsers. They were moments in which he saw himself running with King Ravano.
The Bishop was at the cage, magnanimously delivering maudlin prayers for the "sinner," and Jerry was shrieking and cursing at him through the wooden bars, telling him to take his salvation and "stick it."
"I'll find my own God!" he shouted in pathetic tears of blind frustration and anguish.
"Damn it!" growled Fitz. "Maybe Noley's lads should take him with them when they go."
"I might just join them," said Foxy grimly. "There's more out there for both of us than there is in Adolf's prison camp. Jerry's hung up on his orchids, and I might build myself a boat again and head north for bigger country."
"All's well that ends well," smirked Boozie. "Shakespeare."
"What the hell's that supposed to mean?" demanded Fitz.
Boozie drew them all to one side and told them. "It took an earthquake to knock my think-tank together," he said. "When I saw the ground trying to come apart last night, it reminded me of Sam's lecture about the mineral kingdom. Atomic consciousness and all that. He said: 'What do you suppose holds the worlds together?' Then it hit me. Gravity!"
"So what does that get you?"
"Maybe the instant communication system. With the ship's gravitrons I might be able to swing it. Instead of a forest, how about modulating gravity?"
"What?" said Danny, emerging finally from his pit of despond.
"That's right – gravity as an instant universal carrier wave. If everything goes to hell around here, we can at least tell 'Mother' why her boys and girls will not be coming home."
* * * *
"Record of special Forum, ship date A.D. 2277, Terra Nova, starting at fourteen-oh-five. The plaintiff, Second Officer Captain Daniel Troy, versus anonymous defendants, hereinafter referred to as the Alleged Suspects. Charges in hearing as follows: That alleged suspects are a secessionist group who have..."
It was all there in the log playback as Danny had stated: the sabotage plot, the alleged hypno-strobing, whether in or out of the Pit, the alleged murders of Hahnemann, Frater and Verga, the planned forced landing, masterminding a tyrannical monarchy with no intention of a return to Earth, the potential source of an eventual blood bath, and so on.
As he listened to it and watched the faces around him in the staff room, he had a sense of being rammed along a track by a rocket sled. When he was hit by the news that the Council had invoked the crisis clause and made it a closed Forum, he had felt the hot breath of the "Mastermind" on his neck. It all seemed rigged from the beginning. Even as he further stated his case and used Mabuse as a witness for the tape evidence or when he presented the demolition fragments from the explosion, he felt caged like Jerry, looking out at a very hostile world. The stiff-necked presence of Freddie was like another slap in the face. She had filed a cross-complaint, requesting a second Forum in relation to her stolen tapes. To make things worse, Boozie's hard evidence was gone. The tapes had been coincidentally burned in a fire which had supposedly been caused by the earthquake. Alonso was right. The whole thing was dangerous. The Duke and the Skipper were forced to be on the defensive because a hidden mastermind would be a reflection on their leadership. Even Tallullah was present in matronly outraged propriety. Adolf the Pike was watching him in smug disdain, and Poyntner and Stockton had their heads together in scowling deliberation, preparing the Council's rebuttal. Here indeed was the lion's den.
From a seat by the rear bulkhead, Boozie's ice-blue eyes were saying, "You could be duty blind." Subliminally, however, he caught the deeper message: that an alliance with Ravano might help their fearless leaders in the long run. Noley's plan was suddenly blazing with a new light of farsighted logic. Here they were lying on marble slabs, the cyborg armies of the blind, except for the not-so-hidden mastermind...
Poyntner's rebuttal and cross-questioning came on with all the sulphurous heat and stench of dragon fire. There was no feint and fend. It was an open, flailing attack and it was out for blood. The first bombshell was Freddie in the witness seat. All of her tapes had disappeared!
"Convenient, Captain," crowed the point-headed one in deadly triumph. "You and your friend rig two stolen tapes with false evidence and get rid of the others because they show nothing!"
"It's also convenient," Danny stubbornly retorted, "that a fire destroyed what we had to show."
But that was beside the point. The barrage continued. The ship's log had been computer-analyzed. The summary conclusion was that a landing decision had been mandatory due to the PNR; all deaths were accidental, and Jerry Fontaine was the most likely suspect for the sabotage. As a psycho-phased Jumper he could have planted the bomb that destroyed the S-link and caused the convenient death of Sergeant Frater. Certainly, Mr. Fontaine's past actions and present status seemed to corroborate such an analysis. In fact, an execution judgment might now be justified.
The sword of retaliation whipped onward, dripping red with victory blood. Pike was helping the attack by casting shadows of suspicion
on Danny as a possible accomplice in a subversive plot to discredit the whole colonial and mission administration.
Danny's charges were unanimously discredited, but there was to be a further hearing to handle cross-charges against him. Meanwhile, he was grounded, with no use of any air or ground vehicle permitted. He was restricted to the base, and the same went for Frans Mabuse.
* * * *
A final lightning bolt was struck at dawn of following day. A huge pre-breakfast crowd had gathered around the site of Jerry's cage. Even Lalille Sardou was there, sobbing out her remorse and sorrow, with Tallullah and Freddie and even Alonso trying to keep her from sinking onto the pavement stones. The cage had been violently ripped apart by some powerful jungle beast. Giant catlike tracks had been found, and a guard had been mangled beyond recognition.
Danny glared at Pike who was standing nearby. "My God!" he exclaimed. "Isn't anybody making a search?"
"Why?" said Pike flatly. "Either now or if he's brought back, he's a dead man." As Danny started away, he poked him with his club. "Where do you think you're going?"
"Hell, I'll go look for him myself!"
"You're grounded, but you can try. All I need is one excuse, buddy boy!"
Danny felt his temper coming up like a piston, compressing his nerves for a final explosion. Noley's dark eyes caught him in a fixed gaze that warned him. The Mad Monk was six yards away. Suddenly he saw in him his weapon, so mighty a sword as to make the "Pike" a sliver in a tempest. Decision gripped him coldly, and he walked away.
What helped that decision was a last look at Freddie. Their eyes happened to meet just briefly. Her shield was up, the mask was on. She gave him a withering look of contempt and walked stiffly away with Lalille. She was gently escorted by her father and mother images – the Duke and Tallullah.
Star Quest Page 14