Quillan absorbed the implications of the situation as he came into the room. The three of them there were on edge, and the nerve guns showed his present status—they wouldn’t injure him but could knot him up painfully in an instant and leave him helpless for minutes. He was being told his actions would have to demonstrate that he deserved Ajoran’s confidence.
Almost simultaneously, the realization came to him that the favorable circumstances for which he had decided to wait were at hand.
He went up to the table, looked curiously down at the Sigma File. It was about the size and shape of a briefcase set upright. Quillan, glancing over at Ajoran, said, “I’m taking it for granted you’ve had the destruct charge removed.”
Ajoran produced a thin smile.
“Since it could have no useful purpose now,” he said, “I did, of course, have it removed.”
Quillan gave him an ironic bow. His left hand, brushing back, struck the Sigma File, sent it toppling toward the edge of the table.
He might as well have stuck a knifepoint into all three of them. A drop to the floor could not damage the file, but they were too keyed up to check their reactions. Ajoran started to his feet with a sharp exclamation; even Hace came half out of her chair. The guard moved more effectively. He leaped forward from the wall, bending down, still holding the nerve gun, caught the file with his wrist and free hand as it went off the table, turned to place it back on the table.
Quillan stepped behind him. In the back of the jackets of both guards he had seen a lumpy bulge near the hip, indicating each carried a second gun, which could be assumed to be a standard energy type. His left hand caught the man by the shoulder; his right found the holstered gun under the jacket, twisted it upward and fired as he bent the guard over it. His left arm tingled—Ajoran had cut loose with the nerve gun, trying to reach him through the guard’s body. Then Quillan had the gun clear, saw Ajoran coming around on his right and snapped off two hissing shots, letting the guard slide to the floor. Ajoran stopped short, hauled open the sleep cabin door and was through it in an instant, slamming it shut behind him.
Across the room, Hace, almost at the other door, stopped, too, as Quillan turned toward her. They looked at each other a moment, then Quillan stepped around the guard and walked up to her, gun pointed. When he was three steps away, Hace closed her eyes and stood waiting, arms limp at her sides. His left fist smashed against the side of her jaw and she dropped like a rag doll.
“Sorry, doll, but I had no choice,” he said softly. Quillan looked back. The guard was twisting contortedly about on the floor. His face showed he was dead, but it would be a minute or two before the nerve charge worked itself out of his body. The colonel’s lady wouldn’t stir for a while. Ajoran himself . . . Quillan stared thoughtfully at the door of the sleep cabin.
Ajoran might be alerting the ship from in there at the moment, although there hadn’t been any communication device in view. Or he could have picked up some weapon he fancied more than a nerve gun and was ready to come out again. The chances were good, however, that he’d stay locked in where he was until somebody came to inform him the berserk prisoner had been dealt with. It wasn’t considered good form in Rala’s upper echelons to take personal risks which could be delegated to subordinates.
Whatever happened, Quillan told himself he could achieve his minimum goal any time he liked now. A single energy bolt through the Sigma File would ignite it explosively. And its destruction, getting it out of Ralan hands, had been as much as he reasonably could expect to accomplish in the situation.
He glanced contemptuously at the closed door to the sleep cabin, then at the door which should open on one of the Talada’s passages. Quillan smiled, and decided he didn’t feel reasonable.
He took the Sigma File from the table, carried it over to the passage door and set it down against the wall. He’d expected to see the second guard come bouncing in through the door as soon as the commotion began in here. The fact that he hadn’t indicated either that he’d been sent away or that Ajoran’s suite was soundproofed. Probably the latter . . .
Quillan raised the gun, grasped the door handle with his left hand, turned it suddenly, hauled the door open.
The second guard stood outside, but he wasn’t given time to do much more than bulge his eyes at Quillan.
Quillan went quickly along the passage, the Sigma File in his left hand, the gun ready again in his right. By the rules he should, in such circumstances, have been satisfied with his minimum goal and destroyed the file before he risked another encounter with an armed man. If he’d been killed just now, it would have been there intact for Rala to decode.
But the other goals looked at least possible now, and he couldn’t quite bring himself to put a bolt through the file before it became clear that he’d done as much as he could. “Reasonable,” after all, was a flexible term.
He moved more cautiously as he approached the corner of the passage. This was officer’s country, and his plans were based on a remembered general impression of the manner in which the Talada raiders were constructed. The passageway beyond the corner was three times the width of this one . . . it might be the main passage he was looking for.
He glanced around the corner, drew back quickly. About thirty feet away in the other side of the passage was a wide doorspace, and two men in officer’s uniform had been walking in through it at the moment he looked. Quillan took a long, slow breath. His next goal suddenly seemed not at all far away.
He waited a few seconds, looked again. Now the passage was clear. Instantly he was around the corner, running down to the doorspace. As he stepped out before it, he saw his guess had been good. He was looking down a short flight of steps into the Talada’s control room.
Looking and firing . . . . The gun in his hand hissed like an angry cat, but several seconds passed before any of the half-dozen men down there realized he was around. By then two of them were dead. They had happened to be in the gun’s way. The subspace drive control panels, the gun’s target, were shattering from end to end. Quillan swung the gun toward a big communicator in a corner. At that moment, somebody discovered him.
The man did the sensible thing. His hand darted out, throwing one of the switches before him.
A slab of battle-steel slid down across the doorspace, sealing the control room away from the passage.
Quillan sprinted on down the passage. The emergency siren came on.
The Talada howled monstrously, like a wounded beast, as it rolled and bucked, dropping out of subspace. Suddenly he was in another passage, heard shouts ahead, turned back, stumbled around a corner, went scrambling breathlessly up a steep, narrow stairway.
At its top, he saw ahead of him, like a wish-dream scene, the lit lock, two white-faced crewmen staggering on the heaving deck as they tried to lift a heavy oxygen tank into it.
Quillan came roaring toward them, wild-eyed, waving the gun. They looked around at him, turned and ran as he leaped past them into the lock.
The man at the controls of the Talada’s lifeboat died before he realized somebody was running up behind him. Quillan dropped the Sigma File, hauled the body out of the seat, slid into it . . . .
He was several minutes’ flight away from the disabled raider before he realized he was laughing like a lunatic.
He was clear. And now the odds, shifting all the way over, were decidedly in his favor. The question was how long it would take them to repair the damage and come after him. With enough of a start, they couldn’t know which way he’d headed and the chance of being picked up before he got back to the Hub became negligible.
First things first. He checked the ship’s fuel status— plenty there. Next he checked the environmental controls and got a shock. The ship had no oxygen stores. None! He had only as much air to breathe as filled the cabin space. Quillan made a grumbling mental note to steal a better quality lifeboat next time.
Still, it wasn’t too bad. It would have been nicer if he could have given the two crewmen time to dump another few tanks of compressed oxygen on board before he had taken off. The ship’s recyclers needed something to work with. But a scan of the stellar neighborhood showed two planets respectively seven and eight hours away indicating conditions which should allow a man to stay a short time without serious damage or discomfort. The lifeboat had the standard recharging equipment on board. A few hours on either of those worlds, and he’d be ready.