GEORGE O. SMITH (continued 4)

Norma shook her head coolly. "That's emotion, Charles. I don't know exactly what their purpose is, but I do understand that this is a conflict of eventual survival, and rule of an economic empire."

"But—"

Norma shook her head. "Try the shoe on the other foot, Charles. Suppose you had come upon these people with the rest of your kind—how would you see them?"

"As possible allies and friends."

"Balderdash! You'd have seen them as possible customers and people to be exploited and maybe enemies after you'd seen their history. Their attitude is as arrogant as ours and their personal justification as high. By some obscure luck of science they got to interstellar travel before we did and they automatically place us in an inferior position, but they also know that this inferiority is not so great as to make us a pushover. We are scientifically capable of discovering their interstellar drive at any moment, and why we have not is probably just a matter of our not combining the right sciences. Our knowledge of medicine is far vaster than theirs, for instance."

"How can you know this?" he asked.

Norma opened a few buttons at her throat and slipped her dress down over one shoulder. There was a small circular bandage stuck to one spot. "They took a sample of me," she said. "Because I seem to be immune to several diseases that should give me trouble. When I asked about this, they told me that they hoped to discover just what cell change took place when we take our anti-cancer immunization. This thing they have yet to discover. Oh they use our immunization," she said, slipping the dress up but forgetting to rebutton it, "but they use it as an African witch doctor might use a typhoid serum."

She nodded as she went on thinking, "This thing you have to remember, Charles, that if Terrans had arrived there first there would have been the same conflict, but conducted from the other side."

Farradyne shook his head angrily. "We're not inclined to ruin—"

"Stop sounding like one of King Arthur's Knights. Men of sense and good judgment don't request their enemies to meet them on a field of honor. Instead, a state of war is assumed and from that instant on, A is looking for a chance to stab B in the back because he knows that B will cut him off at the hips if he turns his back for a moment. Honor on the battlefield is accorded only to a defeated enemy; up to the time he is defeated, anything goes. And if both sides know that open warfare means total destruction, the process on either side is one of boring from within, or gnawing at the foundation. But this a bad place to get involved in a discussion of ethics. Where do we go from here?"

"If I knew how to run that ka-dodie in the Lancaster we'd head for Sol—if I knew where Sol was from here."

"And how about Howard?"

"I don't know about Clevis," he told her. "The thing to do would be to hike home as fast as we could and spill our tale to the people who would know what to do about it. Let's face it, Norma. They can mingle with Terrans because they can speak our language. But I couldn't mingle with them to locate Howard. I'd be picked up in a minute."

"So how do we get back?"

"Why do you think they brought the Lancaster?"

"Probably to fit her out as a bona fide hellflower runner."

"Okay. We'll hide out in my cubby until they run her back."

"You go hide out," said Norma. "If they find me missing, they'll know something smells bad."

Farradyne chuckled. "From what I know of them, they're as arrogantly secure as the Gods of Olympus. Some part of their gang is still expecting me to turn up near Terra on an escape course, and the only smart thing I have done is to be where they didn't plan me to be. So we'll be where they don't expect us to be and maybe we'll get away with it. Come on, let's hide out."

The hitch in their plans came when Farradyne led Norma down the stairs to the last deck below and stopped, holding up a warning hand.

"What's the matter?" she whispered.

He pointed. The hatch he had used was lying to one side and a beam of diffuse light was coming up from below. There came also the triple-tongued voices of two men.

Farradyne led Norma one deck above where he could speak without attracting the attention of the men below. "They've installed the space drive in the inspection cubby," he said. "That's probably what all the work was about. It's been taken from the bottom deck and permanently installed down in the cubby where it wouldn't attract attention on a casual tour. Maybe a different unit, I wouldn't know; the temporary job might have been only a harness-job to be used until they could haul the Lanc' to base for a real tear-down and rebuild."

"I didn't see any work-wagon," said Norma.

"Maybe not, but the workman is here, and tuning up the drive. We can't get below now."

"So what do we do?"

"I've half a hunch that they won't leave this ship standing idle long. Let's hide in the cargo hold until they stop tinkering."

Norma nodded thoughtfully. "Let's wait it out," she said. "Then if we have trouble, I can slope and run out of here like a startled rabbit and draw the chase away from you."

"You make the escape," he suggested, "I'll do the hare and the hounds."

Norma shook her head. "Let's use logic, and not emotion," she said calmly. "I'm known to be here, you're not. So if I cut and run and they catch me, that's it. But if you're caught running loose on this joint, they'll also start looking for me. If I carry my point, you'll still be unexpected. Follow? And someone may get back—the other way, no?"

"I suppose you are right."

"You know I am. It's just false chivalry. You get caught and we're all licked."

He took a deep breath. "You're right, of course."

"Now, here we are and can we be safe here?"

"I think—" He held up a hand abruptly. His ears, attuned to life aboard a spacer, had caught the sound of someone coming up the landing ramp and into the salon a few decks above. Then faint as if it were a hundred yards away but audible in the silence of the ship, they could hear the triple-tongued piping of a man.

He was answered by Carolyn Niles. "Speak Terran!"

Farradyne nudged Norma. "That's the line I used and it worked," he chuckled.

Carolyn's companion said, "Why use this mono-voice junk?"

"You know the rules. It's not smart to relax, you idiot."

"All right. So what's the answer?"

"Ask me in Terran."

"All right, Your Highness. I was merely inquiring as to the imminence of your take-off."

"Don't be insolent! We're taking off as soon as we're all aboard. Now get along with your work!"

The next voice scared them both out of a year's growth; they had been straining to hear Carolyn and her companion high above them in the salon, and now, with every nerve tense, the sound of the ship's intercom roared at them with terrifying volume. "Carolyn Niles! Go aloft, will you, and put the—" there came a triple-voiced syllable "—into stand-by!"

Carolyn's voice replied, "Aye-firm. But look, boys, shouldn't we have some Terran term for the space drive?"

"We ought to," acknowledged one of the men in the inspection cubby. "But how do you translate it into Terran terms when they have no term for it themselves?"

The other man said, "We could always use 'space drive'."

"No good. Better we didn't mention it at all. Leave it as it is."

Farradyne whispered, "They're a canny bunch. Talk the language always, act the part always, live the life always; and cut your enemy short when he's looking for something alien."

Another pair of feet came up the landing ramp, and Carolyn said, almost at the same time. "It's on. How's she working?"

"Fine. We're finished. Coming up."

"I want to see."

"Okay, so you come down and see. We're coming up and getting started."

"Pincered!" said Farradyne to Norma.

He drew her to the cargo hold and handed her down the service ladder. He followed, closing the door behind him and then, before he snapped out the lights, he reached up and removed one of them, saying, "I don't think we'll have an inspection, but if we do, having one lamp missing will cast a shadow we can stand in. This is a dimly lit joint at best." He waved at the shadow caused by the empty socket and then snapped the lamp off.

Their weight upon the cushion of flowers was released[1] and sat with their feet pulled up beneath them, not daring to say a word. Her breathing, and the faint pressure of her shoulder against his told him of her presence beside him.

They waited in the dark silence, listening, and occasionally tensing instinctively when someone clumped past the wall outside or seemed to come near the cargo hatch above their heads. There were voices and calls and running feet from time to time, and then the humming sound of the conveyor-belt.

The hatch above was opened wide but the lights were not put on.

And then from the end of the loose-cargo conveyor came a tumbling shower of hellblossoms. They landed on the floor in a conical heap and kept coming until both Farradyne and Norma were shoulder deep in them. The air filled with the thick, syrupy perfume. Farradyne felt a slight spell of dizziness from the heady odor and then wondered with horrified interest just what effect this completely unpredictable overdose of dope would do to the woman.

The shower of hellflowers came on and on, and Farradyne was forced to stand because of their depth. Still they came and he found himself swimming off his depth in them; it reminded him of treading in a haymow. The rain of blossoms ceased as the hold filled and the lights went on briefly for an inspection.

Farradyne was propped neck deep, his head barely below the ceiling and he felt quite safe from detection unless the inspectors put their heads down into the hatch to peer around the edges of the cylindrical hold. He looked at Norma. She had scrabbled up and a-top the pile and was lying on her back with her arms thrown over her head. Her eyes were closed, but as she drew in a deep breath, the lids went half-up and she looked over at Farradyne and smiled ecstatically.

The hatch slammed down, and she said huskily, "Such nice friends you have, Charles."

He wanted to ask her if she didn't find this friendship a bit overpowering, but instead he said, "They're certainly no friends of mine."

"Nor mine. But this is ..." and her voice trailed away to a whisper that he could not catch.

Pressure came upsurging and Farradyne felt that he did not have to explain that the Lancaster was on its way to space and perhaps back toward home. In the midst of the take-off pressure she found his hand and drew it toward her, she snuggled her face against his palm. Her free hand came over and touched his cheek, then ran back around his head. She pulled him forward until she could rest her head against his shoulder with her forehead against his face.

Her fingers ran through his hair and pressed his face to hers. He tried to free himself, but he could not escape without being rough about it and he believed that any bold move to elude her would bring forth either pleas or bitter demands loud enough to bring the enemy on the run. He struggled a bit, his hands closed on either side of her waist but instead of moving away, her body came forward against his.

Then, abruptly, the pressure of the drive went off and they floated free.

Their weight upon the cushion of flowers was released and the springiness of the hellblossoms thrust them up, hard, hurling them against the ceiling.

Norma's hands were dragged free of his head and, in clutching at him frantically, her fingernails raked his cheek. The pressure he held against her waist thrust her away as soon as she lost her leverage. Her head hit the ceiling with a dull thunk, followed by the soft sound of her body hitting flat. A sigh came from her lips, but it was the sigh of an unconscious person.

The hold was filled with hellflowers floating free and spread apart by the tiny pressure of the ends of their leaves and petals; Farradyne fought them away frantically, but only succeeded in digging himself deeper in the room.

Eventually he found the service ladder and clung to it, waving himself a breathing space by pushing the floating blossoms back.

Norma's inert hand touched him limply. Farradyne toyed with the idea of reviving her but gave it up instantly; let her sleep it off, and preferably alone and elsewhere in this hold. He gave the hand a push and she floated from him in the dark, pushing through the free mass by her heavier inertia.

The exertion had called upon his reserves and he drank in lungfuls of air that was stickily laden with the heavy perfume. It made him dizzy again and he fought for air, only succeeding in drawing more of the thick scent into his system. He wondered haphazardly what the effect of an overdose of love lotus might have on a man; the experiment had been tried but not to this extent. So far all it did was to make him feel as though he were being doctored with a dose of nitrous oxide.

He scrabbled up the ladder and opened the hatch cautiously. It was as dark outside as it was inside and Farradyne pushed the hatch up further to put his face in the clean air and take a deep breath. Then, because he felt better, he climbed out of the hold and floated free in the air above the hatch. He latched onto a handrail and closed the hatch carefully with a breathed, "You like 'em, baby. You breathe 'em until I get back!"

Then he sat in mid-air with one hand hooked in the rail and with deep breaths of the clean air, tried to think what to do next.

19

He prowled the cargo hold level, floating along the circular corridor. He knew it was not the safest thing to do but preferred anything to a return to the hold. He did not stop to decide whether it was the perfume of the lotus or the presence of the doped woman that kept him away from his cover.

An hour passed, then two, and Farradyne was growing bolder by the minute. He had covered the entire lower level of his Lancaster and had stopped above his former hiding place speculating whether to hide or not.

He decided not, and went floating upward through the ship until he came to the stateroom level. He floated around the corridor noticing that the little flags that indicated that the door was locked from the inside were all down except one. One of his "guests" did not trust his fellow travellers completely.

He floated on upstairs to the salon and almost ruined his silent flight by trying to put on the brakes. On the divan lay a man in his clothing, restrained by the hold-down safety strap. He was sound asleep.

Farradyne floated over, and then taking hold of the strap to keep himself from flying free with the motions, he deepened the man's slumber with a vicious cut of his revolver.

He floated on into the control room, where the silent and distant stars watched. Some of them were moving down; these would be the nearby stars, while the rest stood as immobile as he had always known them. He would have preferred to stay and watch the effect of travelling faster than light, for the aspect of the sky directly above was very strange in color and in constellation. But he knew that he had started something and he could see this odd, stellar phenomenon at some more leisured time.

He took a roll of two-inch adhesive tape from the medicine supplies and taped the unconscious man's wrists and ankles and then slapped a length over the mouth that sealed up the gash along the side of the head at the same time. Then he went down to his own quarters and opened the door slowly.

A second man slept there, but Farradyne did not lash out with the pistol. He holstered the gun and clipped the enemy along the side of the jaw with a sharp chop of his hand. Tape was applied quickly and effectively.

That made two.

He considered the situation carefully. So long as his batting average stayed at one thousand he was in fine shape. All it had to meet was one error and he was out of the game. His chances were not too good, but they were helped by the fact that he was an unknown enemy among them.

This was some sort of undeclared war, but the Lancaster could hardly have been termed a warship, since there were no space battles to fight. The ship ran itself, there was nothing to watch, so they did what all spacemen do, sleep. If he could catch them one by one....

He opened Stateroom One. It was empty. That put a different light on things. Maybe this was not a fully loaded transport. Maybe it was just like the average cargo-haul with only a couple of passengers.

He opened Stateroom Two and found it empty. That sort of proved it. He opened Stateroom Three and found a man asleep in the bunk. The enemy was stirring as Farradyne scanned the room, and he moved just as Farradyne hastily launched himself across the cabin. Haste ruined his aim so that his down-slashing hand clipped the man on the skull instead of hitting him alongside the ear. The man grunted and swung out blindly, hitting Farradyne and moving him up and away. Farradyne caught the upright of the bunk, staying his free flight, levered himself around and swung again.

The enemy parried the blow and let out a roar that sounded like three angry locomotives tooting for the right of way. Farradyne pulled himself down and around, then kicked out with both feet, catching the man in the face and chest. The force drove his man deep into the mattress, from which he rebounded to fold up over the hold-down strap. He flopped up and down, limp, an inert mass caught between two springs. The same force drove Farradyne out toward the open door.

His aim was still bad, his outsweeping hand caught the leading edge of the door and he and it swung on the hinges until he came flat against the wall behind the door. He fought his body around and came out of the room feet first.

Catching at the handrail he stabilized his flight, then he took notice of his surroundings, expecting the whole enemy horde to come boiling out of their staterooms.

A door down the hall opened and a man came sailing out. He caught sight of Farradyne and launched himself at the spaceman. Farradyne met him with a slash of the pistol, which was parried by a block of the man's forearm against Farradyne's wrist. It stopped the enemy's flight but tore Farradyne's hold loose.

Farradyne recovered first, hauling himself erect just in time to let the other man peer down the barrel of the gun. "Hold it, friend," he snapped.

The enemy, about to kick himself forward, took a firm hold on the handrail behind him and retracted his feet from against the wall.

"You can't get away with it, Farradyne."

"I can try, Brenner. So happy to meet you again."

Warily he listened. There were no other sounds along the corridor, only the one he expected, and soon the little flag on the lock went in and the door opened. Carolyn Niles came out in pajamas and coat, her eyes blinking slightly. "What's the—" Then she gasped. "Charles!"

"Howdedo. Any more hiding in the dark, Carolyn?"

"How did you get here?"

"I walked," he said flatly. He turned to Brenner. "You stay there, schoolmaster. I'm scared to death and a bit touchy."

Brenner shook his head. "I know you're scared. I'm scared, too. Scared to move."

"Relax—but do it slowly. Now turn around and make it hand over hand toward the salon. You follow the gentleman," he said to Carolyn.

Farradyne followed them both, calling to Brenner that if he tried any tricks, Carolyn might get in the way of the shot intended for him. They went up the stairway, one, two, three, and floated into the salon, Farradyne making a bit of a time of it because of his full gun-hand. He hooked his legs around the guard rail and eyed them coldly.

"Carolyn, let's see how good a job you can do on Brenner's wrists with a chunk of this tape." He tossed the roll at her and she clutched wildly and missed.

"Go get it!"

Carolyn performed some intricate free-flight maneuvers before she caught the roll. Then she went to Brenner, who held his hands out behind him while she ran tape around the wrists.

"I'd be willing to bet that's a slipshod job," said Farradyne. "But it will probably hold until I can relax. Carolyn, coast over here and force yourself to sit in the straight chair."

Farradyne taped her to the chair by the wrists and the ankles and took a slight hitch in the hold-down strap. Then he added some security to Brenner's bond and taped the man to the legs of the divan at the ankles. With his hands behind him and the strap tight across the man's hips, Farradyne felt that Brenner would be thoroughly immobilized. He propped the still unconscious one up near Brenner and taped him similarly.

Then he took time to go below and collect the third from his cabin and bring him up. The man was struggling against the wide tape and glaring at Farradyne over the plaster on his lips. Farradyne hurled him backside first at the divan and followed him, to catch the man on the rebound from the divan. He taped him as he had taped the others, then he took a small flight to the bar, where he perched on top of it by hooking his feet around one of the bar stools.

"Aren't we a good-looking bunch?" he chuckled. "Shall we sing?"

"Stop it, Farradyne," snapped Brenner.

Farradyne's twisted smile faded. "We'll play this game according to my rules for awhile."

"How long do you think you'll be able—"

"Long enough. I'm running this show."

"You can't get away with it."

"You said that before. Convince me, Brenner."

"Why bother with you? I'm the one that counts."

"Cut it out," Farradyne said contemptuously. "I should think your position would feel a bit awkward for a conqueror."

"The sooner you free us, the—"

Farradyne laughed in one loud humorless bark. "So I'm still your prisoner?"

"In a way. You wouldn't care to die without telling what you know about us. You'll do anything to stay alive."

"You damn well bet! And I'll do anything to learn a bit more."

"You can't make me talk."

"Want to bet? I don't think I could squeeze anything out of you by torture, but I have a hunch you'll sing loud and long after you watch me take Carolyn's fingernails off with long-nosed pliers and listen to her stifled sobbing. An old-fashioned torture, but still effective."

Carolyn looked at Farradyne coldly. "Come to think of it, Charles, I don't think you have enough sadism to perform the operation on me."

Farradyne looked at her. He held enough dislike of what she stood for to do almost anything with cold deliberation, for he thought any pain was small retribution. But she was still a woman.

Carolyn sniffed cynically, and Farradyne realized that he had mumbled the last few words of his thoughts. "Just retribution, Charles, but have you the guts to collect your revenge?"

He looked down at her. "No, I haven't. But I've someone with me who might."

He took aim and sailed down the stairs. He soared around the stateroom corridor and ran full-tilt into a flurry of floating skirts. He hurled Norma from him and recoiled. When he caught himself again, he had one hand braced against the handrail and the pistol aimed at the middle of her stomach. She righted herself as he let out his breath and relaxed his gun-hand.

"Don't ever do that!" he said sharply.

She looked at the gun and her face went white with the realization of how close it had been. She looked at him searchingly as if seeking company for her fright. She apparently found it, for her face relaxed and she took a deep breath, let it out slowly. Then she fought the hem of her skirt down again and blushed.

Farradyne chuckled, "Go into Number Four and swipe a pair of Carolyn Niles' pajamas," he said. "They don't float. Then come up to the salon."

He turned and headed back slowly, stalling until he heard her return to the corridor.

He went first and helped her make the curve around the railing at the top. Solicitously, he steered her to the divan and fastened the seat strap.

Then he faced Carolyn and the rest. "Speaking of retribution," he said slowly. "I'd like you to meet a woman I know. Miss Norma Hannon. She's a hellflower addict. Whatever she does is basically your responsibility." He said directly to Carolyn, "You have me fairly well pegged. I couldn't do it. But I think that Miss Hannon might enjoy a bit of an emotional binge with the people who fed her the first hellflower and caused the death of her brother." Farradyne turned and sailed across the room to Norma's side. He reached out quietly and removed the love lotus from Norma's hair, then recrossed the room to hurl it into the disposal chute.

"Just sit there quietly until the effects of that thing wear off," he told her. "I'm going to take a tour of inspection of the gewgaw they installed in my ship. I'll be back when they decide to answer questions."

Farradyne dived down the stairway again. He had no idea how long it might take, especially after Norma had been literally sleeping in a smothering roomful of the things for hours. Probably long enough for them all to get the whim-whams just thinking about it, he concluded.

He conned every stateroom on his way down. He was reasonably certain that the ruckus would have awakened them all, but he wanted to make sure that no one in them was lying doggo until he could make his bid. They were all empty, so Farradyne went on down in the Lancaster, checking the supply rooms and the galley and workshop, the other cargo lock and the storage room. He looked into the inspection cubbies and the wiring hatches until he had covered every nook and cranny that was large enough to contain a human being.

The ship was clean.

He stopped once more to eye the four metal cases bolted to the floor and discovered that the gentleman who had occupied the place when he and Norma tried to hide had put nuts on the bolt ends and run the cables neatly below-deck so they no longer trailed. He went up, then, all the way.

"Any talk?" he asked brightly as he soared through the salon.

"Farradyne, you can't do this!" snapped Brenner.

"Who, me?" asked Farradyne, in mock surprise. "I'm not doing anything!"

Norma was still sitting in her seat on the divan. She had not changed position. But her face was losing its softness and her attention was no longer diverted easily. "I'm waiting," she told him as he passed upward to the control room.

Somehow, Farradyne believed, it would not be very long waiting.

20

Farradyne paid no attention to the oddness of the sky because it could tell him nothing and he had more interesting things to inspect. The little auxiliary panel was gone. The controls had been incorporated in the main panel, neatly and as if they had always been there; in such a way as to make any but a completely critical inspection pass them over. They blended with the other myriad controls, so that only the pilot of the ship would be able to find them.

There was a small meter, calibrated arbitrarily in three sectors of colors. The needle stood high in the middle of the blue region. Below the meter was a cross-bar toggle switch and on either side of the toggle were flat buttons set flush with the panel, blue to the right and red to the left. The wiring was concealed, Farradyne found by looking under the panel that it had been neatly inserted into the main bundle of cables and wires as though it had been installed with the Lancaster's construction.

He considered the installation carefully.

In the history of warfare, Farradyne had heard of no one installing a device that would blow up a whole equipment if the operator used the wrong combination. In fact, designers worked hard to make such equipment fool-proof because they knew how rattled a man can get in the heat of battle. The worst he could do was probably the blowing of a fuse if he tampered with it. On the other hand....

So much for that, he thought, and went on to the next matter: destruction charges.

Big prime movers like battlecraft and stationary installations seldom fell into the hands of an enemy in any condition to be reused. Either the big stuff was shot to hell before the enemy captured it and was therefore unfunctional, or there was time for the crew to render the big stuff useless long before the installation was abandoned. There were booby-traps, of course, but these were usually improvised on the spot, or at least installed from a stock closet at the time of possible capture. No thinking nation would ever install a booby-trap permanently because of the possibility of the operator punching the wrong button.

Self-destruction devices were another item. These came shortly after the Military discovered the electron, and at a time when there were basic new designs of equipment the function of which it had been necessary to keep secret from the enemy. Countless pieces of apparatus had been equipped with self-destruction charges heavy enough to addle the insides of the gear, and possibly bulge the case a bit. But a man could sit on one of them while the charge went off and the most he would get would be a sharp kick in the pants.

But such destruction charges were controlled from a separate panel. There could be no mistake or error; no one could hit the wrong button. Destruction must be performed with deliberation.

And so Farradyne eyed the new installation calmly. It might hold a self-destruction charge, but the probabilities of having the control handy enough to be used in the heat of excitement were remote, especially since such a condition would leave a ship and crew marooned in the depths of interstellar space to die because someone's finger slipped. Farradyne was even certain that not much could happen if he tinkered with the toggle, so long as they were in deep space by some light years distant from anything large and hard.

He took the toggle bar in his right hand and pulled. It did not pull so he pushed. It did not push. He turned the cross-bar slightly and exerted effort. The bar moved downward in a wide arc and as it moved, the seat of the chair slammed upwards against the seat of his pants, and all of a sudden up was up and down was down, and the stars were all in their right places. The toggle came to a stop and the accelerometer read one gravity. The needle on the meter still read halfway into the blue.

Farradyne chuckled aloud. He had it now. If the traffic lights flared blue-green for "GO" and red-orange for "STOP" he had this combination as well. Start your spacecraft and punch the blue button for start. That was the beginning and the warm-up and nothing could happen until the meter read into the blue section of its scale. Then the toggle controlled the action of whatever generator of force was used, more or less as the toggle was advanced or depressed. The equipment stayed in readiness all the time. The red button was undoubtedly the cut-off button to close the gear down once the flight was completed.

It was as simple as that. Farradyne had spent many an hour in spacemen's bars up and down the solar system in spacemen's happy arguments regarding the complexities of exotic equipment, so he could theorize on both sides. The pro side was a matter of insisting that electromechanical principles were universal and therefore an alien bit of gear would function in a recognizable manner. The con side considered the fruitless arguments that something new might be discovered or that the evolution of instruments from the original principles would follow the normal dexterity of the alien life-form involved. But Farradyne knew that buttons are buttons and therefore meant to be pushed, not pulled; and similarly, D'Arsonval had invented the same kind of galvanometer as Ugthrybb, on Vega, with a moving coil between the poles of a magnet, and just because one race was right-handed and the other left, the principle did not change.

Then, being of a practical frame of mind, Farradyne forgot the subject and began to wonder about his position and what he was going to do about it. He squinted into the point-of-drive telescope and caught sight of a tiny yellow star on the cross-hairs. That must be Sol, distant, small, and far weaker than Sol as seen from Pluto. It was a true stellar point from here.

Then he looked through the point-of-departure periscope and automatically cut the drive so that the flare would not blind him.

Behind was the constellation of Lyra and on the cross-hairs was another star of no particular consequence. No more important than Sol. He got out the Spaceman's Star Catalog and opened it to Lyra. Among the listings were a number of the F, G, and K classifications, and one of them, about twenty-seven light years from Sol was listed for the right position in the constellation. Farradyne grunted; it meant nothing to him. It was merely Lyra.

The sound of a whimper cut into his thought and he remembered the possibilities of the scene in the salon. He waited. He snapped on the intercom and listened, wondering whether he could sit there and let Norma go to work on Carolyn. Man's inhumanity to man was a pale and insignificant affair compared to the animal ferocity of a woman about to settle up a long-standing account with another woman.

"Charles, come down here and take this madwoman away!" cried Carolyn.

Farradyne sauntered down the stairs. Norma stood before the bound Carolyn. Her eyes were glassy, her face cold. In one hand she held a small bottle of acid from Farradyne's workshop, in the other a small, pointed brush. As he came down the stairs, Norma dipped the brush in the acid and approached Carolyn, holding the brush as she would a pencil.

Farradyne held her hand. "Wait!" he said.

Norma looked at him with a trace of anger in her eyes. "Don't stop me," she said. "I'm going to write 'Hellflower' across that alabaster forehead—among other words."

Farradyne shuddered. His imagination had stopped working at the point of removing fingernails and applying lighted cigarettes to the skin. Now it leaped forward again and he could see the outcome of this assault upon the woman's pride and beauty. A formerly flawless skin covered with scar-tissue lettering of accusals, viciousness and probably lewdness.

"Take her away!" said Carolyn. "There is no point in this."

"Why not? Or are you ready to talk?"

"I'll talk. I'll talk because you will never get a chance to use it."

"You talk and I'll take my chances on that. Give me the works."

Norma struggled a bit. "Please, Farradyne?"

"Maybe later," he said soothingly. "Sit down now, and wait."

Angrily, Norma turned and headed for the divan.

He turned to Carolyn. "What the hell is going on and why?"

"This is war," she said.

"Like hell it's war. This is backstabbing. But it'll be war as soon as we can fight back."

"It is war," she repeated. "Let it go at that. The process should not be unfamiliar to you; you've done it yourselves time and again. First you weaken the enemy by undermining his resources, lowering his resistance, by turning his efforts toward advancement against some stumbling block. Then—"

"I presume that doping the women of a race is a right and honorable practice?" sneered Farradyne.

"It is better than dropping a mercurite bomb. Face the fact, Charles. We got to interstellar space first and met another people as racially jealous as we are. We could have made a landing openly, but if we had, the warfare you are threatening would have been here and done with long ago and there would be nothing left of either of our people but smouldering planets to mark the meeting place of two stellar peoples."

"You can say this knowing that no Solan has the barest notion of how this doodad in the hold can permit us to travel faster than light?"

Carolyn looked at him with pity. "I'll tell you what would happen," she said. "You'd greet us with cheers and invite us in—long enough to steal our warp-generator. You'd trade us your medical science for our chemistry and your electronics for our gravities, and then you'd meet us face to face to prove to yourselves that even though you got a second-place start, you could move faster and hit harder than we could. You'd carry your war to us, and we'd carry our war to you, and there would be cause and effect and attack and retaliation with each blow a bit more vicious until your people would be planting mercurite at the same time we were. And then, as I say, the next interstellar race to visit this section of the sky would find the radioactive remains of two cultures. I know because our people come of the same stock."

He looked at her cynically. "Is that so? Where I come from it takes three people to sing a trio, Carolyn. How do you explain that?"

"That's a recessive mutation."

"All right," he snapped. "So you've justified your own actions to yourself."

"Of course. Everybody is self-justified."

"And you justify the doping of our race by calling it better than meeting us face to face."

"Remember your own history. Even before the First Atomic War everybody realized that warfare was a bankrupt measure to be undertaken after all else had failed. You conducted your conflicts undercover, by boring from within, by undermining the moral fiber and lowering resistance. So, when your people have lost the ability to fight back, we'll move in quietly and make an asset of you instead of a vicious enemy; ultimately a ruined structure that must be rebuilt completely before it is of any use to us."

"Got it all figured out, haven't you?" sneered Farradyne. "All except a few of us who happen to catch on. Then what—if we don't exactly cotton to the idea?"

There was a yelp from behind him and he turned just in time to intercept Norma. She was advancing on Brenner with her acid-brush poised. "Don't, Norma," he said gently, turning her aside.

"But you said—"

"Later." He gave her a gentle shove toward the side of the room and she went reluctantly. "Brenner," he said sharply, "I want information."

"Ask," replied Brenner. "What can we lose?"

"Navigational data," said Farradyne, ignoring the question. "Where are we and how fast does that gizmo run us?"

"I'd guess about six light years out from Sol. The warp generator permits a top speed of about two light years per hour in Terran figures. So go ahead and drive this can somewhere so we can get this fool rigmarole over with. But take the dame aloft with you. I don't want my face lettered like a washroom wall."

"Somehow it seems appropriate," chuckled Farradyne, but he took Norma by the hand and led her up the stairs. She followed like an automaton until they were out of sight, and then she came alive.

Visibly she relaxed. The granite set to her face faded and became soft. Her lips curved gently and her eyes were animated. She walked briskly across the control room, and turned down the outgoing gain before she turned to face Farradyne.

"Charles, that was the hardest acting job I've ever done."

She snapped her acid bottle into one of the spring-containers so that it wouldn't float all over the place under weightlessness and then she went to the co-pilot's seat and dropped into it casually. She relaxed with her head leaned back.

"How long after a sniff of hellflower does the effect last?" asked Farradyne.

"Depends. I could feel the euphoria fading shortly after you took mine out of my hair. The odd part of it was that it seemed different, somehow. I feel so odd. Dizzy and weak and somehow frightened. I'd like to be held, gently, and caressed like a kitten." She sat up and half turned to look over the back of the co-pilot's seat. "This is honest, Charles. I know, I can feel it; it's true and it's good, Charles. Oh, yes," she said in a matter-of-fact voice, "I remember everything. This isn't an act, Charles. This is the real thing. I've seemed to regain my feelings again. Actually, I can almost feel sorry for them, you know?" Her voice ended on an upward note.

Farradyne looked at her. Bemused, he said, "Could it be the hair of the dog?"

"Hair of the dog?" she repeated automatically.

"The one that bit you," he said. "You were in an awful overload dose, Norma; maybe the overload burned the dross out, like fire cleansing a wound. Maybe—"

Norma blushed. "You were very gentle," she said.

He realized what she meant. He recalled the stories he had heard of sophisticates who took their hellflowers to heighten the emotional thrill of a symphony or a dinner; of men who had enough love for their women to let them plumb the depths of emotion without using the exhilarant as the cold means to a crude end. He had been with her through her emotional binge and he had seen her through it quietly. The fact that he had not wanted her, in fact repulsed her, had helped. She had not been burned by piling passion a-top a heightened emotional response.

He looked into her eyes critically. They were alive and soft. Could it be that an overdose of the same devilish stuff could cure the effects of its own?

"How do you feel?" he asked gently.

"Weak, washed out, but I can go on and on," she said confidently. She didn't look it, but maybe she could, he thought. Excitement would carry a person through a lot of trials. He looked at her again and understood that he was right. She would go on and on, until the strain was over and then she would probably come completely unglued for some time.

Farradyne put out a hand and stroked her cheek. She sighed against his hand and moved her head from side to side. She reached up and pulled his face down to kiss him on the lips. It was brief but warmly satisfying.

She laid back in the co-pilot's seat, relaxed. "It's all there again," she said dreamily. "That same fast pulse and the tingle—and the rather interesting feeling of danger. I'm a woman again, Charles; just a very little bit concerned about being marooned in a spacecraft with you. Let's get back home where I can enjoy my feelings. Please?"

Farradyne gave her hand a squeeze. "Done!" he glowed. Silently he wondered whether she were really cured. He looked at her, at the glow in her eyes and at the blush on her face, and he hoped so.

He slipped over the back of the pilot's seat and pushed down hard on the toggle bar. The weightlessness came, and the compressed springs of their seats tossed them up against the restraining straps. From below there came a moan, but beside him, Norma relaxed in full confidence and watched him work the controls with interest.

Two light years an hour ... Farradyne ran the Lancaster for exactly three hours and then cut the super-drive. Together they inspected the heavens and found a brilliant yellow star on their quarter. Farradyne turned the ship to face it and pushed the toggle up and down. The star reappeared without change. He kept his eye to the point-of-flight telescope and raised the toggle slowly. Sol changed color, racing toward the blue and the violet first and then turning a dull red and rising through the spectrum again until it became violet once more. It went through another spectrum change and started to increase in size.

Whatever caused this phenomeonon could not be explained by Farradyne; perhaps by no living Solan physicist until many years of research brought forth a theory.

But regardless of the theories-to-come, Sol grew in size like a toy balloon hitched to a high-pressure air line until its flare frightened the pilot. He shoved the toggle down and Sol winked back into the familiar disc of blinding sun, about the size as seen from Mars.

Farradyne oriented himself with his knowledge of common celestial navigation, consulted the spaceman's ephemeris and pointed at a large unwinking spot. "Home," he said.

Two light years an hour ... Farradyne went to the computer and made some calculations. He returned, pointed the Lancaster at Terra and flicked the toggle up and down, counting off a few seconds for drive. Sol whiffled past, changing in color as its position changed in the astrodome, and when Farradyne drove the toggle down, Terra was a distant disc in the sky above them.

Farradyne turned the outgoing gain on the intercom. "Terra dead ahead," he called to the prisoners below. "Still want to bet?"

Brenner growled. "You've got your bet. It's our lives against yours."

"Done!"

"Don't try to collect too soon," snapped Brenner. "You're not leading your squadron of spacebombers yet."

Farradyne picked up his throat-whistle and put it in his mouth. He worked it back with his tongue and said, "The hell you say, Brenner." The result was a humming, whining, groaning travesty.

21

"We'll not repeat," said Farradyne. "Norma, hike below and see that our visitors stay taped to their chairs. I'm going to land this crate without interference."

Norma nodded and went down to the salon. "They're still secure," she reported over the intercom.

Farradyne replied, "Aye-firm," and then made his first ranging-radar contact with Terra. He set his deceleration drive accordingly and the integrator-needle crept over to the center-scale zero, informing Farradyne that zero separation from the surface of the spaceport would result in zero velocity of the Lancaster.

Then Farradyne fired up the radio and called: "Washington Tower. This is a Lancaster Eighty-One requesting landing instructions. Registry Six-Eight-Three. Farradyne piloting."

"Tower to Six-Eight-Three. Take Beacon Nine at one twenty thousand, Landing Area Five. Traffic is zero-zero, but eight repeat eight Spaceguard cutters are in formation at sixty thousand." The voice changed in tone slightly. "Spaceguard, Code Watchung. Calling Watchung."

"Watchung to Tower, go ahead."

"Tower. Watchung, we are away from Beacon Nine. Lancaster Eighty-One coming in. Give position and course."

"Watchung to Tower. Position azimuth six seven zero, altitude sixty thousand, distance nine miles. Course twenty-seven North azimuth. Will miss Beacon Nine by thirty-three miles. Recheck?"

"Recheck and aye-firm, Watchung. Tower to Six-Eight-Three: Did you follow that?"

"Aye-firm!" called Farradyne.

"Watchung to Six-Eight-Three: Pilot identify yourself."

"Pilot Farradyne here, Watchung."

"Aye-firm. Watchung Five, assume command of Six, Seven and Eight. Take alert pattern at two hundred thousand feet and stand by. Watchung Two, Three and Four compute and take closing course on Six-Eight-Three and convey to Landing Area Five. Farradyne, prepare to accept convoy."

"Deny, Watchung. Request reasons."

"Prepare to accept inspection, Six-Eight-Three."

Farradyne growled angrily and dropped the radio formalities. "Why?" he snapped.

"You are suspected of hauling a cargo of hellflowers. Prepare to stand inspection upon landing."

From down in the salon came the sound of cynical laughter. Brenner said, "We'll let your own people punish you, Farradyne. Hellblossom running, resisting arrest, kidnapping, operating with a forged license, operating a ship with a questionable registry. I'll bet that life you offered."

Farradyne knew what Brenner meant. Taped tight in his ship were Carolyn Niles, daughter of one of Mercury's leading citizens, and a schoolteacher supposedly named Hughes. There would no doubt be a lot of other witnesses prepared to perjure him into three hundred years of hard labor on Titan. He wondered how they had managed this; certainly they had not been prepared for losing their captured spacecraft so quickly. Yet the counter-preparation looked as though such an eventuality had been expected.

"Six-Eight-Three, respond!"

Farradyne snapped his mike-switch and said, "I resent the accusation and demand an explanation!"

"There is no accusation. We have an anonymous tip-off. You are not accused of illegal operations, only suspect. Will you permit inspection?"

"No!" snapped Farradyne. "Deny!"

"Code Watchung: Intercept Six-Eight-Three. Prepare to fire."

"Fire and be damned," said Farradyne in a growl. His hand reached for the toggle and shoved it home for ten seconds. When he turned the ultradrive off, they were far a-space and the radio was silent.

"Give it up, Charles," said Carolyn from below.

"Go to hell!"

Brenner said, "You might as well, Farradyne. No matter how you figure it, you'll either be grabbed by your own people or get picked up by ours. We can't lose."

Farradyne went below and faced them. "And what happens if I dump you out of the spacelock and your cargo with you?"

"You could do that to Cahill," said Carolyn, "because Cahill was not registered as a paying passenger. I am, and when the authorities find me missing—as they will very soon if they haven't been so informed already—you'll be called to account for me."

"Just what sort of act do you suggest?" Farradyne asked cynically.

"Surrender and turn this ship over to us. You will be detained as a prisoner of war and imprisoned among your own kind."

"Doing what kind of prison labor? Growing hellflowers?"

"Not at all. We wouldn't consider that ethical."

"What a cockeyed code of ethics you have!"

"Let's not discuss ethics now. Surrender and you'll be placed on a Terra-conformed planet with every freedom among your own kind except the right to space flight."

"No, thanks," said Farradyne drily. "I had four years of slogging in a fungus marsh because of your kind. I'm disinclined to give up after one miss. It—"

"Charles!" cried Norma through the squawk-box. "Come up here! Radar trace!"

Farradyne raced up the stairs just in time to see the long green line of the radar settling down to a solid signal pip at the extreme end. He flipped the switch that coupled the telescope to the radar and looked through the eyepiece. At the extreme range of the radar beam was a spacecraft, either the same starship that had chased him before or its sister ship. It was closing the range fast.

Farradyne dropped into his chair and snapped the belt. He turned the Lancaster by ninety degrees and grasped the toggle on the ultradrive. Ten seconds later he resumed normal flight for a few seconds and then, at another angle, he used the ultradrive some more.

He paused here long enough to take his space bearing, then plunged the ship down between the orbits of Jupiter and Saturn, far to the south of the ecliptic with a flick of the enemy switch.

"Norma," he asked quietly, after he had inspected the sky to be certain of their freedom, "who is Howard Clevis' boss?"

"Howard reports to Solon Forrester directly."

"Oh fine," groaned Farradyne. "Getting to the Solon is no picnic. How do we go about it?"

From the intercom came a suggestion: "Walk into his fourth under-assistant sub-secretary's office wearing a hellflower and ask for an audience."

A flick of color caught Farradyne's eye and he turned to look at the radar. The line had wiggled slightly and, as he watched, its extreme end formed into a signal pip. He looked through the telescope and saw the starship again. Whether they had one with supervelocity tracking methods or several hundred covering the solar system like an interception net, it made no difference. They were on his trail.

Farradyne played with the high-space drive again, cutting some more didoes back and forth across space, ending up this time not too far from Mercury.

"Having fun?" asked Brenner.

"Shut up!" snapped Farradyne.

From below there came a rapid conversation in multitones, like someone dusting off the keys on a pipe organ played in mute.

Farradyne swore as he sat there looking at the big chronometer on the wall, counting off the seconds. Seventy of them went under the sweep hand before the radar trace hiked up into the same, familiar extreme-range warning.

Deliberately, Farradyne turned his ship toward Terra and hit the ultradrive. "They called me a hot-pants pilot," he gritted. "Now I'll really be one!"

Yellow-green Terra raced up and up and up through the spectrum and burst in size from an unwinking pin-point of light to a shockingly large disc that zoomed toward them frighteningly. They saw its roundness come out of the sky in a myriad colors until it filled the dome above them. Norma screamed, but by the time her voice had stopped echoing through the control room, Terra was past them by a good many miles of clean miss and Farradyne had cut the ultradrive. He grunted unhappily because he was now as far from Terra on the other side as he had been before he took the chance. This mad use of the enemy ultradrive in ducking around the solar system was something similar to trying to make a fifty-ton clam-shell digger split a cigarette paper; at two light years per hour, their speed was enough to take them from Sol to Pluto in one second flat. He could not control it finely enough to do more than zoom off out of sight. Without a doubt the big starship could maneuver at ultra-velocity with their drive cut in at microsecond intervals mechanico-electrically, of course, which was a setup that Farradyne did not have.

He shrugged, and then he patted Norma on the shoulder. "I don't think that my aim is good enough to hit the thing," he said. He turned the Lancaster end for end abruptly and tried a quick flick of the toggle. Once more Terra leaped at them, a swirling kaleidoscope of color, looming into monster size, flicking past.

When they came out of it Terra was again behind them by a few million miles. Farradyne thought for a moment, started to say, "Maybe we—" when he reached out and pressed the red button on the auxiliary panel, "—are being traced by the generator doodad they put below."

"But what are we going to do now?"

"Hit for Terra!"

Farradyne set the drive for Terra and then sat there, tense and waiting. He had not long to wait. The radar wiggled its warning trace almost dead ahead.

They moved to intercept him, but Farradyne raised the drive to four gravities and plunged on. The starship grew and behind it Terra grew, but slower. The radio burst into sound and Farradyne grabbed the microphone and said, "Come and get me, fellows!"

"Stop," came the demand, "or we fire!"

"Start a shooting match here and you'll have all of Terra wondering why the fireworks," Farradyne said.

"Stop!"

"No!"

"One last warning. Stop!"

Farradyne touched a lever. "Maybe you'd like to polish a few rivets?"

The Lancaster turned ever so slightly until the starship was directly on the point-of-drive. His other hand touched the drive and the acceleration increased a bit. Caustically, Farradyne said, "Go ahead and shoot! You'll find your own living room full of by-products if you do!"

He was right. The Lancaster was on collision course with the starship and if the Lancaster was blasted at this moment shards and fragments of the spacecraft would spread like a shotgun charge, and if the starship escaped being hit with a rather uncomfortably large mass of jagged metal it would be because of sheer luck.

"Veer off!" came the strident cry.

"I'm going to ram you, damn you!" roared Farradyne.

The starship flared at its tail and at the same time a torpedo-port winked as a missile blasted off. Farradyne gauged the missile and the starship and kept his nose on the starship's lead. Gritting his teeth he watched the missile come at him as he held his course by sheer nerve. At the last moment the missile veered aside, obviously controlled by the enemy to keep from hitting him. It was a war of nerves.

The starship loomed big in the astrodome and Farradyne aimed the Lancaster amidships. The interstellar monster grew rapidly until the individual plates could be seen. Then with a silent, dark flicker that was as shocking as a loud blast and a searing flare might have been, the starship quietly ceased to exist as an obstacle in front of them. They had resorted to the ultradrive at the last moment. The sky was clear....

Except for the missile, seeking them and with no control to stop it.

It had curved in a vast circle behind them and was now closing in from behind. The radar pip leaked across the screen; the missile must be coming at them by several thousand gravities.

"You'll have to take this," gritted Farradyne to Norma. "Hunker down in the seat."

His hands ran across the board and the Lancaster turned in space slightly while the drive went up to six gravities. The flare behind them lengthened with the increased power, and the Lancaster took a slight side-vector to its course as the flare was aimed at the seeking-missile that was homing on them.

Insensate, unable to understand the maneuver, the missile followed its finding-gear and roared up into the long trail of reaction flare. The flare was a by-product of water, stored in its tank as a reaction-mass. It was heated by the atomic pile to an energy that destroyed the molecular affinity of hydrogen for oxygen and then stripped the electrons from their orbits, and when that was done, the nucleus of the oxygen broke up into eight protons and eight neutrons and added their binding energy to the drive. The flare was sheer gamma and sheer bombardment and the word "heat" had no real meaning, until the reaction blast touched something that was massive enough to absorb the energy.

The missile absorbed this energy, was bombarded back from the Lancaster, and ultimately melted to join with the flare because its mechanism could not function to start the fission of the atomics in the warhead.

There was a sparkling burst from behind, like a monster signal flare. That was all.

Farradyne cut the drive back to a more comfortable level and relaxed a moment to let his body rest. Norma had blacked out briefly, but came to as soon as the drive had been cut.

Ahead of them Terra loomed moon-sized in the middle of the astrodome, and behind them the radar wiggled its tail at extreme-range again. The range closed, and Farradyne with a grunt juggled his levers. The drive rose once more and the pressure increased. The range closed more slowly, but still the starship came on.

"You can't make it, Farradyne," the radio blared exultantly.

Farradyne laughed into the microphone and cut it dead with a flick of his hand. "We may not make it," he told Norma, "but we won't end up as live cowards!"

Terra loomed larger and larger as the range closed between the Lancaster and the ship behind it. Norma cried out, and Farradyne looked through the telescope to see the giveaway annular flare. The enemy had fired another torpedo.

He laughed and Norma touched his arm; he turned to smile at the deep concern and puzzlement on her face.

"They know we can louse it with our drive," he said. "And they know that while that thing is coming up from behind we cannot possibly make a turn-over and start decelerating for a landing. It's a thoughtful tactic on their part—they hope."

"But I don't see—"

"Well, they know I won't pile up on Terra. I'll steer to miss. No doubt they have another starship on the other side of the planet, waiting to intercept us out here after I elude the missile. Maybe they have a whole space net flung out. So hunker down, while I cut some didoes."

The radar showed the picture. The starship, now fearful of being detected by one of the long-range jobs on Terra, veered away on a tangent, while between them came the missile. Before them, the huge, solid-looking pip that indicated the bulking Terra, crept closer and closer. Farradyne cranked the rate-of-change dials and looked at the figures and nodded; the enemy had computed their missile's drive beautifully. It would meet the Lancaster at about the same time the Lancaster met Terra. Since everybody knew that Farradyne was not going to plow into Terra head on, he would have to steer to one side, but in order to keep from being hit by the missile, he would have to keep on driving right past Terra and out into space again—into the arms of the net on the other side, waiting outside the radar range from Terra.

The alternative was to cut the drive and try to land, and if this were tried the missile would blast the Lancaster far above Terra, long before the ship could signal its home planet that there was danger in space.

The missile's range closed home and Farradyne hiked the drive until the reaction-trail was a sun-bright fury and consumed the missile in its fierceness.

He cut the drive dead just in time to hear the first screaming complaint of the superstratosphere. Farradyne hit the upper reaches of Terra's air blanket at a point so high that the air there was a fairly hard vacuum, but the speed of the ship was high enough to pile quite a bit of air in front of it. The accelerometer went crazy, reading peg-stop against the end of the scale to the left. Their seat belts cut their thighs and the blood rushed to their heads. Norma's arms were flung above her head, but Farradyne fought the pressure that tried to lift his arms; he kept his hands on the control panel and caressed his levers gently so that the Lancaster pinwheeled.

The screaming of the air grew louder as the ship turned broadside, then diminished as its tail came around to align itself with the course of flight. Then with the pressure coming from the right direction again, Farradyne waited until the scream of tortured upper stratosphere faded away and the braking pressure stopped. He hit the drive as the Lancaster soared on past Terra.

Though the enemy must have been awaiting him on the line of flight past Terra, the Lancaster came nowhere near them. Its course had changed from the usual straight line to a long ellipse and the first turn of the curve had wound their course so far from the anticipated point that the enemy could not move over in time to intercept him. Terra rotated madly below and to the side, then came moving up in the angle of vision until it was at forty-five degrees off the nose and still rising.

Once more Terra loomed close and once more came the scream of air, deeper and yet shriller as Farradyne cut the drive and let the air-brake take over. They went on around Terra in a close ellipse, the air-screech rising and falling as their altitude changed.

Three times around Terra they went, then Farradyne turned his tail straight down with a few hard blasts and started to drop like a plummet.

Far to one side came a light flare and the radio gabbled something that Farradyne was too busy to catch; in the distance a jet freighter trailed a line of vapor and far to the south ultra-brightness of a spacecraft take-off trail climbed into the sky. Farradyne, busy checking the controls, the autopilot and the computing radar altimeter, aimed the Lancaster for the southern edge of Lake Superior, and they came down in a screaming fall.

The flare parted the waters of the Lake and sent up a billow of steam for about a hundredth of a second. The autopilot cut the drive and the violence ceased as the Lancaster sank into the deep, cool waters, to stop, to come rising buoyantly toward the surface again.

Farradyne hit the switch that opened the scuttlebutt of the water tank and the lake waters rushed in, killing their buoyancy.

The astrodome porpoised once, gently, and then the Lancaster sank very slowly. Farradyne waited until the ship was resting tail down on the bottom; he turned it slightly to one side and opened the drive by a bare fraction. Water churned below them and the ship moved logily sideways, toward the shore. He wondered whether he had enough power coming from the motor to cut up a stream of bubbles and steam, hoping that the cooling water would kill the rising turbulence so as to conceal his operation.

He spent an hour testing and trying the depth along the shore until he found a place that was just deep enough to let the Lancaster stand upright with its dome a foot or two below the surface.

A small fish goggled at the shining metal hungrily.

Farradyne stretched. "We got this far anyway!"

Norma looked at him dizzily. "How?"

"My pappy used to tell me about this sort of come-in," he said. "Seems as how he once knew a gent that had piloted one of the old chemical rockets that used braking ellipses for landings. That was a heck of a long time ago, before we had power to burn. But anyway, it wasn't expected, I gather, because we succeeded."

"Now what?"

Farradyne grinned. "This is going to be a bit wet," he said. He took the retractible antenna from its stowage and wound it with insulating tape half way up its length. Then he pulled out the astrodome plug and ignoring the stream of water that splashed on the control-room floor, he shoved the antenna into the hole and made it fast. The water stopped. The upper half of the antenna projected above the surface of the lake.

Farradyne tuned the radio to a local broadcast station, and waited, relaxing in his seat, until the music stopped for a station break. "The latest news flashes on the system-wide hunt for Charles Farradyne. The search for the notorious hellflower operator still goes on. It has narrowed down to North America because of several reports, some official and some unofficial, of activity a-space in this region.

"Farradyne is also charged with complicity in the disappearance of Howard Clevis, high undercover operative for the SAND Office. It is believed in some circles that Farradyne may be much higher in the love lotus ring than a mere handler or distributor. Some officials have indicated that Farradyne may be Mr. Big himself.

"An early interception and arrest is anticipated. Keep tuned to this station for the latest news."

The music returned.

22

"Very neat," said Brenner.

"I thought so," replied Farradyne coldly.

Brenner's smile was serene and it made Farradyne want to push his face in. "Glad you made it. I wouldn't want to die in space. Now that we've landed it's going to be easier to pick you up."

"Stop crowing, Brenner. I'm not licked yet."

"Why don't you give up? You can't begin to realize how isolated you are from the men who might listen to you—if you could get to them."

"Look, Brenner, I've no doubt that you have your henchmen neatly planted in many high offices. But you can't cover them all."

"How can you tell which is which?" laughed Brenner. "You can't get through, Farradyne."

Carolyn stirred and groaned. Farradyne looked at her as she opened her eyes. "Can't take it?" he sneered. "But how you can dish it out!"

"Where are we?" groaned Carolyn.

"Wouldn't tell you on a bet," he snapped. "You might be telepathic as well as multitonal. I—"

Farradyne's eye caught a flicker of motion and he whirled. The other two men were struggling against the tape that bound their wrists and ankles, and they glared at him over the white sheet of tape beneath their noses.

"Shut up!" roared Farradyne.

Brenner sneered. "Just how do you hope to do anything?"

"I have a few ideas."

"With every roadway plugged from top to bottom? And if you did succeed in getting to a SANDoffice without being shot to bits, how would you convince them of anything?"

"Sometimes it's better to start at the bottom and work your way up," said Farradyne. "The idea is to make enough noise so that a large cross-section of the population can hear you."

Brenner laughed. "You think you can convince the public?"

"You may be surprised."

Farradyne lit a cigarette and relaxed. "We'll wait until dusk to be sure," he said.

Hourly, the radio went on telling how Farradyne was being cornered. Radar nets and radio-contact squadrons were scouring the North American continent with special attention being given to the North Middlewest. A ship of the enemy must have arrived with some information that could be pieced together, for another report said, "Charles Farradyne, sought on many charges involving hellflower operations, has been implicated in the disappearance of Carolyn Niles, according to her family. Her father indicated that Miss Niles had not returned home after a date with the criminal. This is a familiar pattern with hellflower dopesters. Be careful. The man is cornered and desperate. He will not hesitate to shoot, he may even bomb a village or neighborhood if his freedom is threatened!"

Brenner and Carolyn did not even jeer at him. The situation was obvious; Farradyne and his white flag would be shot to pieces before he could tell his name, let alone make explanations.

But now it was dark outside. The stars were bright above the astrodome and they danced with the motion of the water. To one side a wavy trail passed across the sky and high above there was the flicker of a space patrol crossing the sky at fifty or sixty miles. The radio was alive with reports and the police bands were busy with their myriad reports and directions. Farradyne pricked off their calls on a map with a drawing pencil. Ground and air patrols were combing a vast area and space squadrons were holding a dragnet high in the sky above. For a very brief interval Farradyne could hear a distant network in operation which indicated that the same sort of complete search was underway in other districts across the face of the continent.

He inspected his map and hoped that he had them all. Then, very cautiously, he lifted the nose of the Lancaster above the water line and eyed his radar. Pips showed here and there, a couple within a few miles of him. He waited until they turned away, waited until they went beyond the radar horizon.

Using just enough power to waft the Lancaster into the air, Farradyne placed the ship in a gully a few hundred yards from a state highway. The trees covered it from direct observation at night and the flat hills and ravines would cover it from radar detection....

It was almost two o'clock in the morning when a lonely moving van came along the highway. The brakes screeched as the driver caught sight of a crumpled body lying alongside the road. Red sogginess contrasted with the length of white thigh, uncovered by a ripped skirt, and more redness dribbled wet from the corner of Norma's mouth. The driver piled out of one door and his helper from the other. They ran to kneel by the woman's side.

Then they smelled the ketchup and stood up, raising their hands immediately.

"That's not blood spilled," said the driver loudly. "Let's keep it that way."

The driver's helper added, "This is a bum job, friend. We're carting second-hand furniture, not gold."

"I don't want your load," said Farradyne, stepping into the glare of the headlights while Norma got up and dusted herself off. "I want your truck."

They looked at him and he saw recognition in their faces. Obviously every news agency had his picture presented in full color. He saw that they apparently understood why he wanted the truck, for there was also contempt on their frightened faces.

"What's the next move, Farradyne?" asked the driver in a surly tone. "Do we take the high jump?"

"No. I just want your truck."

"Getting a bit brash?"

"Maybe I have to. Driver, what's your name?"

"Morgan. This is Roberts."

"Morgan, you drive that truck into the ravine there and I'll see that Roberts plays hostage. Get it?"

"Behave, Al," pleaded Roberts.

"I will, but I think we'll get it anyway."

"Act like you believe that and you will," snapped Farradyne. "I have neither time nor patience."

Morgan climbed into the truck and drove it from the road through the trees until they came to the Lancaster. Both men goggled at the big ship parked there and Farradyne let them look at it for a moment. Then he waved his gun. "Unload it!" he said sharply.

It took them an hour to move the load from the truck to the ground, and Farradyne spent that hour in nervous watching. He could not trust them not to make a break, nor could he hope to explain. When the van was emptied, he faced Roberts against it and said, "Norma, tape Morgan's hands behind him."

She did, and while Farradyne stood over them, she taped Roberts. Each man knew that the other's life was dependent on him and, while either man might have made some break for safety, he would not so long as the other might suffer.

Their lips curled in contempt as the conveyor-belt came out of the cargo lock and the white blossoms tumbled along it to drop into the van. Both Morgan and Roberts were honest men, but they lacked the higher education that was necessary to be pilot of a spacecraft; therefore, they resented the fact that Farradyne had this training yet used it to such ends. They were rough-hewn and hard-boiled and, perhaps like other transcontinental truckers, they had a woman at either end of the line and a few strung along the way, but their love conquests were lustily honest and they scorned the idea of hellflowers as an aid to passion. Even in their fright they sneered at the spaceman.

Farradyne left them sitting there on the ground after the loading was finished. He and Norma went into the salon and he faced Brenner. "Better take this quietly," he said. "It's inevitable, Brenner."

The radio made him pause:

"Ladies and gentlemen, the late news: The system-wide search for Charles Farradyne is hurrying to a close. Indications are now that the infamous hellblossom king is hiding in the Lake Superior region and all forces are being hurried to that area to create the most leakproof dragnet in the history of man's manhunt. A special session of the planning committee of the Solar Anti-Narcotics Department has been called to deal with the problem, and any information pertaining to Charles Farradyne may be delivered by picking up your telephone and calling SAND, One-thousand.

"This information is being disseminated freely. We know that Farradyne is listening to this broadcast, and the Sandmen have instructed all radio stations and networks to deliver the following announcement:

"'To Charles Farradyne! A reward of fifty thousand dollars has been offered for your capture dead or alive. You cannot escape. The forces that are blanketing the Lake Superior area are being augmented hourly by additional men and materiel. You will be arrested and brought to trial for your life. However, the reward of fifty thousand dollars will be turned over to you to be used in your own defense if you surrender at once.'"

Farradyne grunted. "Very tasty dish," he said sourly. "Very competent people you have, boys and girls. Someone really thought that one out most thoroughly. Can you picture me walking up to a patrol and saying 'Fellers, I've come to give myself up so I can have the reward' and then have the patrol take me in on that basis? I'd go in on a shutter, and the patrol would divide the loot. To hell with you, we'll play it my way. Norma, go ahead."

Norma slipped off one high-heeled shoe and advanced on Brenner. The enemy agent tried to shy away, but Farradyne went over and caught his head between the palms of his hands and held Brenner fixed. Norma swung the slipper and crashed the heel against Brenner's jaw.

Brenner slumped, and the heelprint on his jaw oozed a dribble of blood mixed with mud.

Farradyne slung Brenner over his shoulder and carried the inert man out. He propped Brenner in the helper's seat and handed Norma into the driver's seat. He stood on the runningboard and watched Norma strip the tape from Brenner's wrists and replace it with fresh tape from the truck's own first-aid kit.

"The ankles, too," he warned her. "You have to cover up the tape-marks."

Norma taped Brenner's ankles. Then she looked up at Farradyne. "I'm shaky."

"I know," he said. "But you have to hold yourself together until this gambit is played out."

She smiled wanly. "That's what is holding me together. Charles, wish me luck!"

He leaned into the truck window and put his lips to hers. It was a very pleasant kiss, their first kiss of real affection and mutual confidence, though it lacked a compelling passion. Then he swung down from the truck with a wave of his hand and Norma put the big engine in gear with a grind that set Morgan's teeth on edge.

The truck turned onto the highway and roared off down the road.

Morgan asked, "What do we do now?"

"We wait in the spacer," Farradyne replied, "and go back under water."

Roberts shrugged. "Hope we like the trip," he said. "I've never been in a spacer before."

They went up the landing ramp and into the salon, to stop short as they saw Carolyn and the other pair.

"Quite a collection you have here," said Morgan. "Is this Carolyn Niles?"

"I am," replied Carolyn. "Aren't you going to do something about it?"

Morgan showed her his taped wrists. "Not in this garb," he said. "This man-about-space has too many things his own way."

Farradyne smiled and left them. He went aloft and returned the Lancaster to the lake. "Now," he said, "we'll wait it out."

Morgan shook his head. "With the net they've set up you'll never see your girl or the truck again, or the hellflowers."

"Maybe I want it that way."

"Oh? Putting the finger on the bird you carted out of here?"

"Precisely."

"And how about the dame?"

Farradyne laughed. "In this cockeyed society of ours, even a streetwalking slut can rip her dress open, point at a man, and holler 'Rape' and half the community will start yelling 'lynch the sonofabitch' without looking too hard at either of them. She'll get by, but it may go hard with him."

With some amusement he saw two different expressions looking at him silently. Morgan and Roberts were scornful, angry and ready at any instant to do whatever they could to overcome him. Only the tape kept them from trying. But on Carolyn's face was an expression of mingled defeat and admiration. She knew as well as Farradyne that Brenner was in for a rough time.

Farradyne relaxed. He lit a cigarette and mixed himself a highball. Carolyn groaned and tried to flex the wrists that were secured to the arms of the chair. Morgan growled at the sight of her helplessness and asked if Farradyne had harmed her. Carolyn replied, "Not yet. I happen to be immune to hellflowers."

"Scorpions," said Farradyne, pointedly, "are immune to their own poison."

It made no difference. Morgan and Roberts still wanted to get free so they could take him on in a rough and tumble, and Farradyne knew that either one of them would be more than a match for him. Tooling a truck was not hard in this day of mechanical and electrical aids to human muscle, but manipulating furniture was something else again. Either one of them was capable of bending him double and straightening him out again afterwards.

He listened to them discuss him. It was amusing, in a way. The first remark was made with a sly glance in his direction to see how he reacted. As he merely smiled, their observations became bolder and more damning. They wondered how and why his degradation had been so complete. They considered his family for a number of generations of inbreeding and illegitimacy.

In all of this he had to admire Carolyn's ability to dissemble even while she was playing a losing battle. She was determined to carry on high until the bitter end, and she added to the slander with a fine regard for the well-turned phrase and amplified all the truckmen said. They were working on his chances for a painful Hereafter when the radio music faded again:

"And here is the latest news on Charles Farradyne. Within the past half hour the area of search has been narrowed to a ten-mile circle by the interception of a moving van laden with hellflowers. The arrest was made by a state highway patrol with the aid of a woman who gave her name as Norma Hannon.

"Miss Hannon was in a state of hysterical collapse after days of imprisonment at the hands of the lotus ring, a brutal physical assault, and threats of being forced into love lotus addiction. The driver of the truck was carrying a license made out to Walter Morgan, but information from the Bureau of Identification indicates that Morgan is also known as Lewis Hughes, a prominent teacher of Ancient History in a Des Moines school. During the struggle Miss Hannon succeeded in rendering the alleged criminal unconscious by hitting him on the jaw with her slipper, after which she taped—"

Farradyne chuckled. "You see?" he glowed.

Morgan grunted, "My license!"

Roberts cried, "Our truck!"

Carolyn said, "And what's it got you, Charles?"

"—the first-aid kit," went on the announcer. "Morgan or Hughes is being held on a John Doe warrant pending the true identification of the man, charged with hellflower possession, abduction, illegal restraint, assault and battery, rape and driving an interstate truck with an improper license.

"Miss Hannon collapsed after driving the truck to within sight of the dragnet set out for Farradyne. Her statement will be taken by the Sand Office as soon as she is recovered. The point of hospitalization has been kept secret by the Sandmen, who are now confident of an early arrest. Indications are that Hughes or Morgan has turned state's evidence and is willing to inform on his racket-boss."

"Hah!" glowed Carolyn.

"Did you a lot of good, didn't it, Farradyne?" snarled Morgan.

Farradyne ignored Morgan and spoke to Carolyn. "Unless Norma is being tended by some one of your gang, this is the end, baby."

She eyed him superciliously. "How long will they believe her after they discover she's an addict herself?"

"Maybe she isn't."

Carolyn laughed, "Everybody knows there is no cure."

"And how about our pal, Brenner-Hughes-Morgan?"

"You leave me out of this!" snapped Morgan.

"Sorry," said Farradyne with a smile. "I didn't mean to include you, Walter."

Carolyn said, in a self-confident voice, "Brenner is one of us. He is just as willing to die for our cause as—" She suddenly remembered the truckmen present, who were probably as puzzled as men can be over the trend of conversation. But she didn't have to finish. Farradyne realized with a start that the enemy culture and training must include a high degree of blind patriotism which demanded that the agent in danger of discovery must be ready to eliminate his discoverer even though it cause the death of both of them. The Semiramide—

A searchlight swept across the lake and its light, refracted downward from the waves, caught Farradyne's eye. He left them in the salon and raced up the stairs to the control room. Through the astrodome, distorted by the water, Farradyne could see the headlamps of a big truck. The searchbeam crossed the water again and flashed ever so briefly on the slender rod of the antenna. The truck paused in its course, the beam swept the woody shore and stopped; the truck turned toward something in the woods and rumbled off through the trees.

The radio music died again. "Ladies and gentlemen, we are about to bring you a very startling program. John Bundy, our special events newscaster, has joined the forces scouring the Lake Superior region for Charles Farradyne. Inasmuch as an early arrest is expected, and possibly a running gun battle, John Bundy will take the air with an on-the-spot account. Come in, John Bundy!"

"Hello, this is John Bundy! Our convoy of trucks, men, guns, radar and radio control resembles a war convoy. We have everything from trench knives to one-fifty-five rifles aboard as we scour the northwoods for the criminal who has been so successful up to this time. We arrived at a point along Lake Superior which must be close to Farradyne's operations, according to the description given to us by the arrested truck driver. Sand and mud from Miss Hannon's shoes correspond to that district.

"Flying above us now are eight squadron bombers carrying heavy depth charges because Farradyne is believed to be hiding his spacecraft in the waters of the Lake. A submarine from the Great Lakes Geodetic Survey has been hastily equipped with some ranging sonar from the War Museum at Chicago and is seeking the submerged spacecraft. It—"

There came a distant crash in the radio and seconds afterward the Lancaster resounded with the thunder of an underwater explosion.

"One of the depth charge patterns has been dropped," explained Bundy excitedly. "Perhaps this is—no, it's not. Sorry. Just a hope, but the submarine has just covered the explosion area and reported only an underwater mountain peak instead of a hidden spacecraft. No place will be left unsearched—"

A thin, pure ping of a pitch so high it was on the upper limit of Farradyne's ability to hear came and lasted for less than a tenth of a second. It came again in about twenty seconds, repeating at like intervals again and again. The interval dropped; the volume of the ping increased noticeably until the singing tinkle, something like tapping a silver table knife on Haviland china, was coming fast.

Ping! Ping! Ping!

Farradyne looked above. Circling there were skytrails of jet bombers making loops in the sky. There came another flash of the searchbeam against the antenna.

Ping! Abruptly the pinging changed in tone. It became frequency modulated so that it rose in a chirp, and Farradyne knew that the submarine was coming closer.

Norma! Get through, wherever you are!

Along the shoreline something blossomed with an orange flash. Seconds later there was an eruption fifty yards from the Lancaster that shook the ship hard enough to make the plates groan. A trickle of lake water oozed through the ceiling of the astrodome.

The pinging came louder.

Underwater bursts ricocheted and flashed and hurled their gusts of force against the spacer, buffeting the Lancaster.

Farradyne's hands hung above his controls. He could escape this holocaust; all he had to do was to blast free from the water, make a brief run for it, and then come down hard on the enemy ultradrive toggle-bar and his Lancaster would virtually disappear right under the guns of the squadrons that sought him. He could hide in space for a day or a week and return after Norma explained.

But this was wrong. To be sure he had the enemy equipment in his hold and enemy agents in his salon who could explain the science behind the device. Eventually it could be reproduced—but only if there were time.

For Farradyne realized that his act had been the first overt move that could start the First Interstellar War—but the enemy would not permit Sol to take the second move. Once their secret was out the starships would hover over Sol's planets with their loads of mercurite and it would be slavery or death. He would land to find a ruined Sol and a few remnants of humankind reduced to savagery. The only result would be the locating of a mercurite stockpile and a blow of retaliation.

And then someday, another sentience would come to visit the stars and find only the smouldering ruins of two systems that could neither live with each other nor permit each other to have supremacy.

Another bouncing crash shook the Lancaster.

The radio was rambling on and on as John Bundy gave the world a blow by blow description of the first action made toward its ultimate death.

"—and to those people who have stood out against the expenditure of monies for arms and training, I say they should witness this attack upon an enemy of society. Yes, warfare is dead, but the conflict goes on against evil and ruthlessness, and only by preparedness of strength and preparedness of mind—to be as ruthless as the fiends that bore from within—can mankind combat his own weaknesses.

"They are evacuating the area now. Farradyne is trapped and unless he surrenders within the next half hour, atomic weapons will be used. We may never learn the thoughts of the mind that has directed the decay of the moral fiber of our people. We may never know why a man, given the opportunities that many finer men have been denied, chose as his life's work—"

Carolyn laughed hysterically and Farradyne went below for a look.

Morgan and Roberts fell upon him and hauled him down the stairs. They pinned him to the deck and held him there. Carolyn stood above him.

"We don't mind dying," she said, "in order to take you with us! You and your money and your paid agents and your bribed officials! Permit you to surrender? To stand mock trial and be acquitted? Never!"

The Lancaster shook with the throb of depth charges.

Farradyne struggled against his captors. He'd been as blind a fool as he had ever been, to let them sit there without taping them separately.

"Let me up!" he stormed. "Let me up so we can escape this bombing—"

"Shut the hell up!"

Farradyne struggled.

There was a blasting roar that stunned them all; it shook the Lancaster viciously. The trickle of water through the astrodome was covered by the ear-splitting thunder, but less shockingly loud as the Lancaster hiked into the open air and braved the fire of the squadrons.

Farradyne fought himself awake. "Let him escape and we—"

Carolyn's shrill laugh drowned out his weak voice.

The radio went on as accursedly unanswerable as always. "Farradyne's spacecraft has been trapped and fired upon and now the pilot himself has been flushed from cover. He is making the criminal's last-stand. The rascal is hoping to flee through the most thorough skycover that has ever been assembled. He cannot hope to win though, ladies and gentlemen. I wish we had video here in the early morning light, so that you could see this vivid spectacle of the eternal battle between the forces of good and evil!

"But we'll all be there when Farradyne goes down to the death of flame he so richly deserves. Above him now are the jet bombers and above them lie the Interplanetary Space Guard to fire the final coup de grace—if Farradyne can run this gauntlet of righteous wrath that far.

"His flare trail is dimmed by the pinpoints of flashing death that seek him out. On every side of me are ships vomiting torpedoes, guided missiles with target-seeking radar in their sleek noses that will end this reign of terror and dissolution once they find their mark."

Farradyne looked up at Carolyn and saw a glow of excitement in her eyes. She looked down at him and said, "Charles, you almost succeeded—"

The radio clicked audibly and a forceful voice came on: "Attention! Attention! All listeners hear this. This is the office of the Secretary of Solar Defense, Under Secretary Marshall White speaking. All persons, whether official or unofficial, whether citizen or military, are hereby charged with the safety of Charles Farradyne and the Lancaster model Eighty-One in his possession. This is a 'Cease Fire' order. All citizens and military personnel, officials and non-officials are hereby ordered to offer Charles Farradyne whatever he may request in the nature of manpower, machinery, supplies, protection, material and safe conduct so that he may deliver his spacecraft to the Terran Arsenal at Terre Haute, Indiana."

Morgan looked at Farradyne with a scowl.

Carolyn cried, "Friends in high places!"

Roberts spat on Farradyne's face.

The Under Secretary's voice went on, "Within the hour, Miss Norma Hannon, one-time associate of Howard Clevis, undercover agent attached to this office on free duty, has presented irrevocable evidence to show that the hellflower operations have been a part and parcel of an unsuspected plot against humanity by denizens of an extra-solar culture. Since Farradyne's spacecraft contains the only known device enabling matter to exceed the velocity of light, its delivery to the Arsenal is deemed top priority. All persons are charged—"

Farradyne shrugged himself out of the grip of the truckmen. "Go the hell aloft and grab that bastard running the ship!" he snarled at them.

The other enemy rushed forward and Roberts caught a hard fist on the jaw and reeled back. Farradyne wheeled with a wide swing and chopped the edge of his hand hard against the side of the alien face. The blow hurled the other back against the little bar, against which he crumpled and slipped to the floor in a flaccid heap.

"Watch her!" Farradyne yelled to Roberts, who was recovering from his blow. Morgan dashed up the stairs and Farradyne was at his heels.