Yellow Castle, already furiously ablaze, was left to burn. Jim, after giving instructions as to how his lieutenants were to dispose of such small fry as might be left alive in the city proper, helped his sister load the Blaster’s weapons and armor into a ground car. They drove out into the middle of a great open field. The flitter landed; Cloud’s borrowed equipment was hauled aboard. Tommie and Jim followed it.
‘If you were really smart, I think you’d flit right now,’ Vesta said to Tommie. ‘Captain Cloud isn’t going to like this a little bit.’
‘I know it. I’m not smart. This was worth anything he cares to do about it. Besides, I want to thank him myself and tell him goodbye in person.’
The flitter took off and returned to her mother-ship. Tommie and Thlaskin put her away, then the peculiarly assorted six went up to the control room and faced the quietly seething Tellurian.
Not boldly—only Tommie and Nadine were really at ease. Jim was defiant. Thlaskin was nervous and apprehensive; Malu-leme was just plain scared. So was Vesta—her tail drooped to the floor; she seemed to have shrunk to four-fifths her normal size; her usual free-swinging, buoyant gait had changed almost to a slink.
Cloud stared at Nadine—chill, stern, aloof; an up-to-date Joan of Arc or a veritable destroying angel—nodded at her to synchronize with his mind. She did so, and her mind bore out everything implied by her attitude and expression. She was outraged to her innermost fiber by the conditions she had just
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helped to correct.
‘You were the prime operator in this thing,’ he thought, flatly. ‘With your knowledge of law and your supposed respect for it, how could you take it into your own hands? Become part of a law-breaking mob?”
‘It was necessary. Law in Mingia was shackled—completely inoperative. We freed it.”
‘By murder?’
‘It was not murder. The lives of all who were killed were already forfeit. The corrupt judges, officials, and police officers will be dealt with by Mingian law, now again operative. Of all your crew, only Tommie could by any chance have been taken or recognized. If our coup had failed, she and Jim would have been shot without trial. Since we succeeded, however, Tommie was not recognized, being in your armor, and Jim is now Mingia’s hero. He is also the new Commissioner of Police. Hence, aside from breaking local laws—which, as I have explained, do not count—we are guilty only of unauthorized use of Patrol equipment.”
‘Huh? How about interfering in planetary affairs, the worst in the book? And revealing Stage Ten stuff to a Stage Eight planet?”
‘You are wrong on both counts,’ Nadine informed him. ‘We were on shore leave—that fact is in the log. We volunteered, purely as individuals, for one day of service in the Underground. This procedure, while of course forbidden to armed personnel of the Patrol, is perfectly legal to its civilian employees. A special ruling would have to be made to cover this particular incident, and no ex post facto penalties could be imposed.’
‘That’s quibbling if I ever heard any, but you’re probably right—legally—at that. But how do you wiggle out of the “revealing” charge?’
‘In the specific meaning of the word, as denned by the highest courts, nothing was revealed. Weapons and armor were seen, of course; but they have been seen on Tominga before. Nothing new was learned; hence there was no revealment. And as for Jim’s leaving the ship against your orders, you had no right to issue such orders in the first place.’
Still seething, but on a considerably lower level, Cloud pondered. It wasn’t murder—nobody would or could call it that. ‘Extermination’ would be more like it—or ‘justifiable germicide’.
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She was probably right on the rest of it, too. Even though he was, by virtue of being the captain of the Vortex Blaster I, an officer of the Patrol—strictly speaking a commander, not a captain—there wasn’t a thing in the world he could do about it.
Nadine had been keeping Vesta posted; and the latter, recovering miraculously her wonted spirit and with tail again aloft, was passing the good news along to the others.
‘Don’t get too cocky, sister!’ Tommie advised her sharply. ‘Not yet, anyway.’
‘Huh?’ Vesta’s tail dropped to half-mast. ‘Why not?’
‘You just said she pleaded guilty for all of us to unauthorized use of Patrol equipment. For what we really did that’s certainly a featherweight plea—if I ever get into a real jam I certainly want her for my lawyer—but he can make it plenty tough for us if he wants to.’
‘I got a question to ask, boss,’ Thlaskin put in, before Cloud said anything. ‘You got a license to be sore as hell, no argument about that, but I ask you—are you sore mostly because we took the stuff or because we didn’t let you in on it? We couldn’t do that, boss, and you know why.’
Cloud did know why. The pilot had put his finger right on the sore spot, and the Blaster was honest enough to admit it.
‘That’s it, I guess.’ He grinned wryly.
Tommie, who had been whispering to Vesta, asked: ‘You got back here while we were still sucking juice, didn’t you?’
‘Yes, and as Nadine will undoubtedly point out if I don’t, that fact makes me an accomplice for not pulling the switches on you. So, already being an accessory during and after the fact, I may as well go the route. If any of us gets hauled up, we all do.’
‘No fear of that,’ Tommie assured him. ‘One thing Tomin-gans are good at is keeping their mouths shut. Maluleme and Vesta will spill everything they know, and brag about it sooner or later,’ The Vegian did not relish translating this passage, but she did so, and accurately, nevertheless, ‘but that won’t do any harm. It’s you that’s in the driver’s seat. You could’ve nailed us all to the cross if you liked, and I for one didn’t expect to get off easy. Thanks. I’ll remember this. So will everybody else who knows. You’re washing me out, of course?’
‘Not unless you want to stay here on Tominga. You’re a good engineer, and I can’t picture this as happening again, can you?’
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‘Hardly. I like this better than stationary work. Thanks again,, chief. My brother wants to thank you, too.’
After the sincerely grateful and appreciative Tomingan had gone, Cloud said:
‘Vesta and Maluleme—if Tommie was right about you two having to talk, make a note of this. Don’t do it as long as you’re members of this crew. If you do, I’ll fire you the second I find out about it. Now everybody—as far as I’m concerned none of this ever happened. We came here to blow out vortices and that’s all we did. We’ll go back to the hotel, get a few hours sleep and . . .’
The long-range communicator, silent for weeks, came suddenly to life in English.
‘Calling space-ship Vortex Blaster One, Commander Neal Cloud. Acknowledge, please. Calling space-ship Vortex Blaster One . . :
‘Space-ship Vortex Blaster One acknowledging.’ The detector-coupled projector had swung into exact alignment. ‘Commander Cloud speaking.’
‘Space-ship YB216P9, of First Continent, Tominga, relaying message from Philip Strong of Tellus. Will you accept message?”
‘Will accept message. Ready.’
‘Begin message. Report in person as soon as convenient. Answer expected. End message. Signed Philip Strong. Repeat, please. We will relay reply.’
Cloud repeated. Then: ‘Reply. To Philip Strong, Vortex Control Laboratory, Tellus. Begin message. Remess. Will leave Manarka fourteenth Sol for Tellus. End of message. Signed Neal Cloud. Repeat, please.”
That done, he turned to his crew. ‘Now we’ll have to go to work!’
With Vesta to translate, two days sufficed to rid Tominga of her loose atomic vortices; and no one so much as suspected that the Patrol ship or any of its crew had had anything to do with the upheaval in Mingia.
The trip to Manarka, a two-day flit, was uneventful. So was the extinguishment of Manarka’s vortices.
When the job was done, Nadine’s mind and Cloud’s met briefly. No direct reference was made to the unpleasantness on Tominga, nor to their somewhat variant ideas concerning it. Nadine wanted to stay on. She liked the job and she liked
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Cloud. He was somewhat impractical and visionary, a bit too idealistic in his outlook at times; but a strong and able man and a top-bracket commander, nevertheless.
And the Manarkan, in Cloud’s mind, was not only a top-bracket medico, but also a very handy hand to have around.
On the fourteenth of Sol, then, the good ship Vortex Blaster I took off for Tellus, with Cloud wondering more than a little as to what was in the wind. He wasn’t the type to be unduly perturbed about being called up on the carpet per se; but Phil didn’t go in for mystery much—he explained things … He couldn’t possibly know anything about that Mingian business so soon … and he was going to tell him all about it anyway …