Brian Stableford - Asgard's Conquerors

I returned to my bed with a disturbing feeling that we might all be in the process of being led up the garden path. It was hard to make sense of this proposed jailbreak, and thinking about it threatened to renew my headache. I decided to get some sleep and recuperate as fully as possible. There was, after all, a certain truth in what Susarma Lear had said. If we wanted to know what the hell was going on, we had to follow the bouncing ball.

Just before I went off to sleep, I remembered the figure I’d seen from the observation window while I was talking to Sovorov. All of a sudden, the idea that it was a man in a spacesuit began to seem rather encouraging. Was it possible that we had friends out there?

I woke up again for the evening meal, and for once found myself with a ravenous appetite—a sure sign that I was well and truly on the mend. The nurse seemed grateful to be able to hand me the bowl and spoon, instead of having to help out. I saw that all three of my fellow patients were now sitting up and taking notice. The food was the same kind of broth they’d been serving to us all along, with lots of unfamiliar vegetables and lumps of third-rate meat, but for once I wasn’t too bothered about the taste.

Afterwards, I stayed sitting up, wondering whether it would be possible to have a harmless conversation. Serne got out of bed, looking ridiculous in a nightshirt that barely came down to his thighs. I wondered what our chances were of getting hold of some decent clothes before we made our break.

I checked under my bed, and was pleased to see that my comfortable Tetron-issue boots were there, but my one-piece was nowhere to be found. It was probably in the laundry. The idea of having to make our great escape clad in nightshirts, boots, and spacesuits was sufficiently incongruous to be funny, but not too attractive. I hoped that the someone who came for us would bring the proper accoutrements.

Serne went over to talk to Susarma Lear. Finn got out of bed too, and wandered over to join in. Then the door opened, and he started guiltily. Serne just looked round, his face impassive, as a couple of orderlies wheeled in a fifth bed. Following behind it, looking ready to collapse at every step, was Aleksandr Sovorov.

He gave me a poisonous look of pure resentment as the rubber-gloved attendants helped him off with his trousers and on with the nightshirt. Unintimidated, I waited calmly until the coast was clear, and then hopped out to visit him.

“Sorry Alex,” I said. “How was I to know?”

“There’s a rumour going around that this is an act of war by the Tetrax,” he croaked. “Are you responsible for that?”

“Not exactly,” I told him. “They worked it out for themselves.”

“It’s not true,” he said defensively.

“Oh sure,” I told him. “Finn and I probably picked up the virus on Goodfellow. It’s probably been lurking in the Uranian rings for four billion years, waiting for someone to come along and be infected. And now it’s free at last— saved from the ignominy of having to stay deep-frozen until the sun goes nova.”

As I said this, I looked around at Finn, but he was studiously looking the other way. I took the opportunity to mutter under my breath: “Who told you to send the note?”

He was in too much discomfort to conjure up much of a look of blank incomprehension, but he did his best.

“What note?” he asked. Luckily his voice was too hoarse and his breath too feeble for the question to be loud.

“Nothing,” I said, quickly. “Forget it.” I turned round to face Susarma Lear. She was watching me like a hawk, and though she couldn’t hear what had been said, her powers of deduction were easily equal to the task of figuring it out. “By the way,” I added, “have any more humans arrived in the camp—more of the Star Force people, perhaps?”

“I’ve seen no one,” Sovorov assured me. “And I really don’t care.”

“Do me a favour, Alex,” I said. “Go to sleep—just go to sleep, and ignore everything that happens.”

“I intend to do just that,” he informed me miserably.

The way he looked, there was little doubt that we could trust him to do it.

I waited for another opportunity to talk to Susarma Lear while Finn was lying in his bed and taking no notice. He had probably guessed by now that something was up, but he didn’t know what. It didn’t seem to be a good idea to tell him.

“Alex didn’t write the note,” I told her—confirming what she’d already guessed.

“It doesn’t change anything,” she said. “We still have to go. There may be other humans here—ones that neither you nor he knew about. Hell, it might be one of our boys— we don’t know how many were picked up, where, or when. Serne and I were ambushed along with Joxahan when we went to a meeting-place we’d named on one of those stupid handouts Tulyar prepared. I knew that was a ridiculous idea.”

She was right, of course. There could be other humans here. There certainly seemed to be humans collaborating— or pretending to collaborate—with the invaders. Maybe Sigor Dyan had other informants here, who were trying to play a double role just as I had. There must have been two hundred humans in Skychain City when the melodrama got under way, and there was just a chance that one of them had enough up top to be the Scarlet Pimpernel. If so, I couldn’t wait to meet him.

No doubt we would find out the truth, when the time came.

In the meantime, though, there was nothing to do but twiddle our thumbs and try to build up our strength for the coming ordeal.

Everything was dark and silent for hours on end while we waited, pretending to be asleep. Sometimes, I actually dozed off, but every time I caught myself relaxing too much I snapped myself out of it. The least noise was enough to wake me. Once or twice I was sure that the door had opened, but it was just nerves. Long before the appointed hour actually arrived, I had become impatient with the suspense.

When the door finally did open, the only light that came on was a tiny torch in the hand of a person who remained virtually invisible. The person handed me some clothes, and directed the light at them to show me what they were. My hand brushed the proffering fingers slightly as I took them. The fingers were hairy, with nails like claws. Not human, nor invader.

“Put them on,” said an unfamiliar voice, in a purring whisper. The words were spoken in badly-accented parole. A barbarian, then—certainly not a Tetron.

I could see other bobbing pinpoints of light, and deduced that there were more of the visitors. I couldn’t count properly, though, because the pinpoints were continually eclipsed by the bodies of the people who held them. I shoved my legs into the trousers I’d been handed, and swapped my nightshirt for a lighter garment. Then I dropped lightly from the bed and groped underneath it for my boots.

When I was ready, the hairy hand took me by the arm, and guided me toward the door. The others seemed to be ready too. They were bringing Susarma Lear, Serne, and Finn. I heard Serne suggest to Finn that if he made a sound, or slowed us down, or did anything other than what he was told, he would end up dead. Serne could be fearsome when he was in that sort of mood, and I didn’t doubt that Finn would obey. In any case, he might be just as keen as the rest of us to get out of here.

“I lead,” said one of the furry humanoids. “Follow quickly. Make no sound.”

Outside, the corridor was dark, but the firefly torches gave us something to follow. There were no lights on at all in this part of the camp, but we came quickly enough to a curving corridor that led past several of the observation windows, through which faint streams of coloured light were filtering.