Masters of Everon

  It was unreasonable to think of any possibility but that somebody would be along eventually to open the door of their prison; and when that door was opened—Jef told himself grimly—he and Mikey would have something to say about things before whoever opened it managed to lock them in again.

  They settled down to waiting. Jef investigated the pile of rags in the corner, but they were so dirty that he decided against having anything to do with them. He and Mikey made themselves comfortable on the floor against the wall holding the open window, through which a faint breeze drifted, now and then, to cut the thick atmosphere inside.

  Happily, he still had his pack and the rations in it. He shared some food and water with Mikey, although he was wary of using more than a little of the water. There was no telling how long they might have to live off what was in the pack—

  A distant whirring sound brought him out of his thoughts with a jerk. The sound grew rapidly louder. He got to his feet and stepped to the open window.

  The sound was the sound of a ducted-fan aircraft—the same sort of aircraft that the Constable had told him was forbidden by law from flying this far from Spaceport City. He craned his neck, peering up through the window; but could not see the craft. Then, suddenly, it dropped into view, coming down vertically on to the moss-grass between the building he was in and the next one to it. For a second Jef thought it had landed; but then it lifted again, lightly, and drifted through the air to his right until it was out of sight from his window.

  Jef heard the fans of the craft shut down. In the new silence the late afternoon outside went back to its normal noises, the chiming of the distant clock-birds and other creature cries starting up again from the surrounding forest.

  Jef himself went back to waiting. Time went past. The afternoon had already begun to fade into twilight outside his window, leaving the unlighted room deep in shadow, when he once more heard the sounds of footsteps in the corridor outside.

  Jef got to his feet. The door opened, and Avery Armage walked into the room.

  "Constable!" said Jef, moving forward, "you don't know how glad I am—"

  "Stay right where you are!" Armage said.

  Jef stopped, and Mikey with him. He stared at the laser handgun the Constable held pointed at Mikey.

  "That's better," said Armage, closing the door behind him. "You think a lot of that maolot. Just remember, if you start anything I'll shoot him; and probably I'll shoot you, too. Understand?"

  Jef opened his mouth, then closed it again. He nodded. He could feel his mind racing.

  "Good," said the Constable. "Now, I'm putting this laser back in its holster. Don't fool yourself I can't get it out in plenty of time, before you or your animal can reach me."

  Slowly, watching Jef closely all the while, he lowered the weapon and slid it into the holster at his belt. Then he took his hand from it, but he left unbuttoned and open the weather flap that normally snapped down over the butt of it.

  "All right, tell me," said the Constable. "Who sent you here? What are you doing on Everon?"

  He loomed over Jef like a mountain. There was nothing now in his face of humor, or of the effort to be pleasant that he had shown down at Spaceport City. Jef struggled to control his galloping thoughts and keep his voice calm.

  "You saw my papers," he said.

  "I saw them," answered the Constable. "I also saw the forged papers your friend had. We've got all the evidence we need to take care of him; and we'll have the man himself in a day or two.

  So you might as well tell the truth and make it easier on yourself —it's the last chance you'll get."

  Jef was still trying to straighten his thoughts. The final words of the Constable sent them spinning again.

  "My friend?" he echoed. "What do you mean forged papers? Who's got forged papers?"

  "Curragh. Don't play games."

  "I'm not playing any games," said Jef. "I just don't know anything about any of this."

  The Constable merely stood, staring down at him, the thick lower lip in the big man's face slightly outthrust.

  "You're telling me the man you call Curragh isn't a Planetary Inspector after all?" Jef asked.

  "You know that!" said the Constable. "Anyway, it's not Curragh we're concerned with now, it's his friend. You."

  "His friend?" Jef stared at him. "Me? But I only talked to him for a minute or so, just before the spaceship landed."

  "And you're just now getting around to telling me so." The Constable's irony was as heavy-handed as the man himself.

  "I didn't get much of a chance to tell you anything," Jef retorted. "You'll remember I was stuck in a room in your house with Mikey; and the only times I talked to you were when you looked at my papers, then for a few moments later on when your vet tried to inject Mikey, and on the next day when you put us on the aircraft to start us on our way up here. Come to think of it, how about that law of yours, that you said wouldn't let any aircraft be flown this far away from Spaceport City? You flew up here just now, didn't you?"

  "Police and necessary craft are permitted, of course." Armage stared down at him. "Stay with the subject. We know you're Curragh's partner, just as we know he's no John Smith. Now we want the truth about you."

  "You've got the truth about me!" Jef stared. "Anyway, what makes you so sure he's a fake? You can't have had time to check his papers with E. Corps on Earth in two days."

  "It won't take us long. We're checking with Earth now. We found his real papers hidden in his luggage. In two weeks we'll know all about him. Just as we'll know about you."

  "But my papers are legitimate!" exploded Jef—and then had to break off to calm Mikey, who suddenly pushed past Jef and began droning a warning in the direction of the Constable.

  "That's right," said the Constable. He had put his hand back on the butt of the laser at his belt, although he had not drawn the weapon again. "If you want the maolot alive, keep him quiet. Quiet and calm."

  "I tell you," said Jef, forcing his voice back to a normal level as he straightened up from Mikey to face the Constable once more, "I'm who my papers say I am. Check with the Research Service on Earth, and see!"

  "Don't worry, they'll be checked," said the Constable. "But there's no hurry about it. We're spending the funds to send for an emergency check on Curragh; but we can afford to take our time with you. Meanwhile, I'm starting to run out of patience. If you want to save your own neck, stop playing around and tell me the truth. What are you doing on Everon?"

  "I keep telling you. I'm here to do what my papers said, study Mikey in the context of his native environment."

  The Constable did not say anything more for a moment. He merely stood staring down at Jef.

  "You come here," the big man said at last, "with a man who tries to pass himself off as one of the top E. Corps Inspectors. You say you're looking for information about the death, eight years ago, of your brother—who just happens to have had his last contact with Beau leCourboisier. We know Beau leCourboisier. These woods up here are full of hardheads and outlaws; and he's the worst of the lot. Finally, I turn you loose to walk through a couple of areas belonging to wild-ranchers who ordinarily don't let a clock-bird cross their territory without finding out what it's up to; and you stroll through with no trouble at all—"

  "You deliberately sent me into those woods, knowing the eland ranchers might shoot me?" Jef demanded.

  "They're not quite that trigger-happy. But I thought I might learn something about you—and I did." The Constable stared at him for a second. "Nothing happened but a radio call from that young Hillegas to the wild-ranchers farther up, saying to let you pass."

  He watched Jef for a minute.

  "You're too damn cool about all this," he said, "not to know what I'm talking about."

  "Cool?" The sad bitterness in Jef had swelled in him until he almost felt it would choke him; but the years of training kept his voice level whether he wanted it that way or not. "I don't know what you think you're trying to do. But my papers are legal.
I'm legal; and it's up to you to prove differently if you believe so. What does Curragh say? Does he claim I'm some friend of his?"

  "We'll ask him that—just as soon as we lay hands on him. He disappeared the moment you took off, just before I was going to ask him about the papers we'd found with his real name. But we'll catch him. Everon's not that big. And meanwhile—we've got you, and you'll tell us what we want to know."

  Something snapped in Jef. His voice stayed level and his face calm; but interiorly he crossed some sort of dividing line.

  "I've told you everything there is to tell," he said. "You've got no reason, no right, to question me or hold me. Whether Curragh's a John Smith or not, at the spaceport he reminded you of one thing you might think about now—supraplanetary law. If I'm not out of here in two minutes, you're going to have to answer the charges I'll bring against you in the interplanetary courts!"

  "Oh?" said the Constable. He stared at Jef strangely for a moment before going on slowly.

  "You push me to it, and I'll find a way to learn what you're holding back—trust me if I don't."

  He stepped back suddenly toward the door, the handgun level.

  "Maybe," he said, and the note was still in his voice, "you'd better sleep on that thought. By tomorrow morning perhaps you'll have come to your senses—and that'd save us both trouble all around."

  He reached behind him without turning and touched the door, which swung open. He backed into the corridor.

  "Sleep on it," he said. "Or don't sleep—whichever you want. But you better be ready to answer questions with the right answers by morning."

  The door closed with a crash.

  Jef was left standing, Mikey pressed against him. But the worried noises had died in Mikey's throat—and suddenly Jef recognized that in spite of the threat in Armage's last words, he was feeling decidedly more solid and in command of the situation than he had before the Constable had walked through the door. Why? Certainly he had not backed down before Armage's questions; but he was still a prisoner in this small room of the trading post, with the top representative of local planetary law apparently convinced that he was illegal in some sense or another. Why should he feel as if he had won any sort of victory...

  Abruptly, Mikey stopped making his throat noises and jerked about to stare blindly toward the window. Jef turned to look, himself.

  Against the now darkening sky in the upper part of the window, a dark round shape, as of a head, obscured part of the band of twinkling stars visible there; and the voice of Jarji Hillegas came softly but clearly through the wire mesh that was all that barred the open window from the evening air.

  "I knew you were bound to get yourself in trouble," it said, "the moment I first got a look at you. It's a good thing for you I followed up to see for myself."

  Chapter Nine

  jef stared.

  "Stand back from the window, now," Jarji's voice ordered. "Stand well out of line with it and me."

  A thin finger of shadow came up beside the round shadow of Jarji's head. There was a little wink of light and one of the loops of wire in the lower right corner of the mesh covering the window glowed suddenly white-hot and disappeared in a tiny spurt of red sparks. The loop of wire just above it abruptly glowed with white heat in its turn—

  "Wait," said Jef. "What're you doing?"

  For a long moment from the first sound of Jarji's voice at the window, he had stood dumb, too jarred by unexpected happenings to react with hope or any other feeling at the appearance of the game-rancher. Then the burning through of the wire mesh had jolted him back to feeling and thinking again.

  "Doing?" Jarji said. "I'm cutting this screen from your window. What did you figure I was doing?"

  "I shouldn't escape," said Jef. "I'm under arrest... I think."

  The words came from him unplanned, as if another person within him had uttered them. From beyond the night-dark square of window there was a long second of silence, and then something very like a snort.

  "Well, pardon me!" said Jarji. "Pardon me all to hell. I'll just wander on back down to my woods and hope you'll find it in your heart to forgive me for nearly getting you into trouble with the downcountry law."

  "He's the Planetary Constable—the local police authority," said Jef.

  "Sure, he is," said Jarji. "Well, as I say, so long—" Her voice began to move off.

  "Wait—" called Jef in a throat-tearing whisper, crowding up against the window. "Wait! I mean, come back. You're right. I do want to get Mikey and myself out of here, law or no law."

  There was no response from outside.

  "Come back!" cried Jef in a desperately throttled shout.

  "All right, all right, keep your mouth shut for a moment!" said Jarji's voice, directly under the window. "Stand back."

  Jef stood back. Strands of wire glowed and sparked.

  "Now push," said Jarji. "Look out, it's hot."

  Jef took off his jacket, wrapped it around his fists and pushed with it on the mesh. The mesh gave and there was a soft thump outside.

  "Now, climb through," said Jarji. "I am," said Jef.

  He struggled gingerly through the window, only scratching himself a little. A second later he stood panting on the ground outside.

  "Mikey—" he began, turning to the window. But Mikey was already sailing through the window without touching anything, in a beautifully calculated leap.

  "Let's go," said Jarji. "Stay right with me, now."

  She led off through the darkness. There was no moon presently overhead, but in this latitude of Everon, a cluster of close, bright stars clumped thickly in the western center of the sky gave Jef just enough light to follow her. They passed the lumpy black shape of the ducted-fan aircraft and Jef reached out to touch her on the shoulder.

  "Why don't we take that?" he whispered.

  "Because they'd find it a half a day after we left it and know that wherever we'd left it was only a half a day's walk from where they could find us," Jarji whispered back. "On foot we'll face them with the distance of a full night's traveling in any direction to wonder about."

  They went on, and the deeper darkness of the forest closed about them. But it was not as bad as Jef had expected. His eyes gradually adjusted to the gloom—all the more readily in that he had been locked in an ill-lighted room for several hours previously. Shortly, however, the light about them began to increase.

  "Moonrise," said Jarji. Now that they were clear of the post, she spoke aloud in a normal voice. "I suppose you didn't think we even had a moon."

  "Of course I know you've got a moon," said Jef. "I read—"

  "Actually, we've got two. Two natural satellites, only you can't see the little one in this latitude, except in the summer. You can't even see the bigger one, the one that just rose, until about midnight. The trees hide it unless it's right overhead."

  "It's nice to have light," said Jef peaceably.

  In fact, it was. As the illumination strengthened about them from the invisible moon, the forest floor brightened until, in contrast to the darkness earlier, it seemed brighter than Jef could remember seeing a night scene under a full moon back on Earth. It was almost as strongly illuminated, Jef thought, as it might be on a heavily overcast day. —Come to think of it, he could not remember ever seeing clouds in the Everon sky, except for the hailstorm. He checked himself on that thought, suddenly remembering he had only been down on the surface of this world for a little over four days. It felt as if he had been here for weeks.

  The night air seemed to be intoxicating Mikey—it could hardly be the moonlight, since the young maolot's eyes were, as always, firmly closed. But Mikey was once more running ahead of Jef, as he had been on the hike to Post Fifty. Now he was making little dashes and darts of twenty or thirty meters off into the woods as they moved along the route on which Jarji was leading them. Which reminded Jef...

  "Where are we going?" he asked the girl.

  "As close as possible to where Beau leCourboisier used to have his game ran
ch," Jarji answered. "Somebody's going to meet you there."

  "Somebody is? How do you know?"

  "You," said Jarji, "are something to tell the clock-birds about. You really are. How'd you manage to live this long back on Earth?"

  "What'd I do?" said Jef, bewildered. "I just asked-"

  "Don't," said Jarji. "Don't ask?"

  "That's right."

  Jef slowly exhaled. His temper might be deeply buried, but this pocket-sized game rancher seemed to have a knack for excavating very nearly deep enough to unearth it. Not that he was feeling his usual sad bitterness. It was simply that he was... almost irritated.

  "As a matter of fact," said Jarji, "word got passed. That's all you have to know. I heard it and thought I'd tell you. That's all."

  "Well, I appreciate it of course," said Jef. "In fact thank you for all you've done for me—including getting Mikey and me out of that room we were locked in. But you mean you're going to take me to wherever this person is who's going to meet me? I don't understand. There's no reason for you to put yourself out for me like that."

  "Here on Everon, we call it neighborliness," said Jarji.

  "Nobody else I've met seems to be all that neighborly," Jef told her. "The Constable. The officer at Post Fifty—"

  Jarji snorted. There was no doubt about it being a snort this time.

  "Save your breath," she said. "We've got a ways to go."

  That more or less ended conversation for the next few hours.

  They tramped on in silence. Jef found his thoughts working their way back to his recent confrontation with Armage. He had not had the opportunity to ponder about it until now, but on this silent night walk, he at last had time to consider why he had wound up that meeting with a definite feeling of having come out of it better than the Constable, in spite of Armage appearing to have all of the advantage.