by Andre Norton
The rock of the island had not been, as he had feared, smoothed when the buildings were erected. Having hooked himself to the hose with the belt of his tunic, the Terran used his hands to explore. And well within reaching distance he discovered in a promising shadow what he needed—climbing holds. Working his way sidewise he began to climb. He had gained some six feet and the bridge was still several yards above him yet when he was forced to loosen the hose. When it was free, the Terran gave the supple length a quick jerk, activating the coiling mechanism to have it withdrawn into the room.
There were no ledges on which he could pause and his muscles ached with strain and tension when he at length swung up on one of the underbraces of the bridge. For a moment, he sat astride of a beam, studying the path ahead. To venture up on the surface of that span under the lights was to court instant discovery. His charred, torn clothing and his sudden appearance would be enough to rivet the attention of any guard.
So, if one could not cross on the surface of the bridge, one had to take an under way. And from his present perch that operation did not promise to be easy. Once up on the next island, he must somehow get a scout tunic and then . . . Joktar shook his head. One move at a time, concentrate on what was immediately before him now. His luck had held amazingly and somehow he knew that he was riding a gambler’s winning streak tonight and that he must push it to the limit.
Water washed high below, beat in white edged lashes on the rocks. And he could not swim. To crawl along the half-seen supports before him was going to be an ordeal which would require all his energy and will-power. And waiting was not going to make him any more sure-footed. He was past the first fatigue of his climb, it was time to move.
Joktar crept, he edged, twice he swung from one shadowy hold to another. The training he had taken in what now seemed a very distant past came to his aid as his body responded to the demands he made upon it.
There was some traffic on the bridge about him and the vibration carried to him, just as the constant sound of the sea was a warning of menace below. Now and then when he came upon a resting place he paused to wipe his sweating hands on his breeches before making the swing ahead. His world had narrowed to those supports, most of which lay in dangerous pools of shadow.
Time stretched endlessly until his hands fastened in the last hold, and before him again was a rock wall of island. Once up that he would stand again at ground level. He leaned against the wall, forced his breath into a slow and even pattern. Now—
Once more his nails gritted on stone as he groped for fingerholds. Then, long minutes later, he lay belly-down on a ledge, backed by a man-made parapet which guarded the approach to the bridge. As Joktar raised to look over that, he saw that the medic had been right in his warning of the extra security Lennox had planted to seal off the clinic. There was the uniform of the local police; also, Joktar’s hands caught hard on the parapet, one of the gray-clad scouts, plain under the floodlights.
He watched the conference between the two, hardly daring to hope that the scout was not on regular guard duty. But his luck held. Gray tunic was walking away, heading into the island. Joktar scuttled along his ledge to the end of the parapet. Here were some small ornamental shrubs set out in a fan of soil, a pocket-sized park.
The lights were not the powerful glares of the floods and there were patches of helpful dusk here and there. Once more, the Terran followed a well-known pattern. Such a stalking game as this was native to the streets. He skulked from one bit of cover to the next, to sprint on into the dark well of a doorway.
So normal was the hum of city noise that he could blot it from his consciousness, to concentrate on that other sound, the click of the gravity plates on the scout’s space boots. So announced, his prey drew opposite the doorway.
With a larger man, or a suspicious one, Joktar might not have had such unqualified success. But the blow delivered in just the right spot, the sweep of arm to bring the limp body in against him, flowed, one into the other, with the timing of an instructor’s exhibition. He lowered the unconscious scout to the ground and set about stripping off his uniform. As he sealed the tunic and buckled on the other’s blaster belt, he marveled at his own success. This was certainly one of those nights when luck was pouring his way across the table and he couldn’t lose even if he wanted to.
The Terran settled the tight gray cap on his head and rolled the unconscious scout into the back of the doorway. Unless the fellow was superhuman, he would be out for at least an hour, and groggy for a while afterwards. Wearing Joktar’s singed tunic he would have a lot of questions to answer if he were found before he was able to stagger out on his own wobbly feet seeking help.
There were a few other pedestrians on the street, but none near enough to matter. Joktar stepped out of the doorway and began to walk toward the other side of the island and that second bridge which should take him to the Seven Stars, stopping only once by a brightly illuminated shop window to study the identification folder he had taken from his victim.
So, he was Rog Kilinger, detached for special duty with Commander Lennox, perfect! He smiled at the center display in the window, a collection of Styrian pearl flowers, their colors flushing faintly under the pull of the light. The flowers were beautiful. This was a fine night, and Scout Kilinger after arduous service, doubtless on the barbaric rim, was entitled to plush relaxation at the Seven Stars. The best was none too good for brave Rog Kilinger, Commander Lennox’s doughty right, or maybe left-hand man.
There were police on the second bridge but Joktar’s momentary hesitation as he sighted that guard did not even break his steady gait. Nor did any of the guards pay him attention until he reached the other end of the span where the vast pile of the Seven Stars loomed in a display of lighting and fantastic, scrambled architecture from the edge of the sea well into Loki’s sky.
“Ident, Gentlehomo?”
With a gesture he hoped careless enough, Joktar drew out the folder, flipped it open.
“Your business here, scout?”
Joktar grinned. “Just in from the rim, officer, what do you think?”
The police sentry laughed. “From what I’ve heard, scout, you’d better keep off the joy juice. That commander of yours isn’t too easy in judging a morning-after alibi.”
“You got it,” Joktar agreed. “But then, what commander ever is?”
“Lift one for me.” The sentry handed back the case. “It’s going to be a long night.”
“Something special up?” Joktar made that question as casual as he could.
The sentry shrugged. “Alert B, not that that means much. We get that thrown in our teeth every time a vip has one over five and something leers at him from the vapor shower the next morning. Keep your ident handy, though, they may ask you your name pretty often under a B.”
“Thanks for the tip.” Joktar sketched a salute and walked on passing from the bridge into the rim of garden beyond. So there was an alert on. But he could not believe that it had been triggered by the discovery of his escape from the clinic. Certainly there would have been a tighter control at the bridge if that were true.
Joktar stepped into the shadow of a fantastically twisted tree and stopped short, watching his back trail. But if anyone had shadowed him from the second island that simplest of checks did not smoke him out. The sounds of music, laughter, and a kind of muted roar issued from the Seven Stars, with the wash of waves making a dull undertone. He could detect no such footfalls as announced the scout.
A party of four gaily dressed couples came out of a flowery clump and ran laughing toward the building. Joktar cut across their path, reached a terrace set with tables, all occupied, and threaded a way between them to the door. Another dining room, and the clothing styles of a dozen planets or systems, a babble of tongues which branched from basic Terran speech to mutate into almost incomprehensible idioms used on the planets of far flung stars.
He looked for a gray tunic to match his own; saw only one at a far table so he turned in the oppos
ite direction. The smell of good food tickled his nostrils, offered a temptation which was hard to resist. But he kept on toward the next door. And he had almost reached that point when he checked, his startled gaze centering on two men who had just arisen from a small side booth intended for privacy and were now on their way to the same exit he had marked. One of them turned his head a fraction and Joktar knew he was right: Samms!
The Terran rounded a last table, took the two steps up to the door in a quick scramble, and came out, not into a hall or lounge as he had expected, but into a vast bubble which was a city in itself, rising in levels, each crowded with shops, ribboned with move-belts carrying full quotas of passengers, a kaleidoscope of ever-moving color in which it would be very easy to lose any quarry.
But Samms’ rather drab jacket was the exception in this fashionable world. A glimpse of his wide shoulders drew Joktar into one of the belts and he began moving along it to draw closer to the man from Fenris. Luckily there were other impatient passengers and he did not make himself conspicuous by his stalking. And Samms and his diner companion appeared content to allow the belt to transport them at its slower rate. Joktar was close enough to follow them when they did move, leaving the wider belt with a skip for a narrower one winding into a side corridor. There were fewer riders here and Joktar was forced to allow several passengers to get between him and the pair he trailed.
He knew that the party from Fenris had been housed together and he was certain that sooner or later Samms would guide him to their quarters, for he dared not make any enquiry for Hogan. Now Samms’ companion stepped courteously aside for a woman and Joktar saw that he was Sa—Sa of Harband! Yet from their attitude one would believe those two ahead to be good friends, rather than enemies who less than three weeks ago had been exchanging blaster shots . . . if not exactly at each other, then by proxy. The old suspicion of Samms’ possible double game flowered. And the Terran began to wonder about the wisdom of trailing this ill-assorted pair.
They were leaving the belt; he must make up his mind in a hurry. Joktar, his hand resting near the butt of his blaster, allowed the belt to carry him parallel with the door to the grav-plate shaft where the others now stood, then he jumped off, to come up behind Sa.
Samms glanced around and Joktar expected recognition, but that did not come. For what broke Samms’ stolid expression was sharp surprise, a surprise with a touch of wariness in it. And for the first time there was a spark of some emotion in his pale gray eyes.
“What are you doing here?” he demanded. “I told the commander not to move in before nineteen hours.”
“The commander likes to take out insurance,” Joktar ad-libbed. “I’m the insurance.”
Sa looked over his shoulder. On his thin, well-chiseled features there was a distant shadow of annoyance.
“Such last-minute additions to well-conceived plans,” he commented, “always lead to difficulties. If you go up with us now, it will jeopardize our chances of coming to an agreement.”
He had fallen into something, Joktar knew that, though he still could not understand why Samms did not know him. Or did he? Was the outlaw from Fenris doubling on an already-muddled trail? But how did the scouts and Lennox come into this?
“I have my orders,” he returned shortly.
A grav-plate came to a halt before them and the two from Fenris moved on it reluctantly. The Terran guessed that Samms, at least, longed to order him to remain where he was. They arose in a stomach-rocking sweep, Samms’ inner agitation betrayed by that snap of full power. Joktar braced himself at the hand rail. If they stopped short now. . .
But Samms slowed the plate and the jar of the halt did not shake them from their footing. In the hall facing them, he saw both the green tunic of the planet police and the blue of a patrolman. He waited tensely for Samms to protest to both or either concerning his own presence, but no protest came.
The Fenrian outlaw moved on to the door, placed his palm on its lock, and stepped aside to usher Sa past him. His shoulder half-blocked Joktar, but the Terran nudged him on.
They came into a luxurious apartment which now held an odd scene. Hogan and Rysdyke were both stretched out in the soft embrace of eazee-rests. But neither of them was resting easily. A small disc in the hand of a second patrol officer insured that. They were effectively webbed in the bonds of a tangle.
“It would seem,” Joktar spoke, “that there’s a little trouble here.”
The patrolman turned his head to face the muzzle of the scout blaster.
“Pin up!” the Terran snapped.
When he saw the other’s finger rise from the disc and Rysdyke and Hogan move, Joktar held out one hand.
“Toss!” he gave his second order, “And make it center!”
The patrolman tossed and the Terran’s fingers closed about the tangle control.
“Now, all of you, over there!” His gesture included Samms, Sa, and the patrol officer, sending them to the other side of the room. Holstering his blaster he pushed in the tangle pin.
“You know,” he informed them, “there is a way of jamming these so they can’t be turned off . . . they have to be burned out. Now I wonder how good my memory is . . . Sorry.” His three captives twisted under a tightening of the coils which held them. And Samms spat a quite exotic suggestion concerning Joktar’s past. “There, that ought to do it!” The pin was well-wedged to one side and he dropped the tangle to the floor. “Now you’ll all stay put until that’s burnt out.”
Samms made a biting comment concerning Commander Lennox.
“What’s Lennox got to do with it?” demanded Rysdyke.
“Yes, that I would like to know . . . Oh,” Hogan laughed, “my good friends have really given themselves away this time, haven’t they? They accept the false as readily as the real because they were expecting some such move.” His hand dropped on Joktar’s shoulder. “How did you manage to arrive like the space marines, all ready for battle in good time?”
Samms’ eyes narrowed and he stared at the Terran, for the first time seeing more than the uniform. Again that spark glowed in his eyes. And Joktar knew that Samms would never either forgive or forget this particular meeting.
“The scouts tried to pry me loose from the clinic. I preferred to make the trip under my own power. What I want to know is why?”
“Samms,” Hogan reseated himself. “I sadly fear I made a grave error in your case, the error of underestimating you. Lennox got to you, didn’t he? I would very much like to know how the commander is so well-informed concerning our movements. There has been a bad slip somewhere.”
Sa wriggled as if he were trying to find a more easy fit within the invisible ties which held him prisoner.
“Hogan, I am a reasonable individual. You have impressed me that you possess a certain sense of logic; you are able to rise above such dramatics as these. I also believe that Harband is not the primary objective of your present moves. I believe that we may, as you say, be able to make a deal.”
Hogan listened with an expression of placid interest. “I am, of course, flattered by your estimate of my character, Gentlehomo. Yes, I am attracted to logic, sense, and reason as much as any man. Now, what do you have to offer?”
“Profit . . . and perhaps your life.”
Hogan settled closer into the embrace of his chair. “Both those points are able to hold my full interest, Gentlehomo. Will you please turn up your first card?”
12
Behind Sa’s slender elegance Samms backed the wall. Of the three prisoners, Joktar paid him the closest attention. Those shallow eyes were fastened on Hogan and there was an odd deliberation in that gaze. Was his the study of a knife fighter picking out his mark? Samms’ control was back, he was assured . . . or waiting. Joktar spoke: “They’re playing for time.”
Hogan smiled, answered lazily. “But of course. However, we must preserve the aura of courtesy if not the quality itself. Gentlehomo, Sa has not come here to represent anyone but his own company.”
Sa nodded his head, his body still held rigid by the grip of the tangle.
“Do you wish me to swear to that on the Truth of the Ancestors?” he inquired with a half-sneer.
“Not at all, Gentlehomo. I made a statement, I did not ask for reassurance. Now, what do you have to offer?”
“Suppose the companies relax the import regulations on Fenris, allow free traders to planet?”
“And in return for such a concession?”
“You do not push your case before Cullan.”
“Ah, that’s the nip, is it? But I am a little surprised at you, Gentlehomo. You immediately offer us what men have died vainly to obtain. And yet you have the reputation of being an astute, sly man. So I shall make some guesses, you need not even signify as to whether I am right or am failing to judge correctly what must be in progress behind several different curtains at this moment.
“First, the companies have been warned their monopolies are in danger. A manifest piece of mismanagement or public scandal now will wreck them and Councilor Cullan is the avowed enemy of their present way of conducting business. In answer to that, Gentlehomo, may I say that the end of the companies in their present form is already upon us. You cannot build a dam when a river is in flood. But by granting graciously such concessions as you have already outlined, you might be in a position six months or a year from now, to have the backing of new friends when you need them most. Because the companies are needed on the frontier worlds, but with their policies modified.”
Sa smiled. “We understand each other perfectly,” there was almost a note of humor in that. “May I also point out, Gentlehomo, that you are now engaged in a war covering more than one sector. To turn one of your opponents, a minor one that is true, but nevertheless an enemy of sorts, into a neutral or even a friend at this juncture might also divert the tide in your favor.”
“In other words you have information of value.” Hogan picked up a com-mike with attached mirror from the table. “You have been dealing with Samms, now you offer me certain advantages. Why change? Surely the temporary turning of tables in this room has not had so great an influence . . .”
