Andre Norton (ed) (41 page)

Jord flashed a lop-sided smirk at Miles as if
to say, "Looks like I'm safe, eh?"

His
assumption, it developed, was premature, for the newscaster was handed a slip
of paper by some unseen associate and immediately registered professional
agitation. He rolled his smooth voice, carefully raised to the
"flash-big-news!" pitch, into the two cities and outlying farm
districts of Goran Three:

"The
wreckage of an interstellar has been detected off-world. It is thought to be
that of Henry Jord, J-O-R-D, wanted by the authorities of Jason One for murder
and unauthorized spacing—"

"In that order?" murmured Miles;
but Jord didn't hear him, which was just as well. So
the
story's
finally
gotten
to
Goran,
he
thought.
Perfect
timingl
Maybe
he
was
followedl

Jord
had bared his teeth and snapped them together. He leaned forward until his face
almost touched the visiscreen and he moved his hands—twitched them—as if wishing
he could strangle the distant throat and its unwelcome words.

"—assumed
that Jord is dead, but until such is proven all Goranians are cautioned to
watch for this man. Warning—he is probably armed. His description—"

Jord cut off the telaudio viciously. "So
now what?" he grated, his shallow eyes looking through Miles, through
walls and
jongar,
at the strange and suddenly inhospitable
world of Goran Three.

"I'll
tell you," offered the farmer. "They'll prowl the strato-

lanes
,
check all ships, clamp down on the spaceports and—" he grinned at the
black scowl on the face of the other. "You seem damned happy about
it!"

"Sure. You'll have to try it on foot
now—Mary won't get splashed all over the lowlands." Miles pushed back his
chair and stifled a belch. "You're a gone gosling, mister!"

Jord looked at him
steadily,
then sighed. "I don't know why I shouldn't blast the sass out of
you—" and he stood up, juggling the gun speculatively. The newscast had
knocked all
the I
've-got-the-gun-but-let's-be-chums
out of him.

Miles jumped. To conceal the sudden movement
he carried his hand to his breast pocket, got the cigarette Jord had given him,
lit it. An idea was beginning to take form—

"I'll give you one good reason," he
said, and he told his second lie easily, almost without thought: "You
blast me and you'll have a crowd of Alcron natives on your neck!"

He
saw that Jord was nodding, apparently weighing the menace of the Cronies, so
he added a few more pounds of menace. "Seven feet up," he said,
"and they'll walk miles to look at blood!"

rv

Max Miles leaned back, dribbling smoke from
his nostrils. He hoped he'd made it good. There actually wasn't a more
peace-loving race in the Galaxy. To his knowledge, none of them had ever raised
a duke. They didn't have to.
Nature had created the Cronies
invulnerable, and had in the process, with perfect logic, omitted in them any
capacity for offense— a fact which Miles regretted deeply under the present
circumstances.

At any rate, he had Jord worried about the
Cronies and it was a theme that should be worth developing.
But
not ostentatiously.
It might even be a good idea to change the
subject,' before Jord got to thinking too hard and began to remember his
biology lessons . . . the Cronies' peculiarity was no secret.

So Miles grinned and said loudly,
"What're you going to do now? Not that I give a damn so long as you get
out of here and stop messing up my routine." He saw the big man jump at
the sound of his voice, and thought
Score
one!
Now,
when Lin
comes,
maybe
I
can—

Jord's face tightened at
the cheeks.

"I'm going to think," he said,
"and maybe slap a gag in that big mouth of yours!" He walked over to
Miles and showed him the muzzle of the handblast. "Now, shut up," he
said evenly, "and get into the bedroom. I'm getting sick of by-play!"

Miles'
grin soured. Jord stood back, his shallow eyes bright with anger. He gestured
again with the gun.

"Move, farmer—the
honeymoon's over."

Miles shrugged and went into the bedroom, the
big man stepping carefully after him. "What now?"

"Lie down on the bunk." Jord's eyes
roved, settled. He gathered a handful of Miles' sashes from the dresser-top and
tossed them to the farmer.
 
"Tie
your legs together. Tight!"

Miles
did as he was directed. Then, under the alert nose of the hand-blast, he
permitted his wrists to be tied one by one to the bunk-posts.

"Absurd
things, sashes—" Jord grunted as he drew the knots tight—"but with at
least
one
practical use, eh?"

Miles
tried the knots and met Jord's amused stare. He growled disgustedly,
"Yeah."

Jord
went back into the other room and rummaged in
the deep-freeze
.
After a while he returned with an opened space-tin and a spoon. "I hate to
cheat a man out of his dessert, mine host," he said flatly, "or his
deserts. I'm either going to feed you peaches with this spoon—or gouge out your
eyes with it. I want some information."

"What
information?"

"Do you have any
maps?"

Miles
shook his head. Jord ladled out some peaches and slid them into the farmer's
mouth. He did this carefully, and seemed to be enjoying the situation.

"What's the nearest
city?"

"Three
Major—about thirty miles magnetic north." Miles licked at a dribble of
syrup. "You'll have a tough time hiding out there—strangers aren't the
custom. You'll stand out like a spotlight."

lord's
pleasant mien had definitely returned. It didn't make Miles feel any easier.
"You sound almost as if you wanted to help me, Miles. Why don't you invite
me to hide out here?"

"Sure.
Stick around. It'll take the Patrol about ten minutes to compute the probable
course of your life-shell. They're spotting the Alcron lowlands right now or
I'm a monkey!"

Jord took a moment to consider one, or both,
of these possibilities, then asked:

"How's the country
between here and Three Major?"

"No problem."

"Can a man go it
afoot?"

Miles
didn't hesitate. "A man could," he admitted—a thundering half-truth
if ever one was.

"Any natural barriers?
 
Oceans, mountains?"
"No.
Farm
country, mostly."

Jord shoveled some more peaches into the
farmer's mouth. "I really ought to kill you, natives or no natives,"
he explained. "I can rip out your visiphone, but there's nothing to
prevent you from getting into that stratocoupe of yours and following me until
you can contact a Patrol ship—" He looked at Miles expectantly.

There's
plenty
to
prevent
it,
Miles thought uncomfortably.
Brother,
if
you
only
knew!
But
you
don't
.
.
.
you're
a
stranger to
this
system,
and
you
came
here
in
a
life-shell
without
ports. You
couldn't
see,
so
you
don't
know!
And
that
would
make
it just
perfect—if
only
you
weren't
hanging
around
here!

"You can take out the C, L.
Integrator," he said hastily. "She won't budge without it."

"Convince me."

"There's an instruction-book
on
Moslev stratocoupes in that case. Check with it."

Jord rose to get the
book,
and Miles began to sweat. What the devil had happened to Lin? The big fellow
always showed up about this time before Grandpa—not once in six years had he
failed in his self-set task of warning the farmer. Had he met with an accident?
Miles wondered glumly what sort of an accident it would take to incapacitate a
Crony.
A direct blow from a meteorite, maybe.
No,
there was that time when Fir's cousin had caught one right in the—

Jord grunted as he reached for the book. He
sat on the edge of the bunk and riffled the pages. He studied several diagrams,
turned to the index and back to the diagrams, reading under his breath. Finally
he nodded in satisfaction.

"I'll
have to leave you tied up, of course," he said. "You can get loose in
a few hours.
Peach?"

Miles
chewed, thinking dully that if Grandpa's morning came and he were still tied,
there wouldn't be anything but a blot on the bunk after those few hours. He
might have been able to jump the big man when Lin showed up—

Damn
it! Why had he yapped himself into getting tied up this way! And where
was
Lin?

Jord rose and went to Miles'
closet,
slid it open. He looked critically at the rough work
clothes. "Haven't you any civilized—?"

"Over to your left.
Couple
of suits there."

"Oh, yes.
Fine.
We're just about the same distance around— but—" Jord stripped out of his
rumpled and dirty clothing and got into one of Miles* best suits. He looked
doubtfully in the mirror. "What do you think?" he asked.

"Up
to you.
If
you like it, buy it."

Jord tugged at the bottoms of the tapered
legs and adjusted the tunic. Choosing Miles' most colorful sash, he twisted it
about his waist, eyed his reflection and nodded.
 
"It'll do."

To
be
roasted
in,
thought Miles, and clamped down on his
leaping fear. He wasn't a fighting man—with fists or guns. The more significant
dangers of pioneering in space were his meat.
Or measuring
his prowess alongside that of another man in some intelligent pastime—that was
different.
 
Empire, for

instance
, whose ancestor was the ancient game of
chess. He'd played Lew Levin this last trip to Three Major and won an unusual
victory. One insignificant little page, helpless, ringed by enemy men, had
keystoned the structure that had forced Lew's Black Emperor out into the open
field. Miles' White Guardsman had swooped down for the kill.

His
own situation, as Miles saw it, was very similar. He lay on the bunk, a
helpless page. Jord was the Black Emperor. And the Guardsman—Miles glanced at
the binary-chart stencilled on the wall—

The Guardsman was coming.

The helpless page pressed the only advantage
he had at the moment: Jord's queasiness about the Cronies. The possible results
of the move were not yet evident. But if Lin showed up, as he surely must,
something might come of it.

Miles said casually:
"What time do you plan to leave, Jord?"

Jord
looked up, frowning. "I hadn't thought. About sun-up, I suppose.
Why?"

"You'd better jet-off before then. My
natives get up early, and the first thing they do is come up here for orders.
I'm not worrying about what they'll do to you—
which'11
be plenty— but I don't want any of them to get—"

v

Speak of the Devil, they said in the old
days—and times haven't changed much. Miles spoke of the Cronies—and Lin poked
his head through the window, blinked, and began, in his Crony whisper, the
usual warning speech:

"Miles, it is nearly time to go undergr—"
This much, and then he did a slow take at the scene before him. He made a
little movement of astonishment; the armor of his elbow rasped against the
sill.

Jord's
hand-blast lay on the bunk beside Miles' legs. Instantly it was snatched up to
cover the Crony. Lin stared into the three little holes calmly and Miles felt a
twitch of cynical amusement. God knows what Cronies have for itches, but
whenever one of the farm-hands had an itching back
he
would come to have it scratched with a
hand-blast. "What this, bwana?" enunciated Lin.

Miles winced, closed his eyes. This was one
sweet hell of a time to start pulling that nonsense.
Too many
old novels-Maugham probably.
Lin spoke perfect English, better even than
his own.

Jord rose slowly, staring at the huge native,
his face a loose, crudely-drawn question mark. "What is this ghoul?"
"One of my men."

"Men!"
Jord gasped. "He looks like something
from a roach city. Tell him to go away!" "You tell him."

Lin threw a massive leg over the sill. He
poised there, his eyes bright and curious.

"Get
back," Jord flung at him shakily. "Go away and
me
no kill native!"

"You
bet you won't," Lin replied. "
Me
heap savvy
white boy!" He shoved his other leg into the room and stretched to his
full height. Jord's considerable size seemed abruptly whittled down.

The Crony closed his fists and took an
ominous step toward the killer.

Miles craned his neck from the bunk. Was his
big foreman, unable to attack Jord, trying to frighten the man into dropping
the gun?

If so, Jord didn't scare easily. He skinned
his lips back over his teeth and squeezed at the trigger. The charge leaped at
the Crony's body, spreading out over his barrel chest in eye-aching waves,
jolting him back on his heels with its force. Lin's eyes met Miles', narrowing
a little—

And Miles stiffened as if the charge had
struck him, instead of Lin. The knowledge had come instantly, an icy-certain
hunch—

Jord would fail to kill Lin—had failed
already, although he didn't know it and stood, face ugly, waiting for the Crony
to drop. The killer's urbane mask had fallen, the silk was gone.

He was giving way to the murderous hysteria
that had probably led to the death of his partner.

All this
Miles realized as the hand-blast made its sound, sent its crackling, futile
energy at the big native. And it was grimly logical to suppose that Jord's next
move, when Lin didn't fall, would be to swing the weapon toward the farmer, to
pull the trigger in frustrated, unreasoning fear and fury.

"Lin!" Miles shouted in Alcronese.
"Fall and play dead! Pretend that you are dead!"

Lin
flashed him a puzzled look but did as directed. With a plausible assumption of
pain and terror he let out a siren bleat and sank to the floor. Apparently
overcome with enthusiasm, he continued to squirm and kick his legs and groan
until Miles, again under guise of an outraged yell, told him to he still.

Jord
wheeled to confront the farmer. "You see!" His voice had
risen
an octave, was shrill. "That's how it happened.
He asked for it. So did Harry. I'll kill you too if you act up!"

The
helpless page continued his force-move. The end-game strategy had clicked into
place; had come to him, in fact, just as Lin had flashed him that puzzled look
and obediently dropped dead. Miles stared at Jord for a moment. Then:

"You killed Lin," he said coldly.
"But you can't get two hundred of them I" Which was another whopper;
there were only thirty-one Cronies in the local Hive.

"Two hundred!"
Jord blinked uneasily.

Miles went on: "Unless your aberration
includes a strong death-wish too, you'll get out of here fast. If they find you
here—and that—" he nodded at the prone body. The body barely managed to
close its eyes in time as Jord's troubled gaze followed the gesture. The big
man frowned in thought,
then
wheeled nervously as
Miles began to sing softly in Alcronese.

"What're you doing?" he demanded.
"Death chant.
 
Custom
here."
"Well, do
you
have
to do it?"

Miles drew in his lips unhappily.
 
"I wouldn't feel right, somehow, if I
didn't. I—I really liked Lin—" and in Alcronese, "Lin, call your comrades.
Tell them to approach the cottage. Tell them to converse in low tones, in your
tongue. Tell them to hurry!"

Lin's brow contracted as he beamed the
thought to his fellows, waiting expectantly outside the Hive on the hill. In
his mind's ear he heard anxious exclamations and questions. The other Cronies
had carefully kept their minds away from the cottage for the past few
minutes—too many Presences would have been psychically detectable, would have
added to Jord's jumpiness and instability.

To
their questions, Lin replied that Miles was safe so far and that all had gone
exactly as planned. . . .

It had been difficult for the Cronies to know
what to do, with Grandpa coming inexorably closer. They were constitutionally
unable to attack Jord and tie him up or knock him senseless. If Tos and Fir had
detected the killer sooner they could have easily frightened him away. But they
had been tired and preoccupied, and it was only after they'd casually sent
their thoughts after Miles, seen him accosted in front of the cottage, that
they became aware of Jord's unfamiliar, unpleasant vibrations.

From the Hive, Lin, by common consent, had
watched the following events. It was futile to try to take over Jord's mind—
they'd all tried, one by one. It was closed to them by its distortion. One by
one they had withdrawn from the attempt, sickened.

Lin had read Miles' stubborn, ingrained
unwillingness to do anything that would aid Jord in escaping—even at the risk
of his own life. And he'd read Miles' anticipation of his, Lin's, diverting
arrival at the cottage.

"He'll try to jump the man," the
Cronies had decided, "and probably get himself killed." So Lin,
wincing at the contact, had managed to get Jord to tie Miles up—after first,
through much easily established remote-control, carefully coloring Miles'