Authors: Space Pioneers
behavior
with a puppet cockiness that irritated the
big man and put him in the right frame of mind.
Then
had
come
the question of how to get Jord out of the
cottage before the arrival of Grandpa. Without having
him
turn his gun on Miles as hostage. Approaching en masse, without first having
taken the edge off Jord's latent viciousness, might have proven as fatal to the
farmer as the coming of Grandpa. The problem of the itching trigger finger had
needed to be taken up with delicacy.
Lin
thought he'd handled it nicely. Now that he'd barged in and forced Jord to
"kill" him, throwing the big man off balance into the reactive side
of his killing impulse, Jord's fear of punishment—not yet entirely dead—should
cause him to break and run under the proper stimulus.
Namely,
a present and immediate threat of retribution.
And
Jord, not basically criminal, having reached his exhausting murderous peak for
the second
time,
should decline away from a third
murder—Miles' murder—if that fear were played upon.
This was the script that
Lin wrote.
And Miles had called the
cues—he thought.
Lin
shuddered. It had been nauseating to ball his fists that way, to step forward
as if in aggression-Miles lay on the bunk and hoped that this would do it. He
pressed his eyelids shut and prayed that it would. Although it was only seven
o'clock in the "evening," sunrise was so near that his flesh crawled.
A
light flashed on the binary-chart.
A red light.
Simultaneously, a chime struck softly.
"What's that?"
Jord said nervously, looking at the chart.
"Time signal," Miles said, glad
that he had turned off his wrist-meter, the violent part of it—it would have
been white hot by now. "I've got it fixed to announce my favorite telaudio
programs. Do you ever listen to Sam Space, Detective? That should
interest—"
"Shut up. Do you hear
anything?"
Jord
crossed to the
window,
peered out. His jaw dropped and
he stepped back in dismay. "God in Heaven, there's a million of those
beetle-men out therel"
Miles
could hear them now. Lin had evidently improved upon his
instructions,
had told them to growl and snarl as menacingly as a Crony could. The effect was
that of a horde of baritone kittens; but to Jord's horrified eyes, in the half
light, they must have looked like a shiny-skinned legion of Hell. He raised the
hand-blast, hesitated,
turned
from the window to point
the gun at Miles.
Quickly,
Lin gave Jord's Nemesis fears a solid boost and sent a thought to Miles.
"If
you do," the farmer said levelly, "they'll hunt you down and use you
for sacrifice. They know this country. You couldn't escape."
Not
the wisest thing to say, Lin admitted to
himself
with
superfluous logic, for it as much as stated that Jord had done nothing yet to
warrant the Cronies' taking out after him. Granting that, it certainly didn't
give the Cronies credit for much
esprit
de
corps,
since Jord thought Lin was dead.
But
the killer was much too unsettled to follow up this discrepancy or even notice
it. He made up his mind quickly. The after-a-mouse growlings were louder now.
Slow, deliberate footsteps scuffed the metal of the path—another of Lin's
improvements, for a Crony can move as silently as night.
Jord
darted into the next
room,
collected a hasty pocketful
of concentrated foods. Ludicrous in Miles' undersized suit, he threw a passing
glance through the window and what he saw all but lifted his hair. For Lin had
told his comrades to crouch and wave their arms like great apes.
"Thanks for your hospitality,
farmer—" and Jord scuttled to the back door, flung through it and faded in
the gloom.
Miles let out a long
breath. "Hurrah for our side!"
Lin was bending over the
bunk, working with the knots.
"Tell
your comrades to give chase, Lin. A game, with
he
the
quarry. And tell them to keep snarling!"
The Crony's fingers didn't pause as he beamed
the message. The snarling rose in volume. Rapid footsteps rounded the cottage
and diminished.
VI
When Lin had released him, Miles stood
stiffly, rubbing his deadened arms and hands.
The
binary-chart gave a warning yellow flash and began to clang loudly. Outside, in
the darkness of the yard, the door to the underground swung open and added its
bell-clamor to the confusion.
Miles
went to the
wallcase,
selected a book to while away
Grandpa's visit—he felt anything but sleepy. Lin stood nearby, his green eyes
placidly blank as he followed telepathically the events of the now distant
chase.
"Him heap scared,
bwana," he grinned.
Miles'
voice was not quite steady, though whether because of relief, nervous reaction
or gratitude it would be hard to say.
A mixture of all,
perhaps.
"Thank you, Lin," he said. "Thanks for catching
on so quickly!"
Lin's eyes hooded over their secret amusement.
"Do you think you can make it underground unassisted?"
"I'm
a little stiff, but I'll do." Miles gazed unseeingly through the open back
door at the black hills which were even now receiving lord and his
"pursuers." A futile wolf hunt; the hunters incapable of the kill—the
wolf fleeing toward a death more inevitable and horrible than the imaginary one
from which he fled.
"Poor Jord—" and Miles' voice was
without sarcasm. In these days, on these worlds, men were needed—many men, to
work together for the good of themselves and of their culture. Jord, with his
intelligence, had probably once been such a man. . . .
Miles
shrugged. It was a problem for psychologists, not farmers. In his report of the
incident he would suggest that Jord's children, if he had any, be checked.
Although, on second thought, it was undoubtedly already being done.
The binary-chart let out its last warning, a
chordal scream that rattled the metaglas windows in their grooves. Miles hurriedly
shut it off.
"Better hurry,
bwana," Lin grunted.
"Bwana,
bwana—be damned if I'll ever lend you another book!" Miles grinned and
started for the door. "I don't know why you Alcronians go around acting
like a bunch of heathens. You've got a Utopian system wrapped up in those
Hives—at least to hear
you
tell it, since you won't let us in to see for
ourselves—and yet you work all day picking
kanl!"
Lin laughed easily. "Perhaps those who
live under double suns must live double lives." He trailed after the
little Earth-man.
"That's very pretty,
but it doesn't make much sense."
"And I, frankly, don't understand
polo." They halted by the door to the underground and Lin seemed to listen
a moment, then went on:
"Jord—"
whose name Lin had not been told, Miles thought— and then somehow forgot all
about it—"is high in the hills. He will not escape Grandpa."
Miles dropped his legs onto the metal ladder,
looked briefly at the sky, then grinned at the big Crony. "If you insist
upon acting like a savage, Lin, go on out to your sunrise ceremony." He
ducked down the shaft and his words echoed hollowly: "Poor Jord. He had
about the chance of Eliza crossing the—"
The door clanged shut.
"Asteroids."
Lin finished his employer's thought. He addressed
the metal surface that shone dully in the approaching glow. "To the
outsider, Miles, I suppose it does resemble a form of pagan worship. To be
truthful, however, we find the Babe's day a little chilly."
The Earthmen were all right—some of them. Lin
was glad that he'd been able to help—and in a way that left Miles unaware that
the helpless page had had a Player. Earthmen would, he was sure, resent the
fact that their minds were accessible to Cronies. That was why they didn't know
it.
Lin thought that maybe in another thousand
years, or two or three, Earthmen could take that blow with unbowed ego.
Along with certain other inevitable and well-deserved blows.
Then— and again, maybe—they would be admitted into the Hives to study.
In
the meantime it was probably best to let them colonize, let them stick around
where they could be easily watched. The Cronies—and the natives of Hon, Lyra,
Tabas, Jason, Oro and several thousand other systems many of which the Earthmen
hadn't even discovered yet—had all agreed upon that. For the Earthmen might
decide to develop into a menace, a rogue—they showed some of the signs.
The
Cronies and the others knew how to deal with that. No violence, either.
The Galactic Council didn't like violence.
Lin heard Miles think:
"By
golly, I bet I know why the Cronies group in the open for the rise of
Grandpa—"
Smiling, he trotted off to
join his fellow beings. . . .
Grandpa shoved his gigantic blue-white
shoulder over the horizon and the sky seemed to explode into flame.
Blinded
instantly, Jord turned and fled. He stumbled, crashed shrieking down a long
slope to huddle slant-wise behind a boulder. And through the racing, churning
clouds, through the uncaring stone, Grandpa reached out, touched him. . . .
After seven hours the gong rang and the door
rumbled open, awaking Miles. So he'd slept after all! He dogeared the book to
keep his place and walked up the long corridor, mounted the ladder.
The warm, tempestuous winds were dying down.
The Babe was rising, shedding near-earthly light. Grandpa had disappeared to
the south and there other Earthmen were retreating into their undergrounds and
other Cronies stood almost at attention to drink in the infernal radiations of
the big fellow.
Miles turned and made for
the cottage, passing the lower en
trance
to the Hive and knocking cheerfully on the
door. He received an answering knock—probably an infant, still sheltered
against the cool of the Babe's day.
So
the Cronies gathered in the valley every other morning to warm themselves. He
was rather proud of having figured that out.
Proud, too, of
having gotten rid of Jord so neatly.
Both ideas had come to him in an identical
manner.
Out of the blue.
Inspiration.
Farther on he left the path to finger the
racked
kanl
leaves. With Grandpa, he thought in paraphrase, it was luckily "not
the heat but the short radiations."
The alien
radiations.
Otherwise the leaves would have been ashes. As it was, they
were nicely toasted, ready to be shipped to Three Major.
Lin
came down from the hills and around the sunmill with a large, bulky sack folded
over a wide shoulder. Miles shuddered and told him to put it behind the
linla
crib.
That would have to be
shipped to Three Major too.
ABOUT
THE
AUTHOR
A
ndre
N
orton
was bom in Cleveland, Ohio, where she now
resides. She is editor of the Gnome Press teen-age science-fiction department,
as well as author and editor of thirteen books of mystery, adventure, and
science-fiction. World has published her edition of Malcolm Jameson's
Bullard
of
the
Space
Patrol,
and
Space
Service,
an
anthology of science-fiction tales. Miss Norton was a Children's Librarian at
the Cleveland Public Library, and is an avid student and collector of
science-fiction.