“It is you who will be exterminated,” the Tlixix informed him.
“Enough,” said Commissioner Amundsen. “I order a twelve hour recess for evaluation of evidence.”
He stood up and glared at the partners, with a look which seemed to say, you have saddled the state with a difficult situation.
Which was true. If Krabbe & Bouche—and Northrop—were guilty then the administration had a dilemma: either allow the rehydration to persist, with the consequent extermination of all dehydrate tribes, or reverse it, followed by the massacre of the Tlixix. The only way out of the mess was to relocate either the dehydrates or the Tlixix on a more suitable planet, which would be immensely complicated and expensive.
All others in the room followed protocol and rose also. “Fine,” Krabbe said, as though the recess had been partly his idea. “May we return to our ship meanwhile?”
Amundsen said crisply. “You will take your rest in the holding cells.”
He swept out. Northrop could not help but notice Joanita’s fluttering eyelashes, or the Commissioner’s attempt to mask his reaction as he left.
Despite his continuing tiredness, Northrop did not think he would get any real rest during the adjournment. Lying on a narrow bunk in a metal-lined cell, he tossed and turned, marvelling at the legal tangle in which he had trapped himself.
Yet at some point he must have fallen asleep. He had no idea how long it had lasted when a hand on his shoulder shook him awake.
“Roncie.”
It was the thrilling contralto of Joanita Serstos. Northrop forced his drooping eyelids open. Her face hovered over him, misty in his bleary gaze. A glistening grey tab was stuck to her temple. Had she cut herself?
“Get up. Let’s go.”
The cell door was open. Wonderingly Northrop obeyed. He rose and followed Joanita. A short walk brought them to the Investigations Room. Waiting there were: Krabbe, Bouche, Spencer, Shelley. In other words, the rest of the Enterprise’s delegation.
Each bore a grey tab on the temple, like Joanita’s. Northrop raised a hand and felt his own forehead. He had a tab, too. He tugged at it.
Joanita chuckled. “Don’t pull it off, Roncie, or you’ll fall asleep again. It won’t come off, anyway. I used adhesive.”
Northrop’s confusion was clearing. He was beginning to understand. He looked straight at the partners.
“Why?”
“We’re saving your bacon, Roncie,” Krabbe replied dryly. “Let’s get out of here.”
The party filed through the room’s main door, opposite the exit leading to the cells. An alarm began to shrill.
No one seemed perturbed by it. Down the corridor two guards lay sprawled on the floor, snoring.
Led by Boris Bouche, they headed for the skin of the Commission ship, and came to the docking port. A light was on over it, showing that a vehicle was docked on the other side. The inner door was open. O’Rourke stood by it waiting for them. His face betrayed no unusual tension, only his habitual frown of concentration—his badge of determined professionalism.
“Is everything in order, sirs?”
“Everything’s fine.”
Northrop hung back, wondering whether to run back down the corridor and lose himself in the bowels of the Invicta. He was afraid to go with the partners now they knew what he had done. They had the legal right to kill him. He felt lost, trapped, a born loser.
Seeing him about to sidle away, Krabbe glared. “What is it now, Northrop?” he snapped.
“Leave him here if that’s what he wants, Karl,” Bouche said, a dismissive sneer on his face. “It’s what he deserves.”
“There’s no point in being vindictive, Boris. Or in leaving ourselves short of a top class professional engineer. We’ve no one to replace Northrop.”
“Dummett could do it.”
Krabbe shook his head. “He’s an amateur. He doesn’t have Northrop’s qualifications.”
He advanced on the quaking Northrop. “All right, Roncie, this is what goes down. You’ve disgraced yourself, there’s absolutely no doubt about that at all. But despite everything, you can still start over. We’ll give you a chance to renew your oath to us, if you mean it this time. No jumping ship, no sending sneaky messages behind our backs. But nobody’s forcing you. You won’t go into the brig, this time.
“If that’s not good enough for you, then stay here. And face the Commission’s charges all on your own. Believe me, I wouldn’t like to be in your shoes if that happens. Amundsen will squash you like a fly.”
Northrop blanched. Krabbe pressed home his advantage.
“Tell you what, I’ll even throw in Joanita, how’s that?”
Just like she was a piece of meat, Northrop thought. Yet he had to admit that the prospect sent a thrill running through him. He couldn’t resist glancing at her sidelong. Joanita took him by the hand. “Come on, Roncie, don’t be a damned fool.”
Limply aware that in truth this was the only way out of the legal trap he had set himself, he allowed her to lead him through the port. The eight of them made the lighter’s cabin crowded. O’Rourke handled the controls. He disengaged from the port and ferried them the short distance to the Enterprise. Behind them, the Invicta lay dead in space, effectively unmanned.
Minutes later they had gathered in what was generally known as the Ops Room. Joanita was applying a freezing cold liquid to the grey patches, enabling her to peel them off. Boris Bouche rubbed the frigid sensation from his temple with his fingers. He glanced accusingly at Northrop.
“Take a lesson from this, Roncie. Some people still know how to serve their masters. Miss Serstos has behaved magnificently.”
“Yes, I think I’ve worked out why she was included on the defence team,” Northrop replied, in his best sarcastic voice. He added, “I take it you’ve used a neural damping field.”
“Obviously. But first we had to switch off the Invicta’s electronic defences. That was Joanita’s job.”
Pulling a tab off Shelley, Joanita smiled with pleasure at the praise she was receiving. “Three hours in the Commissioner’s private quarters! That old stick is sure going to be mad when he wakes up.”
Krabbe too had a broad smile on his face. “Bureaucrats are such fools! All she had to do was flutter her eyelashes and Amundsen was practically giving her the keys to the kingdom!”
You had to hand it to the partners, Northrop thought. They really knew how to exploit people’s talents.
A neural damper was not a common device, but as a pursuit ship the Invicta would be protected against that and similar perils by a buffer field. The partners’ answer was simple. Get Joanita to disable the buffer.
The grey tabs were an antidote. They stimulated the brain’s mechanism for consciousness arousal, the ascending reticular system, and so kept one awake even inside a damping field. Joanita would have been wearing one when she turned the buffer off. O’Rourke, watching like a spider on the Enterprise, would have seen the buffer go down and projected the damper in almost the same instant. With everyone around her unconscious, all Joanita had to do then was find her way to the cells and apply tabs to the partners and their bondmen.
A most resourceful woman. An asset to the firm of Krabbe & Bouche, Partners.
Northrop wondered briefly if he had unwittingly played a part in the theatrical performance at the hearing. Had his defection already become known?
No, he didn’t think so. Krabbe’s shock had been genuine.
“A neural damper,” he repeated. “That’s illegal technology.”
He had not seen it or the reticular stimulator before, though he had heard the latter could be a mind-bending torture instrument, keeping a victim awake indefinitely. Bouche answered with a dirty chuckle.