The Alien Way

  “—Nothing,” Jase heard him say. “May have been a short in the powerhouse. Anyway, nothing came down the shaft just now. I’ve looked.”

  “A rat, maybe?” asked the first guard.

  “No, I checked out the whole room. It was empty. Anything on the platform would have got caught by the beams. They’re checking upstairs, though.”

  Jase slipped back among the ships.

  The natives were alerted now, even if they did not seriously suspect an intruder like himself. Nonetheless, a great exultation was welling up inside him. He had been prepared to break into one the ships to discover the nature of its internal machinery. Now—thanks to the dismantled unit he had seen being worked on—that was no longer necessary. His high hopes, his long gamble were about to pay off. His kingdom was before him.

  Only two things were still to be done. The first was to make a visual record of the place to take Home, and the other was to get himself safely out of here and back to his small ship.

  He reached up and touched the top button of the sleeved, outer muffling which covered the upper part of his body in the native fashion. The button concealed the recording device, which had been running steadily, storing up picture and sound of all he had encountered. But adjustments were necessary to allow it to record the vast shapes and spaces about him now. Jase made the necessary adjustments with a touch or two on the apparently featureless outside of the button and for about half an hour after that flitted about like an entertainment-recorder, taking pictures not only of the huge ships but of everything else about this secret underground field.

  It was a pity, he thought, that he could not get up to record a picture of the ceiling far overhead, lost behind the light sources beaming down on the ships and him. Such a picture would show the mechanism that would be necessary to shift aside the ceiling to let these ships out of here. However, that was a minor piece of information. The important information was what he was filming down here.

  Finished at last, he worked his way back to the room containing the elevator shaft. Almost, in the vast maze of ships and jacks, he had forgotten where it was. But the sense of direction which his scout training in his first season as an adult had trained to a fine peak in him paid off. He oriented himself and worked his way at last back to the entrance of the room.

  He halted there, just outside it, peering in at the platform sitting innocuously waiting at the bottom of the shaft. Crossing the room to it would undoubtedly trigger the automatic mechanism that fired the guns. He spent a few moments hunting around for controls, which the natives undoubtedly had for turning off the mechanism when they themselves wished to approach the platform. But he found nothing, and every minute he delayed here increased the chance of his being discovered. And to be discovered now would destroy all the advantage of the information he had gained-and warn the natives that his people had discovered their world. Whereas if he could get away without alarming anyone now, the invasion to come would have all the advantage of information and complete surprise. His Kingdom would fall into the hands of the Ruml and his own with hardly an effort.

  He returned to the open doorway and gazed through it. For a long second he stood, thinking with a rapidity and force he had hardly matched before in his life-even during the duel with Horaag Adoptedson. There had to be a way to the platform that avoided the beams.

  Suddenly a farfetched but daring scheme occurred to him. He knew that the area behind the door was safe. The beams had not touched him there last time. From there two long leaps would carry him to the platform. Unlike the natives, his body was built for springing. If he, with that body the Muffled People could not have anticipated when they designed the automatic-beam circuit and this room, could avoid that single touching of the floor between behind the door and the platform… He thought. It might be possible then that he could reach the platform without triggering the defensive mechanism.

  There was a way, he considered. But it was a stake-everything proposition. If he missed, there would be no hope of avoiding the beams.

  The door opened inward, and it was about six feet in height, three and a half feet in width. From its most inward point of swing it was about twenty-two feet distant from the platform. Reaching in through the entrance, he swung the door so that it was at right angles to the entrance, projecting the distance of its width into the room. Then he backed up and took off his clumsy foot coverings, tucking them into pouches in his body mufflings.

  He got down on hands and feet and arched his back. His claws extended themselves from his fingers and toes, clicking on the concrete floor. For a moment he felt a wave of despair that the clumsy mufflings hampering him would make the feat impossible. But he had no time to take them off, now. He resolutely shoved all doubt from his mind and backed up further until he was a good thirty feet from the door.

  He thought of his Kingdom and launched himself forward.

  He was only two seasons adult, his reflexes were superb, and the exercise under Brodth Swordsmaster had trained him into top shape. By the time he had covered the thirty feet he was moving at close to twenty miles an hour. He flung himself from the threshold of the entrance and flew to the inmost top edge of the door.

  He seemed, even to himself, barely to touch the door in passing. But four sets of his claws clamped on the wood, making the all-important, slight change in direction and thrusting him forward with additional impetus. For a moment he flew above the deadly floor’ of the room. Then the platform and the shaft seemed to leap to meet him, and he slammed down on the flat surf ace of the platform with an impact that drove the breath out of him.

  The beams did not appear. The room was silent—and safe.

  Half-dazed, but mindful of the noise he had made in landing, which might attract the attention of any native nearby, he fumbled hastily around the edge of the platform, found the switches, and snapped over and down the one he had earlier marked in his mind as being the one to send the platform upward.

  He shot up into the darkness of the shaft. On the way up, he recovered his breath. He made no attempt to replace the clumsy foot coverings but drew his handgun and held it ready in his hand. The second the platform stopped at the top of the shaft, he was off it and running noiselessly back along the conveyor belt at a speed which no native should have been able to maintain in the crouched position in which he could contract his running, Ruml body.

  There were sounds of natives moving about beyond the enclosing machinery through which the conveyor belt ran. But he closed his ears to them and ran on. Surely, after bringing him this far, the Random Factor would not desert him now. He clung to the feeling of confidence that his escape was almost already made—when a shout sounded from within the maze of machinery to his left.

  “Stop, there! You!”

  Without hesitation, he fired in the direction of the voice and dived off the conveyor belt into the tangle of gears and driving shafts to his right. Behind him came a grunt and the sound of a falling body. A blue beam lanced through the spot on the conveyor belt where he had stood a second before.

  A dozen feet off the conveyor belt into the maze of machinery, he clung to a piece of ductwork and listened. His first impression had been that there was only one native in the area from which the shout had come. But now he heard three voices converging on the spot at which he had fired.

  “What happened?”

  “I thought I saw something—” The voice that had hailed him groaned suddenly. “I tried to get a clear shot, and I slipped down in between the drums here.”

  “You jammed in there?”

  “I think my legs got broken.”

  “You say you saw something? Just a minute, well get you out.”

  “I thought I saw something. I don’t know. I guess that alarm had me seeing things—there’s nothing on the belt now. Help me out, will you?”

  “Bill, give me a hand.”

  “Easy! Take it—easy!"

  “All right… all right now. We’ll get you in to the doctor.”

/>   He clung, listening, as the two who had come up later lifted their hurt companion out of wherever he had fallen and carried him out of the building. Then there was only silence around him, and in that silence he drew a deep breath. It was hardly believable, but once more the Random Factor had stood beside him.

  Quietly, he began to come back toward the conveyor belt. Now that he could move with less urgency, he saw a clearer route to it. He clambered along and spotted a straight climb along a sideways-sloping, three-foot-wide strip of metal filling the gap between what seemed to be the high side of something like a turbine motor and a narrow strip of darkness about two feet wide alongside more ductwork. The strip led straight as a road, bypassing the conveyor belt, to the open area where the conveyor belt began.

  Looking along it now,, he could see the door of the building ajar and a little strip of sunlight outside showing.

  Perfection, he told himself, attracts the Random Factor… He began slipping along the strip of sideways-tilted metal, and his claws scratched and skidded. It was slicker than he had thought it would be. He felt himself sliding off sideways as he went forward. He increased his speed. Grimly, in silence, he tried to hold himself from slipping off into the strip of darkness alongside.

  His claws blunted on the polished surface. From somewhere there was a single, odd, putting, sound. Scrambling at the metal, he felt a twinge as from a pulled muscle in his neck. He scrambled harder… and, unexpectedly, his senses started to swim.

  A wave of dizziness swept over him. He felt his limbs relaxing, his body sliding, off into the strip of darkness.

  He fell, and the darkness closed about him as his senses fled.

  Chapter Nineteen

  Jase unscrewed the two halves of a small blowpipe and put the weapon back into an inside pocket of his leather jacket. As the two men in guards’ blue uniforms came carrying the limp body of Kator out of the narrow space in which it had fallen, he moved after them. When they laid Kator down in a little open space, Jase reached down and removed a tiny, feathered dart stuck in the Ruml’s neck, just behind and below the flat, pointed ear.

  As he bent over the unconscious Ruml, his body shielding his left arm for a moment, his left hand closed over unhooked, and carried away the topmost of the large buttons on Kator’s imitation jacket. Straightening up and turning away, he came face to face with Swanson.

  “You can tell us now, can’t you?” said the spectacled man. “What was the anesthetic?”

  Jase smiled, wearily and a little ironically.

  “Ethyl alcohol,” he said.

  “Alcohol!” Swanson stared at him, then exploded. “You mean their systems are that much like ours? We could have used alcohol ourselves!”

  “They aren’t that alike—not as much as you think,” said Jase. “It just happens alcohol intoxicates them, like it intoxicates us. But just not the same way. Most of our drugs—chloroform, to take an example—would have killed him. Even alcohol doesn’t affect them just the way it does us—” He gestured at Kator. “Did you see how fast he went out, when only a few drops were introduced into his veins? The same amount wouldn’t have been enough for you or I to feel, probably.”

  “Yes…” said Swanson, without relaxing. He turned to look down at Kator himself. “Well, we’ll start bugging him now. When he comes to and starts back to his ship, he’ll be as full of miniaturized recording devices as a political convention. How long’s he going to be out?”

  “They swallow short-lived alcohol-producing bacterial cultures, the way we drink whisky, for relaxation,” said Jase. “They get high in a few moments, go out almost immediately, and stay unconscious for about two hours, coming out of it gradually into a deep sleep that lasts about four of our hours.”

  “Six hours then?”

  “No, not if you want to cut it short,” said Jase. “You can wake him up as soon as the actual unconscious period is over. With the sense of urgency I—he—” Jase saw Swanson’s eyes flicker at him momentarily as he made the verbal slip, “was feeling, he may wake himself up as soon as he comes to. But, just to be sure, you can jar him or make a noise.”

  “You’re sure, are you?” Swanson stared at him in the relatively dim interior of the building, “about all this information?"

  “Yes,” said Jase. “But why don’t you get that doctor of yours in here if you want to check?”

  “Good idea.” Swanson turned away to speak to the guards. Jase slipped back into the shadows. From one pocket he took a small, brown cube the size of a jeweler’s box for holding and displaying a single ring. Operating almost by feel in the darkness, he made some adjustments on the surface of the button he had taken from Kator’s jacket and held it against a tiny aperture in the ringbox-sized cube. He pressed the cube.

  There was a faint, almost inaudible whirring that sounded for a second just loud enough for Jase’s ears alone to hear it. Then the whirring stopped.

  Jase replaced the cube in his pocket and wandered back to the still figure of Kator, pushing between two of the three guards now standing above it.

  “I’d better look at that spot where the dart stuck in, again,” said Jase. Uncertainly, they let him through to the still body of the Ruml. Jase squatted down, rolled Kator’s lax head to one side to expose the neck area where the anesthetic dart had stuck, and bent down to look closely at the area. He placed his left palm as if to steady himself on Kator’s coat and palmed the button back onto the Ruml-designed hooks that held it.

  None of the guards seemed to notice. The button fastenings were typically Ruml, and only someone who, like Jase, had been in a Ruml mind would think to look for them, or for the microscopic pack of sensitized surfaces just below the camouflaged exterior of the button that was the Ruml version of a miniaturized spy camera.

  “What’s this? Don’t get in our way here!” he heard the voice of Swanson say behind him as he got to his feet. “Clear out of here, Jase. This is our business from now on.”

  The tone of the spectacled man’s voice was brisk and impersonal. It was clear that what he said mirrored his thoughts—with the miniaturized recorders and tell-tales to be now implanted under the skin of Kator, the Ruml could be followed by mechanical snoopers, sending back pictures and sound through a collapsed universe field even from the Ruml Homeworld, if Kator should return to it. Jase was no longer important in the eyes of Swanson, Goth, and the men who did not speak.

  Jase faded back into the shadows of the machinery. He had told Swanson when the capture of Kator was being planned that it was necessary for him to know the layout, not only of the underground spaceship parking area, but of the abandoned factory that served as ground-level cover for it. Now he picked his way smoothly through the factory—but not toward the side yard where the transportation back to Washington was waiting.

  He threaded his way through empty rooms and between silent machinery to another end of the factory, and out a rusting, small door into a field of weeds some forty yards wide to a barbed wire fence and a little woods of maple and oak trees.

  Casually, he strolled across the field. Once out of sight among the trees, he went at a fast walking pace. A little less than an hour and three miles later, he was boarding a bus at a small-town bus stop.

  There was some delay about the bus starting. But some eighteen minutes later air finally sighed through its compressors, and it slid out of the bus terminal building. Jase leaned back his head against the pillowed backrest of his seat and closed eyes that were sandy with fatigue. He had done his part.

  From now on it was up to Kator and the Heads of Families back on Homeworld.

  Chapter Twenty

  …When he woke, he had to think for a moment to remember that he was not on Homeworld, to remember that he had been fleeing through a factory building on the world of the Muffled People—one jump away from capture—when something had happened.

  Slowly it all came back to him; and slowly he began to take stock of his surroundings.

  He was wedged someplace betwe
en narrow walls. Above him there was only silence and a dimness. It seemed to him he had been unconscious for some time, but far above him to his Ruml eyes the light still streaming through the high windows of the factory building seemed to come at almost the same angle. He lay staring at the light for a moment.

  …No, he was wrong. Perhaps an eighth or sixth of the local sunlight period” of the planet here had gone by while he had lain dead to the world.

  His neck ached slightly behind his ear, and there were other sore spots about him. He must, he thought, have knocked himself out when he fell. But the guards chasing him evidently had not found him—

  His thoughts broke off suddenly. Voices struck on his ears. The voices of two natives standing some little distance off. He raised his head slightly and saw he was lying in a narrow gap between the two walls of metal. The gap, like a roofless tunnel, ran toward the open space between the conveyor belt end and the door to outside.

  “…not possible,” one of the speaking Muffled People was saying. “We’ve looked everywhere.”

  “But you left the place to carry Rogers to the ambulance?”

  “Yes, sir. But Corry stood guard outside the door there while we did that. Then, when we came back, we all searched the whole place. There’s no one here.”

  “Sort of a funny day,” said the second voice. “First that short or whatever it was, downstairs, and then Rogers thinking he saw something or someone, and breaking his leg.” The voice moved off, from the open area, back at an angle toward a further part of the factory building. “Well, forget it, then. I’ll write it up in my report, and we’ll lock the building behind us until an inspector can look it over.”

  There was the sound of the small door opening.

  “What’s anybody going to steal anyway?” demanded the first voice, now also moving away. “Put a half million tons of space warship under one arm and carry it out?”

  “Regulations—” The closing of the door cut off the words. There was silence in the dimness, which stretched on and on.