“Which leaves us only one answer—we’ll have to split up for now. You and Rolth take the outside route down and see what you can do in the general melee. Fylh and I shall hold the fort and try to make two think as four.”
Kartr could see the wisdom in that. As humans Rolth and he would have a better chance of getting co-operation from the rebels. At the same time the Bemmy scouts would be safe from ruthless shooting.
The climb down to the roof top across which Smitt had come was ridiculously easy. They paused there long enough to pull on their boots, and then snaked over it from shadow to shadow. When they reached the parapet Rolth looked over. Then he dropped back and put his lips close to Kartr’s ear.
“One floor below there is a ledge. It leads to a lighted window. The drop is sheer, I do not think that anyone who may be in that room would expect company to arrive through the window—”
“And how do you reach the ledge?”
“Our belts hooked together and passed around this—here—” The Faltharian put his hand on a tooth-shaped projection ornamenting the parapet.
If Kartr had an instant picture of what it meant to dangle so precariously over the edge of a sheer drop he did not betray himself.
“It is good that we are both tall.” Rolth buckled his belt to the one the sergeant reluctantly passed over. “A short man could not make it.”
The Faltharian slipped the loop in one end of his improvised rope over the projection and climbed over the parapet. Holding his body at an angle he half slid, half walked down the stone. Kartr huddled against the edge and forced himself to watch. Then Rolth stopped and the belt swung loosely in the sergeant’s fingers.
Not so skillfully as Rolth, Kartr made the same trip, keeping his eyes fast on the stone before him, trying not to think of the darkness below. He inched downward for an eternity and then Rolth’s hand pulled him straight and his boots touched the path of the ledge. He found that it was wider than it appeared from above, he could get all but a small scrap of heel onto it.
“Anyone in the room?” Rolth demanded as they crept toward the window.
Kartr sent out the probe. “Not in the room—near though—”
The Faltharian answered that with a ghost of laughter. “We’re almost as good as some of Fylh’s feathered friends. Here goes!” He caught at the window frame and pulled himself against it, jamming open the casement with his knee. It gave a faint squeak of protest and Rolth landed lightly on his feet within where Kartr joined him a second later.
They were in a chamber where someone was at home. A pile of bedding lay on a bunk bed which had been obviously torn out of ship’s fittings. Two expensive Valcunite luggage bags stood against the wall and a table, also ship use, was piled almost to the sagging point with personal belongings.
Rolth’s nostrils wrinkled. “What a stink!” he commented under his breath.
Kartr tried to remember where he had smelled that too-sweet cura blossom fragrance before.
“Fortus Kan!” When they had run against the secretary in the corridor that morning he had certainly carried cura lily with him.
And as if that identification had been either a summons or an entrance cue, the Vice-Sector Lord’s man was coming toward them now. Kartr had warning enough to plaster himself back against the wall by the door, and Rolth, seeing his move, did the same on the other side of the portal.
There was apprehension to be read in the mind of the man who was fumbling with the intricate ancient fastening. Fortus Kan was afraid. The fastening was defying him, too, so that exasperation began to drown out the fear. He lost command enough to kick the panel as it gave. With such a medley of emotions uncovered it would be easy for Kartr to—
The sergeant allowed him four steps into the room before he put the flat of his hand against the door and sent it shut again. Fortus Kan spun around—to face the small and deadly mouths of two Patrol blasters. And at the sight all his resistance crumbled at once.
“Please!” His hands went up to his working mouth. He retreated backward, without looking where he was going, until the cot caught him behind the knees and he plumped down upon it as if he were as boneless as a Lydian gelisar.
As Kartr walked toward him the little man cringed as if he wanted to burrow into the tangle of bedding.
“One would begin to think, Kartr, that this gentleman has a guilty conscience—”
Rolth’s words might have been the lash of a Tullan slaver’s whip the way Fortus Kan reacted. He stopped trying to pull himself under the covers and sat stone still, his mouth trembling, his eyes glassy with—Kartr recognized—pure fear.
“Please—” The secretary had to work to get that one word out, but it was a stopper which had held up the flood. “Please—I had nothing to do with it—nothing! I advised him not to antagonize the Patrol. I know the law— Why, I have a second cousin who is the clerk in your administration office on Sexti. I wouldn’t go against the Patrol—never. I had nothing, absolutely nothing to do with it!”
His fear was so rank that it was almost an odor in the room. But what was he afraid of—the planting of the force bomb, that trick with the Can-hound? There was only one way to get at the full truth. And for the second time in his life Kartr ruthlessly invaded a fellow human’s mind, breaking down the feeble block, exploring, learning what he wanted—in part. Fortus Kan whimpered, was quiet. He would be quiet for a while now. Kartr turned away. There was a lot to do. A pity that Cummi had not trusted the little man more, there were such big gaps in his information—gaps which might be fatal if the rangers were not careful.
The sergeant came back to Rolth. “There’s a force bomb under the tower stairs, all right. And the Can-hound is set to trick us out and blow it up. Everyone is being moved out of the top floors here before it goes off. Kan came back for some precious personal possessions. The stairs are under guard—”
“We could blast through—rather noisy though.”
“Yes. One thing I’m wondering about—why all these staircases when they had gravity wells, too. Odd—maybe important.”
“This was a state building,” Rolth reminded him. “Might use stairs for reasons of ceremony. Like those Opolti who fly everywhere except in the Affid’s quarter. No evidence of any other way down from here. What about the boys? If that Can-hound gets tired of waiting for them to come out he may just set the bomb off anyway and trust to luck to bag the game.”
“Yes—”
Kartr stood stiffly. He was blacking out, first the corridors, then this room, his awareness of Rolth, of Fortus Kan, of his own person. He did it! His mind touched Zinga’s! He gave the warning. Then he was back in the frowzy room, shaking his head dazedly, to see Rolth crouched by the door listening. Men—two—three of them were coming along the hall outside—straight for this room!
10 — BATTLE
A sharp rap on the door froze both rangers.
“Kan! We’re moving out now. Come along!”
But Fortus Kan was deep in a world of his own.
“Kan! You fool, come on!”
Kartr made mind contact. Out there was the young ship’s officer he had met early in the day, two others—human, non-sensitive. They were impatient, impatient because of fear. And the fear won out. After some garbled conversation, which came through the door only as a murmur, they went on. Rolth glided to the window and studied what lay below.
“I take it that we have to move fast?” he asked without turning around.
“They were afraid—too afraid to linger very long. What’s below?”
“Another roof outcrop, but so far down we couldn’t hope to make it without a climber’s sucker pads.”
“We have a substitute for sucker pads.” Kartr rolled Fortus Kan off the bed and set to work tearing its coverings into strips which Rolth caught up and knotted together. Working against time, but testing each knot, they produced a rough rope.
“You first,” ordered the sergeant. “Then this.” He touched Kan with the toe of his boot. “I’ll come last. Over now—time must be running out fast or they wouldn’t have been in such a hurry to clear out.”
Rolth was gone almost before he finished speaking. Kartr hung over the window sill to watch but the Faltharian was so quickly hidden in the dark that only the movements of the rope told when he stopped climbing down and signaled a safe landing. Kartr pulled the clumsy line back into the room, his palms wet against the torn cloth. There was a terrible urgency goading him. He tied the cloth loop under Kan’s arms and manhandled the secretary’s limp body over the sill, lowering it as slowly as he could until a sharp jerk told him Rolth was in charge. Kartr did not even wait until Kan was untied before he was descending hand over hand.