Poul Anderson: A Circus of Hells

The Ruadrath gave brief greeting and took the newcomers inside. Rrinn entered last, drawing his own door curtain. The plaza lay bare.

Now.

Flandry’s hands shook. Sweat sprang forth on his skin, beneath which the heart thuttered. Soon he might be dead. And how piercingly marvelous the universe was!

The sweat began freezing on his unprotected face. The beard he had grown, after his last application of inhibitor lost effect, was stiff with ice. In a few more of Talwin’s short days, he would have used his final dietary capsule. Eating native food, minus practically every vitamin and two essential amino acids, was a scurvy way to die. Being shot was at least quick, whether by a Merseian or by himself if capture got imminent.

He stood a while, breathing slowly of the keen air, willing his pulse rate down, mentally reciting the formulas which drugs had conditioned him to associate with calm. The Academy could train you well if you had the foresight and persistence to cooperate. Loose and cool, he slipped outdoors. Thereafter he was too busy to be afraid.

A quick run around the house, lest somebody glance out of Rrinn’s and see him…a wall-hugging dash down the glistening streets, snow crunching under his boots…a peek around the corner of the outlying tannery…yes, the bus sat where it was supposed to be, a long streamlined box with a sun-shimmer off the windows.

If those inside spotted him and called an alarm, that was that. The odds say nobody will happen to be mooning in this direction, you know what liars those odds are. He drew his stunner, crouched, and reached the main heat-lock in about two seconds.

Flattened against the side, he waited. Nothing occurred, except that his cheekbone touched the bus. Pain seared. He pulled free, leaving skin stuck fast to metal. Wiping away tears with a gloved hand, he set his teeth and reached for the outer valve.

It wasn’t locked. Why should it be, particularly when the Merseians might want to pass through in a hurry? He glided into the chamber. Again he waited. No sound.

He cracked the inner valve and leaned into the entry. It was deserted.

They’ll have somebody in front, by the controls and communication gear. And probably someone in the main room, but let’s go forward for openers. He oozed down the short passage.

A Merseian, who must have heard a noise or felt a breath of cold air—in this fantastic oily-smelling warmth—loomed into the control cabin doorway. Flandry fired. A purple light ray flashed, guiding the soundless hammer-blow of a supersonic beam. The big form had not toppled, unconscious, when Flandry was there. Another greenskin was turning from the pilot console. “ Gwy —” He didn’t say further before he thudded to the deck.

Whirling, Flandry sped toward the rear. The saloon windows gave on the remaining three sides of the world; an observation dome showed everything else. Two more Merseians occupied that section. One was starting off to investigate. His gun was out, but Flandry, who entered shooting, dropped him. His partner, handicapped by being in the turret, was easier yet, and sagged into his seat with no great fuss.

Not pausing, the human hurried forward. Voices drifted from a speaker: Merseian basso, Ruadrath purr and trill, the former using vocalizers to create the latter. He verified that, to avoid distraction, there had been no transmission from the bus.

Then he allowed himself to sit down, gasp, and feel dizzy. I carried it off. I really did.

Well, the advantage of surprise—and he was only past the beginning. Trickier steps remained. He rose and searched about. When he had what he needed, he returned to his prisoners. They wouldn’t wake soon, but why take chances? One was Cnif. Flandry grinned with half a mouth. “Am I to make a hobby of collecting you?”

Having dragged the Merseians together, he wired them to bunks—“Thanks, Djana”—and gagged them. On the way back, he appropriated a vocalizer and a pair of sound recorders. In the pilot cabin he stopped the input from Rrinn’s house.

Now for the gristly part. Though he’d rehearsed a lot, that wasn’t sufficient without proper apparatus. Over and over he went through his lines, playing them back, readjusting the transducer, fiddling with speed and tone controls. (Between tests, he listened to the conference. The plan called for Rrinn to draw palaver out at length, pumping Ydwyr’s delegation. But the old xenologist was not naive—seemed, in fact, to be one of the wiliest characters Flandry had ever collided with—and might at any time do something unforeseeable. Words continued, however.) Finally the human had what he guessed was the best voice imitation he could produce under the circumstances.

He set his recorders near the pickup for long-range radio. Impulses flew across 300 white kilometers. A machine said: “The datholch Ydwyr calls Naval Operations. Priority for emergency. Respond!”

“The datholch’s call is acknowledged by Mei Chwioch, Vach Hallen,” answered a loudspeaker.

Flandry touched the same On button. “Record this order. Replay to your superiors at once. My impression was false. The Terran Flandry is alive. He is here at Seething Springs, at the point of death from malnutrition and exposure. The attempt must be made to save him, for he appears to have used some new and fiendishly effective technique of subversion on the Ruadrath, and we will need to interrogate him about that. Medical supplies appropriate to his species ought to be in the scout-boat that was taken. Time would be lost in ransacking it. Have it flown here immediately.”

“The datholch’s command is heard and shall be relayed. Does anyone know how to operate the vessel?”

Flandry turned on his second machine. It went “Kh-h-hr,” his all-purpose response. In this context, he hoped, it would pass for a rasping of scorn. A pilot who cant figure that out in five minutes, when we use the same basic design, should be broken down to galley swabber and set to peeling electrons. He made his first recorder say: “Land in the open circle at the center of the village. We have him in a house adjacent. Hurry! Now I must return to the Ruadrath and repair what damage I can. Do not interrupt me until the boat is down. Signing off. Honor to the God, the Race, and the Roidhun!”

He heard the response, stopped sending, and tuned the conference back in. It sounded as if fur was about to fly.

So, better not dawdle here. Besides, Jake should arrive in minutes if his scheme worked. If.

Well, they wouldn’t be intimately familiar with Ydwyr’s speech in the Navy section…aside from high-ranking officers like Morioch, who might be bypassed for the sake of speed, seeing as how Merseia encouraged initiative on the part of juniors…or if a senior did get a replay, he might not notice anything odd, or if he did he might put it down to a sore throat…or, or, or—

Flandry scrambled back into the overclothes he had shucked while working. He stuffed some cord in a pocket. A chronodial said close to an hour had fled. It stopped when he fired a blaster bolt at the main radio transmitter. On his way out, he sabotaged the engine too, by lifting a shield plate and shooting up the computer that regulated the grav projectors. He hoped not to kill anyone in his escape, but he didn’t want them sharing the news before he was long gone. Of course, if he must kill he would, and lose no sleep afterward, if there was an afterward.

The air stung his injury. He loped over creaking snow to Rrinn’s house. Closer, he moved cautiously, and stopped at the entrance to squeeze his eyes shut while raising his goggles. Charging indoors without dark-adapted pupils would be sheer tomfoolishness. Also dickfoolishness, harryfoolishness, and—Stunner in right hand, blaster in left, he pushed by the curtain. It rustled stiffly into place behind him.