"The ship?" she asked in a small voice.
"Across the continent. Hell! Maybe Breuer forgave and forgot. Let's try, anyway."
They never got as far as the hotel. When they reached the square it stood on, there was a breathless rush and Ber-nie stood before them, panting and holding a hand over his chest "In here," he gasped, and nodded at a shopfront that announced hot brew. Ross thoughtlessly started first through the door and caught Bernie's look of alarm. He opened the door for Helena, who went through smiling nervously.
They settled at a small table in an empty corner in stiff silence. "I've been walking around that square all morning," Bernie said, with a cowed look at Helena.
Ross told her: "This young man and I had a talk yesterday at the plane while you were eating. What is it, Bernie?"
He still couldn't believe that he was doing it, but Bernie said in a scared whisper: "Wanted to head you off and warn you. Breuer was down at the field cafe this morning, talking loud to the other hot-shots. She said you—both of you— talked equality. Said she got up with a hangover and you were gone. But she said there'd be six policewomen waiting in your room when you got back." He leaned forward on the table. Ross remembered that he had been forced to sell his ration card.
"Here comes the waiter," he said softly. "Order something for all of us. We have a little money.
And thanks, Bernie."
Helena asked, "What do we do?"
"We eat," Ross said practically. "Then we think. Shut up; let Bernie order."
They ate; and then they thought. Nothing much seemed to come from all the thinking, though.
They were a long, long way from the spaceship. Ross commandeered all of Helena's leftover cash. It was almost, not quite, enough for one person to get halfway back to Azor City. He and Bernie turned out their pockets and added everything they had, including pawnable valuables. That helped.
It made the total almost enough, for one person to get three-quarters of the way back.
It didn't help enough.
Ross said, "Bernie, what would happen if we, well, stole something?"
Bernie shrugged. "It's against the law, of course. They probably wouldn't prosecute, though."
"They wouldn't?"
"Not if they can prove egalitarianism on you. Stealing's against the law; preaching equality is against the state. You get the maximum penalty for that."
Helena choked on her drink, but Ross merely nodded. "So we might as well take a chance," he said.
"Thanks, Bernie. We won't bother you any more. You'll forget you heard this, won't you?"
"The hell I will!" Bernie squawked. "If you're getting out of here, I want to go with you! You aren't leaving me behind!"
"But Bernie——" Ross started. He was interrupted by the manager, a battleship-class female with a mighty prow, who came scowling toward them.
"Pipe down," she ordered coarsely. "This place is for decent people; we don't want no disturbances here. If you can't act decent, get out."
"Awk," said Helena as Ross kicked her under the table. "I mean, yes ma'am. Sorry if we were talking too loud," They watched the manager walk away in silence.
As soon as she was fairly away, Ross hissed, "It's out of the question, Bernie. You might be jumping from the frying-pan into the fire."
Bernie asked, startled, "The what?"
"The—never mind, it's just an expression where I come from. It means you might get out of this place and find yourself somewhere worse. We don't know where we're going next; you might wish to God you were back here within the next three days."
"I'll take that chance," Bernie said earnestly. "Look, Ross, I played square with you. I didn't have to stick my neck out and warn you. How about giving me a break too?"
Helena interrupted, "He's right, Ross. After all, we owe him that much, don't we? I mean, if a person does that much for a person, a person ought to——"
"Oh, shut up." Ross glared at both of them. "You two seem to think this is a game," he said bitterly. "Let me set you straight, both of you. It isn't. More hangs on what happens to me than either of you realize. The fate of the human race, for instance."
Helena flashed a look at Bernie. "Of course, Ross," she said soothingly. "Both of us know that, don't we, Bernie?"
Bernie stammered, "Sure—sure we do, Ross." He rubbed his ankle. He went on, "Honest, Ross, I want to get the hell away from Azor once and for all. I don't care where you're going. Anything would be better than this place and the damned female bloodsuckers that——"
He stopped, petrified. His eyes, looking over Ross's shoulder, were enormous.
"Go on, sonny," said a rich female voice from behind Ross. "Don't let me and the lieutenant stop you just when you're going good."
"It must have been that damn manager," Bernie said for the fifteenth time.
Ross uncrossed his legs painfully and tried lying on the floor on his side. "What's the difference?" he asked. "They got us; we're in the jug. And face it: somebody would have caught us sooner or later, and we might have wound up in a worse jail than this one." He shifted uncomfortably. "If that's possible, I mean. Why don't they at least have beds in these places?"
"Oh," said Bernie immediately, "some do. The jails in Azor City and Nuevo Reykjavik have beds; Novj Grad, Eleanor, and Milo don't. I mean, that's what they tell me," he added virtuously.
"Sure," Ross growled. "Well, what do they tell you usually happens next?"
Bernie spread his hands. "Different things. First there's a hearing. That's all over by now. Then an indictment and trial. Maybe that's started already; sometimes they get it in on the same day as the hearing, sometimes not. Then— tomorrow sometime, most likely—comes the sentencing. We'll know about that, though, because we'll be there. The law's very strict on that—they always have you in the court for sentencing."
Ross cried, "You mean the trial might be going on right now without us?"
"Of course. What else? Think they'd take a chance on having the prisoners creating a disturbance during the trial?"
Ross groaned and turned his face to the wall. For this, he thought, he had come the better part of a hundred light years; for this he had left a comfortable job with a brilliant future. He spent a measurable period of time cursing the memory of old Haarland and his double-jointed, persuasive tongue.
Back in the days of Ross's early teens he had seen a good many situations like this in the tridis, and the hero had never failed to extricate himself by a simple exercise of superhuman strength, intellect, and ingenuity. That, Ross told himself, was just what he needed now. The trouble was, he didn't have them.
All he had was the secret of faster-than-light travel. And, here on Azor as on the planet of the graybeards, it had laid a king-sized egg. Women, Ross thought bitterly, women were basically inward-directed and self-seeking; trust them with the secret of F-T-L; make them, like the Cavallos, custodians of a universe-racking truth; and see the secret lost or embalmed in sterile custom. What, he silently demanded of himself, did the greatest of scientific discoveries mean to a biological baby-foundry?
How could any female—no single member of which class had ever painted a great picture, written a great book, composed a great sonata, or discovered a great scientific truth—appreciate the ultimate importance of the F-T-L drive? It was like entrusting a first-folio Shakespeare to a broody hen; the shredded scraps would be made into a nest. For the egg came first. Motherhood was all.
That explained it, of course. That, Ross told himself moodily, explained everything except why the F-T-L secret had fallen into apparently equal or worse desuetude on such planets as Gemsel, Clyde, Cyrnus One, Ragans-world, Tau Ceti II, Capella's family of eight, and perhaps a hundred others.
Ragansworld was gone entirely, drowned in a planetary nebula.