McCade bent to help him, but Ceex pulled him away. "He's gone, Sam, and if you stay here, he'll take you with him."
They were forty feet down the corridor when Leeb blew up. The explosion made a dull thumping sound and no one chose to look back.
Their entrance into Sappo's quarters was almost anticlimactic. As the door hissed open they were ready for anything, but rather than armor-clad troops a domestic robot rolled forward to greet them. Its synthesized voice was stern and unyielding.
"Please leave. Your presence is not wanted here. I will summon help if necessary. Please leave . . ."
The robot never got to repeat its warning because Reba put her hand blaster up against its metal forehead and pulled the trigger. The beam of blue energy went right through the thin metal and out the other side.
On the far side of the room a tank filled with Nuerillium air fish shattered into a thousand pieces, freeing its multicolored captives to flutter about the room.
And what a room it was. If anything the rumors had understated its elegance. Overhead the vast sweep of the starscape made the room seem huge. The holos added to that impression, wrapping the room in color and pulsating to the beat of the exotic music that floated through the air. And water eddied and swirled beneath their boots looking like marble brought to life. The overall effect was beautiful but cold like a piece of sculpture that is seen and not touched.
"All right," McCade said grimly. "Sappo's in here somewhere. Spread out and find him."
No one had taken more than a couple of steps before a section of holo rippled and a man stepped out. He was small, carefully dressed, and as far as McCade could tell completely unarmed. He wore an amused, almost arrogant expression, and frowned when he saw the air fish fluttering around the room.
"I don't know who you people are but you're certainly destructive. If this is an attempt to rob me, I'm afraid you'll be sadly disappointed. I keep my cash and other valuables somewhere else."
"No," Neem answered as he walked across the room toward Sappo. "This is not an attempt to steal your stupid possessions. What we want is knowledge. Knowledge stored in your brain. And we'll do whatever's necessary to get it."
Sappo became visibly nervous as Neem drew closer. "My brain? Knowledge? What do you want?"
The black plastic of Neem's visor was only inches away when he spoke. "We want the location of a man. A friend of yours by the name of Mustapha Pong. Give us what we want and you'll live."
Sappo was scared now. He took a step backward. "You don't understand . . . I can't . . . Pong would kill me."
Neem reached up to remove his helmet. As it came away he said, "No, you don't understand. If you don't tell, I'll kill you. I'll strip your skin off one inch at a time until you pray for death with every breath you take."
Sappo took one look at Neem's distorted features and began to scream.
Twenty-Four
A week had passed since their assault on Sappo's quarters. Now Pegasus was closing in on asteroid FA 6789-X. It was better known as the Dump, and from what McCade could see via his long-range optics, the name fit. FA 6789-X had once served as an Imperial supply dump, a staging area for some long-forgotten mission, an airless lump of rock to be used and then abandoned.
A long list of temporary residents had come and gone since then, including a succession of miners, an eccentric loner or two, and most recently Mustapha Pong. Or so Morris Sappo claimed.
And McCade was inclined to believe him. For one thing Sappo was scared, and for another he was sitting in the ship's lounge where Neem could reach out and touch him, something the human would do anything to avoid.
Sappo had some rather deep-seated religious beliefs stemming from his childhood on Regor II. There his parents had attempted to beat an understanding of good and evil into his scrawny little body, and even though they'd failed, they had managed to warp his mind. So even though Sappo knew that Neem wasn't the devil, the Il Ronnian's demonic appearance still turned him into a babbling idiot. And babbling idiots can be extremely cooperative.
Thanks to a cooperative Sappo, they'd been able to lift from Tin Town without interference, and without payment for the considerable damage they'd caused. So when Sappo said that Pong made regular use of the Dump, McCade believed him.
The only problem was that McCade couldn't tell if the pirate was in residence or not. McCade spoke without taking his eyes off the screen. "Reba, cycle through the sensors one more time."
"Okay," she replied. "But it won't do much good. There's so much junk on the ground that you could hide the Imperial fleet down there."
Reba was right, of course. The original supply dump had centered around a cluster of domes. When the navy pulled out, all sorts of junk was left behind. Broken-down crawlers, gantries, and other less identifiable chunks of equipment lay all over the place. As the years passed, other tenants had added their debris to the pile so that a jungle of wrecked ships, scrap metal, and other junk filled a good-sized crater.
As a result there was enough metal on Dump to put all of McCade's metal detectors onto eternal alert. On top of that were radiation leaks from junked drives, a lot of vague static, and residual heat emanating from God knows what. It could mean nothing or everything. There was no way to tell.
Reba looked up from her sensors. "Sorry, Sam. There's too much input. If Pong's there, I can't pick his ship out of the background clutter."
McCade nodded and stuck an unlit cigar between his teeth. He could land and risk falling into a trap or stay a safe distance away and wait for something to happen. A day? A week? A month? It made little difference because he couldn't afford to use any time at all. Unless he found the Vial of Tears, and found it damn soon, entire planets would begin to burn.
"Strap in, everybody. We're going down."
It was a simple approach. FA 6789-X had a nice predictable orbit with just the right amount of spin to generate light gravity.
The problem was where to land. The crater was so full of junk that there wasn't much open space left. That seemed to suggest a landing outside the crater's perimeter, but if he did that, Pegasus would stick out like a Zord at a Finthian tree dance. And if Pong returned, he'd see the little ship and destroy it. That left the crater, junk or no junk. It might be a tight fit, but once down Pegasus would fade into the background. In fact, they could lay an ambush for Pong if that seemed advisable.
As the asteroid grew larger in his viewscreens, McCade swung Pegasus to the right and used his repellors to skim across the crater. "Keep a sharp lookout, Reba. Let me know if you see anything funny."
But Reba was silent as they passed over the forest of junk. Light dusted the tops of things and sparkled off the billions of dust motes that were stirred up by the ship's repellors. But outside of the ship itself nothing moved or gave McCade reason to run.
McCade put Pegasus down in the shadow of a huge ore processor. It was a tight fit between that and a pile of metal scaffolding, but he made it. He used the ship's sensors to take one last look around. Nothing. If Pong were present, surely he'd have reacted by now.
McCade released his harness, stuck the cigar in a pocket, and followed Reba out of the control room.
Neem, Sappo, and Ceex were already in the lounge when they arrived, so the tiny space was full to overflowing. Now that they were down McCade was anxious to look around.
"All right. With the exception of Ceex, I want everyone suited up. Yes, Sappo, that means you. If anything unpleasant happens to us while we're out there, it's gonna happen to you too."
"Ceex, I want you to stay aboard Pegasus and man the weapons systems. If anything moves, blast it."
"Maybe he should "Il Ronnian" the weapons systems instead," Neem suggested with a smile.
"Give me a break, Neem. That okay with you, Ceex?"
The cyborg nodded. Half his face was a mass of melted plastic that dripped downward like wax from a candle. The other half wore a twisted smile.
They'd done the best they could for him, but the tr
uth was that his injuries required the attentions of a fully equipped cyberlab, and an Il Ronnian cyberlab at that. But Ceex had insisted that he be allowed to come along, and this way he'd be useful without slowing them down.
"All right then," McCade said. "Let's suit up and take a look around. I want everyone to carry an extra oxygen supply and a blast rifle. There's no telling what we might run into out there and we may want to stay awhile."
Forty-five minutes later McCade scrambled down to the ground and took a look around. Huge pieces of equipment formed a metal maze on every side. There were thousands of hiding places and everyone of them could harbor an ambush. But why bother? McCade thought to himself. If Pong's here, we would have seen him by now.
They had chosen the original domes as their destination. According to Sappo, that's where Pong stored some of his loot between raids, and if they decided to lay an ambush for him, that would be the place to do it.
McCade and Reba took the point with Sappo following along behind and Neem bringing up the rear. Constrained as he was by McCade's leg shackles, Sappo couldn't move very fast but that was fine. The rest of them were loaded down with extra oxygen and weapons so they weren't moving very fast either. But the light gravity helped as did a certain amount of fear.
It was spooky in and among the junk. Their movements carried them from heavy shadow to bright sunlight and back again. It took very little imagination to turn twisted pieces of metal into homicidal aliens.
Once, McCade thought that he saw a weapons turret on a junked shuttle turn to track them, but when he stopped to look again, he saw that it was just the way the light had moved across its surface.
And twice he thought he saw movement, first between two hydroponics tanks, and then through the canopy of an old crane.
On both occasions he used his radio to ask Ceex for confirmation, but the cyborg hadn't seen anything and swore that all of his sensors were clear.
Over the years a number of natural paths had evolved in and between the larger pieces of junk. These were well marked by crawler tracks, but it was impossible to tell how recently they'd been used. Without the effects of weather to wash them away, many were probably twenty or thirty years old.
Finally the domes loomed up ahead. One had been crushed by a badly piloted ore barge years before, one had been stripped for use somewhere else, and three appeared to be in reasonably good shape.
McCade and Reba approached the first of these while Neem and Sappo hung back. Its surface was checkered with solar cells, beat exchangers, and other less-obvious equipment. Crude patches were visible here and there where someone had modified the dome for a particular use and someone else had come along to restore it.
They circled the dome by carefully working their way along the wall until they reached the main door. It was wide open. Stepping inside McCade saw endless rows of empty shelves. There was something about them, something about the used pallets scattered here and there, and the multitude of tracks that ran every which way that suggested recent use. Had Pong emptied the warehouse? And if so, why?
"Sam! Reba! You'd better get out here!" The voice belonged to Neem.
They came at a fast trot and the moment he got outside McCade saw the problem. It was rather hard to miss. Though not huge, a light cruiser is a large ship and this one was hovering about a hundred feet over the crater. It was roughly triangular in shape and was covered with weapons turrets, torpedo launchers, and a host of other installations. Though too large to land on most planets, the absence of an atmosphere and the asteroid's lighter gravity permitted the ship to come in close.
"The damn thing was hiding in the junk on the far side of the crater," Neem said grimly. "One moment it wasn't there and the next moment it was."
McCade chinned his mike. "Don't try it, Ceex, you don't have a . . ." but he could have saved his breath.
Ceex opened up with everything he had, but it was like a zit bug taking on an Envo Beast. Pegasus was heavily armed for a ship her size, but the larger ship's defensive screen shrugged off her puny attack as if it hadn't even happened and then responded in kind.
Huge energy projectors burped blue light and Pegasus exploded into a million pieces. They seemed to fall forever due to the asteroid's light gravity and hit with exaggerated force.
McCade simply stood there completely helpless while his ship and a trusted comrade died in front of his eyes.
There was a burst of static in McCade's helmet followed by a voice he'd never heard before. "Welcome to the Dump. I'm Mustapha Pong, and unless you do exactly what I say, you will die."
Twenty-Five
McCade had never felt so helpless. The cruiser hung above them like some dark god, untouchable and omnipotent. With no atmosphere to conduct the sound of its repellors, the ship seemed all the more awesome and mysterious. Pong's voice filled McCade's helmet.
"Which one of you is Sam McCade? Raise your right arm."
McCade gulped and raised his right arm. There was little point in doing otherwise. If he chose to, Pong could turn the entire crater into a lake of molten metal.
A spear of white light flashed down to pin McCade against the ground. His heart stopped beating while he checked to make sure that he was still alive. With a sigh of relief he realized that it was nothing more than a spotlight.
"Good. Now tell me why you're here, and I warn you, McCade, do not waste my time. If you tell the truth, I will allow you and your friends to live. If you lie, or attempt to mislead me, I will know and our conversation will end rather abruptly. Do you understand?"
McCade understood. He understood that in spite of Pong's threats he should say as little as possible. The question was how much did Pong know? It couldn't be much or he'd have killed them by now. No, Pong was curious. He knew McCade was trying to find him and wanted to know why. He knew about Sappo's abduction but little else.
Thank God! If Pong knew about the vial and understood its value, he'd try to auction it off to the highest bidder, use it to extort money from the Il Ronn, or God knows what else.
McCade swallowed to lubricate a dry throat. "The answer's quite simple. The Brotherhood is offering five hundred thousand credits for your head, and I'm a little short on cash. Surrender peacefully and they'll go easy on you."
There was a long silence. And then, just as McCade was preparing to die, there was a loud laughter. When Pong spoke again, there was merriment in his voice.
"McCade, you're something else. You said the one thing that could save your life, and you said it with a certain amount of style. I like that. I like it so much that I'll let you live. Providing of course that you return my property."
McCade frowned and looked around helplessly. "What property is that? I wasn't aware that I had anything that belonged to you."
There was a burst of static followed by Pong's chuckle. "Oh, but you do. Unless I'm very much mistaken that's my good friend Morris standing over there, and while he's been a little too talkative of late, I'd like to offer him a ride home."
Another shaft of light lanced down to bathe Sappo in white. He waved enthusiastically to the ship and shuffled in a circle.
"Just follow the light, Morris, and a shuttle will pick you up."
The spotlight moved off toward the area where they'd landed and Sappo followed.
Something landed in McCade's stomach with a heavy thud. He chinned his mike. "Neem, Reba, move toward me and do it now."
Meanwhile Sappo hurried toward the white circle and came to a sudden halt when the light stopped moving. "That's far enough, Morris," Pong said sweetly. "I lied . . . and you know what that means."
Sappo looked around with desperate eyes searching for someplace to hide, someone to help. "Please, Mustapha, don't do this, they made me tell."
"Oh, really?" Pong asked quietly. "Are your eyes hanging down onto your cheeks? Are you walking on broken feet? Has every tooth been pulled from your lying mouth? If you can show me those injuries, I will spare you and tend your wounds with my own hands."
Sappo made no reply but tried to run. Due to his leg shackles he didn't get very far. A single burp of blue energy consumed Sappo, space armor and all, leaving nothing more than some scorched rock and a puddle of molten metal. In less than a second Sappo's shackles had been transformed into a marker for his grave.
"Good-bye, McCade. I hereby cede the Dump and all that it contains to you and your friends. Like Morris, it has ceased to be useful."
McCade chinned his mike. "In ten or twelve hours we'll run out of air."
Pong chuckled. "I said I'd let you live, but I didn't say for how long. Besides, as Morris just found out, I lie a lot. Bye."
And with that the cruiser drifted over the domes. Blue beams flashed down to burn huge holes in each structure. Then the ship engaged its main drives, lifted, and disappeared over the horizon.
"The bastard!" Reba shook her fist at the point where the ship had vanished.
McCade had never felt as depressed as he did at that particular moment. They'd come close, damned close, and now it was over. Not just for them, but for the millions, the billions, who would die in the coming war. But before he could pursue that line of thought a strange voice filled his helmet.
"Testing . . . testing . . . can you hear me? Hello, can anybody hear me?"
"I can hear you," McCade replied. "Who are you? Where are you?"
"I call myself Henry," the voice replied. "Although my manual says I'm a NAVCOMP IN7808/L. But that seemed so impersonal I decided to name myself after a great navigator called Henry."
"It's a nice name," McCade agreed. "Although Henry had a tendency to hang around Portugal while other folks did the actual navigating."
McCade looked around and tried to spot where the voice might be coming from. "So you're a robot?"
"Certainly not!" Henry replied, obviously offended. "A NAVCOMP IN7808/L is a far cry from some piece of animated junk. I'm a top of the line navigational computer, and proud of it. Pong didn't like me, and well, I thought we could be friends."
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