Hellflower (1957)

by George O. Smith

“You know I am. It’s just false chivalry. You get caught and we’re all licked.”

  He took a deep breath. “You’re right, of course.”

  “Now, here we are and can we be safe here?”

  “I think—” He held up a hand abruptly. His ears, attuned to life aboard a spacer, had caught the sound of someone coming up the landing ramp and into the salon a few decks above. Then faint as if it were a hundred yards away but audible in the silence of the ship, they could hear the triple-tongued piping of a man.

  He was answered by Carolyn Niles. “Speak Terran!”

  Farradyne nudged Norma. “That’s the line I used and it worked,” he chuckled.

  Carolyn’s companion said, “Why use this mono-voice junk?”

  “You know the rules. It’s not smart to relax, you idiot.”

  “All right. So what’s the answer?”

  “Ask me in Terran.”

  “All right, Your Highness. I was merely inquiring as to the imminence of your take-off.”

  “Don’t be insolent! We’re taking off as soon as we’re all aboard. Now get along with your work!”

  The next voice scared them both out of a year’s growth; they had been straining to hear Carolyn and her companion high above them in the salon, and now, with every nerve tense, the sound of the ship’s intercom roared at them with terrifying volume. “Carolyn Niles! Go aloft, will you, and put the—” there came a triple-voiced syllable “—into standby!”

  Carolyn’s voice replied, “Aye-firm. But look, boys, shouldn’t we have some Terran term for the space drive?”

  “We ought to,” acknowledged one of the men in the inspection cubby. “But how do you translate it into Terran terms when they have no term for it themselves?”

  The other man said, “We could always use ‘space drive’.”

  “No good. Better we didn’t mention it at all. Leave it as it is.”

  Farradyne whispered, “They’re a canny bunch. Talk the language always, act the part always, live the life always; and cut your enemy short when he’s looking for something alien.”

  Another pair of feet came up the landing ramp, and Carolyn said, almost at the same time. “It’s on. How’s she working?”

  “Fine. We’re finished. Coming up.”

  “I want to see.”

  “Okay, so you come down and see. We’re coming up and get started.”

  “Pincered!” said Farradyne to Norma.

  He drew her to the cargo hold and handed her down the service ladder. He followed, closing the door behind him and then, before he snapped out the lights he reached up and removed one of them, saying, “I don’t think we’ll have an inspection, but if we do, having one lamp missing will cast a shadow we can stand in. This is a dimly lit joint at best”

  He waved at the shadow caused by the empty socket and then snapped the lamp off.

  Their weight upon the cushion of flowers was released and sat with their feet pulled up beneath them, not daring to say a word. Her breathing, and the faint pressure of her shoulder against his told him of her presence beside him.

  They waited in the dark silence, listening, and occasionally tensing instinctively when someone clumped past the wall outside or seemed to come near the cargo hatch above their heads. There were voices and calls and running feet from time to time, and then the humming sound of the conveyor-belt. The hatch above was opened wide but the lights were not put on.

  And then from the end of the loose-cargo conveyor came a tumbling shower of hellblossoms. They landed on the floor in a conical heap and kept coming until both Farradyne and Norma were shoulder deep in them. The air filled with the thick, syrupy perfume. Farradyne felt a slight spell of dizziness from the heady odor and then wondered with horrified interest just what effect this completely unpredictable overdose of dope would do to the woman.

  The shower of hellflowers came on and on, and Farradyne was forced to stand because of their depth. Still they came and he found himself swimming off his depth in them: it reminded him of treading in a haymow. The rain of blossoms ceased as the hold filled and the lights went on briefly for an inspection.

  Farradyne was propped neck deep, his head barely below the ceiling and he felt quite safe from detection unless the inspectors put their heads down into the hatch to peer around the edges of the cylindrical hold. He looked at Norma. She had scrabbled up and a-top the pile and was lying on her back with her arms thrown over her head. Her eyes were closed, but as she drew in a deep breath, the lids went half-up and she looked over at Farradyne and smiled ecstatically.

  The hatch slammed down, and she said huskily, “Such nice friends you have, Charles.”

  He wanted to ask her if she didn’t find this friendship a bit overpowering, but instead he said, “They’re certainly no friends of mine.”

  “Nor mine. But this is …” and her voice trailed away to a whisper that he could not catch.

  Pressure came upsurging and Farradyne felt that he did not have to explain that the Lancaster was on its way to space and perhaps back toward home. In the midst of the take-off pressure she found his hand and drew it toward her, she snuggled her face against his palm. Her free hand came over and touched his cheek, then ran back around his head. She pulled him forward until she could rest her head against his shoulder with her forehead against his face.

  Her fingers ran through his hair and pressed his face to hers. He tried to free himself, but he could not escape without being rough about it and he believed that any bold move to elude her would bring forth either pleas or bitter demands loud enough to bring the enemy on the run. He struggled a bit, his bands closed on either side of her waist but instead of moving away, her body came forward against his.

  Then, abruptly, the pressure of the drive went off and they floated free.

  Their weight upon the cusion of flowers was released and the springiness of the hellblossoms thrust them up, hard, hurling them against the ceiling.

  Norma’s hands were dragged free of his head and, in clutching at him frantically, her fingernails raked his cheek. The pressure he held against her waist thrust her away as soon as she lost her leverage. Her head hit the ceiling with a dull thunk, followed by the soft sound of her body hitting flat A sigh came from her lips, but it was the sigh of an unconscious person.

  The hold was filled with hellflowers floating free and spread apart by the tiny pressure of the ends of their leaves and petals; Farradyne fought them away frantically, but only succeeded in digging himself deeper in the room.

  Eventually he found the service ladder and clung to it, waving himself a breathing space by pushing the floating blossoms back.

  Norma’s inert hand touched him limply. Farradyne toyed with the idea of reviving her but gave it up instantly; let her sleep it off, and preferably alone and elsewhere in this hold. He gave the hand a push and she floated from him in the dark, pushing through the free mass by her heavier inertia.

  The exertion had called upon his reserves and he drank in lungfuls of air that was stickily laden with the heavy perfume. It made him dizzy again and he fought for air, only succeeding in drawing more of the thick scent into his system. He wondered haphazardly what the effect of an overdose of love lotus might have on a man; the experiment had been tried but not to this extent So far all it did was to make him feel as though he were being doctored with a dose of nitrous oxide.

  He scrabbled up the ladder and opened the hatch cautiously. It was as dark outside as it was inside and Farradyne pushed the hatch up further to put his face in the clean air and take a deep breath. Then, because he felt better, he climbed out of the hold and floated free in the air above the hatch. He latched onto a handrail and closed the hatch carefully with a breathed, “You like ‘em, baby. You breathe ‘em until I get back!”

  Then he sat in mid-air with one hand hooked in the rail and with deep breaths of the clean air, tried to think what to do next

  19

  He prowled the cargo hold level, floating along the circular
corridor. He knew it was not the safest thing to do but preferred anything to a return to the hold. He did not stop to decide whether it was the perfume of the lotus or the presence of the doped woman that kept him away from his cover.

  An hour passed, then two, and Farradyne was growing bolder by the minute. He had covered the entire lower level of his Lancaster and had stopped above his former hiding place speculating whether to hide or not.

  He decided not, and went floating upward through the ship until he came to the stateroom level. He floated around the corridor noticing that the little flags that indicated that the door was locked from the inside were all down except one. One of his “guests” did not trust his fellow travellers completely.

  He floated on upstairs to the salon and almost ruined his silent flight by trying to put on the brakes. On the divan lay a man in his clothing, restrained by the hold-down safety strap. He was sound asleep.

  Farradyne floated over, and then taking hold of the strap to keep himself from flying free with the motions, he deepened the man’s slumber with a vicious cut of his revolver.

  He floated on into the control room, where the silent and distant stars watched. Some of them were moving down; these would be the nearby stars, while the rest stood as immobile as he had always known them. He would have preferred to stay and watch the effect of travelling faster than light, for the aspect of the sky directly above was very strange in color and in constellation. But he knew that he had started something and he could see this odd, stellar phenomenon at some more leisured time.

  He took a roll of two-inch adhesive tape from the medicine supplies and taped the unconscious man’s wrists and ankles and then slapped a length over the mouth that sealed up the gash along the side of the head at the same time. Then he went down to his own quarters and opened the door slowly.

  A second man slept there, but Farradyne did not lash out with the pistol. He bolstered the gun and clipped the enemy along the side of the jaw with a sharp chop of his hand. Tape was applied quickly and effectively.

  That made two.

  He considered the situation carefully. So long as his batting average stayed at one thousand he was in fine shape. All it had to meet was one error and he was out of the game. His chances were not too good, but they were helped by the fact that he was an unknown enemy among them.

  This was some sort of undeclared war, but the Lancaster could hardly have been termed a warship, since there were no space battles to fight. The ship ran itself, there was nothing to watch, so they did what all spacemen do, sleep. If he could catch them one by one…

  He opened Stateroom One. It was empty. That put a different light on things. Maybe this was not a fully loaded transport. Maybe it was just like the average cargo-haul with only a couple of passengers.

  He opened Stateroom Two and found it empty. That sort of proved it. He opened Stateroom Three and found a man asleep in the bunk. The enemy was stirring as Farradyne scanned the room, and he moved just as Farradyne hastily launched himself across the cabin. Haste ruined his aim so that his down-slashing hand clipped the man on the skull instead of hitting him alongside the ear. The man grunted and swung out blindly, hitting Farradyne and moving him up and away. Farradyne caught the upright of the bunk, staying his free flight, levered himself around and swung again.

  The enemy parried the blow and let out a roar that sounded like three angry locomotives tooting for the right of way. Farradyne pulled himself down and around, then kicked out with both feet, catching the man in the face and chest. The force drove his man deep into the mattress, from which he rebounded to fold up over the hold-down strap. He flopped up and down, limp, an inert mass caught between two springs. The same force drove Farradyne out toward the open door.

  His aim was still bad, his outsweeping hand caught the leading edge of the door and he and it swung on the hinges until he came flat against the wall behind the door. He fought his body around and came out of the room feet first Catching at the handrail he stabilized his flight, then he took notice of his surroundings, expecting the whole enemy horde to come boiling out of their staterooms.

  A door down the hall opened and a man came sailing out. He caught sight of Farradyne and launched himself at the spaceman. Farradyne met him with a slash of the pistol, which was parried by a block of the man’s forearm against Farradyne’s wrist. It stopped the enemy’s flight but tore Farradyne’s hold loose.

  Farradyne recovered first, hauling himself erect just in time to let the other man peer down the barrel of the gun. “Hold it, friend,” he snapped.

  The enemy, about to kick himself forward, took a firm hold on the handrail behind him and retracted his feet from against the wall.

  “You can’t get away with it, Farradyne.”

  “I can try, Brenner. So happy to meet you again.”

  Warily he listened. There were no other sounds along the corridor, only the one he expected, and soon the little flag on the lock went in and the door opened. Carolyn Niles came out in pajamas and coat, her eyes blinking slightly. “What’s the—” Then she gasped. “Charles!”

  “Howdedo. Any more hiding in the dark, Carolyn?”

  “How did you get here?”

  “I walked,” he said flatly. He turned to Brenner. “You stay there, schoolmaster. I’m scared to death and a bit touchy.”

  Brenner shook his head. “I know you’re scared. I’m scared, too. Scared to move.”

  “Relax—but do it slowly. Now turn around and make it hand over hand toward the salon. You follow the gentleman,” he said to Carolyn.

  Farradyne followed them both, calling to Brenner that if he tried any tricks, Carolyn might get in the way of the shot intended for him. They went up the stairway, one, two, three, and floated into the salon, Farradyne making a bit of a time of it because of his full gun-hand. He hooked his legs around the guard rail and eyed them coldly.

  “Carolyn, let’s see how good a job you can do on Brenner’s wrists with a chunk of this tape.” He tossed the roll at her and she clutched wildly and missed.

  “Go get it!”

  Carolyn performed some intricate free-flight maneuvers before she caught the roll. Then she went to Brenner, who held his hands out behind him while she ran tape around the wrists.

  “I’d be willing to bet that’s a slipshod job,” said Farradyne.

  “But it will probably hold until I can relax. Carolyn, coast over here and force yourself to sit in the straight chair.”

  Farradyne taped her to the chair by the wrists and the ankles and took a slight hitch in the hold-down strap. Then he added some security to Brenner’s bond and taped the man to the legs of the divan at the ankles. With his hands behind him and the strap tight across the man’s hips, Farradyne felt that Brenner would be thoroughly immobilized. He propped the still unconscious one up near Brenner and taped him similarly.

  Then he took time to go below and collect the third from his cabin and bring him up. The man was struggling against the wide tape and glaring at Farradyne over the plaster on his lips. Farradyne hurled him backside first at the divan and followed him, to catch the man on the rebound from the divan. He taped him as he had taped the others, then he took a small flight to the bar, where he perched on top of it by hooking his feet around one of the bar stools.

  “Aren’t we a good-looking bunch?” he chuckled. “Shall we sing?”

  “Stop it, Farradyne,” snapped Brenner.

  Farradyne’s twisted smile faded. “We’ll play this game according to my rules for awhile.”

  “How long do you think you’ll be able—”

  “Long enough. I’m running this show.”

  “You can’t get away with it”

  “You said that before. Convince me. Brenner.”

  “Why bother with you? I’m the one that counts.”

  “Cut it out,” Farradyne said contemptuously. “I should think your position would feel a bit awkward for a conqueror.”

  “The sooner you free us, the—”
r />   Farradyne laughed in one loud humorless bark. “So I’m still your prisoner?”

  “In a way. You wouldn’t care to die without telling what you know about us. You’ll do anything to stay alive.”

  “You damn well bet! And I’ll do anything to learn a bit more.”

  “You can’t make me talk.”

  “Want to bet? I don’t think I could squeeze anything out of you by torture, but I have a hunch you’ll sing loud and long after you watch me take Carolyn’s fingernails off with long-nosed pliers and listen to her stifled sobbing. An old-fashioned torture, but still effective.”

  Carolyn looked at Farradyne coldly. “Come to think of it, Charles, I don’t think you have enough sadism to perform the operation on me.”

  Farradyne looked at her. He held enough dislike of what she stood for to do almost anything with cold deliberation, for he thought any pain was small retribution. But she was still a woman.

  Carolyn sniffed cynically, and Farradyne realized that he had mumbled the last few words of his thoughts. “Just retribution, Charles, but have you the guts to collect your revenge?”

  He looked down at her. “No, I haven’t But I’ve someone with me who might.”

  He took aim and sailed down the stairs. He soared around the stateroom corridor and ran full-tilt into a flurry of floating skirts. He hurled Norma from him and recoiled. When he caught himself again, he had one hand braced against the handrail and the pistol aimed at the middle of her stomach. She righted herself as he let out his breath and relaxed his gun-hand.

  “Don’t ever do that!” he said sharply.

  She looked at the gun and her face went white with the realization of how close it had been. She looked at him searchingly as if seeking company for her fright. She apparently found it, for her face relaxed and she took a deep breath, let it out slowly. Then she fought the hem of her skirt down again and blushed.

  Farradyne chuckled, “Go into Number Four and swipe a pair of Carolyn Niles’ pajamas,” he said. “They don’t float. Then come up to the salon.”

  He turned and headed back slowly, stalling until he heard her return to the corridor.