Ben Bova: The Dueling Machine

“No,” Geri insisted. “He’s a prisoner, and he’s in danger.”

“You actually love him?”

Her eyes had the glint of tears in them. “Yes,” she said.

Shaking his head in disbelief, Odal asked, “How can you love that bumbling, tongue-twisted…”

“He’s stronger than you are!” Geri flashed. “And braver. He’d never willingly kill anyone, not even you. He let you live when everyone else on the planet—including me—would have shot you down.”

Odal backed away involuntarily.

“You owe your life to Hector,” she said.

“And now I’m supposed to throw it away to save his.”

“That’s right. That would be the decent thing to do. It’s what he’d do for you.”

“I doubt that.”

“Of course you do. You don’t know what decency is.”

He looked at her, carefully this time, trying to fathom the emotions in her face, her voice.

“Do you hate me?” Odal asked.

Her mouth started to form a yes, but she hesitated. “I should; I have every reason to. I… I don’t know… I want to!”

She got up from the bench and walked rapidly, head down, to the nearest exit from the courtyard. Odal watched her for a moment, then went after her. But the guards stopped him as he neared the door. Geri went on through and disappeared from his sight without ever turning back to look at him.

“Cowards!” Romis spat. “Spineless, weak-kneed old women.”

He was pacing the length of the bookshelf-lined study in his villa, slashing out words as cold and sharp as knife blades. Sitting next to the fireplace, holding an ornate glass in his hand, was the captain of the star ship in which Hector was being held.

“They plot for months on end,” Romis muttered, more to himself than the captain. “They argue over the pettiest details for days. They slither around like snakes, trying to make certain that the plan is absolutely foolproof. But as soon as some danger arises, what do they do?”

The captain raised the glass to his lips.

“They back down!” Romis shouted. “They place their own rotten little lives ahead of the welfare of the Kerak Worlds. They allow that monster to live, for fear that they might die.”

The captain asked, “Well, what did you expect of them? You can’t force them to be brave. The army leaders, maybe. But they’ve all been arrested. Whole families. Your politician friends are scared out of their wits by Kor. It’s a wonder he hasn’t picked you up.”

“He won’t,” Romis said, smiling strangely. “Not until he finds out where Odal is. He fears Odal’s return. He knows how well the assassin’s been trained.”

“Well, you won’t be getting Odal back from Spencer unless you give up the Watchman. And once he goes, you can expect Spencer to hover over us like a vulture.”

“Then what must I do? Kill Kanus myself?”

“You can’t.” The captain shook his head.

“Why not? You think I lack…”

“My old friend, don’t lose sight of your objectives. Kanus is the monster, yes. But he’s surrounded by lesser monsters. If you try to kill him, you’ll be killed yourself.”

“So?”

“Then who will take over leadership of the government? One of Kanus’ underlings, of course. Would you like to see Greber in power? Or Kor?”

Romis visibly shuddered. “Of course not.”

“Then put the idea of personally performing the execution out of your head. It’s suicide.”

“But Kanus must be stopped. I’m certain he means to attack Acquatainia before the month is out.” Romis walked over to the fireplace and stared into the flames. “I suppose we will have to ask for Odal’s return. Even if it means giving back the Watchman and having Spencer poised to invade us.”

“Are you sure?”

“What else can we do? If we can pull off the assassination quickly enough, we can keep Spencer out of Kerak. But if we hesitate much, longer, we’ll be at war with Acquatainia.”

“We can beat the Acquatainians.”

“I know,” Romis replied. “But once we do, Kanus will be so popular among the people that we wouldn’t dare touch him. And then the madman will attack the Terrans. That will pull the house down on all of us.”

“Hmmm.”

Romis turned to face the captain. “We must return the Watchman and get Odal back here. At once.”

“Good,” said the captain. “Frankly, the Watchman has been a royal nuisance aboard my ship. He’s disrupting everything.”

“How can one man disrupt an entire star ship?”

The captain took a fast final gulp of his drink. “You don’t know this one man.”

As the captain approached his star ship in his personal shuttle craft, he could sense something was wrong.

It was nothing he could see, but the ship simply did not seem right. His worries were confirmed when the shuttle docked inside one of the giant star ship’s air locks. The emergency lights were on, and they were very dim at that. The outer hatch was cranked shut by two spacesuited deck hands, and it took nearly fifteen minutes to bring the lock up to normal air pressure, using the auxiliary air pumps.

“What in the name of all the devils has happened here?” the captain stormed to a cringing junior officer as he stepped out of the shuttle.

“It… it’s the power, sir. The power… shut off.”

“Shut off?”

The officer swallowed nervously and replied, “Yessir. All at once… all through the ship… no power!”

The captain fumed under his breath for a moment, then snapped, “Crank the inner hatch open and get me to the bridge.”

The deck hands jumped to it, and in a few minutes the captain, junior officer, and lower ratings had deserted the air lock, leaving the shuttle empty and unguarded.

Out of the pressurized control compartment at the far end of the lock stepped Hector, his thin face wary and serious, but not without the flickerings of a slightly self-satisfied smile.

They should be finding the cause of the power failure in a minute or two, he said to himself. And as soon as the main lights go on, out I go.

Hector tiptoed around the lock, making certain adjustments to the temporarily inert air pumps and hatch control unit. Then he climbed into the little shuttle, sealed its hatch, and studied the control panel. Not too tough… I think.

It had been a ridiculously easy job to cause a power breakdown. All Hector had needed was a little time, so that the guards would begin to allow him to roam certain parts of the ship alone. He had spent long hours in the observation center, learning the layout of the mammoth ship and pinpointing his ultimate objective—the Ministry of Intelligence, where a dueling machine was.

An hour ago, he had taken one of his customary strolls from his quarters to the communications center. His guards, after seeing Hector safely seated among a dozen Kerak technicians, relaxed. Hector waited a while, then casually sauntered over to the stairwell that led down to the switching equipment, on the deck below.

Hector nearly fouled his plan completely by missing the second rung on the metal ladder and plummeting to the deck below. For a long moment he lay on his face, trying to look invisible, or at least dead. Finally he risked a peep up the ladder. No one was coming after him; they hadn’t noticed. He was safe, for a few minutes.

He quickly found what he wanted: the leads from the main power plants and the communications antennas. He pulled one of the printed circuit elements from a stand-by console and used it to form a bridge between the power lead connectors and the antenna circuit. While the rules of physics claimed that what he was attempting was impossible, Hector knew from a previous experience on a Star Watch ship (he still shuddered at the memory) exactly what this “accidental” misconnection would do.