I didn’t switch to any other file. I stayed with that one. I listened to us congratulating ourselves on having got away from the damn Beloved Leaders, I watched myself destroy the transit machine so we couldn’t be followed, I listened as I-that other Icalled the Bureau on Starlab’s ancient radio and painfully worked out a way of communicating with them that the rest of the world, and especially the Beloved Leaders, might not hear. With all the rest of the gang I got into the rickety old crew-rescue vehicle that had been berthed at Starlab since the last time any astronomer visited it. I stayed with them as its engines fired up and we started the long, bouncing, bucketing drop toward Earth, and I would have stayed a lot longer if I could, in spite of the fact that a suspicion was dawning in my mind.
What stopped me in the end wasn’t that I got tired of seeing Pat, or that that new thought needed to be pursued. It was Pirraghiz. “Dannerman? I have brought you some food. And Beert is here now, if you want to see him.”
I took the helmet off and blinked at her. She was taking little fruits and biscuits out of a coppery mesh bag and laying them before it. I ignored them. “Didn’t you tell me that the transit machine on Starlab wasn’t working anymore?”
She blinked back at me. “Why, yes, Dannerman. That is so.”
“That’s what I thought,” I said-the other possibility having been that that other Dannerman hadn’t done as thorough a job of destruction as he thought. “All right, let’s go. I want to see Beert right away.”
“To ask him if you can throw your life away with the Wet One? At least take the meal with you,” she said, scooping it all back into the bag. As she handed it to me she said, “It is a foolish idea, and he will surely say no.”
“You might be right,” I agreed. “But maybe I have a better idea now.”
CHAPTER TWENTY
When I knocked on the laboratory door Beert let me in at once. “Look here,” he said, neck and arms awriggle. “I have taken your advice. Give me one of the ammunition carriers.”
That last part was aimed at his Christmas tree, not me. The thing was hovering over a workbench, littered with the usual cryptic array of gadgets. The robot immediately picked one up and brought it over to hand to Beert. Who handed it happily to me. It was heavy. It was also streamlined and curved, like the other things Beert was attaching to the Wet One, and it had the same clamp arrangement to hold it in place. Which meant, I thought, that the Wet One would have had more sockets carved into his flesh. I admired his dedication. “See,” Beert was saying proudly, reaching to touch the thing in my hand, “this release will fit the Wet One’s digits. It is this button here; he needs only to touch it and it flies open.” Beert did. It did, revealing half a dozen gleaming clips for the twenty-shot. “Also there are eight sixteens of additional clips and several others of the projectile weapons in those containers there-“ gesturing at a pair of oblong boxes of that same rubbery material-“but those he will not be able to carry with him. Perhaps he can hide them somewhere, and come back to them when they are needed.”
His little head was close to mine, the curly eyelashes fluttering excitedly. He was waiting for a compliment, I thought, so I obliged. “That’s fine,” I said, and glanced at the hovering robot. “Can you turn that thing off?” I asked.
Beert pulled his head away to regard me. “But I have told you, Dan, there is nothing to fear from this machine-“
I reached out and caught his neck, pulling his head toward me so that I could whisper. “I want to ask you about something I don’t want the cousins to hear. I don’t want that thing listening.”
Beert went suddenly tense. He didn’t pull away, as he easily could have, and I felt his warm breath on my face as he thought that over. “This robot does not interface with the others, as I have told you.”
“Please, Beert.”
He sighed. “Go into inactive mode,” he ordered the Christmas tree. Then to me, warningly, “Dan, you recall what the Greatmother said to us. We do not agree with the cousins in all things, but they are still Horch.”
“I don’t want to harm the cousins. I just want a favor from you, and I think it is better if they don’t know about it.” I hesitated, looking at the Christmas tree, needles retracted, immobile-but could it still hear? I had to hope not. So I began. “Check me out on this, Beert. When the Wet One goes he won’t be heading for his home planet; he’ll be going to something they call a ‘nexus,’ where there are all sorts of channels that belong to the Others.”
“Yes?”
“That’s true, then? And another thing. When I was using the helmet I saw something funny,” I went on. “I was in Patrice’s mind, and we were in Starlab. I saw myself destroy the transit machine there. But I didn’t lose contact even after it was destroyed. I think that means that there’s another transit machine somewhere nearby that’s still working-I don’t know where. Maybe in the scout ship that found Earth in the first place? But still working, anyway, and somehow or other you’re still tapping into that channel, I guess from this nexus.”
“Yes, yes,” Beert said testily. “I suppose all that is so, but I still do not know what favor you want of me.”
And then he took a deep breath, because Beert was not a stupid being. By then he did know.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
It took a lot of persuasion, and he fought me all the way. “Transmit you to this scout ship? But you do not know for sure even that it exists! The one that visited your planet’s system may be long gone on some other errand.”
“Or,” I said doggedly, “it may not. At least there’s some sort of contact, and what else could it be?”
“Oh, Dan,” he said, sorrowful though sympathetic, “do you know what you ask? I do not believe the cousins would permit it.”
“That’s why I don’t want them to know about it. But I give you my word, I mean no harm at all to the cousins.”
“What about harm to yourself? A ship of the Others is not like your tiny Starlab orbiter. Such ships are quite large, and they are well guarded. There will be fighters of the Others standing by at the transit machine, watchful that they may be invaded by the cousins as this base was.”
“I know. Pirraghiz told me all about the Others’ ships.”
“Then you also know that they will kill you as soon as you appear.”
I shrugged. “Maybe I can kill them first.”
“More likely you cannot, Dan,” he scoffed. “You? Alone against well-armed fighters?”
“Oh,” I said, “we Earth people have a pretty good combat record. Pirraghiz said so herself.”
He waggled his neck at me reprovingly, then tried a different tack. “And even if they do not kill you, what can you accomplish? Do you think you can simply leap through space from the scout ship to your planet?”
“Whatever I can do, it will be more than I can do sitting here in your jail.”
That silenced him for a moment. “I do not think of myself as your jailer, Dan,” he said sorrowfully.
“Then set me free!”
He was silent again for quite a while, his head swerving indecisively about-darting toward the immobile robot as though about to start it up again, returning to search my face at close range.
While I—
I was estimating the distance to the nearest workbench.
I could see that there were all sorts of things there that I thought the Bureau’s techs would have liked to play with. More immediately important, I saw a sort of chisel, a pink ceramic blade with a handle shaped for Beert’s grip, not mine. But I thought I could hold it well enough in a pinch. What’s more, I was pretty sure that the blade could cut right through that sinewy neck of his.
Well, let me make that clear. I certainly wasn’t intending to kill Beert. I was merely hoping that he would believe I would, once I put the knife to his throat. The real question was whether threatening his life would force him to help me.