Chapter 2

"That is a likely story indeed, pretty one! Escapes are not made from this prison quite so easily! You come along with me ... come on!"

His command ended in a sharp yell of surprise. The springbow clattered from his grasp as the corridor suddenly rocked crazily, and Deanne felt herself thrown bodily against the exit panel!

It slid back at her touch, and she was through it, and then thrown headlong as a second tremor wrenched her from her feet. The whole world seemed to be disintegrating around her.

She found strength somehow and ran again, trying vainly to keep her balance, to keep the pitching corridor floor beneath her feet. And then running toward her—God, another guard—

No! No, it was no guard!And it couldn't be—

He caught her, held her without a word.

"B-Haaq! B-Haaq—how—"

"Majtech B-Haaq to you from now on! Just on my way to your cell to take you back where you belong! And that upstart Kane! Only this might save me the trouble—"

He hauled her roughly after him into the open rampway which dipped gently into the wide parking yards. The ramp trembled, bucked beneath them but she somehow kept from falling.

"I—I thought you—Kane—"

"Thought he killed me, did you? He came close enough, and he'll pay for it! Come along...."

They crossed the yards at a half run.

B-Haaq was hauling her up on the fin-step, and then the outer lock was opening, and they were inside.

The small space craft rocked sickeningly on its mounts.

B-Haaq barked to his waiting pilot. "Up-ship, you fool! Do you want us wrecked before we're even underway?"

The grim faced labortech punched his studs almost before Deanne had secured herself in an ackseat, and then with a dangerous overload of power, the tender jumped free of the shuddering planetoid.

"B-Haaq—for the love of Pluto, what's happening—"

"Haven't you learned yet what it's like when a Geejay breaks down? Sol III has been taking this for over an hour. Fortunately for you planetary imbalance doesn't affect all bodies in a system simultaneously, or that piece of rock back there would be rubble by now...."

"Is there a Project AA underway yet?"

"Of course there is. The Flagship received a warp-beam ESR from Sol III, and of course we dispatched a crew to take care of those nuisances immediately. One of our duties, after all...."

The girl unbuckled her ackseat straps and sat up straight. "You mean they had tocall?"

"What do you expect, that we keep a constant watch on all these backwater planets—"

"According to Regulations—"

"A lot you know of Regulations, young woman! Do you realize what the charge against you is? And that the lives of two men were risked to bring you back in one piece?"

"All I know is that this system's Geejay was serviced only eleven Periods ago, and was supposed to be good for at least—"

"That will be enough of that, or you'll find yourself facing more than just loss of rank!"

She reddened. "What of the man Kane?" she asked.

"He's lucky," B-Haaq answered, grinning slowly. "He'll be killed down there before they finish the double-A job."

An alarm clanged in the ship, and it veered sharply on its automatics, dodging the hurtling masses of debris that were still being flung into Space from the Outer Ring of Saturn. Minutes passed before the labortech at the controls, face drained of color with the tension of watching for the first sign of failure of the automatics, was able to relax and set course outward toward the looming hulk that was Director Gentech Starn's Flagship, drifting slowly at the system's rim.

Deanne paused on the catwalk, blended herself with its shadows. She had heard nothing. She knew every inch of the great Flagship as she knew the limited dimensions of her own quarters; knew the main traffic corridors and the hours of each cycle when traffic was at its height and at its ebb. And she knew the mazed web of maintenance catwalks as well.

Her orders had read "Confined to quarters pending disposition of the following charges—" but her Section Commander knew nothing of men like Kane, knew nothing of the fire that could touch a man's soul and ignite the rebellion that now blazed so brightly in her own. The chances were few that it would even occur to Coltech Q-Jaax that she could be anywhere but in her quarters. At any rate, that was her gamble, and it was far less desperate a one than that which Kane had taken for what he believed.

The conference chamber loomed below her in the gloom of the ship's cavernous mid-section, and it would not be difficult to locate one of the many pressure duct leads. But she would need to remove a small transition piece, and—no! What would Kane have done—simply extract a single, strategic machine screw, andswingthe piece aside! It would save minutes. Hearing the men below would then be as simple as though she stood in the chamber with them.

And she must hear, must know what they planned. So that somehow, Jon, if he still lived, could know.

Within seconds she had swung from the narrow walk and dropped soundlessly atop the wide expanse of the chamber's metal ceiling. Quickly she estimated the area beneath which the main council table lay, then sought the duct nearest the spot. In only seconds more, she was lying prone in the deep shadows, able to hear.

"—and to be quite blunt about it, I am genuinely worried...." It was her uncle. "My niece's extraordinary behavior can be discussed later, gentlemen. Right now this matter of the Gravity-Justifiers is of the most importance. First of all, Captech D-Yun, why was I not immediately notified of the perilous difficulty in Sol system? These people depend upon us for their very lives! Well?"

"There is no excuse, Sire."

"Yes, I think perhaps there is! If not excuse, then reason, at least! If my memory serves me correctly, it has been a scant eleven Periods since the Sol Gravity-Justifier was last serviced, a piece of work, gentlemen, that has in the past been valid for fifty at minimum! Was I, perhaps, to be kept from knowing that what work was performed eleven Periods ago was a failure?"

A tight pause. And then, "Certainly not, Sire," in a soft tone from D-Yun. "But these people have been such—well, nuisances. We have given them so much more than their share of service that sabotage of some sort naturally suggested itself. We had been in the process of analytical survey—"

"I'll have none of that, not from any of you! Sabotage indeed. Why, it is a matter of record that Sol is not the only system in which breakdown has occurred far ahead of schedule tolerance! Yes, I know that, too, gentlemen! There is another thing I know as well. I know that there is no sabotage. I know that my personal staff of copytechs has been overworked for a full period in an effort to keep the peoples of over twenty different star systems unaware of the major technical difficulties which have been increasingly frequent in each of the others! I know that propaganda, instead of technical skill, has been keeping the prestige of the Alliance intact! The fault cannot be laid to Captech D-Yun's saboteurs! It must be laid squarely at our own door step, gentlemen! For some reason which I would like to know, we have simply not been able to keep up. We are not the technicians our fathers were, and careful study will show that they were not technicians to match their fathers, nor they their fathers before them! Slowly but too surely, we are losing something! Why?"

Deanne breathed shallowly, straining to hear every word.

"Perhaps, Sire, the efficiency of our Cad tech recruiting system could be improved. Although I admit, the planets have not been producing youths of the caliber of—"

"Bah! If anything, they're getting quicker-witted all the time! And we have had little trouble, from among twenty-one star systems in two galaxies, in obtaining the necessary periodic quota! Yet our new ships are not as good! Our number increases, but that is all! And mere number, by itself, is worthless!"

Another voice replied, but she could not identify it. "That might be traced, Sire, to the poorer quality of raw materials which the planets are obliged by law to furnish us at the scheduled intervals in return for our service—"

"That is starwash, and you know it! If anything, quality has improved, since the discovery of new mining planets. I can still read records, young man! Perhaps you are not fully acquainted with the Director whom you're attempting to deceive!"

"If, Sire, I may hark back for a moment to the question of sabotage...." A curious chill coursed the length of Deanne's slender back. That was B-Haaq speaking. "I suggest that in this particular instance, Captech D-Yun may well be correct. I speak in light of the renegade, Cadtech Kane. Prior to his capture on Titan, there is little telling to what lengths he may have gone for revenge, Sire. As a Fourth Period Cadtech, he knew Geejay co-ordinates for at least twelve systems, and he knew also upon what the power of the ITA depends—technical efficiency. If that were to be flagrantly misrepresented through such sabotage, ITA prestige and power would of course suffer, and Kane's thirst for revenge slaked. I think perhaps it is of paramount importance that we seek to discover where he might strike next! If, that is, he survived the disintegration of Titan."

A murmur went up, grew noisier, and Deanne felt herself holding her breath. Then there was her uncle's voice again—

"You use the word 'power' strangely, Majtech."

"Not at all strangely, Sire! Our technical excellence has made all planets completely dependent upon us! You may say that it is not revenge that we seek, but only safety. You may say that if we do have power and prestige, it is only for self protection, so that what happened to our ancestors centuries ago may never again be repeated. All these things are true. But also true is the fact that power is power. We have it, for two galaxies depend upon us for the very life of their civilizations! It is Kane who would threaten it! To give it up, or to let it be so easily taken from us, is to make of ourselves the fools that Kane so confidently assumes us to be! Centuries of work and progress hang in the balance, gentlemen! If this Kane has escaped Titan, we must find him! And if he has not, then we must undo his work! We must, in short, show these planets who holds the whip-hand, first, last and always!"

There was a moment of silence. Then suddenly a swelling flow of voices lifted in approval, and there was scattered applause. And it did not quiet immediately when the Director Gentech spoke.

"Gentlemen! Gentlemen. You must know that I thoroughly disapprove of the views that Majtech B-Haaq has just expressed, and I am certain that, upon a moment's self-examination, you will feel as I do. I have thought often of the man Kane, and have as often wondered how close he may have been to many truths which we have either overlooked or forgotten! However, in all fairness to the Majtech I will call for a vote. Those in favor of the Majtech's proposals to comb the Sol system for Cadtech Kane, and to assert the prestige of the ITA will ballot 'yea.' Those opposed will cast blank ballots."

Silence, then, and Deanne counted her heart beats, thought surely they must be loud enough now to be heard the length and breadth of the ship.

"—the ballots have been counted, gentlemen...." The deep voice was slow and deliberate as it always was—yet it seemed, somehow, too slow now, too deep. "Majtech B-Haaq's proposals are approved by a majority of—of one vote. We will therefore begin our search immediately, and will trust that I was also incorrect in my evaluation of our present technological efficiency. This session is now adjourned."

Director Gentech Starn had suffered the first overruling of his long career.

VII

There were hard, stinging sensations in his face. They pierced the infinity of darkness until somewhere in it they touched his naked nerves and the darkness receded, slowly and became a blinding light.

A space-suited figure was standing over him, and it held the limp form of an empty suit in one hand, and a hand-weapon in the other, and the weapon was extended toward him, butt first!

He could see the hard, beetle-browed face behind the sealed face piece of the helmet. The mouth was moving rapidly, but he could not hear.

Jon's head hurt, and the pain spread throughout his body when he moved to get his feet beneath him, stood up. Subconsciously he knew he was aboard a ship in Space; there was the subtle, rippling vibration so familiar to any man with Spacelegs, and there was the smell of pumped atmosphere and the curious feeling of artificial gravity.

He tried to think even as he took the suit shoved into his arms by the man who had brought him back to consciousness, and began climbing dazedly into it. A suit, inside a ship in which the atmosphere was perfectly breathable? Aship! Tinker? No—no ITA craft, even the newest, had such thick-looking bulkheads, or was equipped with suits of such peculiar design—hard to get into the thing, nothing was in its right place. But if not an ITA craft, then—but that was not possible!

He had no sooner gotten the helmet adjusted than the radiophones in it crackled.

"Snap it up, get that face plate sealed! Here, you may need this—" He had taken care of the face plate, and now the curiously fashioned hand weapon was pushed into his right hand.

"What—"

"There's half a hundred Tinkers out fumbling around with a Project AA. Things are letting up on the planets, but they still haven't got the damn thing fixed the way it should be ... found us, though...."

"Us?" His tongue was still thick in his mouth and it was difficult to talk, or even think of words to say.

"You'll find out about us later. But in about a minute more they'll be in range, and those Space cannons of theirs'll be whaling away at us for all they're worth. They'd be dead ducks if this bucket was equipped the way it should be...." The man cursed. "... but there's not enough E-blasters to go around yet, or I-drives either, and that's why we're going to be a big sieve in less time than it takes to tell it. I suppose it ain't your fault—"

"My fault? Last I knew—"

"Sorry if I slugged you too hard, but the boss said to be sure. Be sure, he says, and he sends us out in one of the first tanks we made instead of one of the new jobs! Sometimes, I—"

"No escape craft? No—"

"You kidding? We sit here and take it! We could take to the ports, but the power packs on these suits are no match for those space tenders of theirs. They'd pick us up sure. Me, I'd die ten times first!"

Jon tried to assimilate the information, tried to take it all in even as he struggled to gain back his full consciousness.

"Mind telling me where we are? Where we're headed? Why in hell I was shanghaied?"

"Right now, about two points spherical north-northwest of Jupiter, minus about twelve to the ecliptic. Where we're headed you'll find out, if we live through this. And you weren't shanghaied. Not all the way, anyway. You didn't think that alarm system stayed quiet all by itself, did you? Or that the jetgiro flew itself to where you found it? The boss is still going to be sore. We were supposed to put the net over two of you—"

So ithadbeen too easy! Of course the 'quake hadn't been counted on and that had disrupted the plan, but at least there had been a plan, and that meant that there was someone who wanted him away from the ITA.

"You weren't on Titan five minutes before we knew."

"But what about the girl? The Lenantech arrested with me?" Something cold was suddenly eating away inside him, and the memory of the awful quakes came back to him in a rush, and he could visualize Deanne, lying lifeless somewhere.

"Don't know. As it was, we almost missed you after the quake started. Plans went completely haywire as far as she was concerned. But no more damn fool questions. I was supposed to get you oriented before they were on top of us and you've got it all, except for—"

There was a sudden lurch and Jon was thrown sprawling, was suddenly picked up as though by some gigantic hand and thrown bodily toward a self-sealing hatch that closed just as he crashed heavily into it. The chamber was now all but airless. They'd been hit by a Tinker missile, and there was a gaping, ragged hole somewhere in this ship's hide.

He struggled to his feet. Then saw the other man, not moving, crumpled to the deck. A jagged fragment of metal was embedded in his chest. There was another sickening lurch and another. They were being clobbered with everything the Tinker-ship had.

But somehow he got to the wounded man's side. The hard eyes opened for but a moment, and the lips moved. The sounds they made were but a whisper in his earphones.

"Six ... nine-X. Point ... oh one-Y. Eight six. Z—"

And then the eyes opened wide, and the lips closed, and the man was dead.

The ship shuddered again, and through his helmet Kane heard a dull, booming explosion, and he knew the craft had been fatally hit. Another second and it would be pulling apart at the seams. All Tinker guns were on-target and firing at will.

The locks! Where the hell would the locks be on this strangely designed ship?

He breathed again when the hatch popped open because of the dwindling air pressure. He was aware of the conglomeration of noises in his earphones. Somewhere a man was screaming. There had been men screaming for the last full minute, but only now were the sounds beginning to register on his taut brain.

"Where in hell is Zetterman?"

"Don't know—aft with the guy we were sent for I guess. Oh God."

"Then he's within twenty feet of a lock if he's still alive. But he hasn't answered us. So what d'you want to do? We're all that's left and they're almost alongside."

"They'd get us either way. If only we could get aft that lock's on the port side, away from 'em—"

Jon let the words make sense. Port side. Twenty feet away—THERE!

In seconds the inner port was open, and then he was waiting for the outer one, not even bothering to cycle the lock down. He'd be blown a little, but a running start out would help. He wanted to communicate with the men he'd heard talking, find out what the numbers meant that the dead man Zetterman had mouthed, but the Tinkers would be monitoring everything, and they'd pick up even a helmet set at this range.

The outer lock cracked slowly open, and what little pressure there still was in the lock held him gently against the widening opening as it dissipated entirely with a low howl into the black infinity of space. He popped out, and it was like stepping from an invisible mountainside into a night that was too dark, with stars that looked too close. Only crazily, you didn't fall—

He drifted on the slight momentum the spent air pressure in the lock had given him, the telltale flicker of his power pack this close to the huge gray shape that loomed less than a hundred yards to the other side of the broken ship he was leaving would mean the end of him. He thought at top speed. Of course their screens would pick him up but he gambled that he'd be discounted as simply another chunk of wreckage smashed by the Tinker guns.

Jove loomed hugely, fantastically, slightly above him. Soon his drift would become free-fall, but he must wait until the last possible moment to use the pack. Yet if he waited too long—

He clenched his teeth until they hurt, willed his arms to his sides, his hands away from the pack controls. The multi-hued bands of the great planet were alternately dark and bright, undulating slowly, as though readying to seize him, devour him, freeze him. The Gargantuan mass seemed but yards away rather than well over a million miles. Yet it was too close, and it was slowly moving in upon him.

He turned his body, tried to watch the Tinker ship. It had closed with the shattered wreck which he'd escaped, grappled to it. A port opened, and there was a pinprick of fiery light from the dark maw. Boarding in suits. But there was no orange-violet flash of a spacetender's exhausts, so perhaps, then, he had been unnoticed.

But he must still drift and he knew now that he had started to fall. Ever so slightly, but he was heading straight for the great mass of Jupiter, and his initial direction had been almost tangent to its orbit. The massive orb seemed even more flattened at its poles than usual, and its satellites were orbiting erratically, due, he knew, to the Geejay failure that had rocked the whole system.

Yet even as he watched, and as slowly as they swung, Jon Kane's practiced eye and mind detected retrograde movements, and realized that the tiny moons were slowly falling back in what he knew were approximately their former orbits. The Tinkers were somehow succeeding.

But the suit was getting cold. Its insulation was surprisingly efficient, but it was still only an emergency feature of the rig, to keep a man alive for a short period in the event of heater failure. And using the heater meant radiation, yet he'd have to risk it now. And soon, the pack itself. But it would be of little avail if he wandered aimlessly, and that, he had to gamble, was where the numbers came in. With the three letter combinations, they could be spherical co-ordinates. For his life, they would have to be.

69-X. .01-Y. 86-Z. With planes of reference calculated to the median plane of planetary ecliptics relative to the Sun. Then.

Swiftly, his brain analyzed the values, gave him an approximation. And it would be a point—

And where he looked there was only blackness. It was the damn time factor, of course, that was lacking. Yet Zetterman would not have given him figures for yesterday or next month. They'd have to be figures for now, or for expected time of arrival at destination, but where? How far? Near Jove? The satellites? One of them? That would make the time factor next to zero. And—

Of course! The figures would no longer be completely valid; margin of error would be wide after the gravitational imbalance that was only now beginning to be righted! If he scanned several hundred thousand miles to either side of his point of dead reckoning.

And there it was! Callisto. He was almost astride its orbit, and because it was nearer to his reckoned point than any of the rest, it would have to be the most probable destination.

If, of course, he was right about the time factor. If the co-ordinates referred to the location of bodies in the ship's immediate vicinity when it was attacked.

He was numb from the cold, and to wait longer with his powerpack would mean to become ensnared in Jove's awful gravity field before he could make the necessary right angle break in direction and set course for the barren planetoid.

His arms ached as he drew them up inside his suit, and his fingers were clumsy, senseless things groping for the power and heat toggles.

Then he found them. In moments there was warmth, and then the gray satellite toward which he headed began getting larger with each passing second.

The ragged circle of the plain was unbroken for almost as far as he could see in the dim reflected light of the satellite's primary, save for recent fissures in its surface that had been caused by wrenching quakes during the failure of the Geejay, and occasional pockmarks left by the wandering bits of cosmic flotsam that had been ensnared by the surprisingly slight Callistan gravity. The plain on which he had touched down was ringed with low mountain chains that looked like giant dragon's teeth poised to impale him at any moment. And Jove itself looked weirdly tilted with its atmospheric bands now inclined steeply away from the horizontal. Its pale light cast eerie shadows across the plain; made the cracks in its surface and miniature craters deceptively large and small.

And there was no sign of human habitation, no artificial structure shone against the dark horizon, and it meant he would have to waste precious fuel, blasting in great leaps across the moon's not inconsiderable surface, looking. He was not even certain for what.

If Zetterman had intended to have him find this particular one of eleven satellites, then why had he not included grid co-ordinates of latitude and longitude? Or had the man been about to when death intervened?

Unless ... whatever artificial installation existed on the planet could be located with the same co-ordinates! It would be ingenious....

Rapidly, Jon envisioned a standard tri-dimensional system grid in his mind's eye; applied it to the satellite upon which he stood, substituting its ecliptic-apparent north-south axis and solar-apparent X and Y equatorial axes for the Z, X and Y axes of the standard celestial sphere. Applying Zetterman's co-ordinates, then, his direction would be generally north-northwest, to a point below the satellite's surface!

For a moment the thought sent his mind spinning back into confusion, and then he realized that by the standard spherical method of point determination, his chances would have been one in a theoretical infinity of arriving at a point exactly on the planetoid's surface.

The installation was subterranean, then, which was logical, but which made matters all the more difficult. Unless, of course, there would be some slight surface indication. God, if only Zetterman had lived an instant longer.

With a muttered prayer that his deductions and dead reckoning calculations were substantially more than empty rationalizations of desperation, Jon thumbed the power toggles of his suit pack and leapt lightly off across the planetoid's hostile surface. He would, of course, have to be right. For there was only a limited amount of oxygen left in his tanks, and his power would certainly not last forever.

He kept track of his position by the most primitive way Man knew; the orb that was the Sun. And mentally, superimposed that orb against the tri-di grid that seemed now to be stamped imperishably upon his brain, simultaneously allowing for orbital speed differential and solar parallax.

He fell back gently to the planetoid's volcanic terrain for a final time, and knew that the spot he sought, if it existed at all, was now within scant yards of him. Mighty Jupiter was now at zenith, yet even in its directly mirrored, undulating illumination it was more difficult to see than before, and each step was an experiment. Pumice spattered over his spaceboots, solid looking stuff which could be but a shifting overlay for some bottomless fissure or yawning crevasse. And above him and down to the horizon to every side, stars gleamed tauntingly, coldly in the blackness, as though to remind him that a man could not live forever.

He began walking in ever widening circles. Something would show.

VIII

Deanne was never certain whether her decision had been wholly a product of her own mind, seething as it had been with the awful conflict between her life's learning and what she knew to be right, or if it had been made for her by the clanging of the ship's alarm intercom unit in her quarters.

She had been lucky. She had succeeded in getting back undetected from her breach of arrest; return from her vantage point atop the conference chamber had been as uneventful as her stealthy escape through the catwalk maze to it, and once safely back in her quarters she had tried to rest, to get her mind in order and to think.

Her uncle, the Director Gentech himself, had been beaten by B-Haaq, and B-Haaq was not a man to let an advantage be wasted. It would be only a matter of time, now. A matter of time, and the Majtech would be giving the orders, and her own fate would be in his hands. She had to decide. To stay and try to help a faltering old man or to make an outright attempt to escape even as Kane had done, and then somehow to find him! For Kane had been right! Oh, yes, Kane had been right. For power was not an end in itself, and in the last analysis, the end did not justify the means! The ITA, right or wrong ... no! The ITA was wrong!

The alarm clanged, and then the speaker squawked raucously.

"Attention all officers and techpersonnel! Man your combat stations! An unidentified spacecraft lies nine point three points starboard ecliptic minus twelve oh three at three hundred thousand and we are overhauling. Presence of the fugitive Kane aboard is strong probability, therefore orders are to fire to destroy. Repeating, all officers and techpersonnel, man your combat stations! An—"

Deanne snapped the communicator into silence with a force that nearly tore the toggle from its socket. The stupid fools! Enemies had always been destroyed in the past, and so now this enemy was to be destroyed! Regardless of the fact that they would never find Kane, alive or otherwise, if every ship aboard which he might be were blasted to bits!

In moments, the corridors and catwalks would be alive with scurrying Cadtechs, officers and labortechs, rushing pell-mell to half forgotten battle stations, trying desperately as they did to remember precisely how the Flagship's long silent cannon were operated. There would be no eyes for a shapeless, space-suited figure.

She waited tensely until the clamor outside her cubicle was at its height, then swiftly opened the narrow bulkhead hatch, stepped through it and into the milling chaos of men and women, and let herself be swept toward the suit lockers, and the bank or lock ports near them.

The corridor lights were blazing, now, and the white faces that bobbed beneath them were strained. Deanne found a suit and donned it even as the first of the craft's spacecannon was fired. The deck shuddered beneath her feet, and she was nearly knocked off balance by a trio of guntechs who had not yet found their posts. But there was more order now, and she would have to hurry. The other ship must be close, for the guns had already begun firing barrages, and that was only done when the target was in naked-eye view.

Swiftly, she slipped into an air lock, flattened herself against a narrow bulkhead as its inner port slid shut, and remained immobile as its automatic pumps cycled down to zero pressure. Now she would wait, watch and pray that no one looked into the lock in passing. It was a crazy gamble, and if Jon were not aboard....

She watched the star strewn blackness, narrowed her eyelids against the awful glare in it each time a battery fired, and there was a sudden little catch in her throat as the limn of mighty Jupiter swung majestically into her field of vision. Somewhere, out there, in that awful infinity—there!

Ice seemed to form in a lump inside her. The alien ship was a perfect target, silhouetted against the huge shining disc of Jove!And it was breaking up!

Great gouts of fire were bursting from its engine housings, molten fragments of jagged metal glowed as they gyrated crazily from it in great showers of white-hot flame, and she could feel the awful vibration of the Flagship's guns as they continued firing mercilessly on target.

A tiny pinpoint of fire.

She saw it, and in the eye searing holocaust it did not at once register on her reeling brain.

A tiny pinpoint of blue-white fire that had not emanated from the stricken alien, but had suddenly appeared for a mere fraction of a second at a considerable distance from it! A suit pack!

With the silent prayer at her lips that it had escaped the eyes of the others, Deanne triggered open the outer lock port and launched herself into Space.

Somehow she knew the man was Jon Kane, even as she knew she had found him too late. She stood, rooted to the spot in the deep shadow of the ragged crag beneath which she had landed, unable even to warn him of the man who had suddenly appeared behind him. A man with a weapon in one hand, aimed straight at the Cadtech's back! To use her radio at such a distance would mean a power output that would bring a spacetender down upon her within minutes.

Helplessly, she watched. Watched as the other touched Jon with his weapon, forced him over the lip of a wide crater—

"No—!"

Her choked scream all but deafened her inside her helmet.

Then she saw that the other followed over the lip, and realized that their destination was somewhere inside the depression itself.

For long, silent moments she stood in maddening frustration, watching the two men disappear into the crater, as powerless to act as she had been to warn. She could not go back, now, nor could she go further.

IX

The crater walls had been moderately magnetized with a thin coating of metallic spray, and Kane walked before his captor down their sloping incline with greater ease than he had been able to negotiate the planetoid's natural surface. He hesitated as the crater bottom suddenly began to yawn slowly open, and there was the prodding in his back again.

"Keep moving, mister. There's a ladder, and you're first!"

Kane moved carefully, looked over the smooth lip of the now fully opened shaft. The ladder was a thin, tubular affair with narrow rungs. He dropped to his knees, swung one leg over; held with his elbows, groped with the other foot for the next lower rung. Then felt with one hand, found the top rung, and started down.

"I can't cover you on the way down," the man above him said. "But I have a fresh supply of oxygen, and I don't think you have. And I've got both guns!"

The shaft closed silently above them, and then there was sudden illumination, and Jon blinked after the half-light of the bleak world outside. The folds of his suit began to feel loose, and he knew that the shaft must also function as an air lock, and was cycling up to pressure as they descended.

When they at length reached bottom, his captor gestured at him with a hand weapon.

"Get your suit off. It stays with me. Whether you get it back again or not'll be up to you. Move!"

Jon fumbled with unfamiliarly placed dogs and buckles, then surrendered the suit, and took deep lungsfull of air.

"Where now?" But the other couldn't hear. His helmet was still in place, and Jon knew that whoever wanted him wasn't taking any more chances than necessary. But as if in answer to his question, a concave panel in the shaft wall was suddenly sliding open, and the stockily built man who stepped in it covered him almost casually with a strange looking two-handed weapon. He signaled to the other, then looked at Jon as if noticing him for the first time.

He stepped aside, motioned toward the open panel with the ugly snout of the gun he carried. "After you, mister. And step along. You've kept the boss-man waiting a little!"

Both men had spoken in the language of Terra, yet it sounded strangely distorted to Jon. He had known the language almost all his life, but his father had taught him the words as they were said in a part of the planet that had once been called Vermont, and he noticed an odd difference in the other's speech. He wondered, idly, if any of them spoke the Universal. But at least, now, he knew who they were. Solmen of Earth, who had somehow learned to build space ships and weapons; who had somehow escaped the alert eye of Earth's Tinker spies. But he did not feel the surprise he had expected. There were legends about the men of Earth.

The heavy footfalls of the stocky, heavily muscled man behind him echoed hollowly in the narrow corridor. The passageway curved gently, sloping downward, then came to an abrupt end.

"Turn to your right."

He did, and a panel similar to the first was opening for him. He stepped through it, and his second captor followed.

"O.K., hold it."

They were in a compact room, and it was not empty. There were about ten men in it, Jon estimated at first glance, all similarly dressed in the green leatheroid coveralls that his captors wore, and barren of any insignia of rank. They looked up from their places around the paper-littered conference table, and a big man at its head half rose from his chair.

"Haine! I thought I told you—oh, is this the man?"

"Darwin be with us, sir, it is."

The big man's face changed expression quickly. He resumed his seat, and suddenly the room was quiet, and others were turning in their chairs, fixing Jon with their eyes. The big man gave no signal for him to be seated in one of the empty chairs, but spoke to him as though he had been placed under arrest.

"You are Kane? The Tinkerman arrested on Titan?"

"I am," Jon answered, trying to keep self confidence strong in his voice. "But I don't—"

"Just answer my questions, Master Kane. My name is Stine—Martin Stine. On Earth I'm a Senator. My men got you out of the lockup on Titan. Apparently you and the Tinkerwoman escaped them afterward—"

"I don't know what happened to the Lenantech, but as for myself, I'd have tried!" Jon said, rankling slightly at the smug tone of the man's voice. "Apparently you haven't heard of what happened to the ship you sent to pick me up. You won't see it again. And the only reason I'm here is that I elected to come, following the directions of one of your men that was dying."

The Senator glanced quickly at the men surrounding him. Then, "You can tell me that part of the story later, Kane. I understand you're sort of a—renegade Tinkerman, is that right?"

"That's right, but how did you learn—"

"My organization has many men in many places. I understand that you're a rather out of the ordinary technician, Kane, and that at this minute the ITA is after your hide. So I've a proposition for you. We can use technicians." Stine was leaning back in his chair, now, relaxed, sure of himself. The others did not look so relaxed, and to Jon, seemed far from being as certain.

"First of all, I want to know who you are," Jon said, speaking Stine's Terra dialect to the best of his ability. "Earth is no different a planet than the rest."

"I said I would ask the questions, Kane! But for your information, this organization is made up of men much like yourself. I'm assuming that you achieved your technological proficiency by obtaining certain books for yourself; books the Tinkers ordered destroyed, and no longer have themselves. Well, your case is not exactly unique. The difference is, you were trapped into selection for training by the ITA. My men were not. We are, in the respect that we're free, in better position than you are to break the ITA. And certainly you did not hope to do the job single-handed."

"Break the ITA?" Jon asked. He felt a peculiar note of discord. These men were not hiding. Not just hiding.

"Why of course." The big man shifted in his seat, again glanced around at the others. Their eyes were still fastened on Jon as though they had never seen a Tinkerman before. "They may not be dictators in the true sense of the word, but they wield a tremendous political power over more than a hundred planets, Kane. You know that. They have only to refuse a planet its scheduled service visits, and the economy and civilization of that planet is suddenly faced with collapse. Ultimately, such a set-up is going to mean ruin anyway. Someday, there is bound to be rebellion, and not on any single planet, but on many. It will free men from the ITA perhaps, but it will also mean quick retrogression; civilization will, because of its complexity, backslide faster than men can regain what the Wars destroyed, or re-learn what the Tinkers have kept from them.

"It might have worked if the ITA had not become sloppy. But it can no longer even do a decent Project AA! It imperils the lives of two galaxies, yet refuses to give men the knowledge to protect themselves! Therefore, we are going to destroy the Tinkers, Kane. Our propaganda machinery is gaining momentum daily, and this most recent Geejay breakdown in Sol system is grist for our mill. Our technical achievements are improving daily despite the fact that they have been carried out under the handicap of utmost secrecy over a long period of extremely difficult years.

"When I learned of your captivity by warp-beam from Titan and was told about you and the woman and was asked if I wanted you, I said yes. I spared you, Kane, and went to great trouble to obtain you, because you know the Tinkers as we could never hope to know them. And, more importantly, you can handle technology far better than either we or they. Is that true?"

Jon hesitated, looked at the faces up-turned to him, saw the cold bitterness in their eyes.

"I can make a double-A good for five hundred years."

"Just as we thought. You're dangerous to them, Kane, because for some reason you know more than they do. People would start looking to you, rather than to them, for their needs, and they're scared stiff you'll go around blabbing all you know, ruining their hold. Well, that is just the chance we want to give you. Help us, and later, you'll be able to name your own price. Go back to the Tinkers, and you're a dead man."

The room was silent again, but their eyes were still upon him. He tried to think, tried to evaluate what the big man had said. It all seemed so logical, yet—yet there was something wrong. There was something they did not understand. Or, perhaps, understood too well.

"I—I agree with you about the tremendous power they wield," Jon said slowly, "but you're wrong about destroying them. It's true they're not the technicians they once were. They have polluted logic with belief and historical fact with legend; they do knowhow, but they don't knowwhy, and that's affecting their know-how, if you see what I mean. They use belief more and more and reason less and less—"

Stine nodded. "Precisely. If knowledge is not given room to grow, it deteriorates, and finally is nothing more than half understood pseudo truths. Therefore I fail to see—"

"If you destroy them," Jon interrupted, "you suddenly remove the last recognized seat of technical knowledge that exists in our two galaxies. Recognized, you understand. And that'd mean real chaos, Senator. The people would be so scared and helpless at the prospect of being helpless that they'd revert to savages even faster than the way in which you described. They'd panic for certain—panic as panic hasn't been known since the Wars themselves." Jon let the sentence trail off, half wondering as he spoke why he was suddenly championing a system which he hated, defending a reactionary philosophy of existence which stunted men's minds at every turn. For Stine was at least half right—the Tinkers did threaten the very essence of intellectual freedom. Yet at the same time he knew that to destroy them would be to cause even worse harm.

It was as though the others around the table and the man who was his captor did not exist, now. It had become a quiet, tense drama between two minds, and Jon knew he had not been brought here to do Stine's thinking for him.

"You know, Kane," Stine was saying then, his voice suddenly smooth and soft, his big face relaxing into a studied grin, "they got their hooks into you more deeply than I'd thought. You're still half-Tinker, aren't you?"

"But I'm not speaking from loyalty! Only from logic—" The big man waved a meaty hand deprecatingly, interrupted easily.

"Master Kane, the Space Tinkers must be forced to give up their books and charts. They must be forced to relinquish this semi-intellectual, semi-religious hold they have on over a hundred planets; their monopoly, in short, must be broken!" A huge fist slammed emphatically down on the littered table top. "My organization has worked long and hard and preserved its secrets at great risk toward that end! We have the ships, we have the weapons—some better, we believe, than those of the ITA—and we have the men! And you, sir, are either with us or against us!" His face had become florid, and Jon knew now that Stine was playing for effect on the others; knew suddenly that his own logic was right, and that it was again recognized as a threat, even as B-Haaq had recognized it. A threat to personal power!

And suddenly words were coming in heated torrents from his own lips. "Secrecy! It is all you and the ITA can think of! Whatever it is you know or learn, it must be kept from others! Yes, even while you speak of breaking the ITA monopoly of knowledge and power, you seek to form an identical one yourself! Can't you understand that where there is secrecy, peace and progress cannot exist? Can't you understand that in the realm of science and technology, there are no secrets? The facts of nature are everywhere in Creation, Senator! You cannot hide them! For awhile you may blind people to them, but they cannot be hidden, they are for everyone to see and use as he will, regardless of which side he is on! The Tinkers have kept people blind to them for a few years, but it has become increasingly difficult; and they are learning the hard way that the worst of keeping secrets is the forgetting of them yourself!"

Stine's face was becoming white and tense, and the others gave uneasy glances in his direction, but he did not interrupt, and Jon kept going, unleashing the whole torrent of thoughts that had tormented his soul for so long, so very long.

"You speak of monopoly, Senator, but you're forming one yourself! You, and your organization, have been fortunate enough, as I was, to have found some of the old books, to have learned some of the old knowledge with which the armament for the Wars was built, and against which, when their horror was finally over, people everywhere rebelled. It was they who burned the books, Senator! Not the ITA! It was they who wanted done with all that seemed to them responsible for the carnage which they had somehow survived! It was they—on a hundred planets—who without thinking, ran down their scientists, their technicians; murdered them for possessing the knowledge which they had misused! And the few technicians who escaped were bitter and frightened men. They managed to salvage a few of the old ships and escape. And theirs was the natural error of assuming that if they were not to suffer what their murdered companions had, they must think in terms of using what they alone knew as a weapon against those who did not and would not be allowed to have that knowledge!

"But—and listen to me, gentlemen!—even as the Senator has said, if knowledge is not given room to grow, it deteriorates! And by keeping their well guarded secrets to themselves, entrusting them only to specially selected personnel whom they recruited year after year for training from the planets so that their organization could grow more rapidly in numbers, and by keeping those 'secrets' sacrosanct and unchallangeable, they became at length outmoded, and finally half forgotten and adulterated with pompous nonsense! And if you are to do the same, then the same will happen to you!" He paused quickly for fresh breath, then plunged on headlong. "The solution is not in fighting and battle—for that is what precipitated the whole stupid situation in the first place, as it always will. I told you I could do a double-A that would last five hundred years, and I can! And I will do it! And I will show you how to do it! But only on the condition that your propaganda machine gives the Tinkers the entire credit for it!"

"Master Kane, that is enough!"

"I'm not finished yet! Can't you see the effect such a move will have? The Tinkers will be grateful, first of all, because they're in desperate straits right now. Secondly, they will realize that there is superior knowledge to their own, and that it can be a beneficial thing, rather than a threat to their well being. From that point they might be convinced that their 'secrets' should no longer be kept, but instead given back to the very people who once destroyed them in anger. And thirdly, the people will have new faith in the ITA and its ability; new respect for the technical knowledge which they now fear and covet so dangerously! In such a way, gentlemen, you can get civilization climbing again in such a way that the Tinkers will be eliminated, but of their own volition, because they will at length have no more to fear, and no further defensive purpose to serve.

"Unless—" and Jon paused for a long breath, "Unless, Senator, you simply want the power the Tinkers now enjoy, for yourself!"

Stine looked at him for a long moment.

And then he smiled, but there was Winter in his eyes.

"We all make mistakes," he said softly. "Sorry. Haine! Take him away!"

X

Stealthily Deanne picked her way from shadow to shadow toward the smooth walled depression, her feet scarcely touching the planetoid's riven surface in the slight gravity. Yards from it, she got to her stomach and crawled to the lip, peered over.

Every muscle in her body went tense as she saw the hidden hatch at the crater's bottom sliding soundlessly closed.

As she had thought, the crater wall was artificially magnetized, and in a half crouch, clinging to the deepest shadow cast by the grotesque ball of Jupiter above her, she edged her way downward. She reached the spot where the camouflaged hatch had closed, and, again prone, waited.

There was only the space of seconds before the round slab of metal began opening! She tensed, and with her helmet touching the ground, heard the sound of heavy footsteps climbing upward, making the hollow, clanging sounds of space boots on metallic ladder rungs.

A space helmet suddenly thrust itself above the opening, and for a frozen second, she could see the man's face. It was not Jon's! There was a look of stunned surprise upon it for that timeless moment, and Deanne knew even as she moved that it was this space between seconds or never at all.

With all the strength in her body she swung her right leg, swung the heavy toe of her spaceboot straight at the man's face plate!

He tried vainly to dodge, to drop downward to safety. Had Deanne waited a heartbeat longer she would have missed. She felt the terrible impact as her boot hit squarely, shattered the thin plastiglass of the helmet, went through it to strike flesh and bone.

Instinctively her eyes went shut tight as the man inside the ruptured suit virtually exploded.

But there was no time to think of what she'd done, to wonder if this was murder or the duty of warfare: the man was dead. Half in, half out of the yawning hatchway, sprawled like a bloody puppet, his weapons still in their holsters at his sides. She took them. And even in the light gravity of Callisto, it took nearly all the strength she could summon and all her courage to haul the limp thing that had been a man all the way out of the gaping shaft and then push it, over and over, away from her, away from the hatch that had already begun to automatically swing downward.

She squirmed quickly beneath it, found the ladder rungs with her boots, and then clung to the slender ladder in the sudden darkness without moving, her muscles trembling at the edge of panic. To misjudge now was to fall hideously through blackness to certain destruction only God knew how abysmally far below.

Then somehow she steeled herself. Made her legs move mechanically; found the next rung below. And then the next and the next.

The red blindness of exhaustion under the blaze of desert suns flooded over his numbed brain in a dark backwash of pain, and with it were all the past tortures of Prokyman stockades and the hopeless defeat that had lain at the fringe of every movement of his life; Jon Kane could not see and could hear only weirdly distorted sounds for he was, if not yet dead, then close to death, and only through some freak of neural reaction, not quite beyond the threshold of consciousness. But he had not spoken. And now that power was quite lost to him.

But he could still somehow feel the animal presence of his torturers, ringed tight around him yet in the tiny, glaring cubicle of polished steel; there was new pain in his shattered face, and he knew it was the freezing carbon dioxide spray designed to shock him back to full consciousness. But now it was only a new pain.

There was the voice of Haine.

"Hurry up, get him around. If he cashes in before we get anything out of him Stine'll blow a connection. That's a man who hates to lose on an investment."

"Didn't invest much. Didn't risk much either, if you ask me. What else was that broken down tank good for anyway? I say kill the—"

"Get him around and shut up."

The freezing pain again. But the darkness held.

New sounds. Stine.

"What have you been trying to do, kill him outright? How much have you gotten?"

"Nothing yet, sir. He's either the craziest man in the universe or the toughest. Or else he doesn't know anything."

"Nonsense! The things this man knows can put us all in the shade, and don't you forget it! But if we don't find out just how much his people still know—or don't know—it'll be your necks as well as mine! They realize there's somebody else besides themselves in Space, now."

The darkness seemed to be lifting a little; the numbness seemed to be thawing from his brain, and the pain became more agonizingly acute.

"We'll try again, sir—"

"Never mind. There's a better use for this fellow than killing him by inches. Perhaps he places little value on his own life, but when it comes to those of a few billion people. Yes. Haine, do you think you could wreck a Geejay?"

"Wreck a—" There was the sound of hoarse breathing from a half dozen men, and Jon felt something stir inside him, but it was as though he were a thing disconnected from his physical body; that he no longer had power of decision over it. "—sure, I guess so. A double-A in reverse! Haw! Where?"

"Canis Major, Proky system, if that's where he's from."

"Don't look like a Prokyman to me."

"Never mind that. Could you do the job so that the ITA couldn't repair it? And I mean NOT AT ALL?"

"Hell, sir, one of our E-blasters would do that much—"

"I have a feeling that one very simple way to gain our end, Haine, would be through the use of our E-blasters against every ship the ITA possesses—and just what do you suppose that would leave us? This fellow here wasn't so far wrong, you know, when he pointed out what would happen in the event the ITA were suddenly destroyed. We'd be left with a universe full of the screaming meemies. We'd be on top, but on top of the biggest booby hatch you ever saw! If we're going to do ourselves any good, we leave the ITA in one piece. The only difference being, we tell them what to do!"

"Now ain't that nice of us, to just walk in like that without firing a charge—"

"I'm doing the thinking around here, Johnson!"

"It's a cinch you ain't doing much of the shooting! Letting fancy-brains, here, tell you—"

Jon heard the sudden sound of bone crunching against bone; there was a choked yelp of pain, and the sound of a man falling heavily. Then Stine was talking again, softly.

"Anyone else here who prefers muscle to brain power?"

"Sir—Johnson's—you—"

"Bury him later, and listen to me now! I want the Gravity-Justifier in Procyon smashed so that the Tinkers can't do a thing with it—but so thathe can! Do you understand, Haine?"

"I can smash it up so thatwecouldn't put it back together in a million years."

"You'll be responsible. Let's get this man aboard theNew Worldand be ready to up-ship within an hour. We're going to have our cake, gentlemen, and eat it, too! Unless, of course, our friend Kane, here, will be able to watch ten billion people die as an entire planetary system breaks up, and do nothing about it! All right, let's get going!"

And then there was the sound of another man coming into the already crowded cubicle.

"Senator Stine, sir! Look what we found coming down the ladder! And in a shooting mood, too! I'll need a new space rig—"

"JON!"

"Well! The ITA hasn't lost much time! She looks a little bit white, doesn't she, Thurston? And seems to know our friend, here! Gentlemen, I think things are going to work out rather well...."

And that was the moment that Jon Kane returned to full consciousness, and full pain.

But he kept his eyes shut, his voice silent.

The banks of viewscreens in theNew World'sNIC room reflected a kaleidoscope of horror as no man had seen horror before, and as only a man of Kane's century could understand it. To the uninitiated observer of an earlier time whose entire life experience had been within the narrow confines of a single planet, the softly glowing spheres in the screens would have seemed remote things; untouchable, and of only speculative interest. The interest may have been heightened slightly by the sudden rifts that appeared in the surfaces of some, or by the peculiarly undulating ocean masses that seemed bent on erasing the land masses of others.

But to Jon, securely shackled to an ackseat as was Deanne beside him, the screens showed an impending wave of death and destruction on a scale that bordered on the unthinkable.

Procyon I and II were already torn near the point of total break-up; III, IV and V, because of their greater masses, were trembling with a slower rhythm, but the close-up screens showed their largest cities had already begun to crumble. Their streets were clogged with both dead and living, and the gaping mouths of panic stricken faces were eerily silent.

The six outer planets had not yet felt their first tremors, but they had begun to enter subtly-altered orbital paths, and whole continents were unnaturally bathed in the hellish light of twin suns that spewed great, flaming masses of their life-stuff with unchecked abandon into the infinite well of the void.

The largest screen showed a wide, wafer-thin disc floating with an inhuman serenity in the blackness, its flat plane tipped gently to the ecliptic, its surface crawling with tiny ant-like creatures that were men. Hovering above it was a glistening, pencil-shaped object from which more men came, their tiny forms followed by irregularly shaped masses, weightless on the invisible tow-lines.

"Not doing much good, are they, Kane?"

The big man hulked above him, beefy face florid but split with a relaxed, confident grin. Jon broke his long silence.

"Starn has told you he would surrender! Why can't you accept it, and then I promise you I'll—"

"You'll do what? You'd pull everything in the book and you know it, Kane, and we'd end up having to kill you or be killed ourselves. And if you were to die." Jon turned his glance toward Deanne, saw her shudder, then turn her eyes away from the screens, bitter defeat mingled tightly with the tears in them. "And anyway," Stine was saying, "Starn's not the boss anymore! And what good d'you think it's going to do me to push over a has-been? B-Haaq is the one who's calling their plays now, Kane. And B-Haaq is the boy who wants to fight! Too bad you didn't kill him when you had the chance! Look at him out there! Trying to tell me he can fix it, or anything I can do to it! Telling me if I move this ship in a mile closer he'll blow me out of Space! Oh, brother—"

"He could, Stine," Jon said. And the big man whirled.

"With those antiquated pop guns he carries? Don't try to make me angry, Kane. He's going to sweat it out there until he and his whole damn crew drops. And then I'm sending you in! By that time things'll be so bad I'llknowI can trust you. You're the type, Kane! Fight like hell up to the last second, and then comes the noble, heroic sacrifice part. Oh, you'll do the job, all night after you've sat here watching long enough!"

Jon bit his lip, watched the big man stalk back and forth before the wide banks of screens.

"I could beat him in less time than it takes to tell it with E-blasters!" Stine was saying. "But they say there's a better way of winning arguments than with guns, don't they, Master Kane? Slaves are always more valuable than corpses, for one thing, and for another, I think people ought to know that Martin Stine has more to his string than guns alone! Yes...." His broad back was to both Jon and Deanne, now, and he was staring out through a wide port into the gem-studded blackness, and his words were for his own ears. "They will know who is a technician and who is not! The ITA is weak with age—and the weak become the slaves, and the strong become the masters! They shall see."

"Stine, you're a fool!"

The big man turned, faced Jon, and his big face blanched in sudden anger, and then the color flooded back to it and he laughed.

"Stine, do you know what B-Haaq will do when he realizes that he has failed? When he realizes that the woman who spurned him and the man who deserted his ranks are aboard this ship? Do you know what he'll do rather than knuckle under to you? He's the same kind of man you are, Stine. He'll come gunning with everything he's got! You'll be a seive before you know what hit you ... and for once I'll be glad to see B-Haaq take a trick!"

He heard Deanne gasp, could almost feel the trembling of her body.

"That's enough out of you, Kane, or there'll be a couple dozen more bandages on that honest face of yours! If that puppy even turns his nose toward me, I'll show him what real guns are! And let him sweat out there without his engines for awhile!"

"You only think you will! You haven't the faintest idea of what alloy the Tinkers build their ships, and you know it! And it's going to be fun watching you find out."

"If they use the tin they use to fix everything else."

"They may be stupid, Stine, but they've been around quite awhile."

"All right, so you know what alloy their hulls are built of! So my batteries of electro-cannon will—"

"Bounce off like a flashlantern beam, Stine. But I guess you'll want to wait and see for yourself. And if I know B-Haaq, you'll get the chance!"

And suddenly Stine was towering over him again. Jon winced at the vicious slap that landed squarely on his misshapen face.

"You'll tell me the alloy! Do you hear me?" A slap harder than the first. "Do you understand, Kane?"

Jon felt blood trickle down his chin.

"I'll not tell you a thing, Stine. Not about the alloy, or even how to rig your guns to beat it."

The next blow was with Stine's closed fist. Jon's head snapped back viciously, and he held on by sheer will to consciousness. He tensed for another blow. It did not come. And suddenly, Stine's voice was a calm, almost silky thing, barely loud enough for Jon to hear.

"A pity," he was saying, "that your man is so defiant a fellow, Lenantech. I almost imagine that even after the risk you took to save his hide, he'd watch your pretty face be beaten to a pulp rather than tell me the things I'd like to know! That's the way with these noble fellows, you know. Of course, a girl's face isn't everything. But, I suppose that he'd even—"

"Stine, you wouldn't dare!"

"Care to try me, Master Kane?"

"Damn you, Stine—"

The big man clenched his right fist, raised it, and Jon watched Deanne's face whiten, saw the silent plea in her eyes in the quick glance she gave him. But her taut lips did not move.

"You had better speak, Kane—"

"All right! All right, I'll rig your guns for you!"

"And you'd better hurry! Unless my screens are out of order, your precious ten billion Prokymen haven't too much time left."

Jon looked at the screens again, and he knew his horror was reflected in his swollen face. Something writhed sickeningly inside him and he looked at the screen in which the Geejay swung. B-Haaq and his men were at last leaving it! Leaving it, giving up.

But he said nothing as Stine summoned Haine from in-ship, and kept his silence as the squat, burly man unshackled him while Stine held a hand weapon at Deanne's head.

"I'll need her to help," he bit out then. "On your guns, as well as on the Justifier. She's worked on double-A's before."

"She stays, Kane!"

"Very well, she stays. But if this outfit can't get the Geejay fixed either, people won't be too impressed, will they. I say I need her, Stine. That thing out there is too badly wrecked even for me, now, alone. But it's up to you. I'll rig your guns."


Back to IndexNext