Traders Risk
Page 3
help!"
* * * * *
Jennifer did not respond and he slapped her, until her eyes flutteredangrily.
"There's an EI communicator in my cabin," Jeff said. "Let's go."
Memory lent Jennifer a sudden vitality that nearly left Jeff behind intheir dash for the cottage up the beach.
"The door," Jeff panted, inside. "Fasten the hurricane bolt. Hurry."
While she secured the flimsy door, he ripped through his belongings,aligning his EI communicator again on his breakfast table. Finding outwhere the islanders got their calm-crystals had become suddenlyunimportant; just then, he wanted nothing so much as to see a well-armedpatrol ship nosing down out of the Calaxian sunrise.
He was activating the screen when Jennifer, in a magnificent rage inspite of soaked blouse and dungarees, advanced on him.
"You're an Earth Interests spy after all," she accused. "They said inthe Township you are no artist, but Uncle Charlie and I--"
Jeff made a pushing motion. "Keep away from me. Do you want that deviltearing the cabin down around us?"
She fell quiet, remembering the Zid, and he made his call. "Aubray,Chain 147. Come in, Consulate!"
There was a sound of stealthy movement outside the cabin and he flickedsweat out of his eyes with a hand that shook.
"EI, for God's sake, come in! I'm in trouble here!"
The image on his three-inch screen was not Consul Satterfield's but thestartled consulate operator's. "Trouble?"
Jeff forced stumbling words into line. The EI operator shook his headdoubtfully.
"Consul's gone for the day, Aubray. I'll see if I can reach him."
"He was about to send out an EI patrol ship to take over here in theislands," Jeff said. "Tell him to hurry it!"
He knew when he put down the microphone that the ship would be too late.EI might still drag the secret of the calm-crystal source out of theislanders, but Jeff Aubray and Jennifer Mack wouldn't be on hand towitness their sorry triumph. The flimsy cabin could not stand for longagainst the sort of brute the owls had shown him, and there was no sortof weapon at hand. They couldn't even run.
"There's something outside," Jennifer said in a small voice.
Her voice seemed to trigger the attack.
* * * * *
The Zid lunged against the door with a force that cracked the woodenhurricane bolt across and opened a three-inch slit between leading edgeand lintel. Jeff had a glimpse of slanted red eyes and white-fangedsnout before reflex sent him headlong to shoulder the door shut again.
"The bunk," he panted at Jennifer. "Shove it over."
Between them, they wedged the bunk against the door and held it inplace. Then they stood looking palely at each other and waiting for thenext attack.
It came from a different quarter--the wide double windows thatoverlooked the bay. The Zid, rearing upright, smashed away the flimsyrattan blinds with a taloned seizing-hand and looked redly in at them.
Like a man in a dream, Jeff caught up his communicator from the tableand hurled it. The Zid caught it deftly, sank glistening teeth into theunit and demolished it with a single snap.
Crushed, the rig's powerful little battery discharged with a muffledsputtering and flashing of sparks. The Zid howled piercingly and droppedaway from the window.
That gave Jeff time enough to reach the storm shutters and securethem--only to rush again with Jennifer to their bunk barricade as theZid promptly renewed its ferocious attack on the door.
He flinched when Jennifer, to be heard above the Zid's ragings, shoutedin his ear: "My Scoop should have the _Queen_ afloat by now. Can wereach her?"
"Scoop?" The Zid's avid cries discouraged curiosity before it was wellborn. "We'd never make it. We couldn't possibly outrun that beast."
The Zid crashed against the door and drove it inches ajar, driving backtheir barricade. One taloned paw slid in and slashed viciously atrandom. Jeff ducked and strained his weight against the bunk,momentarily pinning the Zid's threshing forelimb.
Chafi Three chose that moment to reappear, nearly causing Jeff to let gothe bunk and admit the Zid.
"Your female's suggestion is right," the Ciriimian croaked. "The Ziddoes not swim. Four and I are arranging escape on that premise."
The Zid's talons ripped through the door, leaving parallel rows ofsplintered breaks. Both slanted red eyes glared in briefly.
"Then you'd damn well better hurry," Jeff panted. The door, heestimated, might--or might not--hold for two minutes more.
The Ciriimian vanished. There was a slithering sound in the distancethat sounded like a mountain in motion, and with it a stertorousgrunting that all but drowned out the Zid's cries. Something nudged thecottage with a force that all but knocked it flat.
"_My Scoop!_" Jennifer exclaimed. She let go the barricade and ran tothe window to throw open the storm shutters. "Never mind the door. Thisway, quick!"
* * * * *
She scrambled to the window sill and jumped. Numbly, Jeff saw hersuspended there, feet only inches below the sill, apparently on emptyair. Then the door sagged again under the Zid's lungings and he left thebunk to follow Jennifer.
He landed on something tough and warm and slippery, a monstrous tailfluke that stretched down the beach to merge into a flat purplishacreage of back, forested with endless rows of fins and spines andenigmatic tendrils. The Scoop, he saw, and only half believed it, hadwallowed into the shallows alongside his dock. It had reversed itsunbelievable length to keep the head submerged, and at the same time hadbacked out of the water until its leviathan tail spanned the hundred-oddyards of sloping beach from surf to cabin.
Just ahead of him, Jennifer caught an erect fin-spine and clung withboth arms. "Hang on! We're going--"
The Scoop contracted itself with a suddenness that yanked them yardsfrom the cottage and all but dislodged Jeff. Beyond the surf, theshallows boiled whitely where the Scoop fought for traction to draw itsgrounded bulk into the water.
Jeff looked back once to see the Zid close the distance between andspring upward to the tail fluke behind him. He had an instant convictionthat the brute's second spring would see him torn to bits, but the Scoopat the moment found water deep enough to move in earnest. The Zid couldonly sink in all six taloned limbs and hold fast.
The hundred-odd yards from cabin to beach passed in a blur of speed. TheScoop reached deeper water and submerged, throwing a mountainous billowthat sent the _Island Queen_ reeling and all but foundered her.
Jeff was dislodged instantly and sank like a stone.
He came up, spouting water and fighting for breath, to find himself aperilous twenty feet from the Zid. The Zid, utterly out of its element,screamed hideously and threshed water to froth, all its earlier ferocityvanished under the imminent and unfamiliar threat of drowning. Jeff sankagain and churned desperately to put distance between them.
He came up again, nearly strangled, to find that either he or the Zidhad halved the distance between them. They were all but eye to eye whenJennifer caught him and towed him away toward the doubtful safety of the_Island Queen_.
Chafis Three and Four appeared from nowhere and stood solemnly by whilethe Zid weakened and sank with a final gout of bubbles.
"We must have your friend's help," Chafi Three said to Jennifer then,"to recover our investment."
Jeff wheeled on him incredulously. "_Me_ go down there after thatmonster? Not on your--"
"He means the Scoop," Jennifer said. "They brought it ashore to help usout of the cabin. Why shouldn't it help them now?"
* * * * *
The Scoop came up out of the water so smoothly that the _Island Queen_hardly rocked, dangling the limp form of the Zid from its great rubberylips like a drowned kitten.
"Here," Jennifer said.
The Scoop touched its vast face to the _Queen's_ rail and dropped theunconscious body to the deck. The Zid twitched weakly and coughed upfroth and
water.
Jeff backed away warily. "Damn it, are we going through all that again?Once it gets its wind back--"
Chafi Three interrupted him this time. "The crystal now. We must have itto quiet the Zid until it is safely caged again."
Jennifer turned suddenly firm. "No. I won't let this EI informer knowabout that."
The Ciriimians were firmer.
"It will not matter now. Galactic Adjustment will extend aid to bothCalaxia and Terra, furnishing substitutes for the crystals you deal in.There will be no loss to either faction."
"No loss?" Jennifer repeated indignantly. "But then there won't be anydemand for our crystals! We'll lose everything we've gained."
"Not so," Chafi Three assured her.