Sjambak Part 10

"When it comes to fighting," said Murphy, "a sjambak can lick twenty men in s.p.a.ce-suits. A little nick doesn't hurt him, but a little nick bursts open a s.p.a.ce-suit, and the man inside comes apart."

"Well," said the Captain. "I imagine the Peace Office will send out a team to put things in order now."

Catlin asked, "What happened when you woke up from the chloroform?"

"Well, nothing very much. I felt this attachment on my chest, but didn't think much about it. Still kinda woozy. I was halfway through decompression. They keep a man there eight hours, drop pressure on him two pounds an hour, nice and slow so he don't get the bends."

"Was this the same place they took you, when you met Ali?"

"Yeah, that was their decompression chamber. They had to make a sjambak out of me; there wasn't anywhere else they could keep me. Well, pretty soon my head cleared, and I saw this apparatus stuck to my chest." He poked at the mechanism on the table. "I saw the oxygen tank, I saw the blood running through the plastic pipes--blue from me to that carburetor arrangement, red on the way back in--and I figured out the whole arrangement. Carbon dioxide still exhales up through your lungs, but the vein back to the left auricle is routed through the carburetor and supercharged with oxygen. A man doesn't need to breathe. The carburetor flushes his blood with oxygen, the decompression tank adjusts him to the lack of air-pressure. There's only one thing to look out for; that's not to touch anything with your naked flesh. If it's in the suns.h.i.+ne it's blazing hot; if it's in the shade it's cold enough to cut. Otherwise you're free as a bird."

"But--how did you get away?"

"I saw those little rocket-bikes, and began figuring. I couldn't go back to Singhalut; I'd be lynched on sight as a sjambak. I couldn't fly to another planet--the bikes don't carry enough fuel.

"I knew when the s.h.i.+p would be coming in, so I figured I'd fly up to meet it. I told the guard I was going outside a minute, and I got on one of the rocket-bikes. There was nothing much to it."

"Well," said Frayberg, "it's a great feature, Wilbur--a great film!

Maybe we can stretch it into two hours."

"There's one thing bothering me," said Catlin. "Who did the steward see up here the first time?"

Murphy shrugged. "It might have been somebody up here skylarking. A little too much oxygen and you start cutting all kinds of capers. Or it might have been someone who decided he had enough crusading.

"There's a sjambak in a cage, right in the middle of Singhalut. Prince Ali walks past; they look at each other eye to eye. Ali smiles a little and walks on. Suppose this sjambak tried to escape to the s.h.i.+p. He's taken aboard, turned over to the Sultan and the Sultan makes an example of him...."

"What'll the Sultan do to Ali?"

Murphy shook his head. "If I were Ali I'd disappear."

A loudspeaker turned on. "Attention all pa.s.sengers. We have just pa.s.sed through quarantine. Pa.s.sengers may now disembark. Important: no weapons or explosives allowed on Singhalut!"

"This is where I came in," said Murphy.

THE END