Get Off the Unicorn (18 page)

“Beg pardon? Oh, yes, I see. Ha ha.”

“
He's
out without a drone.”

“Oh yes, just checking a hull. You can't do that in dry dock, you know. And we're very low on vital materials until Central Credit releases our long-overdue shipment. Besides, he may be a genius with an engine but he couldn't tap a whale to save his life, even if the weather were calm enough to do so.”

“How so?”

Tallav leaned back. These were questions he could answer. “Came here originally as a contractee. Whales didn't take to him. Couldn't even get near enough to them to do a tap. They got to the point of being able to identify the pulse of his fishboat, and they scattered whenever he approached.” Tallav didn't believe that himself, but the other fishmen did and swore to it.

“The whales didn't take to him?” Brack echoed Tallav's skepticism.

“Oh, they've as much rudimentary intelligence as other forms of mammalian sea life. They evidently develop an affection—or dislike—for certain fishmen. Odis, for instance, and old Okker when he still tapped and even Murv, the contractee, have had no difficulty going deep into schools—until recently, that is.”

“Very interesting.” The investigator squinted thoughtfully at the watery plas-glas. “I'm sure you won't mind if I take a walk about.”

“No, no,” Tallav was on his feet too.

“On my own, Tallav. I'd like to talk to the harbormaster. Take a look at the docks and quarters. You know.”

Tallav did know and, though he disliked the notion that a Central Worlds Investigator would be . . . snooping—there was no other word for it—if such activity resulted in the apprehension of the pirates, he must ignore his feelings.

“And have you a counter?” Brack added, smiling slightly, his hand outstretched.

“Counter? Whatever for?” Tallav was shocked. The very idea that he, the Planetary Administrator, might not have conducted the most extensive search for any radioactive iodine illegally hidden anywhere in Shoulder, that his estimation of the fishmen might be erroneous, that . . . Fumbling with indignation, he turned his own handcounter over to Brack.

“Now announce my presence,” Brack pointed toward the com-unit.

Rather stunned, Tallav depressed the
All-stations
switch and informed Shoulder Blade that Investigator Brack was to be given aid and assistance in his efforts to uncover the pirates.

 

Shahanna stirred in her sleep, became aware first of the rough surface on which she was bedded and then of the closeness of the ragged walls. Other senses also registered information—the freshness of the air combined with moist rock, the curious yellow light that filtered in and the assault of complete silence. She sat up, then painfully aware of muscular discomfort and stiffness, crawled out of the shallow cave and looked around.

To the right and forward, massive black and gray clouds, their churning innards clearly visible, scudded beyond the outer rim of the old volcano. All around she saw the diffused vibrant yellow of cloud-strained light—bathing the surrounding area with a strange clarity that made the view of this archipelago and its lagoon crystal clear.

Far off on the left, Shahanna discerned the approaching rim of the other half of this storm. She looked back at the receding section, trying to estimate the extent of the eye and to figure out how much time she might have before the onslaught of the rest of the storm.

She shrugged. She had few options. Her shallow cave had sheltered her well enough up to now. If only it would protect her just a while longer. Suddenly something bobbed up on the waters of the mirror-sleek lagoon below her. Instinctively, Shahanna ducked down and peered cautiously over the obscuring rock.

“The size of it!” she gasped. The sea life of her home world boasted no monster like this whale of Welladay.

Quickly, she reviewed what she knew of the creatures. The fishmen of the planet milked their glands for precious radioactive iodine, by inserting a surgical tap into the gland-sac. Therefore, they must be used to humans. So, perhaps she could figure out a way to activate the tap herself. Her hand went to her belt and then fell. Even if she could tap the whale, with her ship a wreck on the bottom of the sea, how would she get the iodine off-world?

She stared at the floating monster, blinked as a piece of its head appeared to lift. “A fish
boat
.” She watched as a man's figure became outlined blackly against the reflecting water.

She grabbed her hand weapon and dropped three shots forward of the fish snout, waving her arms in a broad semaphore to attract the Welladan's attention. To her amazement, he dove back into his ship. Within seconds the craft submerged.

Cursing her bad luck, wondering how else she could have attracted his attention, and annoyed at such a cowardly retreat, Shahanna began to pick her way down the basaltic rocks. She couldn't imagine that he would rather brave the storm than face one lone occupant of the volcano. Surely he'd surface again.

 

Of all the rotten luck, Murv was growling to himself. The air in the fishboat was rank with human and machine stenches. He was weary and sore from the rough transit of the old channel. The boat was leaking from half a dozen seams which he had better seal before the second half of the storm hit. Of course the lagoon would be quieter than the open sea and he had figured on having the chance both to air the boat and to patch it while the eye of the mach-storm passed Crown Lagoon.

His sonar indicated an overhang along the south coast of the lagoon. Good. He would be undetectable there and could find out who that trigger-happy ape was. And if it just so happened that he was the pirate—stranded?

Pirate? He was jumping to conclusions. Flads, who else would be on Crown Lagoon in the middle of a storm. Tallav had only ordered two fishboats out, and the figure on the rocks was too rangy to be Odis!

Murv's irritation quickly dissolved. He found himself eagerly scrambling into his gear. What luck! What sheer unadulterated luck! To find that passage into the lagoon itself and to spot the pickup. Flads, where had the pirate hid his ship? Crown Lagoon was one fardling big place.

 

The unmistakable triple cracks of a hand weapon had echoed around the lagoon, unnaturally amplified by the volcanic rock hollows, the water, and the curious flat calm of the storm's eye. The shots were distinctly audible to Odis, busy mooring his fishboat on the outer rim of the Crown. He tapped the outboard instrumentation button. Odis quickly called the drone down from its circling security above the stormy mass. If only he could actually catch the pirates in the act of transferring the stolen iodine! Even at speeds no human could tolerate, the distance was still too great for the drone to descend in time. So he slowed its descent. It wouldn't do for the drone to be observed from the ground.

Three shots, he reflected. A signal? He glanced upward at the yellow-clouded skies. There was plenty of time for them to make a transfer before the winds picked up again. And he would have plenty of time to find that space shuttle. There was more than one way to milk a whale!

He secured the outboard gear and went below for his suit and water-aids. He snapped a remote-control drone unit to his belt, a knife to his calf sheath and a buckle-and-line sphere to his shoulder harness. He carefully checked the assist-tanks before he strapped them on. Then, jumping into the water, he began to swim with rapid and powerful strokes around the southern edge of the outer Crown. He knew that he would find better mooring for a space shuttle on the lower south edge of the island.

 

When she finally reached the shores of the lagoon, Shahanna kicked impotently at the coarse black sands. Nowhere was there any trace of that fishboat—nary a wake nor a ripple, bubble or slag.

“Slimy coward. Twice coward! What were you running from?”

She paused. Maybe Welladans were under attack from the same ship that had fired on her. Maybe that's why the repeated demands for the iodine had been ignored. Perhaps that coward had merely acted with sensible caution. Oh ho, that put a new light on the fishman's retreat. And, if he thought she was one of the invaders, she'd never see him again. That was certain!

Disgusted, she sank down to the beach and leaned wearily against a convenient rock. She forced herself to rest, to drain off the poisons of fatigue caused by her difficult descent. Even though this planet did have a lighter gravity than her own, her efforts had been tiring.

Displacing enough water to inundate the narrow beach and half drown Shahanna, the fishboat suddenly surfaced alarmingly close to the shore. Choking from the unexpected drenching, the girl staggered to her feet, too furious to be frightened by the grotesque pseudo-fisheyes that glared at her from the boat's snout.

“That's the last, remember,” a rough voice yelled at her. “And remember, if I'm not off this fardling world in five revolutions, I set the Investigators on you when they get here. And they're coming.”

Shahanna jumped back as a large plas-foamed cube landed heavily at her feet.

“Wait,” she cried as the fish-snout began turning away from her.

“Can't wait, you fool. And neither can you if you want to get off this fardling planet before the storm socks us in again. Grab that stuff and get off-world.”

Shahanna watched as the hatch slammed down and water foamed over the fins of the fishboat. She looked back at the plas-foamed cube and saw its shock webbing—black triangles against the gray stuff. Was that the kind of protection given valuable space shipments?

She dropped to her knees, her arms involuntarily starting to grab up the cube. My God! She pulled back. It just had to be—
a cubeful of radioactive iodine!
Liters of it, just thrown at her feet. She threw back her head and laughed: “Well, I got what I came for, certainly. They've got to give me marks for that!”

She rose to her feet, absently brushed the clinging dark sands from her legs. Her ship had already sent out the death knell. That would eventually connect with a civilized agency which would be compelled to report it to the authorities, and then a search would be inaugurated. She had supplies in her belt for several weeks, in addition to what the sea could provide. Perhaps, and her chuckle was one of pure amusement now, she had only five revolutions to wait until the error in delivery was discovered.

Suddenly she felt much better. With a deft twist, she yanked the heavy cube to her back and began to retrace her steps to the shallow cave. That would be a difficult hole to find, but there she'd be safe from the storm. Her ascent was slower and far more treacherous than her descent because the cube was an unbalancing burden, its weight a strain even on her heavy-world strength. Shahanna had been chosen for this mission for many reasons, not the least of which was her often-demonstrated tenacity. She continued her climb upward.

 

Murv watched the delivery take place with a mixture of satisfaction and irritation. He was too far away to make out the features of either party, or the code letters of the fishboat fins. He took careful note of the odd gait of the receiver—definitely an off-worlder, someone used to a heavier gravitational pull. Murv knew to a kilogram how heavy that iodine cube was, yet the off-worlder had shouldered it with ease.

Muscles or not, Murv decided, that was going to be a fardling hard climb. The pirate must have ducked into the lagoon at the onset of the storm, probably in a small shuttlecraft. Must be a fladding good pilot, too, Murv grudgingly admitted, to land on a stormy Welladan sea, ride out a mach-storm and then trip along like that. Murv glanced over his shoulder toward the west. The black and ochre clouds were still low on the horizon but coming in fast. He grinned to himself. He
could
, of course, shoot the pirate now, take the radioactive iodine back to Shoulder, and get off this fardling world for good. Everything legal and aboveboard; no need to blow his cover. But that did not solve the second part of the puzzle: Who was the illegal tapper?

So a dead pirate informed on no one. But tackling an off-worlder presented other problems, even to a man adept at rough fighting from combats on a dozen outer planets. Well, there was more than one way to milk a whale, Murv decided, and started after the pirate.

Flads! Why hadn't the fishboat swung just slightly port or starboard so he could see at least one letter of the code? And why hadn't the fishman emerged further from the hatch? Murv could have identified him with one clear glimpse of profile. Murv cursed again, remembering that the only other man out when the storm broke was Odis. He was cynic enough to believe any man capable of any deed, given the right combination of pressure and opportunity. But Odis? His love for the great whales was exceeded only by his love of this drenched world. He was the last man Murv would have suspected of treachery. Still, you never knew what went on inside a man's head: everyone had a price.

That settled it for Murv. He could not kill the out-worlder until he had discovered the identity of both traitor and pirate—and learned, to his own satisfaction, why Odis tapped whales to death.

 

To Shahanna, time was shortened to the span involved in a simple physical effort. First one foot must lift, its toes finding a hold, somehow, on the treacherous rock. The toes must then grip long enough to tense the calf muscles which must inform the long thigh muscles of the effort required of them. Arms must, somehow, manage to retain their grip on the shock-webbing on the unquestionably valuable and impossibly heavy cube.

She was only vaguely aware of other pressures: the wind beginning to rise, gustily plucking at the over-balancing burden on her back now and then, or lightly cooling the sweat that trickled down her face and into her suit. The light was changing, darkening as the other side of the storm neared the island. She was completely unaware of being under observation or that her tenacity implied far greater familiarity with the terrain than she actually possessed. An innate sense of direction was another of her assets. Once she had been to any place on any world, she was able to retrace her steps to it, just as she was now heading toward the anonymous cairn hidden.