Heart thumping Paddy hauled himself up the side of the chair into Ladha-Kudh's lap. Above loomed the stern dish-eyed face of the man he had killed and to Paddy's excited brain, the mother-of-pearl plates that were the eyes seemed to stare down accusingly.
Paddy grimaced. "Now's the time for the banshee to howl if ever he's going to. Ah, bless the Lord, may the creature's ghost still prowl the asteroid where he was killed."
Paddy crawled out the right leg to the hand, felt the Stone fingers. "Now how will this be?" thought Paddy. "Will they raise up easy-like or will I want a charge of jovian-powder to lift the hand away? First we'll try my bar."
He unhooked the pry-bar from his belt, pushed it under the hand, applied force. Snap! The ball of the thumb broke off, fell clattering to the pavement.
Paddy crouched, tingling all over. No sound-he felt at the fractured part, sensed the beginnings of a cavity. Bringing up his flash-lamp, he directed the tiniest whisper of light possible at the broken spot. A cavity it was and Paddy eagerly plied the bar.
A stem voice came from below. "What are you doing up there? Come down or I'll pick you off with a beam."
Paddy said, "Right away. I'm coming." He reached into the cavity, pulled out a metal box, shoved it into his pouch.
"Come down!" said the voice. "By the justice of Koto come down!"
Paddy slowly crawled back to Ladha-Kudh's lap. Trapped, caught red-handed-how many of them were there? He peered toward the pavement but could see only darkness. But they could doubtless see him well with their big twilight eyes.
He let himself down the leg of the chair. If he could only see. He snatched out his light, flashed it along the ground. Three Kotons-uniformed, guns at ready-and they were dazzled. Paddy shot them-one, two, three-left them thrashing on the stone. He jumped down, hit with a jar, rose, raced to the edge, dropped over to the Plain of Thish.
He paused an instant, listened. He heard his own panting. The darkness bulked heavy with menace but he dared not use his flash. Above him he heard movement, staccato voices, sounds of anger.
Crouching he scuttled off across the plain. At his back came a shrill whistle and over his head he heard a throb, a hum.
Paddy dodged, ran with mouth open, eyes staring into the gloom. Oh, to be in the ship! Fay, Fay, have the port wide!
A thud ahead of him, a swarm of figures. Paddy shot wildly, kicked, punched. Then his gun was wrenched away and his arms seized.
XII
There was no talk. With swift efficiency they trussed him with many folds of sticky tape, rolled him onto the floor of the air-boat. It rose, took him through the sky.
Night ebbed. The dim twilight that was Koto's day stole upon them like cool water. Paddy lay on the floor between two benches. Four Koton guards watched him with quiet expressionless eyes.
The boat landed. They laid hands on him, bore him across a flat concrete floor, down a ramp, across a square. Paddy glimpsed a tall spidery structure off in the distance, knew it for the Montras Traffic Control. He was in Montras.
Kotons moved past without interest and a small party of Alpheratz Eagles craned their necks. The Kotons walked with an odd loose-kneed gait like comedians mimicking secrecy. They had thick pale hair, growing straight up like candle flames. The soldier clans wore their hair shorn on a plane an inch above their heads and one man on Koto shaved his head-the Son of Langtry.
Across the square to a large blank-walled building Paddy was carried and here the party was joined by other guards in short black uniforms cut and scalloped in eccentric half-moons.
They took him through a dark hall, smelling of carbolic acid, into a room bare except for a table and a low chair. They laid him on the table and departed, leaving him by himself. He sweated, tugged, wrenched mightily at his bonds without success.
A half-hour passed. A Koton in the regalia of Councillor to the Son entered the chamber. He stepped close to Paddy, peered into his face.
"What were you doing at Arma-Geth?"
"It was a bet, your Honor," said Paddy. "I was after a souvenir to show my friends. I'm sorry now I committed the misdemeanor, so if you'll untie me I'll pay the fine and go my way."
The Councillor said to a corporal behind him. "Search this man."
He looked at Paddy's equipment, picked up the metal box, glanced at Paddy with opalescent fire in his eyes, turned, left the room.
An hour passed. The Councillor returned, halted beside the door with a bowed head. "Zhri Khainga," he announced. The guards bowed their heads.
A Koton with a polished bald head entered the room, swung across to Paddy.
"You are Blackthorn the assassin." Paddy said nothing.
The twentieth Son of Langtry put a quiet question. "What have you done with the other material?"
Paddy swallowed a lump in his throat the size of an egg. "Now, my lord, let me loose, and we'll talk the situation over as one man to another. There's rights and wrongs to everything and maybe I've been overhasty time and again."
"What have you done with the rest of the data?" asked Zhri Khainga. "You might as well tell me. It will never do you or your planet any more good since now we possess a crucial segment of the information."
"To be perfectly frank, Your Honor," said Paddy ingenuously, "I never had anything else."
The Son turned, motioned. From a cavity in the wall they pulled a machine that looked like a heavy suit of armor, lifted Paddy, laid him inside. One bent down, deftly taped Paddy's eyelids open, then the cover was closed on him. Instantly every inch of his skin began to tingle faintly as tiny fibrils sought and joined to each of his nerve-endings. In front of his taped-open eyes a hemisperical screen glowed.
He saw moving shapes, a dingy flickering of low fires. He was looking into a stone-vaulted room with a stained floor. Ten feet away n man stood impaled. Paddy heard his screaming, saw his face.
The guards turned, looked at him with great blank eyes. He saw them reaching, felt their hands, the actual clutch at his wrists, under his knees. It was reality. The fact of the screen had left his mind.
They knew the art of stimulating numb minds. They had perfected torture to the ultimate. Past-thought pain might be inflicted time and again with no harm to bone or body. A man could live his entire life in sensation.
And presently the operators would know their subject. They would discover how to grind out his sickest shrieks and the pattern would be elaborated, adjusted, embroidered to a delicate vortex.
Time would become elusive, the world would be vague and strange. The nerve-suit would be reality and reality would be the dream.
A voice gonged at Paddy. "What did you do with the other data?"
It was a sound from a tremendous brazen throat, without meaning. Paddy could not have answered had he wanted to.
After a period the question was no longer asked and then it seemed as if the torture had become meaningless.
Paddy emerged from quiet suddenly with a clear vision. The face of Zhri Khainga looked down at him.
"What did you do with the remaining data?"
Paddy licked his lips. They wouldn't trick him. He'd die first. But there was the rub! This kind of torture didn't let a man die. One twentieth of such treatment would kill a man were it fixed on him the normal way! Here they could torture him to death as many times as they chose and bring him back fresh and sound, nerves tingling and keen for the next session.
"What did you do with the other data?"
Paddy stared at the pale face. And why not tell them? Space-drive was lost to Earth in any event. Four-fifths was as bad as none at all.
Paddy grimaced. Suggestion from without. It must be, since this was the Son's own arguments. Fay! He wondered about Fay: Had they caught her, had she got away? He tried to think but the nerve-suit left him little leisure.
"What did you do with the other data?"