Rogue in Space

by Fredric Brown

  He watched and timed three more figure eights until he could tell from the sound of the heli, coming from behind him, the exact moment when it was safe for him to start, and on the fourth he started.

  And kept going. Dropped the hatch shut behind him, ran the six paces and jumped. Landed lightly and caught his balance only inches past the edge of the Olliver roof, took a step backwards and let himself drop, catching the edge of the roof with his right hand and holding. Got his feet through the open top half of the window and hooked the inside of the top of the frame with his metal left hand, and a second later was inside the window, silently and safely. A maneuver that only an acrobat, or Crag, could have made. Stood quietly inside the window listening to the heli until he was sure that it was continuing the pattern as before, that the pilot hadn’t taken over from the autopilot to drop lower and hover to investigate any movement he might have seen.

  He didn’t think there’d be any guards inside the house, but there might be servants, so he took no chances. He faced away from the moonlight and let his eyes become accustomed to the relative darkness of the room—a bedroom, but unoccupied—before he crossed it and found himself in a hallway that was even darker. He found the stairs and went down them silently. There were no lights on the second floor and he went down another flight. The first floor hallway was lighted dimly, but there was a crack of brighter light under a door across from the foot of the stairs.

  He went to the door and stood in front of it, listening. Heard two voices, Olliver’s and that of a woman, but the door was thick and he heard too faintly to make out what was being said.

  The fact that there was a woman’s voice, too, made him hesitate. But Olliver had told him to come and must be expecting him; if he had a woman with him now she must be someone in his confidence, as the Chief Psycher Technician had obviously been.

  Crag opened the door and stepped boldly into the room.

  Olliver was seated behind a massive mahogany desk. His eyes went wide and his jaw dropped when he saw Crag. He said, “My God, Crag, how did you make it? I never thought of them searching and then guarding this place, since I hadn’t sentenced you. But they insisted on it. I thought you’d hide out and look me up a week or two from now.”

  But Crag’s eyes, after a quick look at Olliver, had gone to the woman. She looked familiar but at first look he couldn’t place her, might not have placed her at all if it had not been for the burnished copper hair, now no longer confined under a technician’s beret, and for her voice: her eyes glinted with amusement as she looked at the man behind the desk and said, “I told you he’d come this evening, Olliver, and you laughed at me. Isn’t it my turn to laugh now?” And she did laugh, a pleasing sound. “And, Olliver, don’t ask the man how he did it. He won’t tell you, and why should you care?”

  She was unbelievably beautiful. The costume of a technician had not completely hidden the fact that she had a beautiful body, but the costume she wore now flaunted the fact. In the bare-midriffed evening style, there was only a wisp of almost transparent material above her waist. The skirt was long and opaque, but before it flared at the knees it molded her hips and thighs by fitting her as a sheath fits a sword. Her face, now with subtle makeup and unmasked by glasses, was worthy of the blazing glory of the copper hair that framed it. She smiled at Crag, and her eyes danced, then very deliberately and very slowly her eyes went down him to his sandals and back again. She said, “Who would have guessed, seeing you in those prison clothes?” It was so frankly and so semi-humorously done that no man could have resented it.

  Except Crag. He glared at her and then turned to Olliver. “Does this woman have to be here while we talk?”

  Olliver had recovered his poise, and smiled. “I’m afraid she must be here, Crag. She’s very important to my plans, our plans. But I’d better introduce you. Crag, this is Judeth. My wife.”

  Crag growled. “If she’s got to stay, give me something to put on. I won’t be looked at that way.”

  Olliver’s face stiffened a bit but he said, “There are robes in that closet. But you’re being ridiculous, Crag. These are not Victorian times. This is the twenty-third century.”

  Wordlessly Crag stalked to the closet and opened it. Several houserobes hung there and Crag grabbed at random a maroon silk one. He put it on, realizing too late, after he’d closed the closet door, that the robe must be Judeth’s, not Olliver’s; the shoulders fitted snugly and the sleeves were a trifle short, whereas Olliver had massive shoulders and long arms. But he realized by now that he’d already been a bit ridiculous and it would have made him seem more so to go back to the closet now and change robes. After all, houserobes were worn by both men and women and this was a plain one, although of beautiful material. Still—

  “It won’t contaminate you, Crag,” Judeth said.

  But he could keep his dignity only by ignoring that. And by, henceforth, ignoring her, and everything she said and did, insofar as possible. Either that or, if Olliver insisted on keeping her around, walking out on Olliver and a chance to make a million dollars. And a million dollars was real moolah, nothing to be taken lightly.

  “Sit down, Crag,” Olliver said.

  He saw that Olliver had already sat down behind his desk and that Judeth had perched herself on a corner of it and was now looking at him quite seriously, not at all mockingly.

  Crag seated himself stiffly in a straight chair, turning to face Olliver and not his wife. “One question,” he said. “You really meant it this afternoon? And you have the million?”

  Olliver nodded. “I really meant it. And I have most of the million now and will have the rest before you finish the job; it’s nothing you can do overnight, and it’s on Mars. Not my own money, you understand; it’s a fund being raised by—”

  Crag waved that aside. “I don’t care whose it is as long as it will be mine if I do the job for you. And the sooner I start, the better. I got in here tonight and I can get out tonight. Tell me what the job is, give me expense money. I’ll be on my way.”

  Olliver shook his head slowly. “I’m afraid it’s not that simple, Crag. You see, to do this job you’ll have to go to the psycher first.”

  CHAPTER FOUR

  IF CRAG’S mental reflexes had not been fully at fast as his physical ones, Olliver would have died in the next second. As it was, he came within six inches of dying; that was how far from his head Crag’s hand—his left hand—stopped. Had that blow been completed, the woman would have died a fraction of a second later. Crag had taken the three steps that took him to the desk so fast one might have thought he blurred.

  Two things saved them. One was the fact that Olliver’s hands were in plain sight on the desk, nowhere near a push button or an open drawer. The other, the fact that the thought had time to flash across Crag’s mind that it did not make sense for Olliver to have meant what he said. Psyching would make Crag’s talents and skills useless for Olliver’s purpose, whatever it was.

  Judeth’s voice was tense. “Wait, Crag.” Out of the corner of his eye, Crag could see that she had not moved, was not moving, a muscle. Even her eyes were looking, not at him but at where he had been sitting. “As you have already seen, or we’d be dead by now, he did not mean that.”

  Olliver’s handsome face was no longer florid, and his voice was hoarse. “All I meant was that—”

  The woman’s voice cut across his, sharply. “Be quiet, Ollie, and let me explain. That was incredibly stupid. I told you that Crag—” She broke off and her voice changed, becoming carefully impersonal. “Crag, will you sit down and let me explain? I promise you neither of us will move. Ollie, keep your hands as they are, exactly. And your mouth shut. Agreed, Crag?”

  Crag didn’t answer, but he backed away to the chair, watching both of them carefully. He sat gingerly on the edge of it; he’d be even faster this time if Olliver moved.

  Judeth said, “As you realized in time, Crag, you would be useless to us psyched. But you’d be almost equally useless to us as a hunted cr
iminal. Do you see that?”

  “I’ve been hunted before,” Crag said. “And by people more dangerous than the police.”

  “True, but this is a very special and difficult job. And besides, Olliver promised you your freedom. That meant your full freedom, not as a hunted man.”

  “You mean a faked psycher certificate.”

  “Of course. A start from scratch, a clean slate. Without even your underworld enemies interested in you.”

  “It can’t be done,” Crag said. “It’s been tried before.”

  “Because it was only a forged certificate, not a genuine one fully backed by all the facts and records. The difference is that you really will have gone to the psycher—but without being psyched. It’s foolproof.” She moved, for the first time, to turn her head and look at Olliver. Scorn came into her voice. “Even against a fool like my husband here, who so nearly got both of us killed a moment ago.”

  Crag’s mind was working furiously. It seemed too simple, too perfect. He said—although he himself saw a simpler answer to the problem—“I’ll have to let myself be recaptured. What if the police shoot first and capture afterwards?”

  “Because you’ll be captured here and now, when we’ve finished talking. Olliver can have a gun on you when we call the police in from outside. You’ll already be captured and they’ll have no possible excuse for shooting.”

  Crag nodded. “And you would handle the—psyching?”

  “Of course. No chance of a slip-up there. I’m the only technician there right now; my assistant is on vacation. The timing is perfect. Any more questions?”

  “Yes.” Crag looked at her, his eyes hard. “How do I know that I can trust you?

  Her eyes met his unwaveringly. “You can, Crag. I can see why you doubt, and—I’m sorry. I should have known better than to tease you, to make you self-conscious, a few minutes ago. I apologize.”

  “And you promise, under the psycher, to do nothing whatever to my mind?”

  “I do. Think, and you’ll know I wouldn’t want to. It would make you useless to us. And if I even tried to change one little thing, you’d kill me afterwards. I know that”

  “If you erased the memory that you’d changed it?”

  “You know better than that, Crag. The process is not that selective. I’d have to erase all your memories or none. Otherwise we’d take away only a man’s experiences and the things that led to them, and leave him the rest of himself. Someday we may be able to do that, but not as yet.”

  Crag nodded again. And this time Olliver, his face no longer pale, said, “Well, Crag?”

  “All right. Get your gun.”

  Olliver slid open a drawer. “Put that robe back where you got it. Might be a little hard to explain.”

  “Wait. Why did we have to go through all this? Why couldn’t you have explained this to me at your private talk after the trial. You could have sentenced me to the psycher then. Why the escape and recapture?”

  Judeth said, “You wouldn’t have believed him, Crag. You might have thought it was something he told to all the boys, to get them to go to the psycher happily. Or whatever you thought, you wouldn’t have trusted him. The fact that we did help you escape takes care of that. We could have no possible motive for doing that and then sending you back to the psycher.”

  It made sense. Crag wouldn’t have believed Olliver, then, to the extent of going to the psycher willingly. He’d have tried to escape, without help, before he’d have trusted anyone that far.

  He stood up, reached to take off the robe and hesitated.

  Judeth didn’t laugh or mock him this time. She slid down from the desk and went toward the door. “I’ll go for the police,” she said. “Be ready.”

  Crag quickly hung up the robe and backed against the wall. He was standing there with his hands raised, Olliver holding a gun on him across the desk, when the police came in.

  Nothing untoward happened on the way to the jail, but something unpleasant happened after six guards took him over from the police and took him to a cell. They beat him into insensibility before they left him there. But common sense and self-preservation made him take it without fighting back. There were six of them and each was armed with a heatgun besides the rubber truncheon he was using. Crag might have killed three or four of them but the chances were a thousand to one against his getting them all before dying himself. Those odds weren’t good enough now; he’d have taken them gladly if the alternative had been a real trip to the psycher.

  Consciousness returned to him in the middle of the night and, every muscle in his body aching, he managed to get from the floor to his cot. After a while he slept.

  In the morning the speaker in the ceiling of his cell woke him with the news that sentence had been pronounced on him and that guards would come to take him to the psycher in half an hour. He sat up on the edge of the cot painfully. He was naked; the guards had stripped him the night before. But they had left prison clothes in a corner of the cell and he put them on.

  Six other guards came for him, ten minutes early so they’d have time to beat him again. Less severely than the previous beating because they didn’t want him to lose consciousness, and mostly about the arms and shoulders because they wanted him to be able to walk. When a buzzer sounded they took him to the psycher room one floor down and strapped him into the chair. They slapped his face a bit and one of them gave him a farewell blow in the stomach that made him glad he’d been given no breakfast, and then they left.

  A few minutes later Judeth came in. Again she was dressed in uniform, as he had seen her the first time. But now her beauty showed through even more for, after having seen her as she’d been the evening before, he knew every curve that the tailored uniform tried to hide. She wore the tinted horn-rimmed glasses as she came in, but took them off as soon as she was inside.

  Crag said nothing when she stood in front of him, looking down into his face.

  She smiled slightly. “Don’t look so worried. Crag. I’m not going to psych you. I’m not going to touch your mind in any way. I’m not even going to connect the electrodes.”

  He said nothing.

  Her smile faded. “You know, Crag, I’d hate to adjust you, even if this was a straight deal. You’re such a magnificent brute that I like you better the way you are than if you were a mild-mannered clerk or elevator operator. And that’s what I could make you into—but I won’t.”

  “Unstrap me,” Crag said.

  “With the door locked, and with us alone?” At his answering growl she smiled. “Oh, I’m not being femininely coy, Crag. I know how you hate women. But I also know your temper and I know how you’ve probably been treated since last night. With you free I’d have to watch every word I said to keep you from slapping me down—left-handed.”

  “You know about that?”

  “I know more about you than you think. But I’m going to have to know a lot more. You’re going to have to tell me a number of things about yourself.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I’m going to have to turn in a report, of course. Including a case history, and a list of all major crimes to which you’re supposed to be confessing right now under the machine. And that reminds me, I’d better turn it on.” She went around the chair out of Crag’s sight and a moment later a humming sound filed the room. Her voice said, “That’s audible in the corridor outside and I don’t want anyone to pass and notice that it isn’t on by now. Don’t worry; it’s not connected to you in any way.”

  When she came into his sight again she was carrying a pad of paper and a stylus; she pulled up a chair this time and sat down in front of him, poising the stylus. “When and where were you born, Crag?”

  “Make up your own story.”

  “Crag, this report will be checked against whatever facts are already known and recorded about you. If it doesn’t hold up in every way, it will be obvious that this little séance was faked. There’ll be an investigation as to why the machine failed to work properly on you. You�
��ll be rearrested and brought back here—and I won’t be the one operating the machine. I’ll be in jail—or possibly even be sent to the psycher myself. To my knowledge, the crime that I’m committing right now has never been committed before and I don’t know what my penalty would be. But there’s no doubt about yours.

  “I can’t take any more chances than I’m already taking, so you must cooperate, or else. Or else I connect these electrodes right now and do the job honestly. I have no other choice. Do you understand that?”

  “All right,” Crag said grimly. “Go ahead.”

  “When and where were you born?”

  Crag told her. And answered other routine questions. Through his graduation from space school, his early years as a spaceman.

  “And your career as a spaceman ended when you lost your hand. Tell me about that.”

  “I’d been a spaceman seven years, and I was lieutenant on the Vega III. On Earth at the time; we were readying the ship for a Mars run. It was a pure accident—not my fault or anyone else’s. Just one of those things that happen. Mechanical failure in a rocket tube set it off while I was cleaning it.”

  “But they blamed you?”

  “Not exactly, but they sprang a technicality on me and used it to keep me from getting the compensation I was entitled to. Not only that, but took away my license and rank, turned me from a spaceman into a one-handed bum.”

  “What was the technicality?”

  “Test for alcohol. It showed a minute quantity. I’d had a farewell drink—just one and a weak one—with a friend six hours before. But there happened to be witnesses and they were able to prove it was six hours before. The rule is, no drinks for eight hours before blast-off, and our schedule called for blast-off one hour after the accident happened. That put me technically in the wrong by exactly one hour. They used that fact to save themselves a lot of money. There was nothing I could do about it.”