Kenneth Bulmer (15 page)

"Hold it, Terry!"

Mallow
turned, off balance, surprised. Charles Sergeivitch Kwang, his smooth bland
face now alarmingly screwed up, stepped forward.

"What the hell do you want now,
Charley?",

"I
didn't know about this change in plan. I can't say I like it. Professor
Randolph's played square by us—you can't go around hitting him—"

"Just
keep out of my way, Charley. I'm the boss, remember that." Mallow spoke
evenly and quiedy; but the vicious spite in his words made Randolph realize
again— and far too late—how wrongly he had summed up his nephew.

"But you can't—" Kwang started to
say.

Bamy
Cain's gun poked into Kwang's back. "Just shut the mouth, feller.
Commander Mallow's the boss. You heard what he said."

"I've
never liked violence," Kwang said, his voice more rasping than anyone had
heard it before. "Randolph picked us up from the gutter, gave us an
aim—and now all you can do is turn on him. I'd have expected—"

"Gratitude?"
Mallow was bitterly mocking. "What man extends gratitude to the hand that
lifts him from the gutter?"

"That's a damn poor philosophy!"
Kwang burst out Mallow snapped his fingers. "H you don't want a part

of
this, Charley, then you're poorer by a large slice of

loot. And we're the richer."

"You'll be sorry you did this,"
Randolph shouted; his slow appreciation of his nephew now filling him with
self-reproach and ashamed chagrin.

"You
mean you'll tell the cops?" Mallow laughed. "Not you. Why—who
organized it all? Who masterminded the plan right from the start? Who's under
suspicion right now, under arrest by Warner? Why—Professor Cheslin Randolph,
that's who. You say one word and you'll be in for life."

Mallow walked about, watching the bent back
of Troisdorff at the bluely-gleaming lock. "A sweet set-up. No one about,
a ship to get clear away in, no one to know the job's done until they hit
planet. Sweet—oh sweet."

Standing
in partial shadow, his thoughts back with Helen Chase standing like some
beautiful and graven statue, Howland felt the tension in the air close around
his head like a wetted thong. All his suspicion of Mallow crystallized; but he
saw savagely that he was far too late, that the man had come out into the open
before he, Howland, had had the guts to play his own hand.

Charley
Kwang, standing alongside Willi Haffner now, wiped sweat away from his forehead.
Howland felt he understood the slender astrogator: as a confidence trickster
he broke the law; but everyone knew that the victim of a good confidence man
himself was a bit of a crook; he'd never fall for the line otherwise. And Kwang
didn't like this violent sort of crime. An ally there, then.

Howland walked back into the picture, one
hand in his pocket.

Mallow
turned at once, rocking on his heels, staring maliciously at Howland.
"An! The soft-hearted doctor! I don't know how you wriggled out of the trap
we set for you with Kirkup; but you're finished now, Howland."

Haffner
started to speak; but Mallow cut him off brutally. "Keep quiet, you old
soak! Else you'll have a bullet hole in you to let out the whisky."

Howland's
reaction disconcerted Mallow. Howland did nothing. Randolph, in turn, began to
speak; but now Mallow forced the pace. "Get over with the others, uncle,
and keep quiet. We don't have all that time. I want to be well clear of
detector range before these fools wake up."

"Just
a minute, Mallow." Howland took a deep breath, his hand gripping in his
pocket. "You intend to take the cash inside that strong room and keep it
for yourself, after paying your men a cut. You intend to deprive the professor
of his chance to work on Pochalin Nine and to create life." The fear
coiling in Howland brought sweat to his forehead and dried his mouth.
"We're taking this money from a corrupt government because they refuse to
let it be used for ends that are good, good in the sense of good for science
and the commonwealth of mankind."

Mallow
laughed the pompous phrases to scom. "Good— what d'you mean, good? Suppose
this life you want to create turns into a ravening monster, destroying men and
women? What then?"

"There
is no danger of that," Randolph said sharply. "Only an ignorant
layman could imagine that. And the government
is
corrupt. They took the Maxwell Fund to develop a super weapon for the
space Navy, to waste it on warfare—when there is no visible enemy. They don't
need all that amount of money—the rest goes in bribes and corruption,
and—"

"So that's the truth about the Maxwell
Fund this year," said Howland. "Right Well-"

"Well shut up,
Howland." said Mallow viciously.

"We
wanted money we should have had for decent purposes, Mallow. You're just a
common thief! If there was any cash left over, we'd return it—but you, oh, no!
You just want wealth for it's own sake, and for your dirty sake, too
..."

Mallow's
gun came up steadily. His face was bleak and mean and plainly on it was written
the mark of the killer.

The
muzzle pointed at Howland, and Mallow's finger tightened on the trigger.

CHAPTER TWELVE

P
eter
H
owland
put his hand over his mouth in terror.

Mallow
gave the gun a last evil thrust forward, as though personally to help the
bullet on.

Into
everyone's ears penetrated a subtle, tenuous, plucking sound, a sub-audible
sound that irritated without being heard, a sound that activated those billions
of sub-audio viruses, a sound that took Mallow, Cain, Briggs, one or two more,
took them and froze them and turned them into motionless, silent, graven
statues.

Howland
let his hand fall away from his lips. A silver whistle glinted between his
fingers.

Willi
Haffner looked at Howland. "You cunning devill" he said. There was in
his voice only admiration.

Howland
tried to smile. The victory had not been won as cheaply as all that. Haffner
had forgotten his fear because it had not been a part of his own actions; now
he could go forward at once. Randolph, to<£ could exclaim, "Now how the
blazes, Peter, did you—

But Howland could only walk a little way
apart from them, and sit down, and rest his head on the cool table top, and let
reaction shudder over him.

In
that moment of unwound tension, of a thankful relaxation of fearful surmise
and a hesitation over what could happen next, Colonel Troisdorff stood up. He
brushed his hands together, precisely. He bent forward from the waist, stiffly,
pressed an amber-lit button beside the blued-steel electronic lock. With the
faintest of hisses the lock revolved, tumblers clanged as the lock stopped—and
the strong-room door slowly opened.

It
was quite clear that Troisdorff hadn't heard a word of what had been going on
behind his back.

Randolph,
Haffner, Ramsy, all of them, they all started forward under the fascination of
that slowly opening door. Forgotten were the deadly moments only just slipping
into the past, forgotten the men among them who stood, silent as stone, their
guns a pitiful reminder of their twisted violence.

Randolph was the first
through the strong-room door.

No one could grudge him
that.

Howland roused himself. His legs had stopped
their trembling and his headache had receded. He stood up and padded softly across
to the others, went with them into the strong-room. No one felt the need to
speak. The vaults seemed to suck up noise, to siphon off excess emotion so that
all that was left was the satisfied, satiated silence of men who stare
enthralled upon a king's ransom and know it to be theirs.

The strong-rooms sprawled. In blued steel
trays and drawers the bullion lay stacked from floor to ceiling. Bulging
bundles of notes, all neatly banded, stacked in two hundred bundles, wrapped
in twenty thousand packs and then crated in reinforced boxes of five hundred
thousand apiece, stood, crate on crate, in regimented alleyways.

"From
Santa Cruz Two the ship goes to Amir Bey Nine— an unpleasant frontier world,
that—and from there the space Navy transfer all this stuff aboard their own
vessels. There must be over a* year's Terran supply here
..
.**

"Yoweeeel"
suddenly screamed Ramsy. Larssen thumped him on the back. Haffner was pumping
Randolph's hand up and down like a primitive bellows. Others were jumping and
laughing in exuberance. The air flew with laughter and jokes and a chuckling
release of tension. One man dived a hand into an opened crate, began to toss
money up into the air. It fell swooping and curling, like a returning flight of
doves.

"Flying
back to tell us we've struck dry land," said Howland, half to himself.

Randolph
made no attempt to bring the roisterers to order. His tiny face glowed, his
frog's-eyes bulging with happiness.

"We've done it,"
he
said, over and over.

Later,
Howland managed to inject a note of caution into the fireworks. "Mallow
can't take the ship back. So who does?"

Kwang stepped forward, his brown face smiling
and smooth.

"You've
no way of knowing, now, how much you can trust me. But I'll take her
back."

Randolph nodded decisively;
but he did not speak.

Ramsy
put one hand to his ear. "Y/know, prof, after your own nephew turned out
like that, I doubt you'll want to trust anyone. But—"

"But
I have to trust someone, don't I? To make sure this money goes where it will be
used properly. Colonel?"

Troisdorff
had taken his long, supercilious look at the motionless men with their guns.
He
harrumped a little, and then said quietly "Kwang and I can get the
ship back safely, and if you send Ramsy along, too, that'll give you extra
insurance. Never did cotton on to young Mallow. But they'll have to be looked
after on the run back to Earth."

"The
Professor and Peter can't go, and neither can I," said Haffner.
"We're here, in the control room, under the eye of Warner. When he wakes
up hell want to know where we suddenly vanished to if we leave now. But,"
he turned to Randolph in his heavy, bovine way. "I feel you can trust
Ramsy and the others now. If they do anything silly, I'm sure they'll live to regret
it."

"There
is enough money here to carry out the necessary experiments, to pay off the men
who have helped us, and probably to return a balance." Randolph kicked a
crate containing five hundred thousand. "You'd better go with them, Ramsy.
You can help fly the ship. Stella will have to cover for you here,"

"She'll do that, all right." Ramsy
looked undecided. "The captain—"

"I
think you'll get along with Stella better from now on." Howland spoke with
all the authority he could bring into
his words. "She's all right, basically. Just that the two of you
needed a fresh start."

"And now you've got it." Randolph
turned on the crew. "Right. Get this stuff aboard our ship. Pronto!"

Moving
the money took time. Everyone chipped in—even Stella. They found electric
trolleys and called out cheerful quips to one another as the full trolleys
labored past the empties hurtling back to the strong-room for more cash. All
their own cutting gear was collected, unused, taken back. Mallow, Cain, Briggs
and the few other roughnecks Howland had injected with harmless distilled water
were carried back to the ship, as stiff as frozen sheets. Ramsy collected his
gear and said goodbye to Stella. No one was around as they said their
farewells, and Peter Howland, for one, was glad of that

The last rites were performed by Colonel
Troisdorff. All the conspirators had been wearing gloves; that was so obvious
as not to warrant a second thought. Now the gallant colonel checked on
everything, ran a coldly calculating eye over the stripped strong-rooms,
checked the valves and swung the ponderous doors to. He gave the electronic
lock a sardonic look, twirled it, and the amber light went out

"Shut
up, tight," he said with satisfaction. "Now your Rebbos can cut 'er
open—and the best of luck Jo 'em!"

Howland chuckled. So the
colonel was human, after all.

They
saw their ship off with three hours to go. They'd taken turns snatching short
periods of sleep, and now the men shaved and brought themselves back into the
condition in which they'd been when Stella had blown her whistle. She now had
a silver whistle that blew an innocuous sound.

"Listen,
professor," Howland said, walking back into the silent control room from
the cabins. "Now everything has been wrapped up—Larssen is finishing up on
the rigging of records and logs—seems to me we ought to arrange an easy
takeover of the vessel by the real crew."

"What do you
suggest?"

"We damp down the
charges in the rebbos
¹
guns, jimmy
the firing pins, things like that. Then when
we make a break, the Freedom Fighters won't have anything to fight withl"

Randolph nodded
pugnaciously. "Good idea, Peter."

They
went about the job methodically. When they had finished the Rebbos might fire
once—but after that their weapons would be useless. Walking back from that door
marked: PRIVATE-CREW ONLY, Howland looked into a side room and saw the body of
Atherstone laid out on the floor. At his side his gun glinted darkly. On
impulse, How-land picked it up, slid it into his trousers pocket where it hung
heavily but did not bulk out betrayingly.

"Anything else,
Peter?"

"Yes."
Howland licked his hps. "Stella had just drawn the winning ticket. I think
it might be a good idea if we made that winner one of our tickets
..
."

"A brilliant thought,
Peter!" exclaimed Haflner.

But
Professor Randolph was looking outraged. He swung furiously on his associates.
"What are you both thinking about? People have paid money to enter this
draw; everyone stands an equal chance. If you did what you suggest it would be
dishonest! I'm surprised . . ."

And, thinking about it, Howland felt shame
that he'd ever mentioned the idea.

"You said," he asked slowly,
"that the government were building a big super-weapons computer thing with
the Maxwell Fund, that only a tithe of it was going to Helen? Right. Well,
that fixes the big power-and-authority boys for me. They're corrupt, all of
'em. And I'm sorry I suggested rigging the draw—that would be corrupt,
too."

Haflner
had found a bottle.. Cradling it, he said reflectively, "People always
used to talk to me about a nebulous thing called 'conscience.' As a scientist
I regarded this as primitive talk—you can't find a conscience when you cut open
a human brain." He lifted the bottle. Over the rim of the neck his face
suddenly lifted, eyes bright and seeking on their faces. "Troubling you
any?"

Randolph
smiled. "It was, at one time, Willi. Troubling me a lot You could call
what we're doing—what we've done, by George!—you could say it was criminal. But
that money was going to utter waste. All my histrionics may have been corny;
but they were true. We're going to use that money to fulfill a purpose I
believe to be 'good.' Other people might quarrel with that, but sometimes you
have to fix your target, and go for it, regardless. You have to stand up
straight in the galaxy and think for yourself."

"Think for
yourself," Howland repeated.

"I
shall continue to live my life now as I would have done before," Randolph
said earnesdy. There will be no luxury, no spendthrift sprees. I am a
micro-biologist, and I have a job to do. This money is merely that which should
have come to us. Instead it was used by a corrupt government to further their
warlike plans. The money is therefore being used by us and we have had to adopt
a somewhat unorthodox method to obtain what in effect is the Maxwell
Fund."

That
damned Maxwell and his Fund," said Haffner benignly.

"All
set, gents?" Larssen walked through, quick and keen and competent, despite
lack of sleep. "I'm going back down, now. I'll arrange the warning to go
through to the captain. Stella will just love that."

"Fine,
thank you, Larssen." Randolph smiled across confidently.

"Oh,
and," said Sammy Larssen, "don't worry your heads over all this. I've
seen some of the waste that goes on in government service. Shocking. High time
they were given a swift kick in the pants. Now maybe they'll think twice before
throwing away the taxpayers' hard earned gravy."

"I'm sure," said
Randolph politely.

Sammy
Larssen went away. The three conscious men in the control room checked watches,
looked at the big central timepiece in the athwartships bulkhead. Fifteen
minutes to go.

"A
very fine operation all round," said Randolph. "Apart from my nephew.
I shall have something to say to that young man when next we meet."

Howland thought of Helen Chase. Haffner took
a last swig from the bottle and threw it down a dispenser. It was still half
full. Haffner, too, had grown up.

Five minutes.

"All right." Randolph moved across
and stood carefully, feet planted exactly. "Take up your positions."

Carefully,
tenderly, Howland put his arm around Helen's waist. Quietly, thinking their own
thoughts, they waited.