Between Planets (17 page)

“Have what?”

“Come, now! I know all about you—almost every word you’ve uttered back to your babyhood. I’ve even fed sugar to your stock pony, Lazy. So hand it over.”

“Hand what over?”

“The ring, the ring!” Bankfield put out a pudgy hand.

“I don’t know what you are talking about.”

Bankfield shrugged mightily. “I am talking about a plastic ring, marked with an initial ‘H’, given to you by the late Dr. Jefferson. You see, I know what I am talking about; I know you have it, and I mean to have it. An officer in my own service was so stupid as to let you walk out with it—and was broken for it. You wouldn’t want that to happen to me, I’m sure. So give it to me.”

“Now I know what ring you are talking about,” Don answered, “but I don’t have it.”

“Eh? What’s that you are saying? Where is it, then?”

Don’s mind was racing ahead. It took him no time at all to decide not to set the I.B.I. to looking for Isobel—no, not if he had to bite his tongue out. “I suppose it’s burned up,” he answered.

Bankfield cocked his head on one side. “Donald, my boy, I believe you are fibbing to me—I do indeed! You hesitated just a teeny-weeny bit before you answered. No one but a suspicious old man like myself would have noticed it.”

“It’s true,” Don insisted. “Or, at least, I think it is. One of those monkeys you have working for you set fire to the building just as I left. I suppose the building burnt down and the ring with it. But maybe it didn’t.”

Bankfield looked doubtful. “What building?”

“Two Worlds Dining Room, at the end of Paradise Alley off the foot of Buchanan Street.”

Bankfield moved rapidly to the door, gave orders. “Use as many men as needed,” he concluded, “and sift every ounce of ash. Move!” He turned back, sighing. “Mustn’t neglect any possibilities,” he said, “but now we will go back to the probability that you lied. Why should you have taken off your ring in a restaurant?”

“To wash dishes.”

“Eh?”

“I was working for my meals, living there. I didn’t like putting it in the hot water so I kept it in my room.”

Bankfield pursed his lips. “You almost convince me. Your story holds together. And yet, let us both pray that you are deceiving me. If you are and can lead me to the ring, I would be very grateful. You could go back to Earth in style and comfort. I think I could even promise a moderate annuity; we have special funds for such purposes.”

“I’m not likely to collect it—unless they find the ring in the restaurant.”

“Dear me! In that case I don’t suppose either one of us will go back to Earth. No, sir, I think that in such a case I would find it better to stay right here—devoting my declining years to making your life miserable.”

He smiled. “I was joking—I’m sure we’ll find the ring, with your help. Now, Don, tell me what you did with it.” He put an arm around Don’s shoulders in a fatherly fashion.

Don tried to shrug the arm off, found that he could not. Bankfield went on, “We could settle it quickly if I had proper equipment at hand. Or I could do this—” The arm around Don’s shoulders dropped suddenly; Bankfield seized Don’s left little finger and bent it back sharply. Involuntarily Don grunted with pain.

“Sorry! I don’t like such methods. The operator, in an excess of zeal, frequently damages the client so that no truth of any sort is forthcoming. No, Don, I think we will wait a few minutes while I get word to the medical department—sodium pentothal seems to be indicated. It will make you more cooperative, don’t you think?” Bankfield stepped again to the door. “Orderly! Put this one on ice. And send in that Mathewson character.”

Don was conducted outside the guardhouse and into a pen, a fenced enclosure used to receive prisoners. It was some thirty feet wide and a hundred feet long; one of its longer sides was common with the fence that ran around the entire camp, the other shut it off from the free world. The only entrance to it lay through the guardhouse.

There were several dozen prisoners in the receiving pen, most of them civilian men, although Don saw a number of women and quite a few officers of the Middle Guard and of the Ground Forces—still in uniform but disarmed.

He at once checked the faces of the women; none was Isobel. He had not expected to find her, yet found himself vastly disappointed. His time was running out; he realized with panic that it was probably only minutes until he would be held down, drug injected into his veins—and be turned thereby into a babbling child with no will to resist their questioning. He had never been subjected to narco-interrogation but he knew quite well what the drug would do. Even deep-hypnotic suggestion could not protect against it in the hands of a skilled operator.

Somehow he felt sure that Bankfield was skilled.

He went to the far end of the pen, pointlessly, as a frightened animal will retreat to the back of a cage. He stood there, staring up at the top of the fence several feet above his head. The fence was tight and strong, proof against almost anything but a dragon, but one could get handholds in the mesh—it could be climbed. However, above the mesh were three single strands of wire; every ten feet or so on the lowest strand was a little red sign—a skull-and-crossbones and the words HIGH VOLTAGE.

Don glanced back over his shoulder. The everpresent fog, reinforced by smoke from the burning city, almost obscured the guardhouse. The breeze had shifted and the smoke was getting thicker; he felt reasonably sure that no one could see him but other prisoners.

He tried it, found that his shoes would not go into the mesh, kicked them off and tried again.

“Don’t!” said a voice behind him.

Don looked back. A major of the Ground Forces, cap missing and one sleeve torn and bloody, stood behind him. “Don’t try it,” the major said reasonably. “It will kill you quickly. I know; I supervised its installation.”

Don dropped to the ground. “Isn’t there some way to switch it off?”

“Certainly—outside.” The officer grinned wryly. “I took care of that. A locked switch in the guardhouse—and another at the main distribution board in the city. Nowhere else.” He coughed. “Pardon me—the smoke.”

Don looked toward the burning city. “The distribution board back in the powerhouse,” he said softly. “I wonder—”

“Eh?” The major followed his glance. “I don’t know—I couldn’t say. The powerhouse is fireproof.”

A voice behind them in the mist shouted, “Harvey! Donald J. Harvey! Front and center!”

Don swarmed up the fence.

He hesitated just before touching the lowest of the three strands, flipped it with the back of his hand. Nothing happened—then he was over and falling. He hit badly, hurting a wrist, but scrambled to his feet and ran.

There were shouts behind him; without stopping he risked a look over his shoulder. Someone else was at the top of the fence. Even as he looked he heard the hiss of a beam. The figure jerked and contracted, like a fly touched by flame.

The figure raised its head. Don heard the major’s voice in a clear triumphant baritone: “
Venus and Freedom!
” He fell back inside the fence.

D
ON
plunged ahead, not knowing where he was going, not caring as long as it was away. Again he heard the angry, deadly hissing; he cut to the left and ran faster, then cut back again beyond a clump of witch’s brooms. He pounded ahead, giving it all he had, with his breath like dry steam in his throat—then skidded to a stop at water’s edge.

He stood still for a moment, looked and listened. Nothing to see but grey mist, nothing to hear but the throbbing of his own heart. No, not quite nothing—someone shouted in the distance and he heard the sounds of booted feet crashing through the brush. It seemed to come from the right; he turned left and trotted along the waterfront, his eyes open for a gondola, a skiff, anything that would float.

The bank curled back to the left; he followed it, then stopped as he realized that it was leading him to the narrow neck of land that joined Main Island to East Spit. It was a cinch, he thought, that there would be a guard at the bottleneck; it seemed to him that there had been one there when he and the other dispossessed had been herded across it to the prison camp.

He listened—yes, they were still behind him—and flanking him. There was nothing in front of him but the bank curving back to certain capture.

For a moment his face was contorted in an agony of frustration, then his features suddenly relaxed to serenity and he stepped firmly into the water and walked away from the land.

Don could swim, in which respect he differed from most Venus colonials. On Venus no one ever swims; there is no water fit to swim in. Venus has no moon to pile up tides; the solar tide disturbs her waters but little. The waters never freeze, never approach the critical 4° C. which causes terrestrial lakes and streams and ponds to turn over and “ventilate.” The planet is almost free of weather in the boisterous sense. Her waters lie placid on their surface—and accumulate vileness underneath, by the year, by the generation, by the eon.

Don walked straight out, trying not to think of the black and sulphurous muck he was treading in. The water was shallow; fifty yards out with the shore line dim behind him, he was still in only up to his knees. He glanced back and decided to go out farther; if he could not see the shore, then they could not see him. He reminded himself that he would have to keep his wits about him not to get turned around.

Presently the bottom suddenly dropped away a foot or more; he stepped off the edge; lost his balance and thrashed around; recovered himself and scrambled back up on the ledge, congratulating himself that he had not gotten his face and eyes into the stuff.

He heard a shout and almost at once the sound of water striking a hot stove, enormously amplified. Ten feet away from him a cloud of steam lifted from the water’s surface, climbed lazily into the mist. He cringed and wanted to dodge, but there was no way to dodge. The shouting resumed and the sounds carried clearly across the water muffled by the fog but still plain: “Over here! Over here! He’s taken to the water.”

Much more distantly he heard the answer: “Coming!”

Most cautiously Don moved forward, felt the edge of the drop off, tried it and found that he could still stand beyond it, almost up to his armpits but still wading. He was moving, forward slowly, trying to avoid noise and minding his precarious, half-floating balance, when he heard the sibilant sound of the beam.

The soldier back on the bank had imagination; instead of firing again at random into the drifting mist he was fanning the flat surface of the water, doing his best to keep his beam horizontal and playing it like a hose. Don squatted down until his face alone was out of the water.

The beam passed only inches over his head; he could hear it pass, smell the ozone.

The hissing stopped abruptly to be followed by the age-old, monotonous cursing of the barrackroom. “But, sergeant—” someone protested.

“I’ll ‘sergeant’ you! Alive—do you hear? You heard the orders. If you’ve killed him, I’ll take you apart with a rusty knife. No, I won’t; I’ll turn you over to Mr. Bankfield. You hopeless fool!”

“But, sergeant, he was escaping by water; I had to stop him.”

“‘But sergeant!’ ‘But sergeant!’—is that all you can say! Get a boat! Get a snooper! Get a two-station portable bounce rig. Call base and find out if they’ve got a copter down.”

“Where would I get a boat?”

“Get one! He can’t get away. We’ll find him—or his body. If it’s his body, you’d better cut your throat.”

Don listened, then moved silently forward—or away from the direction the voices seemed to come from. He could no longer tell true direction; there was nothing but the black surface of water and a horizon of mist. For some distance the bottom continued fairly level, then he realized that it was again dropping away. He was forced to stop, able to wade no further.

He thought it over, trying to avoid panic. He was still close to Main Island with nothing but mist between himself and the shore. It was a certainty that with proper search gear—infra-red or any of the appropriate offspring of radar—they could pin him like a beetle to cork. It was merely a matter of waiting for the gear to be brought up.

Should he surrender now and get out of this poisonous swill? Surrender and go back and tell Bankfield to find Isobel Costello if he wanted the ring? He let himself sink forward and struck out strongly, swimming breast stroke to try to keep his face out of the water.

Breast stroke was far from being his strongest stroke and it was made worse by trying so hard to keep his face dry. His neck began to ache presently the ache spread through his shoulder muscles and into his back. Indefinite time and endless gallons later he ached everywhere, even to his eyeballs—yet for all he could tell about it he might have been swimming in a bathtub, one whose walls were grey mist. It did not seem possible that, in the archipelago which made up Buchanan Province, one could swim so far without running into
something
…a sand spit, a mud bar.

He stopped to tread water, barely moving his tired legs and fluttering his palms. He thought he heard the rushing sound of a powered boat, but he could not be sure. At that moment he would not have cared; capture would have been relief. But the sound, or ghost of a sound, died away and he was again in a grey and featureless wilderness.

He arched his back to shift again to swimming and his toe struck bottom. Gingerly he felt for it—yes, bottom…with his chin out of water. He stood for a moment or two and rested, then felt around. Bottom dropped away on one side, seemed level or even to rise a little in another direction.

Shortly his shoulders were out with his feet still in the muck. Feeling his way like a blind man, his eyes useless save for balancing, he groped out the contour, finding bits that rose, then forced to retreat as the vein played out.

He was out of water to his waist when his eyes spotted a darker streak through the fog; he went toward it, was again up to his neck. Then the bottom rose rapidly; a few moments later he scrambled up on dry land.

He did not have the courage yet to do anything more than move inland a few feet and place between himself and the water a clump of
Chika
trees. Screened thus from search operations conducted from boats he looked himself over. Clinging to his legs were a dozen or more mud lice, each as large as a child’s hand. With repugnance he brushed them off, then removed his shorts and shirt, found several more and disposed of them. He told himself that he was lucky not to have encountered anything worse—the dragons had many evolutionary cousins, bearing much the same relationship to them that gorillas do to men. Many of these creatures are amphibious—another reason why Venus colonials do not swim.