Keith Laumer: The Star-Sent Knaves

“Oh-oh,” Percy said. “A double-cross.”

“I’ve—ah—been expecting you gentlemen,” Dan said. “I—”

“I told you we couldn’t trust a guy with nine fingers on each hand,” Fiorello whispered hoarsely. He moved toward Percy. “Let’s blow, Percy,” he muttered.

“Wait a minute,” Dan said. “Before you do anything hasty—”

“Don’t start nothing, Buster,” Percy said cautiously. “We’re plenty tough guys when aroused.”

“I want to talk to you,” Dan insisted, ignoring the medium-weight menace. “You see, these paintings—”

“Paintings? Look, it was all a mistake. Like, we figured this was the gents’ room—”

“Never mind, Percy,” Fiorello cut in. “It appears there’s been a leak.”

Dan shook his head. “No leak. I simply deduced—”

“Look, Fiorello,” Percy said. “You chin if you want to; I’m doing a fast fade.”

“Don’t act hastily, Percy. You know where you’ll end.”

“Wait a minute!” Dan shouted. “I’d like to make a deal with you fellows.”

“Ah-hah!” Kelly’s voice blared from somewhere. “I knew it! Slane, you crook!”

Dan looked about wildly. The voice seemed to be issuing from a speaker. It appeared Kelly hedged his bets.

“Mr. Kelly, I can explain everything!” Dan called. He turned back to Fiorello. “Listen, I figured out—”

“Pretty clever!” Kelly’s voice barked. “Inside job. But it takes more than the likes of you to outfox a old-timer like Ed Kelly.”

“Perhaps you were right, Percy,” Fiorello said. “Complications are arising. We’d best depart with all deliberate haste.” He edged toward the cage.

“What about this ginzo?” Percy jerked a thumb toward Dan. “He’s onto us.”

“Can’t be helped.”

“Look—I want to go with you!” Dan shouted.

“I’ll bet you do!” Kelly’s voice roared. “One more minute and I’ll have the door open and collar the lot of you! Come up through a tunnel, did you?”

“You can’t go, my dear fellow,” Fiorello said. “Room for two, no more.”

Dan whirled to the cot, grabbed up the pistol Kelly had supplied. He aimed it at Percy. “You stay here, Percy! I’m going with Fiorello in the time machine.”

“Are you nuts?” Percy demanded.

“I’m flattered, dear boy,” Fiorello said, “but—”

“Let’s get moving. Kelly will have that lock open in a minute.”

“You can’t leave me here!” Percy spluttered, watching Dan crowd into the cage beside Fiorello.

“We’ll send for you,” Dan said. “Let’s go, Fiorello.”

The balding man snatched suddenly for the gun. Dan wrestled with him. The pistol fell, bounced on the floor of the cage, skidded into the far corner of the vault. Percy charged, reaching for Dan as he twisted aside; Fiorello’s elbow caught him in the mouth. Percy staggered back into the arms of Kelly, bursting red-faced into the vault.

“Percy!” Fiorello wailed and, releasing his grip on Dan, lunged to aid his companion. Kelly passed Percy to one of three cops crowding in on his heels. Dan clung to the framework as Fiorello grappled with Kelly. A cop pushed past them, spotted Dan, moved in briskly for the pinch. Dan grabbed a lever at random and pulled.

Sudden silence fell as the walls of the room glowed blue. A spectral Kelly capered before the cage, fluorescing in the blue-violet. Dan swallowed hard and nudged a second lever. The cage sank like an elevator into the floor, vivid blue washing up its sides.

Hastily he reversed the control. Operating a time machine was tricky business. One little slip, and the Slane molecules would be squeezing in among brick and mortar particles…

But this was no time to be cautious. Things hadn’t turned out just the way he’d planned, but after all, this was what he’d wanted—in a way. The time machine was his to command. And if he gave up now and crawled back into the vault, Kelly would gather him in and try to pin every art theft of the past decade on him.

It couldn’t be too hard. He’d take it slowly, figure out the controls…

Dan took a deep breath and tried another lever. The cage rose gently, in eerie silence. It reached the ceiling and kept going. Dan gritted his teeth as an eight-inch band of luminescence passed down the cage. Then he was emerging into a spacious kitchen. A blue-haloed cook waddled to a luminous refrigerator, caught sight of Dan rising slowly from the floor, stumbled back, mouth open. The cage rose, penetrated a second ceiling. Dan looked around at a carpeted hall.

Cautiously he neutralized the control lever. The cage came to rest an inch above the floor. As far as Dan could tell, he hadn’t traveled so much as a minute into the past or future.

He looked over the controls. There should be one labeled “Forward” and another labeled “Back,” but all the levers were plain, unadorned black. They looked, Dan decided, like ordinary circuit-breaker type knife-switches. In fact, the whole apparatus had the appearance of something thrown together hastily from common materials. Still, it worked. So far he had only found the controls for maneuvering in the usual three dimensions, but the time switch was bound to be here somewhere…

Dan looked up at a movement at the far end of the hall.

A girl’s head and shoulders appeared, coming up a spiral staircase. In another second she would see him, and give the alarm—and Dan needed a few moments of peace and quiet in which to figure out the controls. He moved a lever. The cage drifted smoothly sideways, sliced through the wall with a flurry of vivid blue light. Dan pushed the lever back. He was in a bedroom now, a wide chamber with flouncy curtains, a four-poster under a flowered canopy, a dressing table—

The door opened and the girl stepped into the room. She was young. Not over eighteen, Dan thought—as nearly as he could tell with the blue light playing around her face. She had long hair tied with a ribbon, and long legs, neatly curved. She wore shorts and carried a tennis racquet in her left hand and an apple in her right. Her back to Dan and the cage, she tossed the racquet on a table, took a bite of the apple, and began briskly unbuttoning her shirt.

Dan tried moving a lever. The cage edged toward the girl. Another; he rose gently. The girl tossed the shirt onto a chair and undid the zipper down the side of the shorts. Another lever; the cage shot toward the outer wall as the girl reached behind her back…

Dan blinked at the flash of blue and looked down. He was hovering twenty feet above a clipped lawn.

He looked at the levers. Wasn’t it the first one in line that moved the cage ahead? He tried it, shot forward ten feet. Below, a man stepped out on the terrace, lit a cigarette, paused, started to turn his face up—

Dan jabbed at a lever. The cage shot back through the wall. He was in a plain room with a depression in the floor, a wide window with a planter filled with glowing blue plants.

The door opened. Even blue, the girl looked graceful as a deer as she took a last bite of the apple and stepped into the ten-foot-square sunken tub. Dan held his breath. The girl tossed the apple core aside, seemed to suddenly become aware of eyes on her, whirled—

With a sudden lurch that threw Dan against the steel bars, the cage shot through the wall into the open air and hurtled off with an acceleration that kept him pinned, helpless. He groped for the controls, hauled at a lever. There was no change. The cage rushed on, rising higher. In the distance, Dan saw the skyline of a town on the horizon, approaching with frightful speed. A tall office building reared up fifteen stories high. He was headed dead for it—