The rough landing had bloodied a few noses, one of them mine, broken an arm or two, and opened a ten-foot seam in the hull that let in a blast of refrigerated air; but that was incidental. The real damage was to the equipment compartment forward. The power plant had been knocked right through the side of the boat. That meant no heat, no light, and no communications. Assemblyman Ognath told me what he thought of my piloting ability. I felt pretty bad until Ommu got him to admit he knew even less about atmosphere flying than I did.
The outside temperature was ten below freezing; that made it a warm day, for Cyoc. The sun was small and a long way off, glaring in a dark, metallic sky. It shed a sort of gray, before-the-storm light over a hummocky spread of glacier that ended at blue peaks, miles away. Assemblyman Ognath told me that now we were on terra firma he was taking charge, and that we would waste no time taking steps for rescue. He didn't say what steps. I told him I'd retain command as long as the emergency lasted. He fumed and used some strong language, but I was still wearing the gun.
There were a lot of complaints from the passengers about the cold, the short rations, the recycled water, bruises, and other things. They'd been all right, in space, glad to be alive. Now that they were ashore they seemed to expect instant relief. I called some of the men aside for a conference.
"I'm taking a party to make the march to the beacon," I told them.
"Party?" Ognath bellied up to me. "We'll all go! Only by pulling together can we hope to survive!"
"I'm taking ten men," I said. "The rest stay here."
"You expect us to huddle here in this wreck, and slowly freeze to death?" Ognath wanted to know.
"Not you, Assemblyman," I said. "You're coming with me."
He didn't like that, either. He said his place was with the people.
"I want the strongest, best-fed men," I said. "We'll be traveling with heavy packs at first. I can't have stragglers."
"Why not just yourself, and this fellow?" Ognath jerked a thumb at Ommu.
"We're taking half the food with us. Somebody has to carry it."
"Half the food—for ten men? And you'd leave seventy-odd women and children to share what's left?"
"That's right. We'll leave now. There's still a few hours of daylight."
Half an hour later we were ready to go, the cat included. The cold didn't seem to bother him. The packs were too big by half, but they'd get lighter.
"Where's your pack, Danger?" Ognath wanted to know.
"I'm not carrying one," I told him. I left the boat in charge of a crewman with a sprained wrist; when I looked back at the end of the first hour all I could see was ice.
We made fifteen miles before sunset. When we camped, several of the men complained about the small rations, and a couple mentioned the food I gave Eureka. Ognath made another try to gather support for himself as trail boss, but without much luck. We turned in and slept for five hours. It wasn't daylight yet when I rolled them out. One man complained that his suit-pack was down; he was shivering, and blue around the lips. I sent him back and distributed his pack among the others.
We went on, into rougher country, sprinkled with rock slabs that pushed up through the ice. The ground was rising, and footing was treacherous. When I called the noon halt, we had made another ten miles.
"At this rate, we'll cover the distance in ten days," Ognath informed me. "The rations could be doubled, easily! We're carrying enough for forty days!"
He had some support on that point. I said no. After a silent meal and a ten-minute rest, we went on. I watched the men. Ognath was a complainer but he held his position up front. Two men had a tendency to straggle. One of them seemed to be having trouble with his pack. I checked on him, found he had a bad bruise on his shoulder from a fall during the landing. I chewed him out and sent him back to the boat.
"If anybody else is endangering this party by being noble, speak up now," I told them. Nobody did. We went on, down to eight men already, and only twenty-four hours out.
The climbing was stiff for the rest of the day. Night caught us halfway to a high pass. Everybody was dog-tired. Ommu came over and told me the packs were too heavy.
"They'll get lighter," I told him.
"Maybe if you carried one you'd see it my way," he came back.
"Maybe that's why I'm not carrying one."
We spent a bad night in the lee of an ice-ridge. I ordered all suits set for minimum heat to conserve power. At dawn we had to dig ourselves out of drifted snow.
We made the pass by mid-afternoon, and were into a second line of hills by dark. Up until then, everyone had been getting by on his initial charge; now the strain was starting to show. When morning came, two men had trouble getting started. After the first hour, one of them passed out cold. I left him and the other fellow with a pack between them, to make it back to the boat. By dark, we'd put seventy-five miles behind us.
I began to lose track of days then. One man slipped on a tricky climb around a crevasse and we lost him, pack and all. That left five of us: myself, Ommu, Ognath, a passenger named Choom, and Lath, one of my power-section crew. Their faces were hollow and when they pulled their masks off their eyes looked like wild animals'; but we'd weeded out the weak ones now.
At a noonday break, Ognath watched me passing out the ration cans.
"I thought so," his fruity baritone was just a croak now. "Do you men see what he's doing?" He turned to the others, who had sprawled on their backs as usual as soon as I called the halt. "No wonder Danger's got more energy than the rest of us! He's giving himself double rations—for himself and the animal!"
They all sat up and stared my way.
"How about it?" Ommu asked. "Is he right?"
"Never mind me," I told them. "Just eat and get what rest you can. We've still got nearly three hundred miles to do."
Ommu got to his feet. "Time you doubled up on rations for all of us," he said. The other two men were sitting up, watching.
"I'll decide when it's time," I told him.
"Ognath, open a pack and hand out an extra ration all around," Ommu said.
"Touch a pack and I'll kill you," I said. "Lie down and get your rest, Ommu."
They stood there and looked at me.
"Better be careful how you sleep from now on, Danger," Ommu said. Nobody said anything while we finished eating and shouldered packs and started on. I marched at the rear now, watching them. I couldn't afford to let them fail. The Lady Raire was counting on me.
At the halfway point, I was still feeling fairly strong. Ognath and Choom had teamed up to help each other over the rough spots, and Ommu and Lath stuck together. None of them said anything to me unless they had to. Eureka had taken to ranging far offside, looking for game, maybe.
Each day's march was like the one before. We got on our feet at daylight, wolfed down the ration, and hit the trail. Our best speed was about two miles per hour now. The scenery never changed. When I estimated we'd done two hundred and fifty miles—about the fifteenth day—I increased the ration. We made better time that day, and the next. Then the pace began to drag again. The next day, there were a lot of falls. It wasn't just rougher ground; the men were reaching the end of their strength. We halted in mid-afternoon and I told them to turn their suit heaters up to medium range. I saw Ognath and Choom swap looks. I went over to the assemblyman and checked his suit; it was on full high. So was Choom's.
"Don't blame them, Danger," Ommu said. "On short rations they were freezing to death."
The next day Choom's heat-pack went out. He kept up for an hour; then he fell and couldn't get up. I checked his feet; they were frozen waxy-white, ice-hard, hallway to the knee.
We set up a tent for him, left fourteen days' rations, and went on. Assemblyman Ognath told me this would be one of the items I'd answer for at my trial.
"Not unless we reach the beacon," I reminded him.
Two days later, Ognath jumped me when he thought I was asleep. He didn't know I had scattered ice chips off my boots around me as a precaution. I woke up just in time to roll out of his way. He rounded and came for me again and Eureka knocked him down and stood over him, snarling in a way to chill your blood. Lath and Ommu heard him yell and I had to hold the gun on them to get them calmed down.
"Rations," Ognath said. "Divide them up now; four even shares!"
I turned him down. Ommu told me what he'd do to me as soon as he caught me without the gun. Lath asked me if I was willing to kill the cat, now that it had gone mad and was attacking people. I let them talk. When they had it out of their systems, we went on. That afternoon Ommu fell and couldn't get up. I took his pack and told Lath to help him. An hour later Lath was down. I called a halt, issued a triple ration all around and made up what was left of the supplies into two packs. Ognath complained, but he took one and I took the other.
The next day was a hard one. We were into broken ground again, and Ognath was having trouble with his load, even though it was a lot lighter than the one he'd started with. Ommu and Lath took turns helping each other up. Sometimes it was hard to tell which one was helping which. We made eight miles and pitched camp. The next day we did six miles; the next five; the day after that, Ognath fell and sprained an ankle an hour after we'd started. By then we had covered three hundred and sixty miles.
"We'll make camp here," I said. "Ommu and Lath, lend a hand."
I used the filament gun on narrow-beam to cut half a dozen foot-cube blocks of snow. When I told Ommu to start stacking them in a circle, he just looked at me.
"He's gone crazy," he said. "Listen, Lath; you too, Ognath. We've got to rush him. He can't kill all three of us—"
"We're going to build a shelter," I told him. "You'll stay warm there until I get back."
"What are you talking about?" Lath was hobbling around offside, trying to get behind me. I waved him back.
"This is the end of the line for you. Ognath can't go anywhere; you two might make another few miles, but the three of you together will have a better chance."
"Where do you think you're going?" Ognath got himself up on one elbow to call out. "Are you abandoning us now?"
"He planned it this way all along," Lath whispered. His voice had gone a couple of days before. "Made us pack his food for him, used us as draft animals; and now that we're used up, he'll leave us here to die."
Ommu was the only one who didn't spend the next ten minutes swearing at me. He flopped down on the snow and watched me range the snow blocks in a ten-foot circle. I cut and carried up more and built the second course. When I had the third row in place, he got up and silently started chinking the gaps with snow.
It took two hours to finish the igloo, including a six-foot entrance tunnel and a sanitary trench a few feet away.
"We'll freeze inside that," Ognath was almost blubbering now. "When our suit-packs go, we'll freeze!"
I opened the packs and stacked part of the food, made up one light pack.
"Look," Ognath was staring at the small heap of ration cans. "He's leaving us with nothing! We'll starve, while he stuffs his stomach!"
"If you starve you won't freeze," I said. "Better get him inside," I told Ommu and Lath.
"He won't be stuffing his stomach much," Ommu said. "He's leaving us twice what he's taking for himself."
"But—where's all the food he's been hoarding?"
"We've been eating it for the past week," Ommu said. "Shut up, Ognath. You talk too much."
We put Ognath in the igloo. It was already warmer inside, from the yellowish light filtering through the snow walls. I left them then, and with Eureka pacing beside me, started off in what I hoped was the direction of the beacon.
My pack weighed about ten pounds; I had food enough for three days' half-rations. I was still in reasonable shape, reasonably well-fed. With luck, I expected to make the beacon in two days' march.
I didn't have luck. I made ten miles before dark, slept cold and hungry, put in a full second day. By sundown I had covered the forty miles, but all I could see was flat plain and glare ice, all the way to the horizon. According to the chart, the beacon was built on a hundred-foot knoll that would be visible for at least twenty miles. That meant one more day, minimum.
I did the day, and another day. I rechecked my log, and edited all the figures downward; and I still should have been in sight of home base by now. That night Eureka disappeared.
The next day my legs started to go. I finished the last of my food and threw away the pack; I had a suspicion my suit heaters were about finished; I shivered all the time.
Late that day I saw Eureka, far away, crossing a slight ripple in the flat ice. Maybe he was on the trail of something to eat. I wished him luck. I had a bad fall near sunset, and had a hard time crawling into the lee of a rock to sleep.
The next day things got tough. I knew I was within a few miles of the beacon, but my suit instruments weren't good enough to pinpoint it. Any direction was as good as another. I walked east, toward the dull glare of the sun behind low clouds. When I couldn't walk anymore, I crawled. After a while I couldn't crawl anymore. I heard a buzzing from my suit pack that meant the charge was almost exhausted. It didn't seem important. I didn't hurt anymore, wasn't hungry or tired. It felt good, just floating where I was, in a warm, golden sea. Golden, the color of the Lady Raire's skin when she lay under the hot sun of Gar 28, slim and tawny. . . . Lady Raire, a prisoner, waiting for me to come for her.
I was on my feet, weaving, but upright. I picked out a rock ahead, and concentrated on reaching it. I made it and fell down and saw my own footprints there. That seemed funny. When I finished laughing, it was dark. I was cold now. I heard voices. . . .
The voices were louder, and then there was light and a man was standing over me and Eureka was sitting on his haunches beside me, washing his face.
Ommu and Ognath were all right; Lath had left the igloo and never came back; Choom was dead of gangrene. Of the four men I had sent back to the boat during the first few days, three reached it. All of the party at the boat survived. We later learned that our boat was the only one that got away from the ship. We never learned what it was we had collided with.
I was back on my feet in a day or two. The men at the beacon station were glad to have an interruption in their routine; they gave us the best of everything the station had to offer. A couple of days later a ship arrived to take us off.
At Ahax, I went before a board of inquiry and answered a lot of questions, most of which seemed to be designed to get me to confess that it had all been my fault. But in the end they gave me a clean bill and a trip bonus for my trouble.
Assemblyman Ognath was waiting when I left the hearing room.
"I understand the board dismissed you with a modest bonus and a hint that the less you said of the disaster the better," he said.
"That's about it."
"Danger, I've always considered myself to be a man of character," he told me. "At Cyoc, I was in error. I owe you something. What are your plans?"
He gave me a sharp look when I told him. "I assume there's a story behind that—but I won't pry. . . . "
"No secret, Mister Assemblyman." I told him the story over dinner at an eating place that almost made up for thirty days on the ice. When I finished he shook his head.
"Danger, do you have any idea how long it will take you to work your passage to as distant a world as Zeridajh?"
"A long time."
"Longer than you're likely to live, at the wages you're earning."
"Maybe."
"Danger, as a politician I'm a practical man. I have no patience with romantic quests. However, you saved my life; I have a debt to discharge. I'm in a position to offer you the captaincy of your own vessel, to undertake a mission of considerable difficulty—but one which, if you're successful, will pay you more than you could earn in twenty years below decks!"
The details were explained to me that night at a meeting in a plush suite on the top floor of a building that must have been two hundred stories high. From the terrace where I was invited to take a chair with four well-tailored and manicured gentlemen, the city lights spread out for fifty miles. Assemblyman Ognath wasn't there. One of the men did most of the talking while the other three listened.
"The task we wish you to undertake," he said in a husky whisper, "requires a man of sound judgment and intrepid character; a man without family ties or previous conflicting loyalties. I am assured you possess those qualities. The assignment also demands great determination, quick wits and high integrity. If you succeed, the rewards will be great. If you fail, you can expect a painful death, and we can do nothing to help you."
A silent-footed girl appeared with a tray of glasses. I took one and listened:
"Ahacian commercial interests have suffered badly during recent decades from the peculiarly insidious competition of a nonhuman race known as the Rish. The pattern of their activities has been such as to give rise to the conviction that more than mere mercantile ambitions are at work. We have, however, been singularly unsuccessful in our efforts to place observers among them."
"In other words, your spies haven't had any luck."
"None."
"What makes this time different?"
"You will enter Rish-controlled space openly, attended by adequate public notice. Your movements as a lone Ahacian vessel in alien-controlled space will be followed with interest by the popular screen. The Rish can hardly maintain their pretence of cordiality if they offer you open interference. Your visit to the capital, Hi-iliat, will appear no more than a casual commercial visit."
"I don't know anything about espionage," I said. "What would I do when I got there—if I got there?"
"Nothing. Your crew of four will consist of trained specialists."
"Why do you need me?"
"Precisely because you are not a specialist. Your training has been other than academic. You have faced disaster in space, and survived. Perhaps you will survive among the Rish."
It sounded simple enough: I'd be gone a year; when I got back, a small fortune would be waiting for me. The amount they mentioned made my head swim. Ognath had been wrong; it wasn't twenty years' earnings; it was forty.
"I'll take it," I said. "But I think you're wasting your money."
"We pay you nothing unless you return," the spokesman said. "In which case the outlay will not have been wasted."
The vessel they showed me in a maintenance dock at the port was a space-scarred five-thousand tonner, built twelve hundred years ago and used hard ever since. If the Rish had any agents snooping around her for hidden armor, multi-light communications gear, or superdrive auxiliaries, they didn't find them; there weren't any. Just the ancient stressed-field generators, standard navigation gear, a hold full of pre-coded computer tapes for light manufacturing operations. My crew of four were an unlikely-looking set of secret agents. Two were chinless lads with expressions of goggle-eyed innocence; one was a middle-aged man who gave the impression of having run away from a fat wife; and the last was a tall, big-handed, silent fellow with moist blue eyes.
I spent two weeks absorbing cephalotapes designed to fill in the gaps in my education. We lifted off before dawn one morning, with no more fanfare than any other tramp streamer leaving harbor. I left Eureka behind with one of the tech girls from the training center. Maybe that was a clue to the confidence I had in the mission.
For the first few weeks, I enjoyed captaining my own ship, even as ancient a scow as Jongo. My crew stared solemnly when I suited up and painted the letters on her prow myself; to them, the idea of anthropomorphizing an artifact with a pet name was pretty weird.
We made our first planetfall without incident. I contacted the importers ashore, quoted prices, bought replacement cargo in accordance with instructions, while my four happy-go-lucky men saw the town. I didn't ask them what they'd found out; as far as I was concerned, the less I knew about their activities the better.
We went on, calling at small, unpopulous worlds, working our way deeper into the Bar, then angling toward Galactic South, swinging out into less densely populated space, where Center was a blazing arch in the screens.
We touched down on Lon, Banoon, Ostrok and twenty other worlds, as alike as small towns in the midwestern United States. And then one day we arrived at a planet which looked no different than the rest of space, but was the target we'd been feeling our way toward for five months: The Rish capital, and the place where, if I made one tiny mistake, I'd leave my bones.
The port of Hi-iliat was a booming, bustling center where great shining hulls from all the great worlds of the Bar, and even a few from Center itself, stood ranged on the miles-wide ramp system, as proud and aloof as carved Assyrian kings. We rode a rampcar in from the remote boondocks where we'd been parked by Traffic Control to a mile-wide rotunda constructed of high arched ribs of white concrete with translucent filigree-work between them. I was so busy staring up at it that I didn't see the Rish official until one of my men prodded me. I turned and was looking at a leathery five-foot oyster all ready for a walk on the beach, spindly legs and all. He was making thin buzzes and clicks that seemed to come from a locket hanging on the front side of him. It dawned on me then that it was speaking a dialect I could understand:
"All right, chaps, just in from out-system, eh? Mind stepping this way? A few formalities, won't take a skwrth."
I didn't know how long a skwrth was, but I followed him, and my four beauties followed me. He led us into a room that was like a high, narrow corridor, too brightly lit for comfort, already crowded with Men and Rish and three or four other varieties of life, none of which I had ever seen before. We sat on small stools as directed and put our hands into slots and had lights flashed in our eyes and sharp tones beeped at our ears. Whatever the test was, we must have passed, because our guide led us out into a ceilingless circular passage like a cattle run and addressed us:
"Now, chaps, as guests of the Rish Hierarchy, you're welcome to our great city and to our fair world. You'll find hostelries catering to your metabolic requirements, and if at any time you are in need of assistance, you need merely repair to the nearest sanctuary station, marked by the white pole, and you will be helped. And I must also solemnly caution you: Any act unfriendly to the Rish Hierarchy will be dealt with instantly and with the full rigor of the law. I trust you'll have a pleasant stay. Mind the step, now." He pushed a hidden control and a panel slid back and he waved us through into the concourse.
An hour later, after an ion-bath and a drink at the hotel bar, I set out to take a look at Hi-iliat. It was a beautiful town, full of blinding white pavement, sheer towers, tiled plazas with hundred-foot fountains, and schools and shoals of Rish, zooming along on tiny one-wheeled motorbikes. There were a few Men in sight, and an equal number of other aliens. The locals paid no attention to them, except to ping their bike-bells at them when they stepped out in front of them.
I found a park where orange grass as soft as velvet grew under trees with polished silver trunks and golden yellow leaves. There were odd little butterfly-like birds there, and small leathery animals the size of squirrels. Beyond it was a lake, with pretty little buildings standing up on stilts above the water; I could hear twittery music coming from somewhere. I sat on a bench and watched the big, pale sun setting across the lake. It seemed that maybe the life of a spy wasn't so bad after all.
It was twilight when I started back to the hotel. I was halfway there when four Rish on green-painted scooters surrounded me. One of them was wearing a voice box.
"Captain Billy Danger," he said in a squeak like a bat. "You are under arrest for crimes against the peace and order of the Hierarch of Rish."