Calvin M. Knox (17 page)

They
rented the jetsled at an extravagant cost from a knowledgeable, covertly
smiling Skorg who had
a
lpcal concession. The Skorg's
beady eyes glinted as Catton paid over the stiff deposit, as if the Skorg
itched to make some remark about the relationship between a Terran and a
Morilaru woman who were renting a sled together. But the Skorg kept his own
counsel, probably afraid of losing the sale.

The sled was well built, a compact
bullet-shaped vehicle totally enclosed in duriplast, with keen snow-runners and
a triple array of rocket tubes. Catton checked out the mechanical parts of the
sled with great care before they left. He knew enough about the Vyorni by now
to realize that if their sled broke down somewhere in the frozen wastes, they
would be left to rot before anyone came out to rescue them.

They
left the residence compound about mid-day, with Vyorn's small yellow sun
directly overhead, dimly visible behind the thick atmospheric swath of
chlorine. Catton kept the speed at fifty miles an hour; more might be
dangerous. There was no road, just a well-worn track through the bleak tundra.
Scattered Vyomi settlements fined the route: odd needle-shaped homes, thirty
feet high and no more than twelve feet wide at the base, and farmland ploughed
by weird swaybacked creatures whose bodies were segmented like crustaceans and
whose eyes had a haunting wisdom about them, as if they were the eyes of intelligent
beings
who
had been subjugated by the Vyorni.

The
sun had nearly set—Vyom's day lasted only some sixteen Galactic hours—when the
sled reached the outskirts of the village that was Catton's destination. They
pulled up outside a domed building much like the other residence compound.

"You
go inside," Catton ordered. "Find out if Doveril's around. If he is,
see if you can get him to come out here.

Nuuri
slipped through the exit hatch of the jetsled and trotted toward the compound's
airlock. Catton waited in the sled, cradling a small blaster in his hand. Five
minutes passed; then Nuuri returned. She was alone.

"Well?"

"He's
across town at the spaceport.
Supervising a cargo
loading."

"Looks like we got
here just in time."
Catton slapped down the starter switch on the sled, and it shot off
down the road.

The spaceport was a small one, a few miles
from the compound. Catton saw only three ships—two small shuttles bearing
Hennimese insignia, and one larger, unmarked ship that stood by itself at the
edge of the field, glinting dull gray in the gathering darkness. A dozen Vyorni
were going back and forth between the ship and a nearby cargo shed. They were
bearing wooden crates two feet square into the ship. A figure in a spacesuit
stood near the open hatch, counting the crates as they entered the ship.

"Should I go over to him?" Nuuri
asked anxiously.

"Wait. They've almost finished loading
the ship."

The
Vyorni made one last trip to the shed,
then
paused as
if waiting for further orders. The figure in the spacesuit seemed to be
dismissing them.

The hatch on the gray spaceship closed
abruptly. The space-suited figure started to walk off the field, toward the
administration building at the edge of the blast area.

"Okay," Catton said. "Go over
and talk to him. I'm tuned in on the wavelength of your suit radio."

Nuuri
ran across the field. Crouching in the jetsled, Cat-ton heard her cry out:
"Doveril! Doverill"

The
spacesuited figure halted.
"Nuuri?
What are you
doing here?"

"I—came to see you, Doveril."

"Followed
me all the way to Vyorn? How did you know where I was?" Doveril demanded
suspiciously. "Who sent you here?"

"Beryaal sent me," she said evenly.
"I have a message for you.

"What dealings have
you
had with Beryaal?" "He employs me," Nuuri said.
"Come with me to that jet-sled. I have a message-disk from Beryaal for
you, in it." "Ill wait here," Doveril said cautiously. "Go
get it."

"No—come with me." "Go get it,
I saidl"

Catton,
waiting hidden beneath the jetsled seat, caught his breath. Doveril suspected a
trap. The former music teacher was a wary one.

Nuuri came to the jetsled alone. Bending over
Catton, she cut her radio and touched her helmet to his to say, "Give me a
weapon. He won't come."

Catton
handed her his auxiliary blaster. "Here. But don't use it. I want him
alive."

She
took the weapon without replying, and returned to Doveril. Catton picked up the
words over his suit radio.

"Here's the message, Doveril." She
extended her space-gloved hand. The gun's nozzle protruded. "Your schemes
are finished. I know about the Earthgirl, Estil. I know how you treated her,
and how you treated me. This is the time for vengeance, Doveril."

"Nuuri?
Are you crazy? You—"

A
sudden purple spear of light flashed from the blaster in Nuuri's hand. But
Doveril had already launched himself forward as if to tackle her. The energy
bolt went wild, passing over the Morilaru's shoulder and dissipating itself
harmlessly in the atmosphere. Before Nuuri had a chance to fire again, Doveril
was upon her, hurling her to the ground, his hand grasping for the blaster she
still clutched.

Catton
scowled. The girl had disobeyed him! He flipped up the jetsled's exit hatch and
ran toward the struggling pair as they grappled on the frozen field.

Nuuri
was screaming hysterically, blanketing the audio channel with her outpouring of
hatred. But Doveril's hand grasped the wrist that controlled the blaster, and
she could not fire. Catton was still twenty yards away from them when Doveril
pounced on the blaster, ripping it from the girl's hand, and leaped back,
dragging Nuuri in front of him as a shield.

"Put
down your gun, Earthman, or 111 kill the girl," Doveril said evenly.

They faced each other over a twenty yard gap,
with Nuuri between them. Catton felt naked and unprotected. If Doveril chose to
fire, he could kill the Earthman easily.

But
Doveril was backing away, toward the ship. Catton saw the Morilaru's lips
moving, but Doveril was talking on another audio channel. Nuuri shouted,
"I can hear him, Catton! He's ordering the crew to ready the ship for
blastoff! Kill him, Catton! Kill him!"

Catton tensed. Doveril said, "You'll
kill her too, Earth-man."

"I
don't want to loll anybody. I want to stop that ship from blasting off."

Doveril
laughed mockingly. "Of course you do. But I'm afraid that's
impossible."

Catton
weighed the chances. Doveril was no more than forty feet from the ship's open
airlock. The Vyorni who had loaded the cargo were standing in a row at the edge
of the field, showing no interest in what was taking place.

Doveril
was close to the airlock now. Suddenly Nuuri squirmed in his grasp, twisted
round, pummelled with both gloved hands on his helmet as if trying to break it.
Momentarily confused, Doveril shoved her away from him.

Catton
fired, but the shot went wild. A microsecond later Doveril's blaster spouted
energy too. But Nuuri, launching herself at Doveril in a frenzied attack,
caught Doveril's beam and was hurled to one side by the energy bolt. Catton
fired again quickly. The second bolt caught Doveril at the waist and ripped
open his breathing-suit, cutting a flaming hole through the middle of his body.
The Morilaru screamed.

Catton
ran forward and knelt over Nuuri. The bolt had ripped her suit open at the
shoulder. She was still alive. "Did you . . . kill . . . him?" she
asked feebly.

"Yes."

"Good.
Thanks, Earthman." She started to close her eyes. He grabbed her.
"Nuuri!
The
hypnojewel secret—tell
me!"

She
giggled hysterically. "They're made on Skorg, Earth-man. I . . . took you
a litde out of your way, didn't I?
Too bad."

She
was dead. The airlock of the waiting ship slammed shut. The warning gong that
was the clear-the-field signal sounded. He ran from the field. The ship was
blasting off.

Unconcerned Vyorni were standing idly by in
the spaceport's administration building. Catton gestured with drawn blaster to
a Skorg. "Do you speak Vyorni?"

"Yes."

"Take me to the control center."

At blaster-point, the Skorg did not stop to
argue. He led Catton down a corridor to a gravlift, then up to the top of the
building. They burst into a central monitoring tower. Three Vyorni peered
quizzically at Catton as he entered.

He
glanced at the viewscreen that monitored the field.
The ship
outside had retracted its atmosphere fins, and landing jacks.
In a
moment it would be blasting off. Catton snapped to the Skorg, "Tell them
that they mustn't let that gray ship blast off. That they must withdraw
clearance and immobilize its controls."

A
simple radiolock was all that would be needed to freeze the ship. The Skorg
obediendy translated Carton's order and drew a blunt, brief reply from the
Vyorni. "They refuse to do it," the Skorg said. "They won't get
involved in other beings' private quarrels."

"But
this isn't private! Do you know what's aboard that ship? If—" Catton
scowled. He waved the blaster fiercely at the emotionless Vyomi. "Tell him
111 kill them if they don't freeze that ship," he said to the Skorg.

"They won't listen to you," the
Skorg said.

The
Skorg seemed to be right. The Vyorni did not fear his blaster. And now it was
too late to do anything. On the field, the ship was rising, incinerating the
bodies of Nuuri and Doveril in its rocket-blast. An instant later the ship
lurched upward and out of sight—bearing its deadly cargo of matter duplicators
intended for Earth.

XVI.

B
y
the time
,
two hours later, that Catton had finished ransacking Doveril's quarters at the
residence compound, night had fallen. Catton did not trust himself to make the
two hundred mile journey safely during the night. He slept over in the dead
man's bed, and left early the following morning.

There
was no inquiry, no question raised by the Vyorni. Oxygen-breathers could
evidently kill each other with impunity on Vyom without arousing curiosity.

Catton
was not happy over the way his pursuit of Doveril had ended. Nuuri, who might
have been useful again, was dead; and Doveril, whom Catton had hoped to capture
alive, was dead as well. Hardly a molecule of their bodies had survived the
holocaust of the rockets. Nuuri had tricked him; she had not wanted to help him
capture her faithless Doveril, merely to get herself to wherever Doveril was
and exact her vengeance. Catton wondered about her last statement—that the
hypnojewels were made on Skorg.
Another of her lies?
A deathbed fantasy?
Or was it the truth, and had she
deliberately led him away from Skorg to hunt down Doveril?

Worst
of all, the cargo ship had escaped. Documents he found in Doveril's room told
him that the ship contained a cargo of one thousand matter duplicators, built
on Vyom. No doubt it was simple to build the duplicators; all you needed were
two pilot models, and the rest could be made by self-duplication. They were
being shipped to Morilar, and from there to Earth. The trip to Morilar would
take the freighter almost a month, which meant that Catton would arrive there
about the same time as the cargo ship. And then—

And
then would come the moment of crisis. Catton knew he had to intercept that ship
before it left for Earth. Once it became lost in the infinite expanse of
nullspace, there would be small chance of tracking it. The matter duplicators
would get safely through to Earth. And one day, between one dawn and the next,
a thousand crates would drift down through Earth's
atmosphere,
a thousand matter duplicators would land.

Perhaps
half would be destroyed on landing—would fall into
oceans,
or crash on inaccessible mountain peaks. But if only a hundred—fifty—twenty,
got into the hands of men shrewd enough to realize the value of the device and
greedy enough not to care about its dangers, Beryaal's plot would have
succeeded.