down into the blue eyes, he smiled. There was no immediate need now to
aim a gun. He laid both hands on her waist. “And I want you in my
reach.”
“Nicky,” she whispered, “you don’t know what you’re doing. Please,
please listen.”
“Later.” A sonic boom made pots jump on a shelf. In spite of the
dictatorship he had clamped down on himself, something leaped likewise
in Flandry. “Hoy, that’s my ticket home.”
He peered past the curtain. Yes, Giacobini-Zinner, dear needle-nosed
Jake, bulleting groundward, hovering, settling in a whirl of kicked-up
snow … Wait! Far off in the sky whence she’d come–
Flandry groaned. It looked like another spacecraft. Morioch or somebody
had played cautious and sent an escort.
Well, he’d reckoned with that possibility. A Comet had the legs over
most other types, if not all; and in an atmosphere, especially
Talwin’s–
The lock opened. The gangway extruded. A Merseian appeared, presumably a
physician since he carried the medikit he must have ferreted out on his
way here. He wasn’t wearing an electric coldsuit, only Navy issue winter
clothes. Suddenly it was comical beyond belief to see him stand there,
glancing puzzled around, with his tail in a special stocking. Flandry
had seldom worked harder than to hold back whoops and yell, in his best
unaided imitation of a Merseian voice: “Come here! On the double! Your
pilot too!”
“Pilot–”
“Hurry!”
The doctor called into the boat. Both Merseians descended and started
across the ground. Flandry stood bowstring-tense, squinting out the slit
between jamb and curtain, back to the captives he already had, out, in,
out, in. If somebody got suspicious or somebody shouted a warning before
the newcomers were in stunbeam range, he’d have to blast them dead and
attempt a dash for the vessel.
They entered. He sapped them.
Recovering the medikit, he waved his gun. “Let’s go, Ydwyr.” He
hesitated. “Djana, you can stay if you want.”
“No,” the girl answered, nigh too weakly to hear. “I’ll come.”
“Best not,” Ydwyr counseled. “The danger is considerable. We deal with a
desperate being.”
“Maybe I can help you,” Djana said.
“Your help would be to Merseia,” Ydwyr reproved her.
Flandry pounced. “That’s what you are to him, girl,” he exclaimed in
Anglic. “A tool for his damned planet.” In Eriau: “Move, you!”
The girl shook her head blindly. It wasn’t clear which of them she
meant. Forlorn, she trudged out behind the tall nonhuman figure, in
front of the man’s weapon.
High and distant, little more in the naked eye than a glint, the enemy
ship held her position. Magniscreens would reveal that three left the
house for the boat–but not their species, Flandry hoped. Just three
sent out to fetch something … The gangway clattered to boots.
“Aft,” Flandry directed. “Sorry,” he said when they were at the bunks,
and stunned Ydwyr. He used the cord to secure his captive and urged
Djana forward. Her lips, her whole slight body trembled.
“What will you do?” she pleaded.
“Try to escape,” Flandry said. “You mean there’s a different game
going?”
She sank into the seat beside his control chair. He buckled her in, more
as a precaution against impulsive behavior than against a failure of
interior grav, and assumed his own place. She stared blankly at him.
“You don’t understand,” she kept repeating. “He’s good, he’s wise,
you’re making such a terrible mistake, please don’t.”
“You want me brainscrubbed, then?”
“I don’t know, I don’t know. Let me alone!” Flandry forgot her while he
checked the indicators. Everything seemed in order, no deterioration, no
vandalism, no boobytraps. He brought the engine murmurous to life. The
gangway retracted, the airlock shut. Goodbye, Talwin. Goodbye,
existence? We’ll see. He tickled the console. The skill had not left his
fingers. Jake floated aloft. The village receded, the geysers, the
mountains, he was skyborne.
The outercom blinked and buzzed. Flandry ignored it till he was lined
out northward. The other spacecraft swung about and swooped after him.
Several kilometers off, she proved to be a corvette, no capital ship but
one that could eat a scoutboat for breakfast. Flandry accepted her call.
“Saniau to Terran vessel. Where are you bound and why?”