It was for an instant only that Blanchard regretted the way in which he had been forced into doing things for which a man could be enslaved and sent to the hells forever. Elston had been his scapegoat. And a good one, for Elston was dead. But even then Blanchard doubted that any blame would be attached to anyone now except the inevitable space pirates to which the System Police always assigned blame for those crimes which otherwise were never solved. And in ten minutes this corner of Spico would be subject to certain chain reactions caused by either guns or tubes.
He ran past Dart—or the charred thing which had been Dart—and, so vividly was Blanchard seeing everything, he noted that the Martian’s salametal tag was glittering brightly. Blanchard paused and tore off his own. There could as easily be two men in that ash pile as one. His identification tag clinked against Dart’s.
Starting up again he ran on toward the door of the Morgue gleaming palely golden in the starlight.
“Blanchard!”
Despite himself he whirled, missile weapon at ready. He froze. Halfway between the landing tower and himself a man came running.
“Blanchard!”
He knew that voice. He now saw the man. It was Ole Doc! His clothing was charred, his left arm was held up by a belt. But it was Ole Doc. And behind him swarmed a dark cloud of people.
With a hasty shot, Blanchard made his pursuer dodge. In an instant Blanchard had gained the port. Cursing, he brought it to and then raced into the control section. Somewhere a door clanged.
Throwing the gun down, Blanchard grabbed for the panel where the starting levers and throttles stood waiting. One set was marked “Chemical” for departure and landing on a port. The other set was marked “Atomic.” It was the second that he thrust full ahead to “start.” In about ten seconds there would be the beginning of the fission.
“Blanchard!”
About the ship the mob swung, many of them passing by the tubes.
Mayor Zoran yelled to some of the men to force the ports of the ship and two Centauri men launched their heavy bulks into the task. Somebody in the crowd yelled to keep clear of the tubes and there was an immediate swing to give them berth. Several pocket torches appeared and turned ship and field into blazing daylight. People gaped up at the golden ship or yelled encouragement to the two Centauri men who were still working at the spaceport. A little boy managed to climb up to the top of the vessel and with great initiative went to work with a slingshot handle prying up the emergency entrance hatch. People noticed him and howled encouragement at him. His father bellowed at him for a moment trying to get him to come down and then, realizing he had a hero on his hands, began to point and tell people it was his son. The boy vanished into the ship and there was an immediate scream from several women who had just realized that Blanchard might be in there, still alive, after killing Ole Doc.
At this the Centauri men renewed their efforts and bent several iron bars into pretzels working on the door. Suddenly it gave way, but not through their efforts. The little boy had opened it from inside, but when a horde would have bounded through it, the child barred their way with a shrill yell of protest. A moment later the effort withdrew hastily.
But it was not the boy who had turned them. Charred and battered and breathing hard after great exertion, Ole Doc filled the spaceport. He was holding a small blaster in his right hand and smoke idled up from its muzzle. He became conscious of it and thrust it into his holster.
The startled silence suddenly burst. From three thousand throats volleyed a spontaneous cheer, a cheer which beat in great waves against the ship, almost rocking it. The enthusiasm fled out from the field and smote against the surrounding hills to come back redoubled and meet the new, louder bursts which sprang up amid tossed hats.
Ole Doc was trying to say something, but each attempt was battered back and drowned in the tumult. Finally, when he had for the fifth time raised his hand for silence, they let him speak.
“I want to tell Mayor Zoran . . .”
There were new cheers for Mayor Zoran and he came forward.
“Tell your people,” said Ole Doc, “that their money is safe.”
There was bedlam in answer to this.
“You had better,” said Ole Doc when he could again speak, “drain your water systems, all the reservoirs. I . . . well . . . Just drain them and don’t drink any more water until you do.”
They cheered this, for they would have cheered anything.
When he could talk, Ole Doc called for Hippocrates. But no Hippocrates answered. People went off eagerly looking for the doctor’s slave but there was no instant result.
Finally Ole Doc thanked them and put the little boy outside and, despite many yells for reappearance, kept the spaceport firmly closed.
Still, there was much to talk about and the crowd, half hopeful that Ole Doc would come back, hung about the ship. Some space rangers found the ashes and the two identification tags and rumors began to fly around that it hadn’t been Blanchard who had gone into the ship. New waves of pessimism went through the crowd. If that was Blanchard there, in the ashes, then what had happened to the money? Maybe it had been burned with Blanchard. People began to drift back to the ship and scream for Ole Doc to come out again.
Several lost interest and recalling the doctor’s admonition to drain the reservoirs, followed the lead of a local common physician who sought some reflected glory and went off to do what they were told.
But those who remained were suddenly stricken in their tracks by the sound, peculiarly fiendish and high pitched, of a dynamo within the ship. They first mistook it for some wail of a savage beast and then identified it. Shortly afterwards lights began to arc in the midship ports and so brilliant was their flare that they sent green, yellow and red tongues licking across the field and lighted up the rows of attentive faces near at hand.
Other dynamos began to cut in and the golden ship vibrated from bow to tubes. There were some who held that she was about to take off and so went well back from her, but others, more intelligent, found in these weird manifestations no such message—nor any message at all—and so hung about in fascination.
It was the little boy, hero of the earlier episode, who again adventured. He climbed up to the emergency entrance hatch which was still open and started to climb down.
Within the instant he shot forth again, his face ghastly in the torches. He came stumbling down the hull ladder and collapsed at its foot. One hand on the last rung kept him from sinking to the ground and in this position he was ill.
Eager people crowded about him and lifted him up, volleying questions at him. But the child only screamed and beat at them to be let go. When he was finally released he sped nimbly past the crowd and sought sobbing comfort in his mother’s arms.
Rumors began to double, then. There were those in the crowd who held that some devil’s work was afoot inside that ship. Others hazarded the wild theory that it had not been the doctor at all who had come to the spaceport, but Blanchard in the doctor’s clothes. Others began to retell mysterious and awful things they had heard about the Soldiers of Light, doctors whom no one knew, who were too powerful to be under any government. Somebody began to say that the System Patrol cruisers should be informed, and shortly, an authoritative youth, a radioman on one of the spaceships in the other port, walked away to send the message, promising a patrol ship there before morning.
With this new stimulus reaching out, people of the town began to cluster back around the ship in great numbers and there were many ugly comments in the crowd. Finally Mayor Zoran himself was called upon for action and he was pressed to the fore where he rapped imperiously upon the spaceport of the Morgue.
The weird screaming dynamos whined on. The lights flashed and arced without interruption. An hour went by.
People remembered then something they had heard about Soldiers of Light, that it was enough to be banished for them to interfere with politics anywhere. This convinced them that something violent should be done to the man in that
ship and blasters began to appear here and there and a battering ram was brought up to force the door. Nobody would risk the emergency port.
The difference between the loud whinings within and the sudden silence was so sharp that the battering-ram crew hesitated. In the silence ears rang. Crickets could be heard chirping near the river. No one spoke.
With a slow moan, the spaceport opened from within. Bathed in the glare of half a hundred torches, a gray-haired, noble-visaged man stood there. He looked calmly down upon the crowd.
“My friends,” he said, “I am Alyn Elston.”
They gaped at him. A few came nearer and stared. The man appeared tired but the very image of the pictures on all the literature.
“I am here, my friends, to tell you that tomorrow morning you shall have all your money returned to you or shall be given work on certain projects I envision here—and will finance—as you yourselves may elect. I have the money with me. I need the records and I am sure morning will do wonderfully well. However, if any of you doubt and can show me your receipts I shall begin now . . .”
They knew him then. They knew him and their relief was so great after all their suspicions and worries that the cheers they sent forth reached twice as far as those they had given Ole Doc. The rolling thunderbolts of sound made the ship and town shiver. Men began to join hands and dance in crazy circles. Hats went skyward. They cheered and cheered until there was nothing to their voices but harsh croaks. And this called for wetness and so they flooded into the town. They carried Elston on their shoulders and hundreds fought with one another to clasp his hand and promise him devotion forever.
In a very short while they would let him speak again.
And he would speak and they would speak and the available supply of liquor would drop very low indeed in Junction City.
Back aboard the Morgue, had they not been so loud, they would have heard a strange series of thumps and rattles which betokened the disposal in the garbage disintegrator of certain superfluous mass which had been, at the last, in the doctor’s road.
And now quietly, palely, the real and only hero of the affair, utterly forgotten, worked feebly on himself, trying to take away the burn scars and the weariness. He gave it up. His heart was too ill with worry. He stumbled tiredly toward his cabin where he hoped to get new clothes. Near the spaceport he stopped, struck numb.
Hippocrates was standing there and in the little being’s four arms lay cradled a burden which was very precious to Ole Doc. Alicia Elston’s bare throat stretched out whitely, her lips were partly opened, her bright hair fell in a long, dripping waterfall. About Hippocrates’ feet spread drops of water.
Ole Doc’s alarm received a welcome check.
“She is well,” said Hippocrates. “When I walked along the riverbank I found three men taking her from a chest. I killed two but the third threw her in the river. I killed the third and threw them in but walked for many minutes on the river bottom before I found her. I ran with her to the nearest spaceship and there we gave her the pulmotor and oxygen. I made her lie warmly in blankets until she slept and then I brought her here. What was this crowd, master? What was all the cheering?”
“How did you come to find her?” cried Ole Doc, hastily guiding his slave into a cabin where Alicia could be laid in a bed and covered again.
“I . . . I was sad. I walked along the river. I see better at night and so saw them.” But this, obviously, was not what interested Hippocrates. He saw no reason to dwell upon the small radar tube he had put in her pocket so that he would not have to go over two square miles of Junction City at some future date when Ole Doc wanted a message sent to her. There were many things he did which he saw no reason to discuss with an important mind like Ole Doc’s.
Disregarding the joy and relief and thankfulness which was flooding from his master, Hippocrates stood sturdily in the cabin door until Ole Doc started to leave.
“I don’t know how I can ever . . .”
Hippocrates interrupted his thanks.
“You have Miss Elston, master. The spaceways are wide. We can go far. By tomorrow morning it will be known that a Soldier of Light has entered social relations and politics. By tomorrow night the System Patrols will be looking for us. By the next day your Society will have banished us or called us to a hearing to banish us. It is little time. We have provisions to leave this galaxy. Somewhere, maybe Andromeda, we can find outlaws and join them. . . .”
Ole Doc looked severely at him.
Hippocrates stepped humbly aside. He cast a glance at the woman he had saved and at his master. He saw that things would be different now.
Chapter Six
It was a bright morning. Dawn came and bathed the Morgue until every golden plate of her gleamed iridescently. The grass of the field sparkled with dew and a host of birds swooped and played noisily in the rose and azure sky.
Junction City stirred groggily. It scrubbed its eyes, tried to hide from the light, scrubbed again and with aching heads and thick tongues arose.
No comments were made on the revel. The Comet Saloon was shut tightly. Blanchard’s house swung its doors idly in the wind. But no one commented. Everyone stumbled about and said nothing to anyone about anything.
So passed the first few hours of morning. People began to take an interest in existence when a System Patrol cruiser swung in and with a chemical rocket blast settled in the main spaceport.
Hippocrates, sweeping the steps of the port ladder, looked worriedly at the newcomer and then threw down his broom. He rolled into the main salon where he knew Ole Doc was.
Opening his mouth to speak three successive times, Hippocrates still did not. Ole Doc was sitting in an attitude of thought from which no mere worldly noise ever roused him. Presently he rose and paced about the table. He paid no heed whatever to Hippocrates.
Finally the small being broke through all codes. “Master, they are coming! We still have time. We still have time! I do not want you to be taken!”
But he might as well have addressed the clouds which drifted smoothly overhead. With long paces the doctor was walking out a problem. His appearance was much improved over last night, for all burns had vanished the night before and the arm was scatheless. However, it lacked days until treatment time and the rule never varied. Ole Doc looked a little gray, a little worn, and there were lines about his mouth and in the corners of his eyes.
Once he walked to a cabinet where he kept papers and threw back a plast-leaf and looked at a certificate there. He stood for a long time thus and finally broke off to stand in the doorway of Alicia’s cabin where the girl still slept, lovely, vital and young.
Hippocrates tried to speak again. “We can take her and the ship still has time. They have not yet come into the town to get reports . . .”
Ole Doc stood looking sadly at the girl. His slave went back to the spaceport and stared at the town.
A little wind rippled the tops of the grass. The silverplated river flowed smoothly on. But Hippocrates saw no beauty in this day. His sharp attention was only for the group of System officers who went into the town, stayed a space and then came out towards the ship, followed by several idlers and two dogs and a small boy.
Rushing back to the salon, Hippocrates started to speak. His entrance was abrupt and startled Alicia, who now, dressed and twice as lovely as before, stood beside Ole Doc at the file cabinet.
“Master!” pleaded Hippocrates.
But Ole Doc had no ears for his slave. He saw only Alicia. And Alicia had but scant attention for Hippocrates; she was entirely absorbed in what Ole Doc had been saying. It seemed to the little slave that there was a kind of horror about her expression as she looked at the doctor.
Then Ole Doc opened up the plast-leaf and showed her something there. She looked. She turned white and trembled. Her gaze on Ole Doc was that of a hypnotized but terrified bird. With an unconscious movement she drew back her skirt from him and then steadied herself against the table.
“And so, my dear,” said
Ole Doc, “now you know. Pardon me for what I proposed, for misleading you.”
She drew farther back and began to stammer something about undying gratitude and her father’s thanks and her own hopes for his future and many other things that all tumbled together into an urgent request to get away.
Ole Doc smiled sadly. He bowed to her and his golden silk shirt rustled against his jeweled belt. “Goodbye, my dear.”
Hastily, hurriedly, she said goodbye and then, hand to throat, ran past the slave and down the ladder and across the spaceport to the town.
Hippocrates watched her go, looked at her as she skirted the oncoming officers and started toward a crowd in the square which seemed to be listening to an address by her father. The cheers were faint only by distance. Hippocrates scratched his antennae thoughtfully for a moment and then turned all attention to the approaching officers. He bristled and cast a glance at the blaster rack.
“Hello up there!” said a smooth, elegant young man in the scarlet uniform of the System Patrol.
“Nobody here!” stated Hippocrates.
“Be quiet,” said Ole Doc behind him. “Come aboard, gentlemen.”
The idlers and the small boy and the dogs stayed out, held by Hippocrates’ glare. The salon was shortly full of scarlet.
“Sir,” said the officer languidly, “we have audacity, I know, in coming here. But as you are senior to anyone else . . . well, could you tell us anything about a strange call from this locale? We hate to trouble you. But we heard a call and we came. We had no details. Five people, fellow named Blanchard and his friends, ran away into the country or someplace. But no riot. Could you possibly inform us of anything, sir?”
Ole Doc smiled. “I hear there was a riot among the five,” he said. “But I have no details. Just rumor.”
“Somebody is jolly well pulling somebody’s toe,” said the languid young man. “Dull. Five men vanishing is nothing to contact us about. But a riot, now.” He sighed at the prospect and then slumped in boredom. “No radioman aboard any ship here sent such a message, they say, and yet we have three monitors who heard it. Hoax, what?”