Tar Aiym Krang

  He stuck his head into range of the pickups and yelled, "Know, 0 sand-eater, that I have sampled AAnn cuisine before, and that my gizzard has found it to be gritty to the palate. Those who dine upon rocks rapidly assume the disposition and mental capacity of the same"

  The AAnn bristled, the scales along its neck-ridge rising. "Listen, dirt-dweller, I'll inform you that ...!" He caught it in mid-curse and recomposed himself with an effort. Feigning a sigh where he no doubt would have preferred a threat, he said, l retain the courtesies while it is evident they have departed your ship. Captain. Have it your way. You cannot outrun us, you know. Now that we are within easy range, my detector operators will be most careful not to lose you. It will be only a. matter of time before we come within filial distance of you. At that moment T would hope that you would have reconsidered my really exceptionally polite and generous invitation, and will lower your field. Otherwise," he said grimly, lam very much afraid we shall be forced to open you up like a can of _zith_-paste.

  The screen abruptly went blank.

  In his cabin, Flinx lay down on his bed and began to strap into the emergency harness that was affixed permanently to its sides. He had Pip next to his left hand, curled around a bar On the side of the bed. He admonished it to be quiet. The snake, sensing that important things were happening, did as k was told with a minimum of fuss and bother.

  When he had finished and settled himself into the closest thing to a comfortable position he could manage in the awkward harness, he turned on the little screen which hung suspended from the roof of the cabin. It cleared instantly to reveal Malaika, Atha, and Wolf busy in Control. Un-willingly, he began to recall more familiar sights and smells. It embarrassed him, but at that moment he wished fervently he were back home in Drallar, juggling before an appreciative crowd and masking small boys laugh by telling them the names of their secret loves. What he could interpret of the mind_thoughts of the AAnn commander was not pleasant. The feeling passed abruptly as though a cool rag had been drawn across his mind and be settled himself grimly to wait.

  In the huge, exotically furnished cabin which formed her quarters, Sissiph lay alone on the big bed, curled in her harness. Her knees nearly touched her chest. She felt very alone. The order to don harness bad been delivered in a tough, no-nonsense tone that Maxy had never used with her before, and she was frightened. The luxurious accoutrements, the intricately carved furniture and sensuous cantilevered lighting, the king's ransom in clothing scattered about the room, all suddenly seemed as frivolous and flighty as the toys of a child. She had known, she had simply known, when she had chosen to try to replace that other little witch - what had been her name? - as Malaga's steady Lynx, that something terrible like this was going to happen. She had known it!

  Merchants were so damned unpredictable!

  She did not throw the switch which would lower the screen and put her in communication with Control and the rest of the ship. Let him survive without her for a while! Instead she buried herself as deeply as she could in the purr-silk pillows and promised herself that if she survived this awful, horrible journey into no place, she was going to find some nice hundred-and-fifty-year-old man ... on the verge of death. A senile, wealthy one, with whom she could look forward to a nice, quiet, comfortable, short, married life... and a long, wealthy widowhood.

  Bran Tse-Mallory was lying in his bed quietly reviewing the hundred and five maxims of the state of Indifferent Contentment, It was originally invented by a brilliant graduate student to help nervous students relax for examinations. It would do duty in other situations. The current one, for example. But no matter how hard he tried, he couldn't get past twenty-one. It kept repeating it self over and over in his mind every time he tried to concentrate on twenty-two.

  "Mankind must without a doubt be the most conceited race in the universe, for who else believes that .God has nothing better to do than sit around all day and help him out of tight spots?"

  It was an unworthy thought for one who supposedly had mellowed so over the years, but how, oh, how lie wished for the comforting grip of a gun - any kind of gun -under his fingers. They tightened and relaxed reflexively, making deep furrows in the softness of the blankets.

  The Eint Truzenzuzex was lying quietly on his modified lounge, legs fully extended, foothands and truehands crossed on his chest in the proper _Oo _position. He tried to keep one half of his mind focused on the ship viewer, while the other half droned through the ritual.

  "I, Tru, of the family Zen, clan zu, the Hive Zex, do hereforth pray that I shall not bring disgrace on my-our ancestors. I, Tru, of the family Zen, clan zu, the Hive Zex, do hereforth pray that in the coming Time of Trouble I may reflect credit on my first-mother, clan mother, and Hive mother. I, Tru, of the family Zen, clan ..."

  Atha Moon and the man called Woif thought otherwise. They were much too busy for anything else. And Maxim Malaika, the man who was responsible for them all, did likewise. Also, he was too scared to have time for trivialities like worry. Wolf broke into his nonthoughts.

  They've closed to within five mils, sir. At this rate they'll be within particle-beam range in five, ten minutes."

  "_Choovy_! And other unmentionables! Damn!" Atha looked back at him worriedly. "Couldn't we try to dodge them, Maxim? I mean, Captain?"

  _"La, hasha_, Atha. Mo way. Those are AAnn destroyers out there. They're built to chase down and slice up ships much faster than we are. The _Gloryhole_ is a rich man's whim, not a navy ship. But it is something of a speedster, Sharti. Of necessity. With any kind of distance between us at initial contact we might have slipped out of detector range and lost them, but they were on top of us before we even knew who they were. Anyway, there are two of them. One, _labda_, we might still slip, but never two. Not at this range."

  Atha thought. "Couldn't we just, well, surrender and take our chances? I mean, everything considered, that Baron didn't seem all that awful. Just impatient. And we aren't at war or anything with his people."

  "_Ndoto_. A dream. The AAnn don't operate that way, Atha." His lips were firmed, "tight. "At best they are... intolerant... with folk who co-operate with them. With those who don't... lf you're curious about details, ask Wolf. He was in an AAnn prison camp for five years, during the last real humanx-AAnn conflict. There may be others who survived that long in one of those hell-pits and lived to tell of it. If so, I haven't met him,"

  "The captain is right, Miss Moon. I would much rather throw myself into space to blow up like a deep-sea fish than be captured by those again." He nodded at the screen, where the white dots continued their inexorable approach. "Among their other affectations, they are very adept at the more refined forms of torture. Very. It is something of an art form with them, you see. Most of my scars don't show. They're up here, you see." He tapped the side of his head. If you wish some detailed descriptions ..."

  Atha shuddered. "Never mind."

  "This Riidi fellow seems fairly decent... for an AAnn, but to take the chance... If I could spare Wolf from plotting, or myself from the computer... _landunono_. No, wait" He leaned over the mike pickup. _"Ninyi nyote!_ Tse-Mallory, sociologist. And you, bug! Have either of you ever handled a spatial weapon before? Even In simulation?" In his cabin Tse-Mallory nearly broke a finger struggling with his harness. And Truzenzuzex broke off his ritual in a place and manner that would have earned him the condemnation of every member of his clan, had they known of it.

  "You mean you've got a _gun_ on this tub?" shouted Tse-Mallory. "What kind? Where? Speak up, mercantilist! Implosion weapons, particle guns, missile tubes, explosive projectiles, rocks... Tru and T will handle it!"

  "_Je_? I hope so. Listen to me. Behind your cabins, _naani_, storage compartment. There's a walkway, it opens into the cargo balloon. Then a pullway. Go to the end of the main pull way, you can't get lost. You'll find branches there. Be careful, there's no gravity in that part of the ship. Take the one that goes ninety degrees north of your horizontal. At the top you'll find a medium charge interstice lase
r, mounted on a universal belt encircling the ship, I'm powering it now." He paused momentarily while his hands did things below the range of the camera's pickup.

  "It is a single-person mounting. Sorry, philosoph. But you could help him with the computer. If he doesn't have to watch the imageouts and battlescreen at the same time..."

  The two men of peace were already on their way.

  Malaika uttered a silent prayer in the hopes that the two scientists wouldn't cut up the ship and turned back to his tables.

  "How are we doing, Wolf?"

  "They're still closing, sir. Not as rapidly now that we've picked up our own speed, but still closing. Yon want to go on maximum?"

  "No. No, not yet. That's strictly out last gasp, if we need it. Let them continue to think the _Glory's_ just another freighter for a while. First I want to see what our braincases can do with the popgun."

  The braincases in question were making their way along the pullway at breakneck speed. Fortunately, there was no drifting cargo to impede their progress. The great metal-fabric enclosure was almost completely empty. A few cases drifted lazily in their spiderweb enclosures, giving the pale green cavern and its ghostly atmosphere a tinge of perspective. The feeling was enhanced by the lighting, or lack of it. Since this area of the ship, although by far the largest, was rarely visited except upon arriving or departing a cargo stop, the lighting was kept to a minimum. Even so it would have been lost in the cargo compartments of one of the great "Soaring Sun" class freighters.

  They had no trouble locating the correct branchway at the end nexus of the main one. It was the only strand headed remotely in the required direction. Tse-Mallory launched himself upward and began to float up to the rope. He reached out and began to pull himself rapidly upward, hand over hand. Truzenzuzex, he knew, would be right behind him. With its four hands the insect could go faster than he, but there was no reason for him to pass Bran since ho couldn't operate the human-contoured gun nearly as well.

  They reached the gun housing, a sphere of thick metal like a blister in the skin of the ship. It had its own emergency power and air supply. Far off to both sides he could see where the mounting's powered belt encircled the skin of the vessel. Moving along that belt the gun could cover an approaching threat from any angle. He had only a second to wonder what it was doing on a private yacht before he was inside the shell and buckling himself into the gun seat, Truzenzuzex secured the hatch behind them, moving to the computer imageouts to Bran's left, A more modern weapon would have had both combined in a single helmet-set that would fit down over the gunner's bead. The insect began to cannibalize braces, locks, and belts from the emergency compartments, until he had built himself a reasonably solid harness opposite the 'puter.

  Bran wrapped his light hand around the pressure trigger with all the fondness of a proud father caressing his new-born. His left went into the battlescreen sensory pickup. He let go of the trigger for a moment, reluctantly, to tighten the nerve sensors around his spread left hand. He flexed it once to make sure the pickups didn't pinch and then returned the right to the trigger grip. Next began a careful examination of the screen and dial scopes. It was definitely an early model, but then laser weapons hadn't changed much in their basic design for several centuries, and probably wouldn't in several more. The base design was too cheap and efficient. He had no doubt that he could operate this one effectively on the first try. Come to that, he'd damn well have to! Their pursuers weren't likely to give them a practice shot.

  Under impulses from his left hand the battlescreen Ht. He was gratified to see that his combat reflexes, at least, were still operative. On the screens were two dots the size of his thumbnail. For a moment he almost panicked, thinking he was back on the old Twenty-Five. If an opposing ship had m amazed to approach this close in a war situation they'd have been vapourized by now. But then, this wasn't a war situation. At least not yet. He put that unpleasant line of thought out of his mind. Something for the diplomats to sharpen their tongues on. Obviously neither of the approaching ships had expectations of meeting even token resistance. It was simply a game of catch-up. They came on openly and without caution. Possibly, hopefully, they also had their screens down or at least underpowered.

  From his left Truzenzuzex began rattling off a. stream of figures and co-ordinates. One of the destroyers was slightly nearer than the other. The sloppy formation was the inevitable result of overconfidence on the enemy's part. Bran began lining up a centre shot. His finger hesitated over the trigger, and he spoke into the intership mike.

  "Look, Malaika. These people are here after something, and since we've only got one something worth risking an interstellar incident over, they're going to want us in One piece. I don't expect them to start any reckless shooting. They're coming in as if all they expect to have to do is net us like a clipped _Geech_ bird. I've played with the AAnn before. They're not overimaginative, but they think damn fast. That means one good shot and one only, and then we'd better run like hell. How close can you let them get while still giving us an outside chance to break their detection? Assuming they'll be sufficiently confused to let us."

  Maiaika. calculated rapidly in his head. "Um ... um ... _mara kwa mara_ ... that Rildi fellow will have to decide whether to blow us to atoms or make another try ... the latter, I don't doubt ...has to take us alive, or not at all... I can give you another two mils distance. La, one and a half, now."

  "Good enough," said Tse-Mallory, concentrating on the screen, ft would have to be, he thought. "We'll know it back here when the 'puter hits it." Malaika didn't reply. That will bring us down almost to ... to three," said Tnizenzuzex.

  I supposed. Let me know when we reach three point one."

  Time enough?"

  Tse-Mallory grinned. "0le bug-wug, me friend, my reflexes have slowed down through the years, but dead yet they ain't! It'll be enough. Up the universe!"

  "Up the universe!" came the even reply.

  In Control, Malaika turned to Wolf, his face thoughtful.

  "You heard?"

  The shadow-man nodded.

  "All right then. Start slowing down. Yes, slowing down! If he says he's going to get only one shot, he's probably going to get only one shot, and I want him to have as good a line as possible. So let's make it look nearly as we can as though we're giving up the chase."

  Obediently. Wolf began cutting their speed. Slowly, but the AAnn computers would notice it.

  "Three point seven ... three point six... Truzenzuzex's voice recited the figures with machine-like precision and clarity.

  Bran's body was steady, but he was trembling ever so slightly inside He was older.

  "Tru, uh, did you spot any HTP drugs in that emergency locker?"

  "Heightened TP? Three point five ... you know that stuff's almost as carefully watched as the SCCAM circuitry. Oh, there's some of the bastard stuff back there, the kind that's available on any black market. All that will do, my friend, to borrow a saying, is 'screw up you bod' ... three point four ...not to mention your reflexes... screw it down, more likely. Relax."

  "I know, I know!" His eyes never left the screen. "But, vertebrae. I wish I had some now!"

  "Obscenity is better ... three point three ... pretend you're back at the University working over old man Novy's thesis. That ought to generate enough anger for you to take those ships apart with your bare hands..."

  Bran smiled, and the tenseness left him. Back at the University old professor Movy had been one of their pet animosities.

  "... three point two ..."

  He could see the bastard's ugly face now. He wondered what had finally happened to the old boy after ... His finger tightened on the trigger.

  "... three poi ..."

  Already the pressure-stud was being depressed.

  In the nothingness of nowhere a lancet of emerald green brighter than a sun leaped from the _Gioryhole_ across a second of infinity. A milli-instant later it impinged on the drive fan of the nearest AAnn warship, which happened to be the _U
nn_. There was a soundless flash of impossible scintillating gold flame, like the waves of tortured hydrogen that march across the skin of stars. It was followed by an explosion of vapourized solids and an expanding, rapidly diffusing cloud of ionized gas.

  The battle screen showed one white dot and one tiny nebula.

  In the gun housing, Bran was frantically trying to reline the laser for a shot at the second ship, but he never got a real chance.

  At the instant of silent destruction, Malaika had permitted himself one violent cry of "_Oseee-yees_!"

  Then, "Wolf, Atha, get us _moving, watti_!" Atha slammed over connection and the _Gloryhole_ leaped forward at her maximum acceleration.

  On the still existing AAnn ship, the _Arr_, panic reigned only in those areas of the vessel where Baron Riidi WW's control was peripheral. Around him the crew only reflected fatal resignation. The one pleasant thought in all their minds was what they would do to the people on their quarry once the commander and the techs had extracted whatever it was they wanted from them. None glanced at the Baron's face for fear of meeting his eyes.

  The Baron's polished claws scraped idly at the scales on his left arm. There was a voice pickup set by the right one.

  "Enginemaster," he said calmly into the grid, "full power, please. Everything you can spare from the screens." He did not bother to inquire if they were now up.

  He turned back to the huge battlescreen which dominated the bridge. On it a white dot had shrunk rapidly but had not succeeded in disappearing completely. Now, it could not. Without taking Ills eyes from the screen he addressed the crew over the comm-system.

  "No one is to blame for the loss of the Unn. Not expecting interspace weaponry on a private craft of that type, only debris screens were up. That error has since been rectified. The enemy is faster than originally estimated. It apparently hoped to pass out of detector range in the confusion engendered by the loss of our sister-ship. This had not occurred. It will not occur. We are through playing polite. Bend your tails to it., gentlemen, we have a ship to catch! And when we have done I can promise you at least some interesting entertainment!" Inspired, the crew of the _Arr_ dipped to their tasks with a will.