At least it was warm inside the Centaurian lounge. It was dimly lit, and it also smelled quite horrible, likely because of the half-dozen pups that were squirming around one of those elevated Centaurian sleeping pads. “New litter,” the female said proudly, cuffing them out of the way. “Exceptionally handsome lot, don’t you agree? Now you come closer here, I hug you to defrostedness.”
Her fur was soft, her body blessedly warm. The pups didn’t like the idea of this alien monster preempting their mother’s embrace, but the male spoke sharply to them and they curled up sullenly against Giyt’s back. When he tried to talk Mrs. Threewhiteboots shushed him peremptorily. “You get blood running again, then have conversation. Not yet.” But then, as he felt life returning, he felt also a nearly overpowering urge to drift off to sleep. He resisted it; his story could not wait. Haltingly he told Mrs. Threewhiteboots what he wanted to do.
“You bet, sure,” she said. “Show proof of total iniquitousness of other large males six-species gathering, good idea. So we take you to rocket, all right, let damn ugly Large Male Hagbarth try to stop us.”
“But he has a gun,” Giyt remembered to say between bouts of yawning.
That produced a considerable silence. Then Mrs. Threewhiteboots murmured something to her mate, who turned and pushed his way out of the door. “Hate damn guns,” she said morosely. “That make things tough, right? But we do best we can. Mr. Threewhiteboots go check things out. Now you sleep a little, understand me?”
It was an invitation hard to refuse. Against his better judgment Giyt let his eyes close. Perhaps Mr. Threewhiteboots would come back with help. Or perhaps he would raise the alarm, and the several dozen other persons in the polar complex, human or otherwise, would turn away from the broadcast of the opening ceremonies long enough to overpower Hagbarth’s few and convoy him to the rocket, and then to the Hexagon to show his chiplets to the council meeting…
But perhaps Hagbarth would not want to be overpowered.
And he and his bullies did have that gun.
The gun made all the difference.
Of course, Giyt reasoned, it would make no sense for Hagbarth to start a shooting war here and now. Everything was against it. Hagbarth wasn’t ready for anything like that. Especially right now, with the six-species council in session, and capable of summoning quick reinforcements from the parent planets. Most of all, Hagbarth’s illicit armory had vanished with the explosion of the Kalkaboo bombs; that was another reason why this would not be a good time to start his putsch. Shooting anybody would certainly not be a sensible thing to do.
But, on the other hand, who had ever described Hoak Hagbarth as sensible?
A sudden twitch of alarm from Mrs. Threewhiteboots made Giyt open his eyes. That was a strange sensation, for what he saw was no different either way. Eyes closed, eyes open, there was only blackness. Was this what blindness felt like?
But it wasn’t his eyes that were at fault. “Is power out,” Mrs. Threewhiteboots said worriedly. “Power never out. Is bad thing. You stay here inside lek where no one can see, Large Male Giyt, I look.”
That was an order he could not obey. As she peered out of the door Giyt was shoulder to shoulder with her. Power was out, all right. The principal illumination in the corridor was from one distant, palely glowing panel of green emergency lighting on the ceiling. He could see the plenum at the end of the hall, but the brilliant readout displays were gone, leaving only one fast-moving line of symbols on one wall. There were brighter moving lights just beyond there, too. Someone—no, several someones—were there with pocket torches. And he heard voices.
One of the voices was raised in anger, and it belonged to Hoak Hagbarth.
Mrs. Threewhiteboots moaned something, then reared upright to peer down the hall. Something small was skittering rapidly toward them. It turned out to be her mate, who leaped into the fur of her back, chattering at her. She listened for a moment, then turned and shoved Giyt back inside. “They coming, maybe! Go in! Close door!”
The power was out, and so were communications. Mr. Threewhiteboots (his mate explained to Giyt) had gone to the communicator; but that was when the power went—shut off, most likely, by Hagbarth himself to make things even tougher for Giyt. While Mr. Threewhiteboots was trying to get the emergency circuits working to sound the alarm, two large Earth-human males had come in. “They asking you. Large Male Giyt,” the female reported. “My husband hear you name, but nothing else; he not have translator. They talk at him, but he not understand nothing. Then they point stinky gun at him. He run.”
“Hell,” Giyt said. Communications dead, access to the rocket blocked: Was there any way out of this? He thought rapidly. “Are they still there?”
“Think not. Don’t want to look. You want?”
“No. Well, maybe I do, but not right away. They won’t stay around. Then maybe I can—”
But he stopped there, because he knew, before he said it, that they would never let him get to the rest of the complex. They would let no one in or out until they had made sure Giyt was not still inside.
Then he remembered what was parked by the outside door.
He took a deep breath, then opened the door a crack, listening. The Centaurian pups were whining softly, but he heard nothing else, and it was dark outside. When he poked his head out there were no lights.
There would be no better chance than this. “Mrs. Threewhiteboots,” he said, “do you have a key card for the hover? If I could get around the outside to the rocket pad—”
She made a snuffling sound that might have been amusement, “What you do with keycard? You think you driving Centaurian hover?”
“Maybe you could tell me how to do it.”
“Maybe you being very ridiculous, Large Male Giyt. Never happening; driving instruments quite complicated. Also what you think those large males do, they finding us here and you gone? No, not giving keycard. Driving vehicle own self, most fearfully.”
Mrs. Threewhiteboots delayed only to scrabble in a compartment for a body-shawl and a set of flat disks like snow-shoes. When she had strapped them to her little feet she muttered to her husband, and the two of them led Giyt to the door.
The hovercraft started quickly and moved easily over the drifts. It took only a few minutes to reach the rocket launch pad.
And then they stopped, looking at each other, looking back at the dome they had left. There were more of those handheld lights moving around outside that door. They undoubtedly belonged to some of Hagbarth’s people, searching for them. If they went back there, they would be caught.
But there wouldn’t be much point in trying to do that, anyway. The pad was empty. The suborbital rocket itself was gone.
XXVIII
With heartfelt sadness I have to tell you all, dear friends, that there isn’t any doubt any more. Our mayor, Evesham Giyt, was definitely lost in that terrible explosion at the Pole.
So, folks, I think it’s time for us all to show what big hearts we have here in Tupelo. Never mind that the explosion was his fault. Never mind what it’s going to cost us all—many months of lost production, and. I don’t even want to think about how much money. Say nothing mean about the dead and gone, folks, no matter how much of a mess the guy made. Probably he just didn’t know any better, maybe. So let’s forget that part of it and just give our deepest sympathy to his grieving widow—who, you know, is probably going to be leaving us herself before long anyway.