by Kris Neville
He groaned and stiffened, anticipating the light when they were in second procedure level.
He heard one of the crew say: “Pick-up successful.”
“Can you berth your craft on the Flagship?”
PARR felt a dread for he had thought to go to the Advanceship, and that was the one Lauri would name for destruction!
Relief came when the crewman said, “Wrong hanger sort. This isn’t combat equipment, sorry.”
“All right.”
Parr breathed an easier sigh, and the communications set went off.
The lights came on.
Instinctively Parr lowered his head into his arms. He groaned again. “My leg,” he mumbled.
“What?”
“Hurt my leg,” he lied.
A crewman knelt beside him. Parr realized then that they were carrying an extra crewman.
The Knoug rolled him over.
There was a startled gasp of recognition and Parr hit him in the neck. He slumped down and Parr had to squirm from under his limp body.
“What the—!”
Parr was on his feet.
“That’s not Kal!” one of the others said.
The pilot swiveled around.
Parr dove, realizing, even as he was in the air, that each Knoug was reaching for his focus gun.
He hit the standing Knoug. The Knoug teetered. Parr hit him again.”
The pilot had his gun out.
Parr slammed a mental bolt at the pilot and he was surprised to see that the shield folded like hot butter. Even had he wished to he could not have stopped his assault from crisping the other’s thoughts to oblivion. He was almost annoyed at the weakness.
He tried a mental assault at the other sagging crewman with equal results.
The craft started to spin out of control.
Parr struggled forward, was slammed sideways, and far below he could see moonlight flash on water.
He was thrown into the controls on the second spin, and he pulled back the emergency equalizer in desperation. The craft skittered.
And then he was in control.
He found the beam on the dial. He was to the left. He centered on it and followed it in.
He jockeyed below the gaping hatch of the Advanceship and came up slowly. The controls were stiff. It was a ticklish job.
Then he was inside. He shied left to set the craft down.
It bounced and half rolled on the deck. Then he struggled to the door.
When he opened it there was an orderly waiting. “That was a hell of a landing,” he said. “For—hey!”
He went down easily under the assault. Parr realized his mind had grown even stronger than he had supposed. For the first time he began to hope that he really stood a chance of making it.
He glanced at his watch.
Almost forty-five minutes! It had seemed only five . . .
LAURI ran toward the second building. Her mind usually smooth and calm, was now a welter of conflicting thoughts. She had tried to reach the other Oholos. But they shut themselves off. No help from them.
There were no cabs out. And the telephones were dead. She was desperately afraid Ka! was in the morgue but she could not risk the time to be sure. Vaguely she remembered the siren that had squalled when the police came for the body of the Oholo and his Earth assailant who had been killed outside the hotel. But she could not remember another siren near the time Kal had been killed. She was forced to assume the police had not come for him.
But she could not be sure.
If the police had not come, she reasoned, then he had not been killed before witnesses. Therefore he had not been killed in the streets.
She knew that he had seen them leave the hotel. That narrowed the range. That he had been killed shortly afterward by the Oholos narrowed the range even more.
He had not been moving when he was killed, and he had just finished reporting Parr’s and her flight, meaning that he had been stationary since his observation. And there would be no reason for the Oholos to move or to hide the body.
Therefore his body should be where it had fallen.
There had been four business buildings in the vicinity where a man could have been killed unseen.
She pushed open the doors to the second. The ground floor, within observation range, was easily checked. So was the second. Third. Fourth. Fifth.
She was back in the street. Two more buildings. Half her time gone. She glanced at her watch for verification. Each of the two remaining buildings had four floors.
The nearest one was locked. But there was a light inside. She was puzzled. Then she saw the cleaning maid come down the front stairs, carrying a brace of candles in one hand and a mop and bucket in the other. The old woman moved slowly, unconcerned, oblivious of the outside world, intent only on her job. Lauri shuddered, but she knew that the face would not be calm if she had seen a corpse in her duties. Therefore, there was no corpse inside.
One building left!
But a few minutes later she was back in the streets. There had been nothing on the lower floor, the second floor, and the two top floors needed only a glance.
She sobbed desperately.
Something had been wrong with her reasoning, and she had only twenty minutes left to start from the beginning and find the Knoug’s body.
PARR ran quickly along the corridor. He passed two incurious Knougs. He continued on, winding upward toward the control room which he had to capture. There would be a delicate balance of timing and luck between success and failure.
He was not frightened now, even though he knew he could not personally win the fight in capture or success. His mind was calm. Strangely, too, it was at peace.
He clambered up the final ladder, his hands unsteady on the rungs. The control room door was closed. He tensed, listening, wondering how many of the enemy were inside.
He knocked, his knuckles brittle on steel. He thought, in that fleet second, of Lauri. He wondered dimly if she had found the comset.
“Yeah?”
“I’ve got Kal out here, sir!” Parr said briskly, hoping to imitate the orderly’s voice.
“What the hell!” a voice from inside roared, “I thought we told you to take him down to the Commander’s office.”
Parr held his breath.
He heard an indistinct mutter of voices inside and he knew that one of them must be on the inter-phone to the Commander.
“Something screwy here!” the voice roared indignantly.
Parr hit the door and it crashed inward with an echoing clang.
He catapulted into the congested control room. In a glance he saw there were only two Knougs. One was at the control banks, half turned in surprise. The other held the phone limply in his left hand, his eyes-staring.
Parr kicked the door shut viciously and the sound rang in his ears. He launched himself at the Knoug with the phone. He felt his head meet a soft stomach and he heard explosive air pop from the man’s lungs. The Knoug went over backwards, down lard.
The other one roared an oath.
PARR walked on the fallen one’s face. He stomped the face and it gurgled. He stomped again in fury as all his frustration and new bitterness found an outlet. He locked the other Knoug in mental battle, but the mind he met was strong, catching him off guard.
The Knoug dove for the huge comset to warn the Fleet.
Parr could hear, from the receiver of the dangling phone, the Commander saying over and over again, “What the hell’s going on? What the hell’s going on?”
Parr brought the remaining Knoug to his knees with a mental assault.
Parr backed toward the door. As he fought mentally, he managed to slide the force bar across it. They’d play hell getting him out, at least.
His enemy was down, quivering. Parr panted desperately, and then from beyond the door, he felt the growth of mental assault force. Three minds hurrying toward him! Two more minds came in and he staggered and almost fell.
Then he was down, as if from a hammer b
low to the chin. He fought, sickened. He began to crawl toward the control board. And fighting, he Struggled up, as if under a great weight. New minds came in. And still he could fight. But he was almost down again.
(Five minutes, he thought.)
He found the right lever, pulled.
There was the crackle of the heterodyne mind shield. And the control room was isolated by a high, shrill whine. He winced, recovering, and smiled inwardly at the careful devices Knoug officers had to protect themselves against a mutinous crew.
He dampened all the thrust engines with three hacking strokes at knife switches, being careful to get the right ones. He ripped out the engine room control. The Advanceship was dead in space for at least an hour.
HE staggered to the comset. He stumbled over the dead Knoug and kicked the body. He shattered the transmitter with a furious blow.
With fumbling fingers he ripped away the seal the Commander had placed on the receiver. He snapped the volume control to the right. The radio whined.
Someone was trying to call the Advanceship, and Parr smiled grimly.
Another circuit broke in on the call. “Their commander is questioning the advancemen they brought up, I imagine. Let him go. The information we got from the Texas advanceman supercedes it anyway.”
Parr cursed monotonously.
“Forward bank in!” another circuit reported.
“Nine stations on planet shield. Ready?”
There was a crackling of readiness.
“We’ll hit before it. Try to get it set in fifteen minutes.”
“In position, there. Eight, back a little.”
“Clear hulls. Unscreen.”
“Check . . . Check . . .”
Parr glanced at his watch. The hour had only minutes of life. What was wrong with Lauri?
“Ready around?”
The Fleet was getting ready to move. Parr screamed in wild frustration.
At the door, the force field was beginning to show strain. Outside they had a huge force director focused on it. Parr speculated idly how they had managed to get it up from the engine room so quickly. The force field at the door began to peel. In a few minutes it would shatter and the control room would be an inferno with every switch and bit of metal melted into smoking blobs.
SHE was searching the shops, kicking in glass, when necessary to gain entrance. She was listening, now, and time dribbled away. Standing amid broken glass, she cocked her head hoping to hear the whisper of the still active comset.
Ten minutes.
What had been wrong with her logic? Why hadn’t Kal’s body been in one of the four buildings? Even as she searched on she reviewed it in her mind, until suddenly, with an abrupt snap she knew that she had overlooked one. There were not four possible buildings but five.
Kal might have been hiding in the hotel itself!
Nine minutes.
And how many front rooms were in the hotel? A twelve storied welter of windows, and he might be behind any one.
Nine minutes.
Automatically she was running for the hotel.
(Not the lower floors, she thought, or the Oholos would have had him sooner. They must have come down and then gone back up or else the whole time element was wrong.)
One of the upper floors then?
She would have to chance that.
She was in the deserted lobby. As she ran across it she marveled at the panic of a few hours ago. She saw a busy looter in the shadows, and there were not, certainly enough soldiers to be everywhere.
In her headlong rush she did not see the human form on the second landing before she crashed into him. She gasped as the breath went out of her lungs.
The man reached out for her.
“What happened?” His voice was desperate. “I’ve been asleep, and all of a sudden, when I wake up—”
“Let me go!”
“What happened?” he said pathetically. “The city’s so still.”
She pushed him back and continued up the stairs.
He ran after her. “Wait!”
At the top floor she saw no exit to the roof.
The corridor was “U” shaped, the bottom of the “U” facing onto the street. Six rooms on it.
“Young lady!” the man cried, rounding the corner of the stairs below her. She dropped her mental range into a low register and struck toward him. But she could not quite find his range and he shook his head and continued up the stairs. She waited, and when he arrived, she said, “Sorry,” and hit him on the chin. He rolled halfway down the short flight of stairs.
She searched the six rooms. All were unlocked and empty, and the doors slammed in her wake.
Nothing.
She gritted her teeth and headed for the stars and the next floor below.
PARR shattered the glass from the emergency deep space suit. He ripped the suit from the hangar and struggled into it with anxious fingers.
It was a minute after the hour.
He hesitated, holding the helmet in his hands.
The force field at the door was nearly gone. The radio crackled with Knoug attack orders.
And then—with infinite relief—he heard her voice, crackling over the other voices. She sounded short of breath and excited.
“What’s that?” someone roared in Knoug, and Parr realized they did not understand English, the common language they had used on the planet.
“Idiots!” Parr shrieked. “Fools! Can’t any of you understand!”
“I’m going to destroy your Advanceship,” Lauri said breathlessly. “I am an Oholo. I’m . . .”
Suddenly a Knoug was translating her message.
Last minute instructions to the Fleet ceased.
“I’m going to destroy your Advanceship,” she said again. And then, after a breath, she said, “Be careful! Be careful!” And he knew that the last was not to them but to him.
He could wait no longer. The force field was seconds thin. His mind cried desperately, “Hurry!” He clamped down the he met and all sound vanished.
But her words rang in his mind, “Be careful!” and he was grateful for them. They choked in his throat.
Then he threw the Advanceship into hyperspace.
THERE was a pinwheel of motion that slammed him into the control panel. He could not hear, but everywhere, around him, metal screamed and wrenched and tore.
The force director beyond the door spun loose and sprayed the Knougs around it, and they vanished. It jerked its current cable and was still. A vast rent in the hull let the air whoosh out into hyperspace, and the Knougs all over the Ship puffed and exploded.
Parr came slowly to his senses. He staggered directionless around the control room. Everything was a shambles.
After a while—nearly an hour had elapsed—he was wandering through silent corridors. It was hot inside his suit.
He found the pick-up ships eventually, but they were ripped from their moorings. One seemed upright and serviceable. He tested the motor. The motor worked. He got out and struggled with the escape hatch. Finally it came loose.
He taxied the pick-up ship out of the mother ship.
Hyperspace was grey and hideous. Here and there lights flashed. The vast, battered derelict of the Advanceship lay below him. Hyperspace spread away. He blasted further from the gutted hull and brought up the space shield of his craft. It wavered around him. Behind him the tortured Advanceship exploded.
He hit back toward real space. The craft skittered under his hands as he wrenched at the controls. The motor was strong, but its delicate shielding apparatus had been damaged and there was a sickening jolt.
The shield was off and Parr was falling, down, down, down, and lights in his head exploded.
And he thought it was infinitely sad that he had done something decent for the first time and now he was to be punished for all the rest. Then he knew no more . . .
THE comset had erupted into a babble of incredible confusion after her message. She waited leadenly. She warned the Fleet once more.
“If you do not leave at once, we Oholos will destroy your whole Fleet.” She had no way of knowing what was happening.
The Knoug commanders, unnerved, cried among themselves:
“No weapon I ever heard of could do that!”
“The advanceman was right! They can destroy us!”
“I say we don’t stand a chance!”
“Did you hear? It just vanished.”
“I’m going to order my ship back.”
“I’ve already shielded for hyperspace.”
“What’s the Flagship say?”
“What’s the Flagship say?”
“Commander Cei just pulled out. That makes five.”
“As for me, I say, Let’s go!”
“The Flagship has already got its hyperspace shield turned on!” Slowly the voices died away. The comset was silent in Lauri’s hand, and she knew that the Fleet had gone. The Advanceship was destroyed.
Remembering Parr, she bowed her head. She saw the body of Kal lying at her feet, where she had found it in the second room on the tenth floor. And she was crying without sound.
CHAPTER XI
SHE finally got through to the other Oholos. They listened, because the expected attack had not come.
They cane for her and she met their airship in the street. They soared above the silent city of Denver.
“A Knoug!” one said. “Who ever would have thought a Knoug would do that!”
She tried to explain but they did not listen tor they were busy with other thoughts. She was still crying, but inwardly now. She said, “Don’t you see what he might have become within a few years?”
“Imagine hitting hyperspace without a shield,” one Oholo said.
“It must have turned the ship inside out!”
“So the Knougs actually believed it was a weapon that did it!” another said, pleased.
Lauri said, woodenly, “He was very strong. He was almost as strong as I am. He would hive become even stronger.”
“There’s no Knoug as strong as one of our best workers, Lauri.”
“He was more than a Knoug,” she insisted gently. “A Knoug would have just—just gone on being what he was.”
She fell silent, remembering.
“It played hell with this planet,” an Oholo said. “It’ll take years to straighten it out.”