But it was only Helena, awkwardly fumbling open the door of the car. "Get in," she said sourly.
"You've spoiled my Holiday. Might as well do what you want to do."
"What's that?"
Helena looked where he was pointing, and shrugged. "Guard box," she guessed. "How would I know?
Nobody's in it, anyhow."
Ross nodded. They had abandoned the car and were standing outside a long, seamless fence that surrounded the spaceport. The main gates were closed and locked; a few hundred feet to the right was a smaller gate with a sort of pillbox, but that had every appearance of being locked too.
"All right," said Ross. "See that shed with the boxes outside it? Over we go."
The shed was right up against the fence; the metal boxes gave a sort of rough and just barely climbable foothold. Helena was easy enough to lift to the top of the shed; Ross, grunting, managed to clamber after her.
They looked down at the ground on the other side, a dozen feet away. "You don't have to come along," Ross told her.
"That's \Mst. like you!" she flared. "Cast me aside— trample on me!"
"All right, all right." Ross looked around, but neither junior nor elder was anywhere in sight.
"Hang by your hands and then drop," he advised her. "Get moving before somebody shows up."
"On Holiday?" she asked bitterly. She squirmed over the narrow top of the fence, legs dangling, let herself down as far as she could, and let go. Ross watched anxiously, but she got up quickly enough and moved to one side.
Ross plopped down next to her, knocking the wind out of himself. He got up dizzily.
His ship, in lonesome quiet, was less than a quarter of a mile away. "Let's go," Ross panted, and clutched her hand. They skirted another shed and were in the clear, running as fast as they could.
Almost in the clear.
Ross heard the whine of the little scooter before he felt the blow, but it was too late. He sprawled on the ground, dragging Helena after him.
A Senior Citizen with a long-handled rod of the sort Ross remembered all too well was scowling down at them. "Children," he rumbled through his breast-speaker in a voice of awful disgust, "is this the way to act on Holiday?"
Helena, gibbering in terror, was beyond words. Ross croaked, "Sorry, sir. We—we were just——"
Crash! The rod came down again, and every muscle in Ross's body convulsed. He rolled helplessly away, the elder following him. Crash! "We give you Holiday," the elder boomed, "and——" crash
"——you act like animals. Terrible! Don't you know that freedom of play on Holiday——" crash "——is the most sacred right of every junior——" crash "——and heaven help you——" crash "——if you abuse it!"
The wrenching punishment and the caressing voice stopped together. Ross lay blinking into the terrible silence that followed. He became conscious of Helena's weeping, and forced his head to turn to look at her.
She was standing behind the elder's scooter, a length of wire hi her hand. The senior lay slumped against his safety strap. "Ross!" she moaned. "Ross, what have I done? I turned him off!"
He stood up, coughing and retching. No one else was hi sight, only the two of them and the silent, slack form of the old man. He grabbed her arm. "Come on," he said fuzzily, and started toward the starship.
She hung back, mumbling to herself, her eyes saucers. She was hi a state of grievous shock, it was clear.
Ross hesitated, rubbing his back. He knew that she might never pull out of it. Even if she did, she was certain to be a frightful handicap. But it was crystal-clear that she had declared herself on his side. Even ft the elder could be revived, the punishment hi store for Helena would be awful to contemplate. . . .
Come what may, he was now responsible for Helena.
He towed her to the starship. She climbed in docilely enough, sat staring blankly as he sealed ship and sent it blasting off the face of the planet.
She didn't speak until they were well into deep space. Then the blank stare abruptly clouded and she exploded in a fit of tears. Ross said ineffectually, "There, there." It had no effect; until, in its own time, the storm ended.
Helena said hoarsely, "Wh-what do I do now?"
"Why, I guess you come right along with me," Ross said heartily, cursing his luck.
"Where's that?"
"Where? You mean, where?" Ross scratched his head. "Well, let's see. Frankly, Helena, your planet was quite a disappointment to me. I had hoped—— Well, no matter.
I suppose the best thing to do is to look up the next planet on the list."
"What list?"
Ross hesitated, then shrugged and plunged into the explanation. All about the longliners and the message and faster-than-light travel and the Wesley Families—and none of it, while he was talking, seemed convincing at all. But perhaps Helena was less critical; or perhaps Helena simply did not care. She listened attentively and made no comment. She only said, at the end, "What's the name of the next planet?"
He consulted the master charts. Haarland's listing showed a place called Azor, conveniently near at hand hi the strange geodesies of the Wesley Effect, where the far galaxies might be near at hand in the warped space-lines, and the void just beyond the viewplates be infinitely distant. The F-T-L family of Azor was named Cavallo; when last heard from, they had been builders of machine tools.
Ross told Helena about it. She shrugged and watched curiously as he began to set up the F-T-L problem on the huge board.
7
THEY were well within detection range of Azor's radar, if any, and yet there had been no beeping signal that the planet's GCA had taken over and would pilot them down. Another blank? He studied the surface of the world under his highest magnification and saw no signs that it had been devastated by war. There were cities—intact, as far as he could tell, but not very attractive. The design ran-to huge, gloomy piles that mounted toward central towers.
Azor was a big world which showed not much water and a great deal of black rock. It was the fifth of its system and reportedly had colonized its four adjacent neighbors and their moons.
His own search radar pinged. The signal was followed at once by a guarded voice from his ship-to-ship communicator: "What ship are you? Do you receive me? The band is 798.44."
He hastily dialed the frequency on his transmitter and called, "I receive you. We are a vessel from outside your solar system, home planet Halsey. We want to contact a family named Cavallo of the planet Azor believed to be engaged hi building machine tools. Can you help us?"
"You are a male?" the voice asked cautiously. "In command or simply the communicator?"
"I'm a male and I'm in command of this vessel."
The voice said: "Then sheer off this system and go elsewhere, my friend."
"What is this? Who are you?"
"My name does not matter. I happen to be on watch aboard the prison orbital station 'Minerva.' Get going, my friend, before the planetary GCA picks you up."
Prison orbital station? A very sensible idea. "Thanks for the advice," he parried. "Can you tell me anything about the Cavallo family?"
"I have heard of them. My friend, your time is running out. If you do not sheer off very soon they will land you. And I judge from the tone of your voice that it will not be long before you join the rest of us criminals aboard 'Minerva.' It is not pleasant here. Good-by."
"Wait, please!" Ross had no intention at all of committing any crimes that would land him aboard a prison hulk, and he had every intention of fulfilling his mission. "Tell me about the Cavallo family—and why you expect me to get in trouble on Azor."
"The time is running out, my friend, but—the Cavallo family of machine tool builders is located in Novj Grad. And the crime of which all of us aboard 'Minerva' were convicted is conspiracy to advocate equality of the sexes. Now go!"