“Thirty seconds?” He almost smiled. “Why not?”
“This other survivor—he’s armed and dangerous! He’s the one who tried to destroy your station—”
She hesitated and swallowed, realizing for the first time how preposterous her story would sound. “He’s not a human being,” she said flatly, almost sullenly.
The man’s eyes might have become a trifle more wary, but he only nodded. And suddenly something seemed to break in Lane. She heard herself babbling it out—how Frome was a small human colony on a franchised world; how they had gone out there in a group from the Hub Systems a year before. That the Nachief, Bruce Sinclair Frome, had organized the emigration, the trip, everything. She’d been his secretary—
The station man kept on nodding and listening, noncommittally.
“I found out a few days ago that he’s a man-eater! A blood-drinker—like a vampire—that was why he had set up the colony of Frome. He had eight hundred people under hypnotic control, and he was using ultrasonic signals to keep the controls in force. He’s got instruments for that!” Lane said, her voice going shrill suddenly. “And he’s been living on our blood all along, and nobody knew, and—”
“Take it easy!” It was a crisp though level-toned interruption, and it checked her effectively. She was sweating and shivering.
“You don’t believe me, of course. He’ll—”
“I might believe you,” the man said amazingly. “You think he’s after you now?”
“Of course, he’s after me! He’ll want to keep me from telling anyone. He brought us out here to kill us, the three who knew. The other two crashed in the bubble . . .”
He studied her another moment and motioned toward the gravity rider. “Better get in there.”
The brown animal he’d called Sally slipped into the back of the rider ahead of Lane. It had a pungent, catty odor—the smell of a wild thing. The man came in last, and the rider rose from the ground. Seconds later, it was tracing a swift, erratic course at a twenty-foot height among the trees, soundless as a shadow.
“We’re retreating a bit until we get this straightened out,” the station man explained. “My name’s Frazer. Yours?”
“Lane. Lane Rawlings.”
“Well, Lane, we’ve a problem here. You see, I’m manning the station alone at present—unless you count Sally. There’s a mining outfit five space-days away; they’re the closest I know of. But they’re not too cooperative. They might send an armed party over if I gave them an urgent enough call; and they might not. Five days is too long to wait anyway. We’ll have to handle this ourselves.”
“Oh, no!” she cried, stunned. “He—you don’t realize how dangerous he is!”
“There’ll be less risk,” Frazer continued bluntly, “in going after him now, before he gets his bearings, so to speak, than to wait till he comes after us. We’re on an island here, and it’s not even a very big island. If he’s—well, a sort of ogre, as you describe him—he’ll find precious little to live on. The Bureau cleaned the animal life off the island quite a while ago. We’re using it as an experimental ranch.”
“Why can’t we lock ourselves up in the station?” Fear was pounding in her again, a quick, hot tide.
Frazer brought the rider around in a slowing turn, halting it in mid-air.
“There’s some sixty years of experimental work involved,” he explained patiently. “And some of our cultures, some of the stuff we’re growing here, becomes impossibly dangerous if it’s not constantly controlled. The Bureau could get out a relief crew within two weeks, but we’d be obliged to raze the island from one end to the other by that time. That’s getting rid of your Nachief of Frome the hard way.”
Lane realized in abrupt dismay that she wouldn’t be able to shake this man’s hard self-confidence. And recalling suddenly the speed and effectiveness with which he had countered the Nachief’s space-attack, she admitted that he might have some justification for it.
“He’s got a long-range hunting gun,” she warned shakily. “I suppose you know what you’re doing—”
“Sure I know.” Frazer smiled down at her. “Now, I’ll drop you off at the station; and then Sally and I will go after your friend—”
“No!” she interrupted, terrified again at the prospect of being trapped alone on an island with the Nachief of Frome if Frazer failed. “I’ll go with you. I can help.”
Frazer seemed surprised but pleased. “You could be a help at that,” he admitted. “Particularly since you know all his little ways. And we’ve got the rider—that should give us about the advantage we need . . .”
* * *
“What makes you so sure,” Lane inquired a while later, “that he’ll come to the bubble? He may suspect it’s being watched.”
They sat side by side hidden by shrubbery, a half mile from the wreck of the escape bubble, on somewhat higher ground. The gravity rider stood among bushes thirty feet behind them. A few hundred yards behind that was a great, rugged cliff face, bare of vegetation. It curved away to their left until, in the hazy distance, it dipped toward the sea.
“I imagine he does suspect it,” Frazer conceded. “If he’s anywhere around, he may even have seen us touch ground here.” They had lifted high into the air to scan the area but had made sure of only one thing: that the Nachief of Frome was no longer where Lane had left him. On the other hand, there were a great many places where he could be by now. This part of the island was haphazardly forested. Thickets of trees alternated with stretches of rocky soil which seemed to support only a straw-colored reed. Zigzagging dense lines of hedgelike growths, almost black, seemed to follow concealed watercourses. Except for the towering cliff front, it was a place without distinguishing features of any kind where one could get lost very easily. It also provided, Lane realized uncomfortably, an ideal sort of background for the deadly game of hide-and-seek in which she was involved.
“He hasn’t much choice though,” Frazer was saying. “As I told you, the island’s bare of all sizable animal life. He’ll get hungry eventually.”
Staring at the bubble, Lane felt herself whitening. Frazer went on, unaware of the effect he’d produced or unconcerned about it. “The other thing he might try is to get into the station, but his gun won’t help him there. So he’ll be back.” His eyes shifted past Lane to the wide spread of scrub growth beyond her. “Just Sally,” he said in a low voice, as if reassuring himself.
Sally came gliding into view a moment later, raised her head to gaze at them impersonally and vanished again with an undulating smoothness of motion that reminded Lane of a snake. It was as if the creature had slipped without a ripple into a gray-green sea.
“Trapped Sally on the mainland four years ago,” Frazer remarked conversationally, still in low tones. “She’s an elaig—seventy-pounds of killer and more brains than you’d believe. In bush like this, the average armed man wouldn’t stand a chance against Sally. She knows pretty well what we’re here for by now.”
Lane shivered. Something about the cool, unhurried manner of Frazer as he talked and acted gave her, for minutes at a time, a sense of security she knew was false and highly dangerous. He seemed actually incapable of understanding the uncanny deadliness of this situation. She felt almost sorry for Frazer.
“You’re wondering why I’m so afraid of him, aren’t you?” she said slowly.
Frazer didn’t answer immediately. Gun across his knees, a small knapsack he’d taken out of the rider strapped to his hip, he was studying her. Pleasantly enough, but not without an obvious appreciation of what he saw, even a touch of calculation. A tall, sun-darkened, competent man who felt capable of handling this or any other problem that might come his way to his complete satisfaction.
“Irrational fear of him could have been part of that hypnotic treatment he gave you,” he told her, almost absently.
Lane shrugged, aware of a wave of sharp irritation. In the year since she’d known Bruce Sinclair Frome, she had almost forgotten the attraction the strong, clean lines of her body had for other men. She was being reminded of it now. And, perhaps because of that, she was realizing that part of her hatred for the Nachief was based in the complete shattering of her vanity in being discarded by him. She had a moment of unpleasant speculation as to what her reaction would have been if she had found out the truth about him—but had found out also that he still wanted her nevertheless . . .
She drove the thought away. The Nachief would die, if she could abet it. But the chances were that he regarded her and this overgrown boy scout beside her as not much more of a menace than Sean and Grant had been. She sat silent, fingering the small Deen nerve-gun Frazer had given her to pocket—”just in case.” She’d warned him she probably wouldn’t be able to force herself to use it—