“I’d like to know,” said Linda at last, “just who it is who’s brought her boyfriend along for the trip … Carlin, perhaps. Did I tell you that she lent me the Doralan version of a vibrator? If she’s not needing it, that figures. Or the saintly Lady Mother, who seems to have made quite an impression on you … ”
Linda must have sensed, thought Falsen, his growing feeling for the Doralan captain. There was no sexuality in it. There never could be. But with Carlin? She exuded sexuality, and she would not be fussy where she took her pleasures. Any member of whatever species would do for her, as long as he was male. That little rat he had flushed out of hiding might well be hers. It was just as well, thought the man, that she had a stud of her own race along. To become involved with her could seriously interfere with his and Linda’s plans.
“Let’s get out of here,” he said, “before somebody starts wondering where we are.”
“Shall we report what we found?” she asked. “Will you tell the Lady Mother?”
“No,” he said. “We don’t know what toes, of how many persons, we might be treading on. We must remain on friendly terms with these people until … ”
“Until we steal their ship,” she laughed.
They made their way back to the axial shaft. The elevator cage was no longer there. Perhaps the malfunction had been discovered and corrected. Falsen pressed the call button. After not too long a delay the cage came up from one of the sternward levels. Then, obedient this time to Falsen’s command, it carried them to Number 4 Deck.
A junior officer was awaiting them there. She said very correctly, making it plain that she was addressing Falsen only, “The Lady Mother presents her compliments, sir, and requests that you join her in the control room.”
CHAPTER 11
The big ship’s control room was bright, although the only internal illumination came from screens and instrument dials. Through the big viewports beat a steadily shifting reflected glare as the big searchlights swept the terrain surrounding the vessel. Falsen stared out. The almost featureless plain looked, in the harsh brilliance, as though it were covered with fresh snow, and every pool of water glittered like ice.
“It is very quiet,” said the Lady Mother.
The Doralan captain was sitting in her chair, a small, frail figure, forlorn somehow and lonely. Beyond her a junior officer was peering into a hooded screen — bio-sensitive radar, guessed Falsen.
“It is very quiet, Mr. Falsen,” repeated the Doralan.
“It is, Gracious Lady,” agreed the Earthman.
But, to his ears, it was not. There was the murmur of machinery. There was the soft breathing of the sleepers throughout the ship. (In spite of all that had happened, of all that might happen yet, people still had to have their rest.) And was Linda sleeping? he wondered. He did not trust her. She was too impatient, too … ruthless? Yes, ruthless.
Something was padding almost silently up the companion-way into the control room. Instinct made Falsen stiffen — and reason told him to relax. It was only Pondor. The animal stalked over the deck, spat at Falsen in passing, went to the Lady Mother and rubbed against her legs.
“Well, cat,” she asked, “is all well?”
“I have a name,” mewed Pondor. “I wish that you would use it.” He condescended to allow the Lady Mother to tickle his ears. Then, “All is quiet,” he said. “I left Tilsin making her rounds of the lower decks.”
The presence of the cat was making Falsen nervous; he started to pace up and down, four steps one way, four steps the other. Carl in came in, made a report to the Lady Mother in her own language. Then she fell in beside Falsen, tried to match her stride to his, attempted to make conversation. Falsen answered in monosyllables. He thought, Was it your boyfriend we found, I wonder? Is this why you’re trying to be nice to me?
“It is too quiet … .” whispered the Lady Mother.
Falsen stopped his nervous pacing, stood still with every sense alert. He did not join the Doralans at the viewports in their scanning of every inch of the terrain with their high-powered binoculars. But … There is something wrong, he thought. Linda? Is she up to something? Out of the corner of his eye he saw a little light flashing on an otherwise dark console. He knew what it signified; the control room layout had not been changed. He thought, The silly bitch! What the hell is she playing at?
The sudden clangor of alarms struck like a blow, was a blow to the auditory senses. The Doralans fell back from the viewports. A pair of binoculars dropped to the deck with a clatter. The Lady Mother gripped Falsen’s arm, pointed with her other hand to the flashing light and cried, “Look! The after air-lock door is open!”
Already the ship was in an uproar. Falsen could visualize the way that it must be — full illumination flashing on in every compartment, every alleyway, the crew boiling out through the open doors of cabins and dormitories, some in night attire or naked, some half-dressed but with every woman among them armed. Somebody, somewhere, was firing at something; to him the distinctive hiss and crackle was audible above the general tumult. Yet it could not be far away, must be only a few decks down from the control room on one of the accommodation levels.
The stupid bitch! he thought. The stupid, vicious bitch!
He ran from the control room. He was not sure what he would do, could do, but he had to see what was happening. He used the spiral staircase; at a time like this it would be too easy to be trapped in the elevator cage. There seemed to be Doralans everywhere, milling about, getting in his way. He pushed through them, knocking some of them down. The air was thick with the smell of fear and, as he approached the deck where his own cabin was situated, of blood.
Somebody was running with him, keeping close beside him. It was Carlin. Her cat face was almost smiling, her cat’s eyes alight with excitement. She was not frightened. He almost liked her.
Almost.
He cursed her as, accidentally or by intent, she tripped him. When he scrambled to his feet the chase had surged past and over him and the staircase was deserted. But it was only a few steps to the deck where whatever it was had been happening.
He heard the babble of frightened voices that, after a few seconds, was stilled by the clear, authoritative commands of the Lady Mother. He approached slowly, fully alert, ready to fight or to run as dictated by circumstance.
Carlin was waiting for him.
She said, “Come quickly. She is hurt. She is asking for you.”
The crowd of Doralans parted to let Falsen through. He was shocked at what he saw. There were bodies on the deck, which was slippery with blood. It was the manner of their killing which horrified him; the eyes clawed out, the disembowelment. What beast could have been responsible? He forced himself to ignore them, walked to where Linda was sprawled naked and bleeding against the door of her cabin with the Lady Mother and the ship’s surgeon bending over her. He tripped over something, half stumbled. He looked down. It was a cat, or what was left of a cat. It could not be Pondor, so it must be Tilsin, his mate. Something had torn the animal’s head from its body.
“Nick … ” whispered Linda, looking up at him.
Her face was very pale beneath the blood that streaked it, especially around the mouth. Her blood? Falsen wondered. There was more blood on her shoulders and down the front of her body. Falsen stared at the deep gashes on her belly and wondered how, and by what, they had been inflicted. Not by herself; that was obvious.
“She did it!” screamed Pondor suddenly.
Was the animal telepathic? wondered Falsen.
“She did it! She killed Tilsin!”
Squalling, he launched himself at the wounded girl, his claws reaching for her eyes. But the Lady Mother caught him in mid-flight, held him at arm’s length while his scrabbling hind feet tried to rend her wrists. Then she threw him from her. There was a dull thud as he hit the bulkhead. He fell to the deck, then got unsteadily to his feet. He glared wildly at his mistress.
“She did it,” he mewed. “I know she did it! Kill her.
Kill her!”
“Take him away,” the captain said to one of her officers, “and shut him up somewhere until he comes to his senses.” Then, to the surgeon, “How is she, Magadja?”
“She has lost some blood, but her injuries are only superficial.” She was speaking in English for Linda’s and Falsen’s benefit. Falsen appreciated the courtesy. The woman deftly cleaned the wounds, sprayed them over with syntheskin, then said, “Mr. Falsen, you are stronger than we are. Will you move her into her cabin?”
“I can move myself,” Linda whispered, “with some assistance … .”
Falsen helped her to her feet, supported her into the compartment. She flopped, but not ungracefully, onto the bunk. He caught her limp hand in his. He could feel her fear, knew that something had frightened her very badly.
He said, “Don’t worry. You’re safe now.”
He wished that he were able to believe what he had just told her.
“Miss Veerhausen,” the Lady Mother said, “I am sorry to be obliged to question you before you have recovered from your ordeal. But you appear to be the only survivor of this … massacre. For the safety of all of us, I must know what happened.”
Falsen felt Linda’s hand go tense in his.
She said haltingly, “I … I was going to sleep. Then I had the … feeling that something was wrong. Very wrong. There was a strange odor in the air. I got up from my bunk and went out into the alleyway. And … and it attacked me.”
“It?” asked the captain. “What was … it?”
“I … I don’t know. It had teeth and claws. It was like an animal that we have on Earth called the tiger … .”
“A tiger?” echoed the Doralan. “I have seen a tiger. In a zoo. But a tiger? Here?”
“Like a tiger, I said. But it seemed to run on its hind legs only … .”
“Was there more than one?”
“Yes. I saw others while I was fighting it off.”
“Do you know who opened the air-lock door, Miss Veerhausen?”
Linda stared up at the captain.
“How could I know?” she asked.
“Somebody must know,” the Lady Mother said. “Or somebody did know — before she died.”
Carlin came into the room.
“Gracious Lady,” she said, “I have been down to the after air lock. There is blood on the ramp, and more blood on the moss at the foot of it. I followed the trail as far as I could before it petered out … .”
“I will see for myself,” the captain said.
Falsen and Linda were left by themselves.
CHAPTER 12
“What did happen?” demanded Falsen.
He stood there, looking down at her as she sprawled on the bunk. He stared at her wounds, red and glistening beneath the transparent syntheskin. Only a little deeper, he thought, and the viscera would have been exposed. They might, they just might have been self-inflicted, but … He looked at that other wound on her shoulder, the one that she had received in the cave. It was healing fast, but it was still visible.
“What did happen?” he repeated.
“What I told the Lady Mother,” she muttered sulkily. “Oh, I did leave something out. I killed Tilsin. The sound of her padding up and down outside was driving me crazy. Those cats hate us, you know … .”
“There’s only one of them left,” said Falsen. “Pondor. But go on.”
“I … changed, then went outside to deal with Tilsin. It was lucky that I was ready, because I’d just killed her when that … thing jumped me. I was able to fight it off … ”
“And was it really as you described it?” he persisted. “A sort of cross between a kangaroo and a tiger? That’s even more fantastic than the big, gray, armor-plated beast that you told the captain about. You weren’t treating her to another fairy tale, were you?”
“I was not!” she snapped.
“But where did it come from?”
“How should I know? It must be something native to this world.”
“The Survey Service,” he said, “made a thorough exploration … ”
“And you’re Survey Service Reserve, aren’t you? You believe everything you read in Survey Service reports. Well, Lieutenant Falsen, SSR, I’m not and I don’t.”
He laughed without humor. “I’ll be frank. I don’t always myself. I was involved in an exploration project during my last training cruise. It wasn’t a very pleasant planet — it was rather similar to this in many respects. As a navigator I was on the cartography team. We did a thorough job, but the other specialists seemed to spend most of the time in their pneumatic tents, watching their portable paymasters, playing cards and getting drunk. But their reports!” He held his hands apart. “Books this thick!”
“So your precious Survey Service missed a large, very dangerous animal on this world. After what you’ve just told me, that figures. But I was alone here for a long time. I never saw anything like what I saw tonight. I was never attacked — until now.”
“You must smell wrong and taste wrong. Obviously the Doralans smell and taste right.”
“Do they? But how did those things get into the ship?”
“Some fool opened the air-lock door,” said Falsen. “Whenever there’s something that should not be done, there’s always some idiot around to do it.”
But how, he wondered, had the predators gotten up to the accommodation decks so quickly? The interval between the coming on of the tell-tale light and the attack had been a very short one. Could such oddly constructed beasts as Linda described have negotiated the spiral staircase from the stern to an upper level so quickly? Yet they must have. To suppose that they had used the elevator would have been the ultimate absurdity.
However they had done it — in a series of bounds, perhaps? — they were deadly dangerous, to Linda and himself as well as to the Doralans. He looked again at the ugly wounds on her belly, still glaringly apparent despite the bio-adhesive. He looked at that other one on her shoulder. He remembered how her face was scratched when she killed that first eavesdropping cat — and how, when she had gone down to the messhall with him, the skin of her cheeks had been unblemished.
He said, “We must help the Doralans.”
She said, “We help ourselves. Only ourselves.”
“We must help the Doralans,” he repeated, “until such time as this mess is cleaned up.”
She grinned at him derisively. “Sweet on the Lady Mother, are you? Oedipus Falsen … . Oh, I suppose that one myth is as good as another. Or is it Catface Carlin you’re lusting after? Don’t let me stop you — as long as you remember to whom you really belong.”
“Yes,” he admitted. “We’re two of a kind. The only two of our kind on this planet. But don’t forget that the Doralans are … human.”
“Human?” she scoffed. “And would it make any difference if they really were?”
While they were talking, the ship subsided slowly into as nearly a silent state as she would, while in commission, ever attain. Soon the only sounds, apart from the perpetual mutterings and whisperings of life-support machinery, were those being made by the cleaning-up party in the alleyway, the unfortunates whose task it was to mop up the blood and remove the spilled guts. Somebody vomited noisily. Linda laughed. She was not squeamish, Falsen thought. But neither was he.
She said, “I think you’d better stay with me for what’s left of the night.”
“It will be as well,” he said.
He took off his shirt.
She told him, “There is no need for that. I’m not in the mood. I’m wounded — or hadn’t you noticed? Besides, this bed is too narrow.”
He stepped out of his shorts, his shoes.
He said, “It is as well to be prepared. If you hadn’t been, you would have been badly hampered. You’d be in a worse state than you are now. Or dead.”
“Old age,” she remarked, “doesn’t set in all that fast.”
“There are more ways of dying than of old age.”
“But not here.
Not on this world, aboard this ship.”
He shrugged. He stood there naked, listening intently.
He said, “They’re finished outside now.”
“Not the mess but the waste,” she quipped.
He ignored this, went on, “If the Lady Mother wanted us, she’d have sent for us by now. I imagine that, the way things are, she doesn’t want any outsiders getting underfoot.”
“Not even you?”
“Not even me.”
He curled up on the deck like a dog, was scarcely aware when Linda extinguished the light over her bunk before going to sleep herself.
CHAPTER 13
The next morning they were called to a conference by the Lady Mother. For their benefit the proceedings were conducted in English, although it was obvious that this courtesy to them did not please most of the Doralan officers. While the discussions were under way, reports were coming in from both the airship and the scouting helicopters, the latter machines being flimsy contraptions each carrying only two persons and with a very limited range. Only the dirigible was capable of lifting electronic detection devices of all kinds, including bio-sensitive radar and other equipment with which it was possible to chart subterranean features.
A large screen had been set up in the captain’s day cabin, and in it was displayed a map of the terrain over which the airship was flying. By it was a speaker from which issued the voice of one of those aboard the dirigible. She was speaking in her own language, but a Doralan officer was acting both as interpreter and expounder.
This woman, Falsen noted, was a specialist officer of some kind. The marks of rank and department on the high collar of her scarlet tunic were not the usual stars but pairs of compasses or dividers. A cartographer, he thought. Or a geographer.
She said, scowling at the Terrans as she spoke, “This … picture nothing will mean to you … .”
How true, thought Falsen. The screen was like an abstract painting, glowing blotches of green and red, blue and yellow, darker patches of brown and near-black, shifting slowly from right to left as the airship proceeded on its mission.
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