Helen opened the car door and got in. Seymour uncurled from the passenger seat and nuzzled her hand. Pushing the dog away from her, she reached for the radio panel, then pulled back her hand. Her heart had begun a slow, steady pounding that stirred the hair at her temples. She got out of the car and went back into the chalet, locking the door behind her.
As she stood over the bed, removing the eyeset from his face, Sam Tallon moved restlessly and moaned in his sleep.
This, she thought as she unbuttoned the blouse of her uniform, is the way it all begins.
sixteen
A spring morning, lovely with pastel mists, had moved in over New Wittenburg, bringing a feeling of life to the tree-lined streets, laying bars of clear, fresh sunlight across the concrete desert of the space terminal.
“This is as far as we go,” Tallon said as the car topped a rise in the road and he saw the city spread out before him. “I can walk from here.”
“Must we split up?” Helen slid the car over to the side of the road and allowed it to sink onto the ground. “I’m sure I could help you.”
“This is the way it has to be, Helen. We’ve been over the whole thing already.” Tallon spoke firmly to cover his own feelings of dismay at leaving her. The five days they had spent together at the motel had passed like so many seconds. In terms of affecting his life, however, they might have been decades. In loving her he had found both youth and a new level of maturity. But now the pea-sized capsule buried in his brain had acquired even greater importance than the brand-new planet it represented. Two other worlds were at stake, for if it came to war, neither Earth nor Emm Luther would survive in its present form.
It had taken him some time to persuade Helen that they ought to split up on reaching New Wittenburg. She had been unimpressed when he’d pointed out that slipping away from the Pavilion in defiance of an order was one thing, being caught in his company was another. In the end, he had told her he would be unable to make contact with his own agents while in the company of a government prison official.
“You’ll call me at my hotel, won’t you, Sam?”
“I’ll call you.” Tallon kissed her once, briefly, and got out of the car. As he was closing the door she caught his sleeve.
“You will call, Sam. You won’t leave without me?”
“I won’t leave without you,” Tallon lied.
With Seymour tucked under his arm, he began to walk into the city. The pale blue car ghosted past, and he tried for a last glimpse of Helen, but Seymour jerked his head in the wrong direction. He had deemed it necessary for them to separate because if he and Cherkassky should meet again, it would be here in New Wittenburg. The trouble was, no matter how things worked out, the separation was going to be permanent. If he were to get off the planet undetected, there would be no coming back; and with what his escape would cost Emm Luther, there would be no hope of Helen’s being free to follow him.
Tallon walked quickly, staying relaxed, but keeping an eye out for patrol cars or uniformed men on foot. He had no definite plan for making contact, but New Wittenburg was the one city in which the Block had been able to build an effective organization on Emm Luther. His original orders had been to stay on the loose near the space terminal until he was contacted, and that was what he intended to do now, three months later. Considering the publicity his escape from the Pavilion had received, the organization was bound to be making preparations to receive him.
The contact came sooner than he expected.
Tallon was moving along a quiet street, heading in the general direction of the hotel where it had all started, when he suddenly lost vision. He stopped and fought down the surge of panic, then discovered that moving his eyes slightly to the left brought back his sight. Evidently the signal beam from the eyeset had been deflected from the optic nerve juncture, which suggested he had entered a powerful force field of some sort. He had just decided it must be emanating from the interior of a heavy truck parked beside him at the curb when — snap!
Tallon staggered and grabbed for support. He was in a long narrow box, lined with power circuitry and lighted by a single fluorescent tube overhead. Hands caught him from behind, steadying him.
“That was neat,” Tallon said. “I guess I’m inside the truck.”
“Correct,” a voice said. “Welcome to New Wittenburg, Sam.”
Tallon turned and saw a tall, youngish, thin-shouldered man, with tousled hair and a slightly crumpled nose. They both lurched as the truck began to move.
“I’m Vic Fordyce,” he said. “I was beginning to think you’d never get here.”
“So was I. Why didn’t somebody go south to watch for me along the way?”
“They did. And most of them were in the Pavilion before your bunk had a chance to cool down. The E.L.S.P. boys must have staked out every Earthsider on the planet. One suspicious move and that was it.”
“I thought it might be like that,” Tallon said. “Cherkassky is thorough, if nothing else. But what was the idea of grabbing me off the sidewalk? Wouldn’t it have been easier to open the door and whistle?”
Fordyce grinned. “That’s what I said; but this rig was specially built to lift you right out of an E.L.S.P. cruiser, if necessary, and I guess they didn’t want to let all that perfectly good gray-component gear go to waste. Talking about special gear — are those glasses the radarlike device we’ve been hearing about? How in hell did you get the chance to build something like that?”
Tallon thought of Helen Juste and it hurt. “It’s a long story, Vic. What happens next?”
“Well, I have a drug pack here in the truck. I’m to administer it while the boys up front cruise around the city; then we take you to the spaceport. You should be on board your ship within an hour.”
“Within an hour! But the schedule — ”
“Schedule!” Fordyce interrupted excitedly. “Sam, you’re an important man now; scheduled flights are out as far as you’re concerned. The Block has sent a special ship for you. It’s registered on Parane as a merchantman, and you’re going aboard as a crew replacement.”
“Won’t look a bit suspicious? What if some spaceport official starts checking on why a Paranian ship should come to Emm Luther just to pick up a new crewman?”
“That would take time, and once you’re aboard the Lyle Star you’re as good as home. It looks like a merchantman, but it’s fast and has the firepower of several battle cruisers. They’re prepared to flatten the whole city to get you out.”
Fordyce moved about the gently swaying interior of the truck, switching off the gray-component equipment. Tallon sat down on a box and stroked Seymour, who lay on Tallon’s knees and uttered low growls of contentment. After what he had been through, Tallon thought, it was impossible to believe he was almost in the clear. Within an hour, a mere hundred minutes, he would be on board a ship and ready to lift off from New Wittenburg, leaving behind him Lorin Cherkassky, the Pavilion, the swamp, Amanda Weisner — everything connected with this world. And Helen. The thought of leaving her was especially painful now that the final break was imminent.
Fordyce unfolded a low stretcherlike cot along the floor and opened a black plastic box. He motioned to the bed.
“There it is, Sam. Lie down on this and we’ll get on with the job. I’m told this hurts a bit, but it wears off after a few hours.”