Arriving at the pilothouse, Burton had to wait a few minutes before the busy king could speak to him. Burton reported what had happened to him. John wasn’t at all sympathetic; he was beside himself with rage, cursing, giving orders, stomping around.
Finally, he said, “Go to sick bay, Gwalchgwynn. If the doctor says you’re unfit for duty, Demugts will take over. There isn’t much the marines can do now, anyway.”
Burton said, “Yes, Sire,” and he went to the C deck hospital.
Doctor Doyle x-rayed his skull, cleansed the wound on his head, bandaged it, and ordered him to lie down for a while.
“There’s neither concussion or fracture. All you need is some rest.”
Burton did so. Shortly thereafter, Strubewell’s voice came over the loudspeaker. Twelve people were missing, seven men, five women.
John took over then, apparently too enraged to allow his first mate to call out the names of the missing. His voice shaking, he denounced the twelve as “treacherous dogs, mutinous swine, scurvy stinking polecats, cowardly jackals, yellow-bellied hyenas.”
“Quite a menagerie,” Burton said to Alice.
He listened to the roll call. All were suspected agents, all having claimed to have lived past 1983.
John thought they had deserted because they were afraid to fight.
If he weren’t too furious to think straight, John would have remembered that the twelve had shown their courage in many battles.
Burton knew why they had fled. They wanted to get to the tower as quickly as possible, and they didn’t want to be in~ a fight which they regarded as totally unnecessary. So they had stolen the launch and were now racing up-River as fast as possible. Undoubtedly, they were hoping that John wouldn’t go after them, that he’d be too concerned with Clemens.
In fact, John had been worried that the Not For Hire might come up through the strait while the Rex was chasing after the launch. However, the guards on the path above the strait had a transceiver, and they would report instantly if the Hire moved toward the channel. Still, if the Rex was too far up The River, it couldn’t get back in time to block the Hire.
Despite this, John was taking his chances. He was not going to allow the deserters to get away with the launch. He needed it for the coming battle. And he wanted desperately to catch and punish the twelve.
In the old days on Earth, he would have tortured them. He probably would like to put them to rack and wheel and fire now, but he knew that his crew, most of them anyway, wouldn’t tolerate such barbarisms. They would permit the twelve to be shot, though they wouldn’t relish the deed, because discipline did have to be maintained. Moreover, stealing the launch had compounded the felony.
Suddenly, Burton groaned. Alice said. “What’s the matter, dear?”
“Nothing,” he said. “Just a twinge.”
Since there were other nurses around, he couldn’t tell her that it had just occurred to him that Strubewell had stayed aboard. Why? Why hadn’t he gone with the other agents?
And Podebrad! Podebrad, the Czech engineer, the chief suspect. His name wasn’t on the list.
One more question to add to the dozens he would ask an agent someday. Perhaps he should not wait until someday. Why not go to John now and tell him the truth? John would have Strubewell and Podebrad into the brig and put them to the question with a speed unhampered by legalities and red tape.
No. It couldn’t be done now. John wouldn’t have the time to do this. He’d have to wait until after the battle. Besides, the two would just commit suicide.
Or would they?
Now that there were no resurrections, would an agent kill himself?
He might, Burton thought. Just because the Valleydwellers weren’t resurrected was no proof that agents weren’t. They could rise again somewhere else, in the vast underground chambers or in the tower.
Burton didn’t believe this. If the agents were resurrected elsewhere, they wouldn’t have hesitated to board the suicide express. They wouldn’t now be traveling via paddlewheeler to get to the tower.
If he and Strubewell and Podebrad survived the battle, he was going to catch them unawares, knock them out before they could transmit the mental code which would release the poison in the little black balls in their forebrains, and then hypnotize them as they came out of unconsciousness.