The Golden Age Of Science Fiction Vol X Part 67

"They proceed toward a planet on the near side of this galaxy called Earth," the second officer said. "Their mission is to replenish their supply of breeders."

"You are certain of that?"

"I admit it is peculiar, for the breeders they seek are women of that planet."

"Women?"

"Yes. However, the Earthmens' minds indicated a strong tendency to refuse cooperation."

"I see. Do you think our probe was detected?"

"No. I withdrew it immediately when the Earthmen were taken aboard the Ihelian destroyer."

There was a long moment of silence. The commander's eyes stayed unwaveringly on the control sphere mounted in gimbals before her. They remained concentrated on it when she spoke again.

"Women, you say. Hardly conceivable, Daleb, unless--unless it was not simply a penal planetoid which we destroyed!"

"A startling thought, Lady!"

"Yes. And the Earthmen, you say, did not have cooperative thoughts?"

"That is correct. They are not taking the Ihelian craft to their planet of their own volition."

"That is difficult to understand, Daleb, for the Ihelians are like ourselves in at least one respect. They are not aggressors. And if they are refused their strange request, they will leave the planet Earth peacefully. But if they are not refused it, perhaps the Earthman's superiors will cooperate, Daleb! In which case--"

"Whatever their mission, it is our duty to prevent its success, Lady. But to do this without violating the Book, without infecting a foreign area of the galaxy with our conflict?"

"I think there is a way," the commander said. She twisted the sphere slightly, and again the two tiny pips it held were caught squarely at the intersection of the curving light traceries within it. "There is a way," she said. "Give me a complete description of the clothing these Earthmen wore, Daleb...."

A tapering, streamlined shape slid shadow-like across the face of an undulating globular cl.u.s.ter, and then was swallowed quickly in the strange gray void of hyper-s.p.a.ce.

Mason and Judith waited outside the towering New United Nations building in Greater San Francisco, their chauffeured government helio parked on a sky-ramp adjacent to the three hundredth floor.

They waited for Kriijorl; they had been a.s.signed, as Earthmen best acquainted with the alien, as his official hosts during his stay on their planet. Mason had protested, but Judith had kept the protests from reaching the wrong ears.

"You won't make any mistakes. You're home, now!" she had whispered. "After all, he's only human!"

It had been the first time Mason had heard a hint of levity in her voice, and he had liked it, and decided to take the a.s.signment gracefully. And, the orders said, Sergeant Judith Kent went with the a.s.signment. Without Cain!

He hardly felt nervous at all as they waited for the Ihelian to leave the General Council chamber.

"Wonder how he made out?" he said idly, offering the girl a self-lighting cigarette. "Been in there for hours...."

"We'll know soon enough," she said. "But I--I personally can't conceive of it, sir. Of course, the New-UN is very practiced in dealing with all kinds of cultures. Remember the time they had with those awful five-legged things from Canis Major? Wanted to trade all the tritium we'd need to blow up a planet just for trees; because they wors.h.i.+pped trees! Any and all kinds of trees...."

Mason smiled. He was good looking when he smiled and the s.p.a.ce-tension was gone from his slate colored eyes. "I remember. But it looks as though they're going to have the toughest time with somebody just like us--two legs, two arms, oxygen-breathing.... Women, the man said. Just what the devil does he expect us to do? Draft 'em? Have an international lot drawing?"

She smoked quietly, and her gray eyes were thoughtful. "A matter of view-point, sir," she said finally. "As it always is. To them, females are for breeding only, to keep their war machine well stocked. From what Kriijorl said, they do not understand love as we do. There's simply one purpose...."

"Well, that's why I think the whole thing is--well, as you say, inconceivable from our point of view. Our culture, our women just aren't conditioned for such an existence."

"Think back two centuries, sir."

"You don't have to keep calling me 'sir' like that!" Mason said, feeling a sudden warmth at the back of his neck as he said it. And then, "Two centuries back. Yes. After every war, Earth's birth rate would go crazy. Mother Nature ruled the roost in those days, didn't she? Supply and demand, cause and effect. It's a wonder Man ever got anywhere."

"More wonder some men do--"

Mason looked up. But Judith's face was, as usual, quite calm and detached. "You say something?"

"I said I'd like to have you get Kriijorl to demonstrate that teleprobe thing of his for us, if you can, s---- Lance. How did he say it worked?"

"I still don't get it completely. A peculiar mixture of radio and the electroencephalograph, I think. He said it replaced radio on Ihelos and Thrayx centuries ago. You can communicate to a group or an individual with it in language, or in basic thought pictures. That's what they use it mostly for, of course, and as such, it's termed a mentacom. But he told me that it can also be used as it was on us as a teleprobe when the subject isn't screened. They use a specially tuned carrier wave of some sort, he said, that impinges on a thought wave pattern, but instead of registering the pattern's electronic impulse equivalents as does the electroencephalograph, it 'reflects' them. Like a basic radar system. And the receiver, it's a tiny thing, breaks the reflected pattern down into values equivalent to those in which the 'listener' thinks; amplifies, and that's it! Mind reading made easy, I guess."

Judith squirmed a little uneasily. "I'm glad they're not natural telepaths, anyway," she answered. "And even with a gimmick like that--"

And then the conversation was lost as Kriijorl, flanked by two New-UN guides, strode from the building. The stiff breeze at three hundred stories of what had once been called n.o.b Hill flicked his scarlet short-cape behind him and rippled the broad front of his black and silver tunic.

He climbed into the helio with a smiled greeting, seated himself to Judith's right as he knew Earth custom demanded, and the craft was lifting slowly over the central area of the ancient city before Mason spoke.

"Well, how did they treat you in there, sir?"

"Not as well as I had hoped," Kriijorl answered. "Your President-General spoke with me privately after the World Delegates Council met to question me, and he held out extremely little hope. However, the issue is to be debated. I think perhaps more out of diplomatic courtesy than actual consideration. I am to be informed of the official decision tomorrow...."

"There were scientists present, of course?"

"Yes; you have brilliant men on Earth, Lieutenant. They are good thinkers. I am certain they were interested in me for more than the sole fact that I am an alien of a race so precisely a replica of your own. But it is again the old factor, cultural difference. Your entire world simply regards women differently than we. I imagine my request, to persons less learned than those with whom I spoke, would be quite shocking anywhere on the planet."

"Perhaps," Judith murmured. "Yet somehow I wonder. Somehow I wonder how much two hundred years has really changed us. Our history in such things is not pleasant, Kriijorl. Many of our women once gave their bodies for money. Shock us? I'm not sure you really could. For your breeders simply give their bodies to produce the flesh for war. And there was a time when we did that, too."

There was silence between them for a while, and then Lance began directing the Ihelian's attention to points of interest as the air phase of the diplomatic tour got under way.

The blue-green beauty of the Pacific stretched lazily below them from the colorful California sh.o.r.e line to the west. Surrounding air traffic was light, and the tour proceeded smoothly eastward; over the Great Divide, and then swung north. Kriijorl seemed impressed and grateful for the momentary respite.

It was near the end of the tour's air phase that Mason remembered Judith's request, and Kriijorl obliged with an amused smile, producing a personal mentacom for Judith to examine.

"And the receiver simply fits about the head like earphones?"

"Like this," Kriijorl said. They were nearing Denver, and air traffic at their level had picked up, and the helio was proceeding more slowly so that Kriijorl's demonstration caused him to miss little of the tour.

He fitted the compact headpiece to his ears and flicked a small switch. It was suddenly bathed in a warm orange glow. "This way, the device functions as a limited range mentacom," he began. And then he flicked the switch again. "And now, as a teleprobe, you see, I could tell you, Lady Judith, just what--"

She flushed furiously, but Kriijorl had suddenly stopped speaking. His face had blanched, and a look of bewildered fury was suddenly in his eyes.

"Lieutenant! That air bus! There!" He pointed to a thick egg shaped vehicle speeding to the north. "Tell your chauffeur to pursue it at once! It carries a full pa.s.senger-load of Earthwomen!"

For a moment Mason thought the Ihelian was attempting some strange joke. But a look at the man's face told him that here was no joke; that here was something he was failing to understand.

"Earthwomen? Sure--"

"Plus two other beings, Lieutenant. Two others using Thrayxite probe screens!"

On Mason's order the government chauffeur swiftly heeled the helio about. "Those buses can make nearly a full Mach when they're wide open like that one," he told Kriijorl. "We can't overtake them, but maybe we can keep up. I'll have the chauffeur try for radio contact--"

"No, no! They'll be alert for any signs of awareness of their presence! Wait--" The Ihelian made a third adjustment on the mentacom, and it emitted a slight humming sound, and the orange glow vanished. "This will screen us for a short period, at least," he said. "And if we've not been already detected, perhaps we'll be able to follow. If you'll continue to help me, Lieutenant--"

"Looks as though they've got some of ours, doesn't it?" Mason said evenly. There was a strange heat in his veins now, and with the Ihelian, his nervousness was somehow evaporated. "But how the devil--"

"They are clever, Lieutenant. We were somehow followed here even as we at first followed you in your Scout s.h.i.+p. We may have been probed before you were taken aboard our screened destroyer."

"But you said nothing about destroying their breeders," Judith said above the throbbing roar of the helio's fast accelerating jets. "Why would they want--" and she let the sentence die as comprehension snapped in her gray eyes. Her dark, slender eyebrows arched nearly together as she pushed the thought further.

The borderlands of Canada sped beneath them, and then there was pine forest, but the helio kept the fleeing bus in sight even as the shadows of a dying day crept inexorably from the east to engulf them. And then, abruptly, the bus had started down.

"They're hanging a neat frame on you, sir," Mason said. "Making certain you don't get the women you ask. By kidnaping some, they plan sure as h.e.l.l to make it look as though Ihelian desperation is responsible. And bingo, your side's in the dog house in nothing flat. No deal!"

"They're d.a.m.nably cunning," Kriijorl said. "It will not be the first time they have come near making utter fools of us. I can't understand that."

"But how would they have gotten those women?" Judith asked. The helio was slanting downward, and was now less than five miles distant from the fast vanis.h.i.+ng bus. It began to skim the tree tops of a great tract of spruce, its chauffeur awaiting Mason's signal to drop quickly out of their quarry's line of sight.

"Video ads, of course," Mason answered quickly, straining his tensed eyes to estimate distance in the fast gathering darkness. "Some big deal. s.p.a.celiner hostess at twice the going rate of payment. Anything like that...."

The bus finally vanished less than a half-mile ahead of Mason's helio, and there was a dark vertical shadow jutting just above the tree tops. He knew it was one of their shuttle boats, and from its apparent size would easily hold all the bus would be able to carry--perhaps a full three hundred. He gave orders quickly to the chauffeur, and then the helio was hovering inches above the tree tops, and he tossed a plastiweave ladder over the side.

"Don't use the radio," he snapped to Judith. "Just get back to New-UN headquarters. Inform them any way possible of what's going on, and then flash the air patrol and tell 'em to come gunning!"

He didn't give her a chance to argue. He simply swung over the helio's side, Kriijorl after him, and within moments they were on the ground, and running with what silence they could through the darkness toward the towering Thrayxite s.h.i.+p a quarter-mile distant.

"Their action is incomprehensible to me," the Ihelian grunted between gulps of air. "It violates the most basic tenets of the ancient Book of the Saints, sacred to us both--"

"Better save your breath for running," Mason told him, and they sprinted across the soft pine needle forest floor, s.h.i.+elding their eyes from treacherous, low hanging boughs, dodging the trees themselves as best they could in the moonlit darkness.

And they burst upon the clearing in which the Thrayxite s.h.i.+p had landed almost before realizing it.

Mason caught a glimpse of Earthwomen, being led as though drugged into the yawning flank of the silent vessel.

There was a sudden movement in the darkness to his left, and he heard the start of an outcry on the Ihelian's lips. But it was all he heard or saw. There was a quick knifing pain in his skull, and he crumpled to the ground.

III.

"You may wait in here, sergeant," the New-UN orderly said. She was ushered into a small, comfortably appointed chamber adjoining the main conference hall, and the perfectly controlled coolness of her bearing was at its peak. To the casual glance of the orderly, perhaps, it flawlessly masked the vital convictions which had long seethed within her and made her the little known woman she was. The studied mask itself had made her the efficient s.p.a.ce officer she was. And at the moment she was glad for it, because it also concealed the anxious uncertainty that twisted coldly inside her.

She was to wait, the Council had informed her. Wait, while the information she had given them was a.n.a.lyzed, digested. As though, perhaps, what she had said was part of some insidious plot; as though it were too fantastic to be the truth.

They had not even immediately authorized the dispatch of a patrol cruiser to the spot where she'd left Lance and Kriijorl over two hours ago, and by now--?

She tried not to think or what the Earthman and the Ihelian might be facing, alone and in the darkness. Nor of the conclusions to which the Council, called into emergency session by the President General himself when her information had been rapidly relayed through the correct channels to him, might arrive.

She could only wait.

And her waiting was terminated with an abrupt suddenness that made the twisting cold thing inside her a churning confusion. It had been only minutes, hardly minutes.

Only one of them came into the small room where she sat. She rose quickly to attention. It was an aide to the President General himself; a brevet-Colonel wearing the uniform of the World Police.

"Sergeant Kent," he said, "it is the Council's decision that you be placed under temporary arrest. Your case will be heard at the next sitting of the martial court to which your unit is a.s.signed. If you will accompany me, please...."

"May I ask, sir, what the charge against me is?" Her voice was steady by cultivated habit.

"You are to be held on suspicion of acting as accessory before and after the fact of conspiring to a.s.sist an alien power in the achievement of its objective within the governmental jurisdiction of Earth without official permission of the New United Nations."

"But the Ihelians have not done that, sir!" she protested. "It is a plot of their enemy, as I explained to the Council--"

"You will be given full benefit of due legal process, sergeant," the officer said. "You will come with me, please."

The Women's Detainment Barrack was not unpleasant, yet, Judith thought, it may as well have been a medieval dungeon. But her own problem, she knew, was nothing beside the cunning success of the Thrayxites.

The call-buzzer at the side of her bunk interrupted her thoughts; it meant she was wanted in the main guard room. She straightened her uniform quickly, and within moments presented herself before the barrack warden.

Roger Cain stood beside the warden's desk. There was something white in his hand, and she knew what it was.

"You're at liberty, Sergeant Kent," the beefy-faced warden informed her in a tone as casual as though she'd asked her for a cigarette. "Warrant Officer Cain has posted a release voucher; you're ordered into his custody until your trial. That's all. You may go."

She left the barrack with Cain, wordlessly. None of it made sense. Unless-- "Well, don't I even get a thank you?" the red-haired giant asked.

"Yes, Mister Cain, sorry. But I don't understand--"

"Why I did it?" He chuckled, and she didn't like the sound of it. "I'm only too glad to have you in my custody, young woman! And, you know, you're not supposed to be out of my sight any--that is, any of the time!"

She felt her face redden, and spun about to face him. There was sudden anger at her lips and her coolness had evaporated.

"You contempti--"

"Easy there, sergeant! Always knew there was a little more to you than that ice cube exterior of yours! But tell me--d'you want to sit back there in that dump, or shall we stick our noses into the lovely mixup your precious Lieutenant Mason has set off?"

She stared up at him wordlessly, the blood hot in her cheeks. And she tried to think. This was Cain as she knew he was. This was Roger Cain, angling for a deal.

"I'm in your custody," she bit out. "I must stay within your sight. That is your responsibility."

He laughed at her, then gripped her elbow.

"Come on," he said. "I've got a R-IX waiting at the field. I think we should go on a little trip, sergeant. There are people I want to see!"

They were streaming for open s.p.a.ce within less than thirty minutes from the time Cain had freed her. She didn't ask him how he'd gotten permission for the fleet R-IX's use, or how he'd obtained her voucher, nor did she ask him how he had learned of what had happened to Lance and Kriijorl, yet she knew that somehow he was aware of the Thrayxites and their plot. Cain had ways of learning the things he wanted to learn, getting the things he wanted to get.