The Doimari wouldn't have been at all happy to find out how easily Blade learned their secret. The night they brought him to the research complex, he'd seen an unmistakable gantry crane on the horizon. He'd heard the equally unmistakable sound of large rockets being fired several times. (And now he understood the secret of the Doimari base he'd surprised. It was a ranging and tracking station for the missiles; the craters around it were from test missiles or warheads.)
Blade had been brought to this cell in the research complex to act as a guinea pig in the test for new strains of deadly germs. He found this out from the guards who'd brought the woman in and had wondered out loud if she would infect him.
«Probably,» said one. «Does it matter?»
«I don't bet either way. I've heard they're ready with Culture S, so they may not need any more tests.»
«Maybe. But this one-he looks like a fighter. Suppose they want to find out how long he can handle a weapon with S in him? That's something could mean your arse and mine when the Day comes.»
«All right. But we'd better shout the first thing he shows any sores.»
«He'll shout loud enough. You ever heard anyone in first stage?»
«No.»
«You don't want to, either.»
The guards went out, and the last piece of the Doimari puzzle fell into place for Blade.
Although Blade's deductions would have surprised the Doimari, they wouldn't have surprised J. He knew that Blade was an exceptionally keen observer, even by the standards of a profession whose members had to be rather sharper than the average if they were to live long enough to draw their pensions or even justify much of their not too generous salaries. Blade treasured a remark passed on to him by a friend who'd overheard J say, «Richard is in a class by himself awake. He's fairly good sound asleep. And frankly, I wouldn't care to reveal any secrets in the same room as his corpse.»
Unfortunately the Doimari weren't being hospitable to «defectors» from Kaldak. Of course Blade couldn't have known that. He'd had to run, and even though getting captured and put into the Doimari research complex hadn't kept him from figuring out what they were up to, it would probably keep him from doing any vital damage. It would almost certainly keep him from getting a warning to Kaldak. That could make his trip just as useless as if he'd been shot dead the minute he stepped across the frontier!
Blade went over to his own pallet and lay down on it. It looked as if this trip to Dimension X was going to end in the same sort of confusion and frustration as it began. The only trouble was, he was probably going to end along with it.
It was time to get his own sleep, while the woman was between bouts of fever. It seemed to help her if he was sitting beside her. If he could do nothing else, he could try to see she didn't die alone. There were worse ways of spending his own last days.
Blade was awakened by the cell door crashing open. Four guards with drawn pistols tramped in. The pistols weren't lasers but heavy revolvers, with as much stopping power as a Home Dimension Magnum. They could disable a man even if they didn't hit him in a vital spot.
«Up!» snapped one guard. Blade rose swiftly. He wanted to appear frightened and submissive, to make the guards less alert.
Another guard bent over the dying woman and shook his head. «She won't last the day.» He drew his revolver and shot the woman in the head. At least it was a more merciful death than being left alone in her last delirium.
The four guards made a square around Blade and marched into the corridor. Blade realized they were probably taking him somewhere else to experiment on him. Down the whitewashed corridor to an elevator, up what seemed like three or four floors, then out into another corridor. This one was brightly lit and hummed with activity behind closed doors of polished metal. It reminded Blade rather of the main corridor in the Project's Complex One.
At the end of the corridor a door led out onto a metal-railed balcony. Beyond the railing a cliff dropped off more than three hundred feet, to the plain where the missile station lay. Blade recognized the gantry, saw assembly buildings, radar stations, and warehouses, as well as humped shapes which might be blockhouses or fuel tanks. He also saw brightly polished construction robots at work on a number of what looked like missile silos.
In daylight, it was easy to see this wasn't just a research facility. It was also Doimar's main missile base. When the «Day» came, the germ warheads would be launched from those silos. And a fat lot of good this knowledge was likely to do Richard Blade!
The guards hustled Blade along the terrace toward the door at the far end. As they did, he thought he heard someone calling his name, so faint and far off he couldn't be sure he'd even heard anything aloud. Who would be calling him here? Nobody. He decided he was imagining things. Then as they reached the door the call came again.
This time Blade was sure he'd heard it, but not aloud. He'd heard it in his mind.
Who in this Dimension would be calling him mentally, even if they knew his name?
Cheeky?
Blade nearly said it out loud. Then he nearly said «Impossible,» normally an obscene word in his vocabulary. Instead he thought his name as strongly as he could, while also holding a mental image of himself as he'd been in Home Dimension.
The reply came. It was a reply, no mistake about it. But it still might, just might, be a Doimari telepath.
Cheeky.
He thought the feather-monkey's name just as hard as his own, and projected Cheeky's image as clearly as he'd projected his own. Two of the guards looked at him suspiciously while the other two fumbled with the door.
Then suddenly pandemonium broke loose. An explosion roared above. Blade heard glass smash and saw smoke gush out of a window carved in the cliff two stories above the terrace. Then a small shape sailed out the window.
Even at a distance Blade recognized Cheeky. He held his breath as the feather-monkey slid a good way down the cliff. Even Cheeky might not be able to find a firm grip, and it would be just too much to lose him now!
But Cheeky's fingers and toes were as sure as ever. He stopped his slide and began to crawl like a fly along the face of the cliff toward the terrace.
One of the guards followed Blade's eyes and saw Cheeky. He raised his pistol and sighted on the feather-monkey. To do this he had to turn his back on Blade. He seemed confident that the other three guards were enough to keep Blade out of trouble.
That was his last mistake. As his finger tightened on the trigger, Blade caught him by the hair with one hand and chopped him across the throat with the other. The guard died choking and Blade caught his pistol as it dropped from limp fingers. Blade put his back against the wall and covered the other three guards.
A moment later Cheeky reached the railing, balanced on it, then made a flying leap clear across the terrace onto Blade's shoulder. He was yeeping hysterically with joy and excitement. His thoughts were so jumbled that Blade didn't even try to follow them.
He also didn't try to understand how this miracle of Cheeky's return had come about. For now, it was enough that Cheeky was back.
Chapter 15
The three surviving guards weren't going to drop their guns, not with a comrade to avenge. On the other hand, they weren't quite crazy enough to draw as long as Blade had the drop on them.
They could go for their pistols the minute he blinked, though. How long could he keep from blinking?
Then a thought struck Blade. He filled his mind with a picture of Cheeky going around to the three guards and taking their pistols. He held the picture until he sensed that Cheeky was getting it, thinking it over, and beginning to calm down.