Edgar Burroughs - Beyond The Farthest Star

We parted then and I went out to the Harkases' to bid them good-bye. Yamoda was stronger and had been moved out into the garden, where she lay on a couch in the artificial sunlight which illuminates this underground city. She seemed so genuinely happy to see me that I hated to tell her that I was going away for an indefinite period. We had become such excellent friends that it saddened us both to realize that we might not see one another again for a considerable time, and her lip trembled when I told her that I had come to say good-bye. She seemed to sense that this was more than an ordinary parting to which the women of Unis are so accustomed.

"How long will you be gone?" she asked.

"I have no idea," I replied.

"Then I suppose that you can't tell me where you are going, either."

"No, I can't," I replied; "about all I can tell you is that it is a secret mission."

She nodded and placed her hand on mine. "You will be careful of yourself, won't you, Tangor?" she asked.

"Yes, Yamoda, I will be careful; and I will try to get back as quickly as possible, for I shall miss you very much."

"You have been doing very well without me lately," she said, with a mischievous twinkle in her eye; "is she such very good company?"

"She is better than nobody," I replied, "and I get terribly lonesome when I can't come out here."

"I don't believe I know her," she said; "she does not go with the same people I do."

I thought I noticed just a trace of contemptuousness in that speech, something quite unlike Yamoda. "I have never met any of her friends," I said. Just then Yamoda's mother came into the garden, and we talked of other things. They insisted on my staying to dinner.

When I left, later in the evening, it was very hard for me to say good-bye to them all, for the Harkases are my best friends in Unis, and Don and Yamoda are just like brother and sister to me; in fact their mother calls me her other son.

EARLY THE FOLLOWING MORNING, I called on the Commissioner for War, and told him that I planned on leaving that day. I explained in detail the procedure I wished to follow to get Morga Sagra out of Orvis, and he told me that everything would be arranged in accordance with my plans. He then gave me a sheaf of military documents which I was to turn over to the Kapars as proof of my good faith and of my potential value to them.

"You will need something to meet expenses while you are there," he said, and he handed me a heavy leather pouch. "As there is no longer any monetary medium of international exchange," he continued, "you will have to do the best you can with the contents of this pouch, which contains gold and precious stones. I shall immediately instruct your squadron commander that you have been ordered to make a reconnaissance flight alone and that the mission is a secret one, he is to see that no one is in the hangar between the third and fourth hours after noon, as it is my wish that no one sees you depart. During that time, you can smuggle in your co-conspirator; and now good-bye, my boy, and good luck. The chances are that I shall never see you again, but I shall remember you as one who died gloriously for the honour and glory of Unis."

That sounded altogether too much like an obituary, and I went away thinking of the little white cross somewhere in the Rhine valley. If what I had been told about the Kapars were true, I would have no little white cross there, as my body would be shipped off to serve as food for some of their subjugated peoples working in slavery for them.

I called on Sagra at the third hour after noon. "Everything is arranged," I told her, "and we shall be on our way within the hour."

She had not smiled as she usually did when we met, and I noticed a certain constraint in her manner. Finally the cause of it came out, as she blurted, "What were you doing in conference with the Commissioner for War this morning?"

"How did you think I was going to get out of Orvis?" I demanded. "I had to work on the old chap a long time to get him to order me to make a reconnaissance flight alone."

"I'm sorry," she said, "but this is dangerous business; and when one's life is constantly at stake, suspicion becomes almost an obsession.

"I can well understand that," I said; "but if our mission is to be successful, we must trust one another fully."

"I shan't doubt you again," she said, "but right now my nerves are on edge. I am really terrified, for I don't see how you are going to get me out of the city; and if you are caught trying it, we'll both be shot."

"Don't worry," I said; "just do as I tell you."

We went out to my car then, and I had her get in the rear compartment, and when I was sure that no one was looking, I told her to lie down on the floor; then I threw an old robe over her.

I drove directly to the hangar, which I found entirely deserted. I drove as close to my ship as I could and then had Sagra crawl into the gunner's compartment in the belly of the fuselage. A moment later I had taxied up the ramp and taken off.

"Which way?" I asked Sagra, over the communicating system.

"Northwest," she replied. "When can I get out of here? I don't like it down here."

"In just a moment," I replied.

By mutual agreement, Sagra had kept all of the plans covering our flight to Kapara and our entry into that country to herself. My job had been to simply get the military secrets and get us out of Orvis.

A small hatchway in the ceiling of the compartment in which Sagra was led to the rear gunner's cockpit, and when I told her to come up with me, she came through this hatchway and climbed over into the forward cockpit.

"Now," I said, "you can tell me why we are flying northwest if we are going to Kapara, which lies southwest of Unis."

"It's a long way around, I know," she said, "but it's the only way in which we can eventually enter Kapara in a Kapar plane. In this plane and with that uniform of yours, we'd not get far in Kapara; so we are flying to Gorvas first."

Gorvas is a city on the continent of Karis, the farthest removed from the continent of Epris on which Kapara is situated. It is a poor barren continent, and the one least affected by the war, for it possesses nothing that the Kapars want.

After an uneventful flight, we landed at Gorvas. No fighting planes had come up to meet us, and no antiaircraft shells had burst around us, as we had circled above Gorvas before landing; for the people of Karis know they have nothing to fear from Unis, and we received a friendly greeting from some officers at the airport.

Morga Sagra had obtained forged credentials for us, and she had told me that my name hereafter would be Korvan Don, while she would keep her own name which was favourably known to her connections in Ergos, the capital of Kapara.

After leaving the airport, Sagra told the driver of the public conveyance we had hired, to drive to a certain house, the address of which had been given her by a Kapar agent in Orvis.

Gorvas is a poor city, but at least it is not underground, although, as I was told, every building has its bombproof cellar. Occasionally we saw bomb craters, indicating that the Kapars came even here to this far away, barren country, either because the Kerisans were known to be friendly with Unis or just to satisfy their inordinate lust for destruction.

Our driver took us to a poor part of town and stopped before a mean little one-story stone house where we dismissed him. We stood there until he had driven away; then Sagra led the way along the street to the third house, after which she crossed the street to the house directly opposite. It was all quite mysterious, but it showed the care with which everything had been arranged to avoid leaving a well-marked trail.

Approaching the door of this house, which was a little more pretentious than the one before which we had first stopped, Sagra knocked three times in rapid succession, and then twice more at intervals; and after a moment the door was opened by a hard-faced, scowling man.