He eyed the blowpipers speculatively. Unarmed as he was, he didn’t dare risk trying to escape, with or without the girl. The ship was too far from the village, and beyond a doubt the natives would know shortcuts and could easily head him off at Hassolt’s command.
Sneaking up behind Hassolt was equally impossible. As king, Hassolt was thoroughly guarded. Belting him from behind and making a run for the ship with the girl would be sheer suicide.
McDermott sat down by a grassy rise in the turf.
“What are you going to do?” the girl asked. She was looking at him in the starry-eyed way that teenage girls were likely to look at Corpsmen who came to rescue them from alien planets. She didn’t seem to realize that this particular Corpsman was average, overweight, and didn’t have the foggiest idea of how to rescue either her or himself.
“Nothing,” McDermott said. “Nothing but wait. Maybe some other ship will come after me. But I doubt it.”
McDermott spent the next few hours wandering around the village. Evidently some sort of council meeting was going on in Hassolt’s hut; McDermott heard the sounds of alien words from time to time.
The blowpipers ringed in the village. There was no way out. He wondered if Hassolt intended to keep him prisoner indefinitely.
No, that was unlikely. McDermott, as a Corpsman, was a potential danger to Hassolt at all times. Hassolt undoubtedly would get rid of him as soon as the business at hand was taken care of.
And the girl was looking at him so damned hopefully. As if she pegged her life on a serene inner confidence that the Corpsman was going to engineer her rescue somehow:
Somehow.
The afternoon was growing late and the big golden sun was sinking in the distance when one of the aliens came noiselessly up to them, and proferred each of them a bowl of some sort of liquid.
“What is it?” McDermott asked, sniffing the contents of the bowl suspiciously.
“Something alcoholic,” she said. “They make it out of fermented vegetable mash. Hassolt drinks it and says it’s okay.”
McDermott grinned and sampled it. It was sweet and musky-tasting, not at all bad. And potent. Two bowlsful this size could probably keep a man in a pleasant alcoholic stupor half a day.
He finished the bowl off hurriedly and realized that the girl was looking at him in surprise and—was that disgust? Her image of him as a super-boyscout was fading fast, he thought. He had guzzled the liquor just a bit too greedily.
“Good,” he said.
“Glad you like it.”
He started to make some reply, but he heard an approaching footfall behind him, and turned. It was Hassolt. He was holding McDermott’s blastgun tightly in his hand and his face had lost the sophisticated, mocking look it had had earlier. He seemed drained of blood now, a pale, white sickly color. It was pretty plain that Hassolt had just had a considerable shock. Something that had rippled him to the core.
He said, in a voice that was harsh and breathy, “McDermott, how far is your ship from here?”
McDermott grinned. “Three miles. Three and a half, maybe. More or less due east.”
Hassolt waggled the blastgun. “Come on: Take me to it.”
“Right now?”
“Right now.”
McDermott stared levelly at the kidnapper for an instant, and let some of the euphoria induced by the alien drink leave his mind. Narrowing his eyes in unbelief, he said, “Are you serious?”
“Stop wasting time. I want you to take me to the ship now.”
The girl was staring in bewilderment at him. McDermott said, “You sure got tired of the kinging business fast, Hassolt. You loved it here two hours ago.”
“I didn’t know two hours ago what I know now. You know what they do to their king and queen at the end of the year? They throw them into a live volcano! It’s their way of showing thanks to the volcano-god for having brought them safely through the year. Then they pick a new king and queen.”
McDermott started to chuckle. “So it’s the old savage story, huh? Treat you like a king for a year and chuck you to the lava!”
“I happened to come along a few days after the old king and queen had been sacrificed,” Hassolt said. “Usually they choose the new ones from their tribe, but they prefer to have strangers. Like the girl and me.”
McDermott continued chuckling. “But what’s your hurry? If the new year’s only a few days old, you have plenty of time.”
“I don’t care to stick around. Take me to your ship now, McDermott.”
“Suppose I don’t?”
Hassolt stared meaningfully at the gun. McDermott said calmly, “If you shoot me, I can’t guide you to the ship, can I?”
Tightly Hassolt said, “In that case I’d find it myself. You can either take me there and stay alive, or refuse and die. Take your choice.”
McDermott shrugged. “You have me there. I’ll take you.”
“Let’s go, then. Now.”
“It’s late. Can’t you wait till morning? It’ll be dark by the time we get there.”
“Now,” Hassolt said.
“How about the girl?”
“She stays here,” Hassolt said. “I just want to get away myself. The two of you can stay here. I’m not going to take any more chances. That she-devil wrecked the other ship.”
“So I guide you to my ship and let you blast off, and I stay here and face the music?”
“You’ll have the girl. Come on now,” Hassolt said. His face was drawn and terror-pale.
“Okay,” McDermott said. “I’ll take you to the ship.”
He could understand Hassolt’s jittery impatience. The natives might not like their king taking a runout powder, and Hassolt intended to get out while he still could. His ransom project didn’t matter, now; having found out what the real function of the king was on this planet, he wanted off in a hurry, at any cost.
Which, McDermott reflected, leaves me and the girl here. And I’m the substitute king.
And a boiling volcano waiting for me at the end of my year-long reign, he thought.
They left the girl behind in the village and slipped off into the thick jungle as the first shadows of night began to descend. McDermott led, and Hassolt, following behind him, made it plain that he was keeping the gun not very far from the small of McDermott’s back all the time. The Corpsman hacked stolidly forward into the jungle, retracing his steps.
“It was only three miles, you say?”
“Maybe four,” McDermott replied. “Don’t worry, Hassolt. I’ll take you to the ship. I’d rather be a live coward than a dead hero.”
They pressed on. After a while they passed the lifeship and the wreckage of the mother ship, and McDermott knew they were on the right path. The sun dropped below the horizon; the sky darkened, and two small jagged moons, bright and pitted, drifted into the sky. The air was cooler now. McDermott thought of the girls back at the village. And of the volcano.
“You thought you had a pretty good deal, eh, Hassolt? Servants and food and booze and a girl, all set up for the rest of your life. You don’t think you might have gotten tired of it after a while?”
“Shut up.”
“But then they let you know what was waiting for you, and you decided to run out. Lucky for you that I came along with my nice shiny ship,” McDermott said. He was thirsting for a drink of any kind.
Half an hour later, they reached the ship. McDermott turned and saw Hassolt staring at it almost lovingly. He said, “You know how to operate it?”