Buck Rogers 2 - That Man on Beta (14 page)

Suddenly Theopolis lit up in full array. He activated his voder circuits and called out in a perfect imitation of Buck’s tones: “Guard! Guard! Come in here, will ya? How do you work this thing?”

There was a momentary pause, then the door swung open and a burly guard strode into the room. He peered around, looking for Buck Rogers. “Hey,” he demanded, “what’s going on in—”

The guard made a single startled grunt as he took the full weight of Buck’s body on his back and shoulders, as Buck launched himself from the shelf above the doorway. The guard’s laser-pistol clattered to the floor and skidded halfway across the room. The guard lunged for it but Buck pulled him back, landed a punch on the side of the guardsman’s head.

The guard, a huge man who must have weighed at least half again as much as Buck, hurled his attacker off himself with a snarl. As Buck lunged again, the guard threw himself onto the floor, trying desperately to get hold of his pistol once again. Buck wrestled the guard’s hands away from the laser, grappled frantically with the bigger man. The guard landed a piledriver blow to Bucks temple, momentarily stunning Buck while the angry man reached successfully toward the laser.

Before he could bring the pistol into play, his grip on the weapon was challenged by Buck. The two of them grappled on the floor, each striving to point the weapon at the other.

All the while Theopolis lay helplessly watching, blinking his lights on and off frantically, calling words of desperate encouragement to Buck. In the excitement, Theopolis still used Rogers’ own voice to give him advice.

The two struggling men staggered to their feet, still locked together in their desperate efforts to control the pistol. It disappeared between their bodies as they clinched. Then there was a flash of blinding light from between them, a small puff of black smoke and a sickening stench of burned cloth and flesh.

The guard fell to the floor and lay unmoving.

Buck Rogers held the laser-pistol in one hand. With the other he lifted Dr. Theopolis, lowered the computer’s carrying strap around his neck, and painfully made his way into the hall.

E L E V E N

Wilma Deering lay semi-conscious on the soft bed in her locked room. Her eyes were closed and images flitted through her brain. Recollections of her girlhood in the Inner City of Earth. School days, school friends, girlhood romances, her sensitivity testing and the gasps of admiration and envy from her companions when she was invited to apply for defense squadron flight training.

Her early career, combat missions, training duty, the startling speed of her rise through the ranks.

Her first encounter with Captain Buck Rogers, her overwhelming feelings for him, and—now she had learned of her strange rivalry with the Draconian crown princess Ardala.

Everything, everything. Faces floating before her in mists. Buck. Kane. Dr. Huer. Professor Von Norbert. Draco himself. Ardala. And a voice, a voice whispering in her ear.
I am your friend. The Draconians are your friends. Buck Rogers is your . . . enemy.

Suddenly someone was shaking her. She opened her eyes. A man was looming above her, his face peering deeply into her own. And, strangely, a flickering, glowing parody of a second face hanging from his neck.

The man was speaking. “Wilma! Wilma! You’ve got to wake up!”

Wilma raised a hand, brushed a lock of hair away from her face. “Who—what—wait, I can’t . . . who is it?”

“It’s me,” the man said, “Buck.”

Suddenly Wilma was wide awake—alarmed and angry. This was the enemy! She leaped to her feet, snarled at him. “Get away from me!”

“Wilma! It’s me. Buck.”

“I’ll kill you if you come any closer,” she growled.

“Hey,” Buck exclaimed, “snap out of it, I’m your friend.”

“You’re my enemy,” Wilma spat.

“Hey, come on, we gotta get out of here!” He grabbed her to hustle her out of the room—if need be, to carry her. She resisted, and for the second time in as many minutes Buck found himself engaged in a desperate wrestling match.

As they struggled and rolled around the room, Buck managed to gasp at Wilma, “Come on, cut it out, we don’t have time to play games. The professor’s gonna find us.”

“I’ll kill you,” Wilma reiterated, “the professor is my friend.”

Buck broke Wilma’s hold on him, tried once more to drag her to her feet and hustle her out of the room. Instead she planted her teeth deep in the muscle of his shoulder. He yelled, jerked away, shot a desperate request to Theopolis: “Hey, what’s the matter with Wilma, Theo? Can you take a quick scan on her and figure it out?”

Wilma tried again to get her teeth into Buck. This time he was faced with the need of trying to keep her from escaping and at the same time prevent her from getting her teeth anywhere near his flesh. Dr. Theopolis was pinned between their bodies; his arrays of lights blinked on and off as his scanners analyzed Wilma’s condition.

“She seems to be infected with a mind-distorting drug,” he gritted. “She must have been brainwashed with the aid of the drug, Buck, so she really believes you’re her enemy!”

“Oh, no! You mean she doesn’t even
want
to be rescued, Theo!”

“Precisely. You’d better give her a stun-blast from the laser-gun.”

Again Wilma broke loose from Buck’s grasp. Instead of returning to the attack she sprinted for the door. He dived after her, caught and dragged her back into the center of the room. “And then what?” he asked the computer, “carry her all the way to spaceport on my back, steal a ship and haul her away in it?”

“I think the laser-gun is the only way, Buck.”

“There must be something else!”

“There isn’t.”

“Wait, Theo! I’ve got it! I’ll give Wilma the pistol.”

“Buck, that does not compute.”

“Oh, no?”

Wilma had continued to struggle with Buck all during his dialogue with Theopolis. She had a hand free now, and used it to grab the laser-pistol that Buck had previously taken from the guardsman. She leveled the pistol at Buck’s chest and commanded him to raise his hands.

Buck complied.

“Now I’m in charge,” Wilma asserted.

“It doesn’t matter,” Buck answered. “Earth has captured Villus Beta, didn’t you know that, Wilma? The whole planetoid is in our hands. That pistol can’t help you, you might as well surrender.”

“I’ll never give up,” Wilma sneered with an almost Kane-like sound in her voice. “I’ll fight to the death.”

“Let me go and I’ll help you escape to the spaceport,” Buck appealed. “I don’t know why you’ve sold out to the Draconians, Wilma, but I’ll help you get away if that’s what you want.”

“You must think I’m stupid, Rogers,” Wilma mocked him. “I’m going to Draconia, all right. But I’m taking you with me to stand trial!”

“You’ll never make it,” Buck told her.

“Just watch me! Now get going. You first, Rogers. I’ll be right behind you, with this laser in my hand. One false move and you’re zapped—and I won’t set it on stun, you can be sure.”

Buck meekly exited from Wilma’s room, hands in the air, Theopolis hanging around his neck. In the hallway they passed other doors, other crosscorridors. When they reached a major intersection Wilma gestured Buck to halt. She poked her head around the corner, saw a guardsman in full Draconian uniform.

“You earthlings think you can fool me by dressing up your troopers in Draconian uniforms? Hah!” She stepped around the corner boldly, raised her pistol and zapped the guard.

“I guess we can’t fool you,” Buck conceded as he stepped over the unmoving form of the guardsman. They continued through the interlocking corridors of the artificial wedge that was the city of Villus Beta, threading their way through a maze until they had reached the giant crossbar that comprised the planetoid’s spaceport.

A pair of heavy metallic doors sealed off the port from the rest of the city. Wilma set the laser-pistol on a maximum-power needle-beam, cut an opening for them through the doors.

Suddenly two guards shouted a warning from behind them: “Stop, you!”

Slowly Buck turned to face the guards, hands raised in the air. “You win,” he surrendered. “Don’t shoot.” He inclined his head toward Wilma Deering. “She knows, anyway.”

“She knows what?” a guard asked.

“It’s no use, friend. We can’t fool her. She knows we’re all earthlings. Our trick fizzled.”

The two guards looked at each other in puzzlement. Then one of them addressed Wilma. “Better hand over the weapon, ma’am.” He held out his hand for the laser. The other guard moved toward Wilma.

With a lightning movement, Buck knocked aside the gun-arms of the two guards. He couldn’t disarm them, could only spoil their aim for a split second. But that was all the time that Wilma needed to squeeze off two quick blasts of her own pistol, sending both guards crumpling to the floor.

Then she looked at Buck, puzzlement in her face. “What did you do that for?” she asked. “You betrayed your fellow earthmen into my hands.”

“I dunno,” Buck shrugged. “Just got confused, I guess.”

“Well,
I
know what I’m doing anyway,” Wilma retorted. “Go on!”

They passed through the double doors into the spaceport. With a shock they realized that it was night on the tiny world—or on this side of it, at least. They had been so long in the artificially controlled environment of the Villus Beta urban area that they had lost all track of night and day.

A fleet of Draconian fighter craft stood at the ready, along with various other types of spacecraft obtained by combat or trade with other planets. Buck’s eyes gleamed at the sight of an earthly starfighter of the type used in the defense squadron. His hands itched to take the controls of the rocket.

Through the opening at the end of the spaceport they could see the sky above Villus. Three more planetoids danced in a fantastic saraband, like a triplicated moon, as the tiny worlds made their way in a path around Villus’ sun.

Wilma prodded Buck silently with the muzzle of her laser-pistol. She pointed toward the starfighter, urged him with a gesture to move toward the rocket. With a secret smile, Buck complied.

They moved from shadow to shadow across the spaceport. When they halted at last in the shadow of a Citsymian gyrocopter Wilma said, in a low voice, “No tricks now. We’ll have to make a run for it, these last few yards. And remember, if those Earth troopers of yours in their phony Draconian uniforms try to stop us, I’ll zap you first and deal with them later.”

Buck nodded. “Here we go,” he whispered. He crouched, ready to make the last sprint to the starfighter, but as he cast a last glance at Wilma he saw her holding her head in one hand. She staggered once, nearly fell, then lifted her head again with a startled, somehow puzzled, look on her face.

“What’s the matter, Wilma?” Buck asked.

“I don’t know,” she answered. “I feel so—just not right.” She squeezed her eyes shut, gave her head a shake as if throwing off an evil spell. When she opened her eyes again and looked at Buck, her expression was clear. “But”—she said—“but you’re Buck Rogers. What am I doing?”

“You’re getting yourself back together,” he grinned.

Wilma looked down at the laser-pistol she’d been pointing at Buck. “This is silly,” she said. She slipped the pistol back into her belt. “I’m so sorry, Buck, I don’t know what I was thinking.”

“Just what Von Norbert drugged you into thinking,” Buck said. “But you had a good time anyhow. Let’s get out of here.”

They started to sprint across the last few yards of darkness. They were only feet from the starfighter when night turned into day! The entire spaceport was suddenly illuminated. Runway lights, overhead worklamps, landing beams, every form of light flashed on. Sirens wailed. Trucks and landcars swarmed over the runways.

And Draconian troops—not squads or even platoons but whole companies of them,
hundreds
of grim-visaged, combat-outfitted troops advanced in solid ranks, converging on the starfighter and the two spotlighted Earth people.

The hatch of the starfighter swung open and a massive, oily-countenanced figure emerged. “Good evening, Rogers. Good evening, Deering,” the figure oozed, his voice as thick and smooth as cough syrup. “I’ve had quite a wait here for you.”

“Kane!” Wilma exclaimed.

“At your service, Colonel.” The Draconian courtier bowed. “And may I ask what our two star guests were doing at the spaceport?”

“We were out for a midnight stroll,” Buck spat bitterly.

“Enjoy the night air,” Kane sneered in reply. “It’s the last you’ll breathe of it for a long time, Rogers. In fact, I’d say for some years—if ever! Your little escapade—which I must say, I anticipated to the last detail—should convince Professor Von Norbert that he’ll have to do things
my
way from now on!”

“You mean—no more Mr. Nice Guy, hey, Kane?”

Kane smiled his oiliest smile. “Precisely,” he lipped, bowing with ironic exaggeration.

A few hours later, as the weird dawn of Villus Beta sent its eerie light onto the planetoid, Wilma Deering sat disconsolately on the edge of her bed. She could move, but not far—a chain held one ankle to the leg of the bed.

The door ground open and two guards entered, one bearing a metal tray of greasy, unpleasant looking food; the other carrying a primed laser-pistol, ready to fire at a moment’s warning. The two guards were followed by the massive form of Kane.