by Various
"To what you have to offer!"
He laughed again. "It's more than Mason ever had! You know, sometimes I think you were torching for that space-happy has-been!"
She felt the burn of rising color in her cheeks and turned quickly away from him.
"You don't get it yet, do you duchess?" his heavy voice was saying behind her. "It's never occurred to you that there are other places to be beside with your own flock; that there are other men among whom to seek your fortune if the ones you were born among didn't offer the opportunities you expected. What are we among the stars at all for if it's not to find our destinies anywhere we think they might lie? What's this Big Freedom for, if not to use to some kind of advantage? And me, I'm sick of being a Warrant under worn out space-neurotics like Mason! And I don't want to end up being one, either!"
Judith held her lips tight against the thing that surged hotly inside her. There would have to be a way to stop this man. And if there weren't--How the pampered friends whom she'd left so proudly to choose this calling would laugh at her, would say "that was what the hot-headed little rebel deserved ... she had it coming if she couldn't act like a lady." And they were wrong!
But this man was hideously twisting all the things she had thought were good and right, worth hoping and striving for. All the priceless things that had stood for more than the soft, idle and pointlessly shallow existence to which she'd been born.
"But I guess you wouldn't get it," Cain was saying. "Born with a silver shovel in your mouth, you don't have to worry about sweating out your pile! Quit any time and there it all is after your little adventure, still waiting for you to come home to! Maybe they'll even want you to write a book! But me--my father wasn't a lucky g-prospector."
A proximity alarm clanged, and Cain quickly turned his attention to the control banks. He jacked out the auto control and took over manually. And within seconds the pursuit was hovering over the great whale-like back of the Thrayxite craft, and then was drawn slowly to it as its powerful magnetics reached out, ensnared it. Then Cain cut the pursuit's drive, and they both waited.
The airlock opened, and the two women stepped through. There were weapons in their hands.
"I want to see your commander," Cain barked.
"I am the commander of this complement," the taller of the two said in an almost unaccented English. "You will consider yourselves my captives. Daleb...."
"What? Not all women." There was a curious look on Cain's face; thoughts were racing behind the thin blades of his eyes.
"You are prisoners of the matriarchy of Thrayx," the officer called Daleb said. "If you do not resist, you shall be unharmed."
"All right, come off that alien-meets-alien stuff," Cain said as though the two briefly-uniformed women before him held toys rather than weapons in their hands. "I didn't just tag after you at a billion times the speed of light to get thrown into one of your dungeons! I've got some information I think you can use. And--" and the curious look was again on his face, "--there are some--shall we say--services, I think I can profitably perform for you."
"Profitably, Earthman? Profitable to whom?"
"To both of us. To me--that's why I'm here--and to you."
Judith's face was white. Perhaps this was some clever trick of Cain's. She could have been wrong.
"Tell me this information you have, Earthman."
"Let's dicker about price, first, Goldylocks!" He stood there, confident, defiant, great muscles bunched beneath the fabric of his tunic.
"You, Earthman, are hardly in bargaining position!" Only the woman's mouth moved; her eyes bored straight into Cain's like fine diamond drills.
"Chuck me," Cain said with a grin, "and you chuck the best chance you've ever had to take your Ihelian friends to the cleaners. What information I have concerning Ihelian plans is one thing." Judith caught her breath. She knew Cain was lying now. Even Lance had learned little of the Ihelian strategy, above Kriijorl's attempt to enlist Earthwomen for Ihelian breeding colonies. It was all, she realized suddenly, a colossal bluff, from which Cain planned to play his cards as he went along! And now he had found a wedge of some sort, some new bargaining point. There was still that curious look on his face, that careless grin at his lips. "But what service I can render you," he was continuing, "is quite another! Ladies, how good are your teleprobe gadgets against an Ihelian screen? A big blank, aren't they? But I still think you'd give those cute shirts of yours to find out what's going on inside the thick skulls of our Ihelian friends."
A puzzled look flickered across the Thrayxite commander's face, yet she remained immobile, and her weapon held steady.
"First of all, bright eyes," Cain said swiftly, "may you be the first to know that they're all men! All men, get it?" There was a soft gasp from Daleb, and the commander's eyes flickered, widened almost imperceptibly. "And better yet, I'm a pal of Kriijorl, their commander who picked us up just inside the Rim that time you followed us into Earth. So think it over. It ought to be worth a fancy little pile to you, ladies, since women agents would be kind of conspicuous in an all-male civilization!"
"You expect us to believe this fantasy? Do you expect us to accept your proposal on the basis of nothing more than words? And the technique you describe. It has never been used, never even considered as a legitimate method of battle!"
Cain laughed easily. "Then maybe you better consider it if you want to come out on top! And as to the rest of it, if I was part of some counter-plot against you do you think I'd've gone to the trouble of bringing along some security?" And Judith felt something freeze inside her as he threw a careless glance in her direction. "There she is--Sergeant Judith Kent. Your hostage for this little operation! If I misbehave, she should make a pretty good bargaining point with Ihelos. From all I gather, they've got Earth sore enough at them as it is!"
There was an instant's silence, and then the commander said, "You have not proven your statement that our enemy is a male enemy."
"What do you think they wanted women for on Earth after you blasted that planetoid of theirs? A quilting party or something? Add it up."
The quiet in the small control bubble was electric. Judith watched the Thrayxites' faces as they weighed the incredible thing that Cain had said.
"I haven't got all eternity!" Cain snapped. "You think you can afford not to believe me?"
"Very well. Our Book has never mentioned this technique of spying, and therefore there can be no rule against it. As for the rest--that could be immaterial. You could be of value to us. Outline your plan."
"That's better, girls. Only take it just a little slower. We both know what we are, but let's haggle for awhile about the price, shall we?"
V
Judith shivered, partly from an uncontrollable terror and partly from the pre-dawn dampness creeping from the thick jungle surrounding the small clearing which held one of the breeder planetoid's many secluded colonies. The camp and the tangled growth which bounded it was her prison; a place in which there was freedom, yet where none were free. To walk or to run or to hide--but where? And so it was with the rest--the hard-muscled, obviously drug-clouded males who had never known any other world than this; who never questioned from whence came the periodic groups of Thrayxite women for them to fertilize; who only glared dully at her, dimly understanding that she was to be, although captive here, left to herself and unmolested. Yet despite her status as hostage and Earthwoman, she was afraid.
The brute of a camp leader, Bruhlla.... Not drugged like the rest. There was more to his sidelong glances than curiosity and vague resentment. Too often, she could sense his eyes upon her. And she wondered at the increasing frequency of his visits to the camp's well guarded mentacom installation.
She had lost count of night and days under the white sun of Thrayx and its ringed host. There had been two, perhaps, or three. Three days in which Roger Cain had been doing what? Was he with Kriijorl and Lance posing as their friend, their fellow captive, listening to their plans against their Thrayxite captors ... r
emembering? Or would they be freed, if indeed they still lived, in order that Cain could, with them, learn even more of Ihelian stratagems on a far greater scale?
And the Earth girls--she had heard the cries of some, the desperate curses of others.
Bruhlla, entitled to use of the mentacom for daily contact reports with Thrayx as he was, was the only other alien being on the planetoid who could converse with her. He had lost little time in probing her to learn her tongue. And he had already hinted at the fate of the women from her planet. In other camps on the planetoid, held in small isolated groups, unmolested, Bruhlla had said. But prisoners, as was she.
Somehow, the Ihelians would have to know.
For there was no Earth to which to turn now.
The shiver again shook her slender body, and her tattered uniform did little to shield her from the damp cold.
"Still one apart from the rest of us, are you?" The growl of Bruhlla's voice behind her startled her, and she turned quickly to face the loose grimace of derision on his thick lips.
"I am to be left to myself," she said with what assurance she could muster. "That is your order."
"I know my order, little one! No need to tell Bruhlla his orders! But perhaps you will grow colder; perhaps you will grow hungry."
"You couldn't--"
"I have no order about feeding you, little one!"
Somehow she found the strength to voice her defiance. For she could still think. And thought, Lance had once told her, was the ultimate strength....
"You lie! There was such an order! But if you wish to bring the wrath of your masters down upon your ugly head." She watched his unkempt face, fanned the sudden puzzlement she saw growing in his red, sadistic eyes. If his intelligence were blurred enough by the self-made drug of his lust. "I myself heard such an order; and if you can prove me mistaken you may do with me what you will!" God, would he stop to realize that she understood not a word of the Thrayxite tongue?
"Quickly proven, my little one! Quickly enough proven! And then if what you say is untrue...." He left the sentence mercifully unfinished, and turned toward the sturdily-built cubicle that housed the colony's mentacom.
"Wait! I'll only believe your proof if I can hear it for myself!"
"Come along then and you shall hear it!" The thick lips slackened into a lascivious grin that sickened her, but she hastened to follow him. And he did not see her as she scooped the jagged stone from the ground, thrust it into a tattered tool-pocket of her uniform.
Past the quiescent, sweat reeking bodies of the bull-muscled guards, into the dimly lit chamber beyond, Bruhlla half walking, half shambling before her.
She watched him as he switched the device into life; waited until its dull orange glow assured that it was ready for use. So much like the communications room of an ordinary ship of Earth, she thought. So like the familiar things of her life, yet so alien.
He had barely slipped the mentacom's headpiece on his skull and adjusted a simply calibrated control dial when she struck him at the base of his thick neck with the stone, all the force of her supple young body behind it.
Blood spurted as its ragged edges tore through flesh, bone and nerves, and slowly, Bruhlla crumpled from the rude chair that held his dying bulk.
Thought images as well as words, Kriijorl had explained during their flight so long ago in the helio. Language would be no barrier. Over the head, like this ... and this switch--
She twirled the large dial from its setting, watched a slender thread of light within a transparent sphere above it fluctuate in breadth as the dial twisted. And when it was at its widest, she gambled that it indicated the broadest transmitting beam of which the mentacom was capable.
And then she marshalled her thoughts, carefully chose the simplest words.
Warning, Ihelos! There is an Earthman among you at work as a spy for Thrayx! I am a captive.
Over and over, the same words, the same thought images which they formed; of Cain, of this hell-planetoid itself.
The orange glow pulsated as though itself alive with the desperation of her signal. And she heard the guard barely in time.
A howl of rage bellowed from him as she turned, twisted frantically just outside his grasp, darted headlong through the door.
And she was quicker than those outside; she was beyond them, running, the breath sobbing in her throat.
Away from the blood-soaked thing she'd left crumpled in death behind her, and toward the jungle's edge. Toward some new horror, perhaps, and toward a freedom that would be short-lived at best. For she had killed Bruhlla, and she knew they would not stop now until she had been run to earth.
* * * * *
The three men watched as the six ships landed in the jungle clearing; emptied of the selected Thrayxite women who would in little more than a day's time re-enter them, the breeders' seed within their bodies, for the journey back to the mother planet.
It had been the same the day before, and the day before that, and in the distance, they had watched similar craft descend toward other of the many colonies with which the lush planetoid was dotted.
"Nuts!" Cain said. He turned to Mason. "What the hell else is there to do? Sit here and rot? They won't kill us. They'll just let Nature take its course--"
"There's more to be done than simply make a run for it to one of their ships," Mason snapped. "The mentacoms on them, Kriijorl's said a dozen times, haven't the necessary range."
"So what's your plan? Or don't I get to hear any of the details?"
Mason studied the big man's face. Captured in his attempt to rescue the Earthwomen, he had said. His explanation had been that simple. New-UN hadn't believed Judith, but she had convinced him, and so he'd tried on his own responsibility, and simply hadn't made it. And then they'd brought him here, scarcely hours after Mason and Kriijorl had themselves been delivered to the teeming colony.
Logical enough, yes. Cain was the kind who would try such a crazy stunt, alone, with such supreme overconfidence in his own muscle power. Yet--
"We must not be impatient," Kriijorl interrupted his thought. He stood up, his blond head nearly touching the top of the plastifabric tent. "We must be certain and wait for the best time, Mister Cain. For if we fail in our first attempt, there will not be a second. And it has only been three days. As yet, we have been left quite to ourselves; even my life has not been threatened."
Mason noticed the puzzled frown that was across the Ihelian's forehead. "Do you think--"
"I cannot even guess the reason for that," Kriijorl murmured, as though more to himself than in answer to Mason's question. "By all the rules of our conflict, I should be stretched naked for the jungle beasts by now."
"Forget it!" Cain broke in quickly. "You're alive now, and if we can have a little action around here maybe you'll stay that way. We've watched long enough. They don't guard those ships at all. These breeders they keep drugged to the eyes, so why should they? I say we just grab one and blast off! Unless somebody's got a better plan, and I still haven't heard one--"
"Awfully anxious, aren't you, Mister Cain?" Mason asked.
"I'm not afraid of 'em if that's what you mean!"
Lance turned to Kriijorl. "Maybe he's right. We've watched for three days. What do you think?"
The Ihelian looked out across the colony of low, square-shaped enclosures and to its far side where the twisted jungle began; to the spot where the mentacom was housed in a squat, guarded dome of crudely-shaped steel. Then he turned back to the Earthman, and Mason saw the uncertainty in his eyes.
"We have gained far less than I had hoped by watching," he said slowly. "We have learned the number of their guards, and the period of their change, but perhaps that is all we shall learn. If you think that as soon as there is darkness--"
"About time!" Cain said sourly. "And it'll be straight for the--"
"To the mentacom first," Mason said quietly. "And after that, to the ships if we can, Mister Cain." He felt strangely calm as his eyes met Cain's squarely. Somewhere
within him, there was something changing. "Take it from an ex-has-been, big man! That's how it's going to be!"
* * * * *
The camp was dark and silent as the three men left the tent. They walked as if from boredom, changing direction often as though at random; yet they moved with a deceiving swiftness, and each step brought them closer to the crude dome. The sound of their movements was as a whisper that lost itself with the quiet murmur of the night wind through the web of the jungle, and when they were close enough, they halted, to wait; to watch.
There was the soft clink of metal on metal and the mutter of dead-toned voices as the guard changed. Four hulking shapes walked at last in a tired shamble from the structure housing the mentacom. Four others prepared to take their posts.
And there was little to disturb the silence after that.
A muffled grunt, a choked off curse lost in a brief rustle of undergrowth as though a sudden breeze had momentarily ruffled its languid calm. And that was all.
Four breeders lay dead outside the dome.
Mason felt the warm stickiness of blood on his face, and the sting of a deep cut somewhere upon it. He saw that Cain was straightening over a mangled form; that Kriijorl had overcome odds of two to one. The breeder at his own feet had died swiftly of a deftly broken neck, a reddened dirk still clutched in his stiffening fingers.
Then they were inside the dome, and Kriijorl was placing the head-unit of the mentacom over his matted yellow hair.
Mason watched in the half-light of the pulsing orange glow, listened to the heaviness of Cain's breathing.
And he saw Kriijorl's face stiffen suddenly. With a swift movement the Ihelian had handed him the head-unit, and with slippery fingers he fumbled the device into place over his own head.
