A Saucer of Loneliness (12 page)

His glance strayed to the Captain, and he stopped breathing.

Of
course!

He ran to the Captain’s personal lockers. He should have known that such a cocky little hound as Rootes could not live, could not strut and prance as he did, unless he had a weapon. And if it was the kind of weapon that such a man would characteristically choose—

A movement caught his eye as he searched.

The loverbirds were awake.

That wouldn’t matter.

He laughed at them, a flashing, ugly laugh. They cowered close together and their eyes grew very bright.

They knew.

He was aware that they were suddenly very busy, as busy as he. And then he found the gun.

It was a snug little thing, smooth and intimate in his hand. It was exactly what he had guessed, what he had hoped for—just what he needed. It was silent. It would leave no mark. It need not even be aimed carefully. Just a touch of its feral radiation and throughout the body the axones suddenly refuse to propagate nerve impulses. No thought leaves the brain, no slightest contraction of heart or lung occurs again, ever. And afterward, no sign remains that a weapon has been used.

He went to the serving window with the gun in his hand.
When he wakes, you will be dead
, he thought.
Couldn’t recover from stasis blackout. Too bad. But no one’s to blame, hm? We never had Dirbanu passengers before. So how could we know?

The loverbirds, instead of flinching, were crowding close to the window, their faces beseeching, their delicate hands signing and signaling, frantically trying to convey something.

He touched the control, and the panel slid back.

The taller loverbird held up something as if it would shield him. The other pointed at it, nodded urgently, and gave him one of those accursed, hauntingly sweet smiles.

Grunty put up his hand to sweep the thing aside, and then checked himself.

It was only a piece of paper.

All of the cruelty of humanity rose up in Grunty
. A species that can’t protect itself doesn’t deserve to live
. He raised the gun.

And then he saw the pictures.

Economical and accurate, and for all their subject, done with the ineffable grace of the loverbirds themselves, the pictures showed three figures:

Grunty himself, hulking, impassive, the eyes glowing, the tree-trunk legs and hunched shoulders.

Rootes, in a pose so characteristic and so cleverly done that Grunty gasped. Crisp and clean, Rootes’ image had one foot up on a chair, both elbows on the high knee, the head half turned. The eyes fairly sparkled from the paper.

And a girl.

She was beautiful. She stood with her arms behind her, her feet slightly apart, her face down a little. She was deep-eyed, pensive, and to see her was to be silent, to wait for those downcast lids to lift and break the spell.

Grunty frowned and faltered. He lifted a puzzled gaze from these exquisite renderings to the loverbirds, and met the appeal, the earnest, eager, hopeful faces.

The loverbird put a second paper against the glass.

There were the same three figures, identical in every respect to the previous ones, except for one detail: they were all naked.

He wondered how they knew human anatomy so meticulously.

Before he could react, still another sheet went up.

The loverbirds, this time—the tall one, the shorter one, hand in hand. And next to them a third figure, somewhat similar, but tiny, very round, and with grotesquely short arms.

Grunty stared at the three sheets, one after the other. There was something … something …

And then the loverbird put up the fourth sketch, and slowly, slowly, Grunty began to understand. In the last picture, the loverbirds were shown exactly as before, except that they were naked, and so was the small creature beside them. He had never seen loverbirds naked before. Possibly no one had.

Slowly he lowered the gun. He began to laugh. He reached through the window and took both the loverbirds’ hands in one of his, and they laughed with him.

Rootes stretched easily with his eyes closed, pressed his face down into the couch, and rolled over. He dropped his feet to the deck, held his head in his hands and yawned. Only then did he realize Grunty was standing just before him.

“What’s the matter with you?”

He followed Grunty’s grim gaze.

The glass door stood open.

Rootes bounced to his feet as if the couch had turned white-hot. “Where—what—”

Grunty’s crag of a face was turned to the starboard bulkhead. Rootes spun to it, balanced on the balls of his feet as if he were boxing. His smooth face gleamed in the red glow of the light over the airlock.

“The lifeboat … you mean they took the lifeboat? They got away?”

Grunty nodded.

Rootes held his head. “Oh, fine,” he moaned. He whipped around to Grunty. “And where the hell were you when this happened?”

“Here.”

“Well, what in God’s name happened?” Rootes was on the trembling edge of foaming hysteria.

Grunty thumped his chest.

“You’re not trying to tell me you let them go?”

Grunty nodded, and waited—not for very long.

“I’m going to burn you down,” Rootes raged. “I’m going to break you so low you’ll have to climb for twelve years before you get a barracks to sweep. And after I get done with you I’ll turn you over to the Service. What do you think they’ll do to you? What do you think they’re going to do to
me
?”

He leapt at Grunty and struck him a hard, cutting blow to the cheek. Grunty kept his hands down and made no attempt to avoid the fist. He stood immovable, and waited.

“Maybe those were criminals, but they were Dirbanu nationals,” Rootes roared when he could get his breath. “How are we going to explain this to Dirbanu? Do you realize this could mean war?”

Grunty shook his head.

“What do you mean? You know something. You better talk while you can. Come on, bright boy—what are we going to tell Dirbanu?”

Grunty pointed at the empty cell. “Dead,” he said.

“What good will it do us to say they’re dead? They’re not. They’ll show up again some day, and—”

Grunty shook his head. He pointed to the star chart. Dirbanu showed as the nearest body. There was no livable planet within thousands of parsecs.

“They didn’t go to Dirbanu!”

“Nuh.”

“Damn it, it’s like pulling rivets to get anything out of you. In that lifeboat they go to Dirbanu—which they won’t—or they head out, maybe for years, to the Rim stars. That’s all they can do!”

Grunty nodded.

“And you think Dirbanu won’t track them, won’t bring ’em down?”

“No ships.”

“They have ships!”

“Nuh.”

“The loverbirds told you?”

Grunty agreed.

“You mean their own ship that they destroyed and the one the ambassador used were all they had?”

“Yuh.”

Rootes strode up and back. “I don’t get it. I don’t begin to get it. What did you do it for, Grunty?”

Grunty stood for a moment, watching Rootes’ face. Then he went to the computing desk. Rootes had no choice but to follow. Grunty spread out the four drawings.

“What’s this? Who drew these?
Them?
What do you know.
Damn!
Who is the chick?”

Grunty patiently indicated all of the pictures in one sweep. Rootes looked at him, puzzled, looked at one of Grunty’s eyes, then the other, shook his head, and applied himself to the pictures again. “This is more like it,” he murmured. “Wish I’d a’ known they could draw like this.” Again Grunty drew his attention to all the pictures and away from the single drawing that fascinated him.

“There’s you, there’s me. Right? Then this chick. Now, here we are again, all buff naked. Damn, what a carcass. All right, all right, I’m going on. Now, this is the prisoners, right? And who’s the little fat one?”

Grunty pushed the fourth sheet over. “Oh,” said Rootes. “Here everybody’s naked too. Hm.”

He yelped suddenly and bent close. Then he rapidly eyed all four sheets in sequence. His face began to get red. He gave the fourth picture a long, close scrutiny. Finally he put his finger on the sketch of
the round little alien. “This is … a … a Dirbanu—”

Grunty nodded. “Female.”

“Then those two—they were—”

Grunty nodded.

“So that’s it!” Rootes fairly shrieked in fury. “You mean we been shipped out all this time with a coupla God damned
fairies?
Why, if I’d a’ known that I’d a’ killed ’em!”

“Yuh.”

Rootes looked up at him with a growing respect and considerable amusement. “So you got rid of ’em so’s I wouldn’t kill ’em, and mess everything up?” He scratched his head. “Well, I’ll be billy-be-damned. You got a think-tank on you after all. Anything I can’t stand, it’s a fruit.”

Grunty nodded.

“God,” said Rootes, “it figures. It really figures. Their females don’t look anything like the males. Compared with them, our females are practically identical to us. So the ambassador comes, and sees what looks like a planet full of queers. He knows better but he can’t stand the sight. So back he goes to Dirbanu, and Earth gets brushed off.”

Grunty nodded.

“Then these pansies here run off to Earth, figuring they’ll be at home. They damn near made it, too. But Dirbanu calls ’em back, not wanting the likes of them representing their planet. I don’t blame ’em a bit. How would you feel if the only Terran on Dirbanu was a fluff? Wouldn’t you want him out of there, but quick?”

Grunty said nothing.

“And now,” said Rootes, “we better give Dirbanu the good news.”

He went forward to the communicator.

It took a surprisingly short time to contact the shrouded planet. Dirbanu acknowledged and coded out a greeting. The decoder over the console printed the message for them:

GREETINGS STARMITE 439. ESYABLISH ORBIT. CAN YOU DROP PRISONERS TO DIRBANU? NEVER MIND PARACHUTE.

“Whew,” said Rootes. “Nice people. Hey, you notice they don’t say come on in. They never expected to let us land. Well, what’ll we tell ’em about their lavender lads?”

“Dead,” said Grunty.

“Yeah,” said Rootes. “That’s what they want anyway.” He sent rapidly.

In a few minutes the response clattered out of the decoder.

STAND BY FOR TELEPATH SWEEP. WE MUST CHECK. PRISONERS MAY BE PRETENDING DEATH.

“Oh-oh,” said the Captain. “This is where the bottom drops out.”

“Nuh,” said Grunty, calmly.

“But their detector will locate—oh—I see what you’re driving at. No life, no signal. Same as if they weren’t here at all.”

“Yuh.”

The decoder clattered.

DIRBANU GRATEFUL. CONSIDER MISSION COMPLETE. DO NOT WANT BODIES. YOU MAY EAT THEM.

Rootes retched. Grunty said, “Custom.”

The decoder kept clattering.

NOW READY FOR RECIPROCAL AGREEMENT WITH TERRA.

“We go home in a blaze of glory,” Rootes exulted. He sent,

TERRA ALSO READY. WHAT DO YOU SUGGEST?

The decoder paused, then:

TERRA STAY AWAY FROM DIRBANU AND DIRBANU WILL STAY AWAY FROM TERRA. THIS IS NOT A SUGGESTION. TAKES EFFECT IMMEDIATELY.

“Why that bunch of bastards!”

Rootes pounded his codewriter, and although they circled the planet at a respectful distance for nearly four days, they received no further response.

The last thing Rootes had said before they established the first stasis on the way home was: “Well, anyway—it does me good to think of those two queens crawling away in that lifeboat. Why, they can’t even starve to death. They’ll be cooped up there for
years
before they get anywhere they can sit down.”

It still rang in Grunty’s mind as he shook off the blackout. He glanced aft to the glass partition and smiled reminiscently. “For years,” he murmured. His words curled up and spun, and said,

Dutifully, then, came the words:
Coventry Patmore, born 1823
.

He rose slowly and stretched, revelling in his precious privacy. He crossed to the other couch and sat down on the edge of it.

For a time he watched the Captain’s unconscious face, reading it with great tenderness and utmost attention, like a mother with an infant.

His words said,
Why must we love where the lightning strikes, and not where we choose?

And they said,
But I’m glad it’s you, little prince. I’m glad it’s you
.

He put out his huge hand and, with a feather touch, stroked the sleeping lips.

H
E HEFTED ONE CORNER OF THE BOX
high enough for him to get his knuckle on the buzzer, then let it sag. He stood waiting, wheezing. The door opened.

“Oh! You
didn’t
carry it up five flights!”

“No, huh?” he grunted, and pushed inside. He set the groceries down on the sink top in the kitchenette and looked at her. She was sixty-something and could have walked upright under his armpit with her shoes on.

“That old elevator …” she said. “Wait. Here’s something.”

He wiped sweat out of his eyes and sensed her approach. He put out his hand for the coin but it wasn’t a coin. It was a glass. He looked at it, mildly startled. He wished it were beer. He tasted it, then gulped it down. Lemonade.

“Slow-ly, slow-ly,” she said, too late. “You’ll get heat cramps. What’s your name?” Her voice seemed to come from a distance. She seemed, in an odd way, to stand at a distance as well. She was small as a tower is small on the horizon.

“Don,” he grunted.

“Well, Donny,” she said, “sit down and rest.”

He had said, “Don,” not “Donny.” When he was in rompers he was “Donny.” He turned to the door. “I got to go.”

“Wait a bit.”

He stopped without turning.

“That’s a beautiful watch for a boy like you.”

“I like it.”

“May I see it?”

Breath whistled briefly in his nostrils. She had her fingers lightly on the heel of his hand before he could express any more annoyance than that. Grudgingly, he raised his arm and let her look.