I felt I was in time.
I got a challenge. An airbus at night would be very suspect. With fifteen thousand troops at the camp below Spiteos, they had lots of sentries, lots of time, no traffic to mention.
I pushed my identoplate against the screen.
The screen flashed:
HOLD WHERE YOU ARE!
Not too unusual. I clumsily gunned the airbus into a hovering stop in the sky.
The screen said:
YOU ARE NOT ON OUR TRAFFIC LIST.
I picked up the microphone. “I’ve been gone. It is absolutely, utterly urgent that I see Lombar Hisst at once! This is top priority emergency!”‘
HOLD.
Spiteos lay black and brooding in the starlight and the glow of a moon just rising. A dreadful place. One could almost hear the groans of the thousands of political prisoners buried a mile deep in its bowels.
I began to fret. I looked over at the horizon where lay Palace City, but of course it was invisible: it was powered with a black hole in the mountain behind it and was thirteen minutes in the future. I hoped that Lombar Hisst wasn’t there. Time was its defense but it also made direct communications difficult.
My screen said:
CAN YOU SPOT THE ORANGE FLARE?
I looked down. At the far edge of the camp, closest to Spiteos, an orange flare pinpointed the dark. “Yes.”
The screen said:
LAND THERE AND NOWHERE ELSE OR WE WILL FIRE.
I sent the airbus plummeting down.
The orange flare was lighting up a circle on the ground and hurting my eyes.
I made a very bad landing.
I opened the door to get out. There was a ring of Apparatus troops.
An officer was beside me, holding a hand blastgun. “Get out.”
“Look, I haven’t got time for this!”
“Just precautions. There have been threats against the Chief’s life.”
“Get me to him instantly!” I cried.
“That’s right where you are going!” said the officer. “March!”
“Look,” I cried, “at any instant now a tug is going to try to land on the Spiteos roof. Inform your batteries.”
“A tug?”
“A tug.”
“March!”
“Inform them!” I cried.
“March!”
They took me to the tunnel entrance and pushed me into a guard car. We hurtled to the first checkpoint. The sentries searched me and looked through my satchel of evidence. They pushed me back in and we roared through the long tunnel.
We came out and they escorted me into an elevator.
We went rocketing up and exited into the outer office of Lombar Hisst. There were no clerks around.
The officer made a signal on Lombar’s door.
It opened.
There was Lombar Hisst!
He was as tall and as heavy and as mean looking as always, but there was a heavier scowl on his face. It made me very nervous.
“What are you doing here?” he thundered. “When I was told you wanted to land, I couldn’t believe it. You’re supposed to be on Blito-P3!”
“Oh, sir, there isn’t time! In just minutes, Jettero Heller will be here.”
“WHAT?”
“Jettero Heller, sir—the man you sent on Mission Earth.”
“You didn’t kill him?” said Lombar, incredulous.
“Well, no, sir. He ducked.”
“WHY is he coming here?” snarled Lombar.
That tone of voice terrifies me when he uses it. I opened my mouth to tell him that Heller was coming to get some forged documents. But then, with sudden wit, I checked myself. If I admitted I knew of those documents, I myself would be involved in the forgery penalties. I wound up just opening and closing my mouth several times.
Lombar’s eyes went like slits. “You don’t have to tell me. I know why. They’re all after me!”
I tried to speak again but he interrupted me. Lombar never waited for any answers.
“Oh, that aristocratic upstart! The insolence!” said Lombar. “Coming to kill me! The effrontery of it!”
His paranoia was not about to be checked by anything I could say.
“Is he coming in a tank?” said Hisst. “No, he wouldn’t get near here in a tank. He’s coming in a space battleship!” Was there a flash of fear on his face?
“No, sir. Please, sir. He’s coming in a tug.”
“A what?”
“A space tug.”
“The tug! No arms! No armor!”
At that instant, alarms went throughout the area!
The screaming howl of them hurt my ears!
HELLER HAD BEEN SPOTTED!
Hisst looked for an instant like he was going to rush back into his office. Then he checked himself.
Suddenly he rushed forward toward the elevator. I raced after him.
I knew where he was going.
There is no fighter cover at Spiteos as it would be too obvious. But Lombar Hisst had a flying cannon of his own. It was buried deep in the castle, with a tunnel for immediate release into the air. It was the most armored, most heavily built flying cannon ever made. Its gun could knock down a city and no known projectile or beam could even dent its hide.
I raced after him.
I barely made it into the elevator.
Down we went like a powered bomb.
We were in the hangar in seconds.
There sat the impregnable monster, black, big and ugly.
Lombar leaped into it and I piled into the second seat.
Lombar was pushing buttons which opened the exits. The drives of the brute roared to life.
Heller, I exulted, you will shortly be the most dead spacer anybody ever heard of!
Here we come!
PART SIXTY-SIX
Chapter 4
The tunnel walls were rushing by. Ahead I saw the stars.
We burst out upon a world of franticness.
The dull green moonlight fell upon a camp stirred up like bog beetles running madly everywhere.
Even through the window of the giant flying cannon I could hear the strident screaming of alarms.
Fifteen thousand men were pouring to their batteries of guns.
Lombar was climbing. The engines screamed. I looked wildly everywhere.
I could see no tug, no Heller, nothing!
He should be hovering over Spiteos to let the Countess off. But well away from it and looking down on it, I could see nothing.
That didn’t mean he wasn’t there. Absorbo-coat would not reflect any light or beam. But neither would it pass light and that tug should make a shadow against the desert sand, against the stars or moon.
All our screens were blank except for the ground below.
Then suddenly, there it was, directly above the camp! The tug! A black silhouette!
Abruptly, like a ring of blue electric flame, a thousand defense guns opened up!
Arcs of fire two miles long carved a savage geometric pattern in the sky. The apex of the two cones was the silhouette!
They must be missing!
It was still there!
The amount of fire redoubled from the ground.
Lombar, snarling so his teeth showed, turned the nose of the flying cannon in a deadly curve.
His fingers pressed the trips!
Our vessel bucked like a thing gone mad!
The screech of our missiles pierced my ears!
We must be missing!
There was no target burst of flame.
The silhouette was still there!
An illusion!
Heller was throwing a silhouette illusion of the tug above the camp!
He must be somewhere else!
I glanced out my window at Spiteos, over to our right. I could see it was very black there even with my flame-dazzled eyes.
I looked back at our viewscreens.
One was pointing at Spiteos.
There!
There was something ther
e!
I looked closer.
A ladder! Lacking absorbo-coat, it was reflecting on our screen!
In the middle of the dangling ladder was a figure. That would be Krak!
“Lombar!” I screamed. “There! There! There!” I was pointing frantically.
He saw it.
He turned the ship.
With snarls he turned his gun controls to maximum barrage!
He pressed the trips.
The light blinded me. The savage burst almost seemed to tear the heavens up!
A second passed. Then two. Then three. I could see again.
Something was falling.
Down, down, down it went, plunging into the abyss. It had a mile to go.
It was not the tug.
It seemed that a body had been blasted! It was falling away!
Frantically I looked at the heavens.
A shadow between us and the moon! “Lombar!” I screamed. “Up there!”
Oh, where was Heller now?
I quickly added it up.
Our barrage must have dislodged Krak and sent her falling to her death.
Heller would be frothing for revenge!
“Lombar!” I screamed. “Get away from here!”
The Chief of the Apparatus was looking savagely around. The lust to kill was over him like sheen. “Where is the insolent (bleepard)?” he howled. “Royal officer! Royal (bleep)! Let me at him!” he raved.
I felt a jolt.
It was as if we had run into a wall.
Yet we were two miles above the planet surface!
I looked anxiously at the throttles. They hadn’t changed.
Yet we were slowing down!
Then suddenly we started up. We rose into the sky! We were in the grip of some awful force far beyond control!
The towing tractor beams!
Heller had us gripped like any other tow.
Those things could move billions of tons, thousands of these flying cannons.
Up, up we went and then began a sickening curve.
“What’s happening?” shrieked Lombar.
“He’s got us in the towing grips!” I cried. “Pour full throttle on and break out! DO IT QUICK!”
Lombar was looking all around. His face was getting wild.
We swung into the beginning of a circle. We were now heading obliquely at the ground.
“They’ve got me!” screamed Lombar, going white.
We hit the bottom of the arc and began to climb again, and all without our power.
I was being pressed by centrifugal force against the side of my seat.
We came around the top of the arc, the moon and stars whirring by.
Down we started once more.
Lombar was howling! He sounded like an animal!
Around we went and around and around. The tug must be pivoting in a small, tight circle. It was as if we were on the end of a mile of rope.
“Turn! Turn!” I cried. “Start shooting at the pivot point!”
Lombar hit his throttles. They made us go in the same direction we were being swung!
He hit his turn controls.
They didn’t work!
Suddenly our motors died.
We were in a second field, as well, that held our engines paralyzed!
The whistling scream of air going by drove terror to my soul.
We were powerless in an awful thing. We were just a pellet in a whirling sling!
We came down the arc, pointing at the ground.
SUDDENLY THE GRIP WENT OFF!
Below us stretched the desert!
We had been released! We were hurtling down at an awful speed!
The ground, moonlit, was rushing up.
The rocks and sand and bushes were suddenly too plain!
WE CRASHED!
PART SIXTY-SIX
Chapter 5
The impact must have knocked me out.
I came to in the sizzle of electric fire and the smell of smoke.
Something was lying on my legs.
The entire front panel of the ship had come off and was pinning me in the remains of the seat.
The flying cannon was a crumpled thing.
I wondered that I had survived at all. But maybe I wasn’t going to: electrical fires were dancing all along the panel back, right below my face. At any moment they could flare up and incinerate me!
My hands were bare. I could not reach anything. But this was a matter of life or death. Barehanded, screaming at the pain, I beat them out.
The green moonlight would not let me see the agonizing burns of the flesh, as I lay in shadow.
A shaft was shining in.
It hit the face of Lombar. He was lying there, head back, pinned in place with snapped cables and conduits. They made it look like he was lying in a nest of snakes.
The hull was split apart and above the creak of cooling metal I could hear the desert sounds. I lifted my head. Far off, there was Spiteos against the pale green moon. They would come for us. They had seen the crash, most certainly.
Lombar began to groan. He moved. He opened his eyes. I had moved and the moonlight was on my face. He looked at me and memory seemed to return.
His eyes went slitted. “So you were part of the conspiracy to kill me!” he said.
“No, no! I came to warn you and save your life!”
“Conspiracy to kill! You came to set me up for Heller! The two of you have been in it thick, all the time!”
“NO!” I tried to hold up my hands. “I even kept you from burning to death!”
“And all this was a ruse! You pretended to come with a warning—me, whom the angels have chosen to be king! Just so you could get me into the air and Heller could shoot me down!”
“Oh, dear Gods, no! You’ve got it all wrong!”
“I know who my enemies are. They are everybody. And you chose this chance to sneak up on me when I was undefended!”
Far off I could see lights dancing across the desert. Those would be ground vehicles racing to the wreck!
Lombar saw them. “As soon as they get here, that will be the end of you, Soltan Gris!”
Oh, Gods. His paranoia had him in its grip. I didn’t have a chance.
Frantically I pushed at the panel that had collapsed across my legs.
I looked up at the approaching lights. They were going brighter and dimmer as they plunged over the uneven terrain. They were only half a mile away.
With strength I did not know I had, I wrenched again at the panel.
IT MOVED!
I reached out with my maimed hand to grasp the door latch. The whole side of the flying cannon fell off.
My foot was caught. Something was gripping the heel. I got my foot out of the boot.
With scrapes and tears, I moved my legs sideways.
I WAS FREE!
I leaped to the ground and ran!
Bushes whipped at my legs. Sharp rocks savaged my unshod foot. I could not go far in this condition!
My plight was extreme. Two hundred miles of impassable desert lay between me and Government City. A similarly uncrossable distance lay between me and the Blike Mountains. Nobody had ever passed through this devil-whipped desert afoot and lived to tell of it!
A dark line against the moonlit sand. A gully lined with bushes!