Quillan set off with it finally in a Lornese naval courier to make the return run to Orado. The courier was a very fast small ship which could rely on its speed alone to avoid interception. As an additional precaution, it would follow a route designed to keep it well beyond the established range of Ralan patrols. This would actually take it outside the Hub before re-entering a good distance from Rala.
A week later, something happened to it. Just what, Quillan didn’t yet know.
Besides himself there had been three men on board: the two pilot-navigators and an engineering officer. They were picked men and Quillan had no doubt of their competence. He didn’t know whether they had been told the nature of his mission; the matter was not brought up. It should have been an uneventful, speedy voyage home.
When one of the Lornese pilots summoned Quillan to the control room to tell him the courier was being tracked by another ship, the man showed no serious concern. Their pursuer could be identified on the screen. It was a Ralan raider of the Talada class, ten times the courier’s tonnage but still a rather small ship. More importantly, a Talada could produce nothing like the courier’s speed.
Nevertheless, Quillan didn’t like the situation in the least. He had been assured that the odds against encountering Ralan vessels in this area of space were improbably high. By nature and training he distrusted coincidences. However, the matter was out of his hands. The pilots already were preparing to shift to emergency speed and, plainly, there was nothing to be done at the moment.
He settled down to watch the operation. One of the pilots was speaking to the engineering officer over the intercom; the other handled the controls.
It was this second man who suddenly gave a startled shout.
In almost the same instant, the ship seemed to be wrenched violently to the left. Quillan was hurled out of his seat, realized there was nothing he could do to keep from smashing into the bulkhead on his right . . .
At that precise point, his memories shut off again.
* * *
“Fleegle!” something was crying shrilly. “Fleegle! Fleegle! Fleegle!”
Quillan started, looked around. The small green biped nearest him downhill was uttering the cries. It had turned and was facing him frontside. Presumably it had just become aware of him and was expressing alarm. It waved its stubby forelimbs excitedly up and down. Farther down the slope several of its companions joined in with “Fleegle!” pipings of their own. Others stood watchfully still. They probably had eyes of a sort somewhere in the wrinkled balls of their heads, at any rate, they all seemed to be staring up at him.
“Fleegle! Fleegle! Fleegle!”
The whole hillside below suddenly seemed alive with the shrilling voices and waving green forelimbs. Quillan twisted half around, glanced up the slope behind him.
He was sliding the gun out of its holster as he came quietly to his feet, completing the turn. The thing that had been coming down toward him stopped in midstride, not much more than forty feet away.
It was also a biped, of a very different kind, splotchy gray-black in color and of singularly unpleasant appearance. About eight feet tall, it had long, lean talon-tipped limbs and a comparatively small body like a bloated sack. The round, black head above the body looked almost fleshless, sharp bone-white teeth as completely exposed as those of a skull. Two circular yellow eyes a few inches above the teeth stared steadily at Quillan.
He felt a shiver of distaste. The creature obviously was a carnivore and could have become dangerous to him if he hadn’t been alerted by the clamor of the fleegle pack. In spite of its scrawny, gangling look, it should weigh around two hundred and fifty pounds, and the teeth and talons would make it a formidable attacker. Perhaps it had come skulking down from the forest to pick up one of the browsing fleegles and hadn’t noticed Quillan until he arose. But he had its full attention now.
He waited, unmoving, gun in hand, not too seriously concerned—a couple of blasts should be enough to rip that pulpy body to shreds—but hoping it would decide to leave him alone. The creature was a walking nightmare, and tangling with unknown lifeforms always involved a certain amount of risk. He would prefer to have nothing to do with it.
The fleegle racket had abated somewhat. But now the toothy biped took a long, gliding step forward and the din immediately set up again. Perhaps it didn’t like the noise, or else it was interested primarily in Quillan; at any rate, it opened its mouth as if it were snarling annoyedly and drew off to the right, moving horizontally along the slope with long, unhurried spider strides, round yellow eyes still fixed on Quillan. The fleegle cries tapered off again as the enemy withdrew. By the time it had reached a point around sixty feet away, the slopes were quiet.
Now the biped started downhill, threading its way deliberately among the boulders like a long-legged, ungainly bird. But Quillan knew by then it was after him, and those long legs might hurl it forward with startling speed when it decided to attack. He thumbed the safety off the gun.
With the fleegles silent, he could hear the rasping sounds the thing made when it opened its mouth in what seemed to be its version of a snarl . . . working up its courage, Quillan thought, to tackle the unfamiliar creature it had chanced upon.
As it came level with him on the hillside, it was snarling almost incessantly. It turned to face him then, lifted its clawed forelegs into a position oddly like that of a human boxer, hesitated an instant and came on swiftly.
A shrill storm of fleegle pipings burst out along the slope behind Quillan as he raised the gun. He’d let the thing cut the distance between them in half, he decided, then blow it apart. . . .
Almost with the thought, he saw the big biped stumble awkwardly across a rock. It made a startled, bawling noise, its forelimbs flinging out to help it catch its balance; then it went flat on its face with a thump.
There was instant stillness on the hillside. The fleegles apparently were watching as intently as Quillan was. The biped sat up slowly. It seemed dazed. It shook its ugly head and whimpered complainingly, glancing this way and that about the slope. Then the yellow eyes found Quillan.
Instantly, the biped leaped to its feet, and Quillan hurriedly brought the gun up again. But the thing wasn’t resuming its charge. It wheeled, went plunging away up the slope, now and then uttering the bawling sound it had made as it stumbled. It appeared completely panicked.
Staring after it, Quillan scratched his chin reflectively with his free hand. “Wonder what got into him?” he muttered. After a moment, he re-safetied the gun, shoved it back into the holster. He felt relieved but puzzled.
The biped, plainly, was not a timid sort of brute. It must possess a certain amount of innate ferocity to have felt impelled to attack a creature of whose fighting ability it knew nothing. Then why this sudden, almost ludicrous flight? It might be convinced he had knocked it down in some manner as it had come at him, but still—
Quillan shrugged. It was unimportant, after all. The biped had almost reached the top of the slope by now, was angling to the left to reach the lichen-gray forest a few hundred yards away. Its pace hadn’t lessened noticeably. He was rid of it.
Then, as Quillan’s gaze shifted along the boulder-studded top of the hill, something like a half-remembered fact seemed to nudge his mind. He stared, scowling abstractedly. Was there something familiar about that skyline? Something he should . . . He made a shocked sound.
An instant later, he was climbing hurriedly, in something like a panic of his own, up the rocky slope.
Beyond that crest, he remembered now, the ground dropped away into a shallow valley. And in that valley—how many hours ago?—he had landed the Talada’s lifeboat, with the Sigma File on board. Every minute he had spent wandering dazedly about the area since then had brought him closer to certain recapture—
3
He had been slammed against the bulkhead on the Lornese courier with enough violence to stun him. When he awoke, he was a prisoner under guard on the Talada, lying on a bunk to which he was secured in a manner designed to make him as comfortable as possible. The cabin’s furnishings indicated it belonged to one of the ship’s officers.
It told Quillan among other things that they knew who he was. Raiders of the Talada class had a liquid-filled compartment in their holds into which several hundred human beings could be packed at a time, layered like so many sardines, and kept alive and semiconscious until the ship returned to port. An ordinary prisoner would simply have been dumped into that vat.