Meanwhile he hooked claws into the thick tail, which would else be a club smashing upon him or thumping a distress signal. The boots, which might have done likewise, he pinned between his calves.
The Merseian was powerful, less so than him but surging against his pressure, sure to break free somewhere. Targovi released the gun wrist. His own arm whipped around behind the neck of the foe. Low and blunt, unlike Axor’s, the spinal ridge nevertheless bruised him—as his right arm shoved the head back over that fulcrum.
The Merseian clutched his blaster. Targovi heard a crack. The head flopped. The body shuddered, once, and lay still.
Whatever their variations, Merseian, Tigery, and human are vertebrates.
Targovi jumped off the corpse, snatched the rifle, crouched to cover the doorway. If the noise had roused someone, he’d have to try shooting his way free.
Minutes crawled by. Silence deepened. Light grew stronger in the windowpanes.
Targovi lowered the weapon. Nobody had heard. Or, if anybody did, it had been so briefly that the being sank back into sleep. After all, he had taken just seconds to kill the guard.
How much time remained before reveille, or whatever would reveal him? It was surely meager. Targovi got to work.
Having closed the door, he examined the computer. Aye, Merseian made, and he was ignorant of the Eriau language. Not entirely, though. Like most mentally alive persons in this frontier space, he had picked up assorted words and catchphrases. His daydream of operating among the stars had also led him to learn the alphabet. Moreover, Merseia had originally acquired modern technology from Terra; and logic and natural law are the same everywhere.
When they first arrived here, the gatortails must have brought this as their own mainframe computer. Not only would they be most familiar with it, they need not fear its being tampered with, whether directly or from afar. Besides making active use of it, they’d keep their database within … Yes. Targovi believed he had figured out the elementary instruction he wanted.
He touched keys. “Microcopy everything.”
The machine had rearranged molecules by the millions and deposited three discus-shaped containers on the drop shelf before Targovi finished the rest of his job. Yet what he did went swiftly. He stripped the tunic from the Merseian, who now resisted him with mere weight, and slashed it in places until he could tie it together as a package. The weapons would go in, as well as the data slabs and—He set things out of the way while his knife made the next cuts, and afterward fetched a towel from the bathroom. It wouldn’t do to have his bundle drip blood.
Ready for travel, he opened the door a crack, peered, opened it wide, stepped through, closed it again. Quite possibly no one would be astir for another hour or two. Merseians tended to be early risers, but had no good reason to reset their circadian rhythms according to the short Daedalan period. In fact, they had good reason to refrain. The effort was lengthy and demanding; meanwhile they’d be at less than peak efficiency.
It was likewise possible that, whenever the rest of his mission got up, the sentry would not be immediately due for relief, and no other occasion would arise for them to pass this door.
Targovi couldn’t count on any of that. Thus far his luck had been neither especially fair nor especially foul. Most of it he had made for himself. Had he come upon a different situation, he would have acted according to it as best he was able. Throughout, he had exploited surprise.
How much longer could he continue to do so? Not very!
He stole down corridor and hall. At the exit, he dropped to a belly-scraping all fours and crept, dragging his burden in his teeth. Up a tree—a flying leap to the outer wall and a bounce to the ground beyond—snake’s way through brush till a dip of terrain concealed him—He rose and ran.
Zacharians stared at the carnivore form that sped unhumanly fast down their streets, a bundle under an arm. With his spare hand, he waved at them. They had gotten used to seeing the poor itinerant huckster around, his hopes of business gone, aimlessly adrift. If today he bounded along, why, he must be stretching his legs. He looked cheerful enough.