Non-Stop (25 page)

‘You’re going to bed,’ Complain said. ‘You look exhausted.’

‘You don’t think I could sleep with all this noise going on, do you?’ she asked, smiling rather tiredly.

‘I think you could try.’

He was surprised with what submissiveness she let him lead her away, although she stiffened suddenly as they met Marapper loitering in a side corridor.

‘You are the hero of the hour, priest, I understand,’ she said.

Marapper’s face was ponderous with gloom; he wore injury round him like a cloak.

‘Inspector,’ he said with a bitter dignity. ‘You are taunting me.
For half my wretched lifetime I go about with a priceless secret on my finger without realizing it. And then when I do realize it – behold, in a moment of quite uncharacteristic panic, I give it away to your friend Scoyt for nothing!’

We’ve got to get out of the ship somehow,’ Vyann murmured. Her eyes were shut as she spoke, her dark head down on the pillow. Softly, Complain crept from the dark room; she would be asleep before he closed the door, despite the chaos of sound two decks away. He stood outside Vyann’s door, half afraid to go away, wondering if this was a good time to bother the Council or Scoyt with news of the ruined controls. Indecisively, he fingered the heat gun tucked in his belt, as gradually his thoughts wandered back to more personal considerations.

Complain could not help asking himself what part he was playing in the world about him; because he was undecided what he wanted from life, he seemed to drift on a tide of events. The people nearest to him appeared to have clear-cut objectives. Marapper cared for nothing but power; Scoyt seemed content to grapple with the endless problems of the ship; and Complain’s beloved Laur wanted only to be free of the restraints of life aboard. And he? He desired her, but there was something else, the something he had promised himself as a kid without finding it, the something he could never put into words, the something too big to visualize . . .

‘Who’s that?’ he asked, roused suddenly by a close footstep.

A square pilot light near at hand revealed a tall man robed in white, a distinctive figure whose voice, when he spoke, was powerful and slow.

‘I am Councillor Zac Deight,’ he said. ‘Don’t be startled. You are Roy Complain, the hunter from Deadways, are you not?’

Complain took in his melancholy face and white hair, and
liked the man instinctively. Instinct is not always the ally of intelligence.

‘I am, sir,’ he answered.

‘Your priest, Henry Marapper, spoke highly of you.’

‘Did he, by hem?’ Marapper often did good by stealth, but it was invariably to himself.

‘He did,’ Zac Deight said. Then his tone changed. ‘I believe you might know something about that hole I see in the corridor wall.’

He pointed at the gap Complain and Vyann had made earlier in the wall of her room.

‘Yes I do. It was made with this weapon here,’ Complain said, showing the weapon to the old Councillor and wondering what was coming next.

‘Have you told anyone else you have this?’ Zac Deight asked, turning the heat gun over with interest.

‘No. Only Laur – Inspector Vyann knows; she’s asleep at present.’

‘It should have been handed to the Council for us to make the best use of we could,’ Zac Deight said gently. ‘You ought to have realized that. Will you come to my room and tell me all about it?’

‘Well, there’s not much to tell, sir . . .’ Complain began.

‘You can surely see how dangerous this weapon could be in the wrong hands . . .’ There was something commanding in the old councillor’s tone. When he turned and made down the corridor, Complain followed that Gothic back – not happily, but without protest.

They took a lift down to the lower level, then walked five decks forward to the councillor’s apartment. It was absolutely deserted here, silent and dark. Bringing out an ordinary magnetic key, Zac Deight unlocked a door and stood aside for Complain to enter. Directly the latter had done so, the door slammed behind him. It was a trap!

Whirling round, Complain charged the door with all the fury of a wild animal – uselessly. He was too late, and Deight
had the heat gun with which he might have burnt his way to freedom. Savagely, Complain flashed on his torch and surveyed the room. It was a bedroom cabin which had been disused for some while, to judge by the dust everywhere; like most such rooms throughout the length of the ship, it was spartan, anonymous.

Complain picked up a chair and battered it to bits against the locked door, after which he felt better able to think. An image swam up to him of the time when he had first stood close to Vyann, watching through a spyhole when Scoyt left Fermour alone in the interrogation room; Fermour had jumped on to a stool and tried to reach the ceiling grille. Obviously, he had expected to find an escape route that way. Now supposing . . .

He swung the bed into the centre of the room, tossed a locker on top of it and climbed rapidly up to examine the grille. It was similar to every other grille in every other room of the ship; three feet square, latticed with thin bars widely enough spaced to allow a finger to be poked between them. The exploring torch revealed these spaces to be silted up with dust sticky as rheumy eyes; such breeze as drained through in the room was faint indeed.

Complain heaved tentatively at the grille. It did not budge.

It had to budge. Fermour did not stand on that stool and stretch upwards just because he needed some physical jerks. Here too, if the grilles opened, would be an explanation of the way some of Scoyt’s previously captured Outsiders had escaped from guarded cells. Complain stuck his fingers through the grille and felt along its inner edge, hope and fear scampering coldly through his veins.

His index finger soon met with a simple, tongued catch. Complain pressed it over. Similar catches lay on the upper surface of the other three sides of the grille. One by one, he flicked them over. The grille lifted easily up; Complain angled it sideways, brought it down and put it quietly on the bed. His heart beat rapidly.

Catching hold of the aperture, he drew himself up into it.

There was hardly space to stir. He had expected to find himself in the inspection ways; instead he was in the ventilation system. He guessed immediately that this pipe ran through the strange inter-deck world of the inspection ways. Clicking his torch off, he strained his eyes down the low duct, ignoring the breeze that sighed continuously into his face.

One light only lit the tunnel, filtering up from the next grating along. Struck with the idea that he must look much like a cork in a bottle, Complain dragged himself forward and peered through the grille.

He was staring down into Zac Deight’s room. Zac Deight was there alone, talking into an instrument. A tall cupboard, standing now in the middle of the room, showed how the niche in the wall which housed the instrument was normally concealed. So fascinated was Complain with his novel viewpoint that for a moment he failed to hear what Zac Deight was speaking about. Then it registered with a rush.

‘. . . fellow Complain causing a lot of trouble,’ the Councillor said into the phone. ‘You remember when your man Andrews lost his welder a few weeks back? Somehow it has now got into Complain’s hands. I found out because I happened to come across a gaping hole in the wall of one of the compartments on Deck 22, Inspector Laur Vyann’s room . . . Yes, Curtis, can you hear me? This line is worse than ever . . .’

For a moment, Deight was silent, as the man at the other end of the line spoke. Curtis! Complain exclaimed to himself – that was the name of the Giant in charge of the mob who captured him. Looking down on the councillor, Complain suddenly noticed the give-away ring with the octagonal stone on Zac Deight’s finger, and began to wonder what ghastly web of intrigue he had blundered into.

Deight was speaking again. ‘I had the chance of slipping into Vyann’s room,’ he said, ‘while your diversion down on the Drive Floors was in full swing. And there I found something else the dizzies have got hold of: a file we never knew
existed, written by the first man to captain the ship on the way back from Procyon V. It contains far more than the dizzies should know; it’ll set them questioning all sorts of things. By a stroke of luck, I have managed to get both file and welder into my possession . . . Thanks. Even more luckily, nobody but Complain and this girl Vyann yet know anything about – or realize the significance of – either file or laser. Now then, I know all about Little Dog’s ideas on the sanctity of dizzy lives, but they’re not up here coping with this problem, and it’s getting more difficult hour by hour – if they want their precious secret kept, there is one easy way to do it. I’ve got Complain locked in next door to me now . . . Of course not, no force; he just walked into the trap like an angel. Vyann is asleep in her room. What I’m asking you is this, Curtis: I want your sanction to kill Complain and Vyann . . . Yes, I don’t like it either, but it’s the only way we can possibly retain the
status quo
, and I’m prepared to do it now before it’s too late . . .’

Zac Deight was silent, listening, an expression of impatience creeping over his long face.

‘There isn’t time to radio Little Dog,’ he said, evidently interrupting the speaker. ‘They’d procrastinate too long. You’re in charge up here, Curtis, and all I need is your permission . . . That’s better . . . Yes, I do consider it imperative. You don’t think I enjoy the task? I shall gas them both through the air vents of their rooms, as we’ve done before in similar awkward cases. At least we know it’s painless.’

He rang off. He pushed the cupboard back into place. He stood for a while hesitating, gnawing his knuckles, his face seamed with distaste. He opened the cupboard and removed a long cylinder. He looked speculatively up at the ceiling grille. He took the blast of Complain’s dazer right in his face.

The colour fled from Zac Deight’s brow. His head flopped on to his chest and he collapsed, sprawling, on the floor.

For a minute, Complain lay where he was, his mind attempting to adjust to events. He was brought back to the
immediacy of the present by a horrible sensation. An alien thought had somehow drifted among his thoughts; it was as if somebody’s thickly furred tongue licked his brain. Flipping on his torch, he found a tremendous moth hovering before his eyes. Its wing span was about five inches; the
tapetum lucidum
in its eyes reflected the light like two cerise pin points.

Sickened, he struck at it but missed. The moth fluttered rapidly away down the air duct. Complain recalled another moth in Deadways which had left a similar delicately dirty fingerprint on his mind. Now he thought, ‘This power the rabbits have – the moths must have it in lesser degree. And the rats seem to be able to understand them . . . Perhaps these moths are a sort of airborne scouts for the rat-hordes!’

This notion scared him a great deal more than hearing Deight pronounce his death sentence had done.

In a sweat of panic, he flicked back the four tongues which kept Zac Deight’s grille in place, slithered the grille along the duct and dropped down into the councillor’s room. Pulling up a table, he climbed on to it and moved the grille back into its proper position. Then he felt safer.

Zac Deight was not dead: Complain’s dazer had been turned only to half power; but he had been at close enough range to receive a shock of sufficient strength to keep him senseless for some while. He looked harmless, even benevolent, huddled on the deck with hair fallen over his ashen forehead. Complain took the councillor’s keys without a stir of compunction, collected his heat gun, unlocked the door, and let himself out into the silent corridor.

At the last moment he paused, turning back into the room to flash his torch up at the grille. Sharp little pink hands grasped the bars, a dozen sharp faces hated down at him. Hair prickling up his neck, Complain gave them the daze. The little burning eyes lost their brilliance at once, the pink hands relaxed their grip.

Squeals following him down the corridor told Complain he had also winged concealed reinforcements.

His ideas flowed fast as he walked. One thing he stubbornly determined: Councillor Deight’s role in this affair, and all that he had said on the strange instrument to Curtis (where
was
Curtis?) should be mentioned to nobody until he had discussed it with Vyann. They could no longer tell who was on their side and who was not.

‘Just supposing Vyann . . .’ he began aloud; but he quickly tucked that dread away. There was a point where distrust merged with insanity.

A practical item worried Complain, but he could not quite formulate it. It was something to do with the rescue of Fermour . . . No, it would have to wait. He was too anxious to reason coolly; he would consider it later. Meanwhile, he wanted to give the heat gun, the welder, as Deight had called it, over to somebody who could make best use of it: Master Scoyt.

The excitement round Scoyt had gloriously increased; he had transferred himself into the centre of a whirlpool of activity.

The barriers between Forwards and Deadways had been broken down. Sweating men busily tore down the barricades, relishing the work of destruction.

‘Take them away!’ Scoyt shouted. ‘We thought they guarded our frontiers, but now that our frontiers are all round us, they are useless.’

Through the broken barriers, the tribe of Gregg came. Ragged and filthy, male or female or hermaphrodite, well or wounded, on foot or on rough stretchers, they docked excitedly among the watching Forwarders. They bore bundles and bedding rolls and boxes and panniers; some pulled crude sledges they had dragged through the ponics; one woman drove her belongings before her on the back of an emaciated sheep. With them all flew the black midges of Deadways. Such was the fever of excitement which simmered over Forwards, that this animated gaggle of squalor was greeted with welcoming smiles and an occasional cheer. The tattered legion waved
back. Roffery had been left behind; he was considered near enough dead to make any trouble expended on his account worthless.