Then, slowly, there was silence.
The guard bowed. “They’re gone now, sir. Come on out if you wish.”
Langley stepped into the shambles of his living room. There was a haze of smoke, burned plastic, the thin bitter reek of ozone. Furniture was trampled wreckage between the bulky, armored shapes which filled the chamber.
“What happened?” he yelled.
“Easy, sir.” The squad commander threw back his helmet; the shaven head looked tiny, poking out of the metal and fabric that incased its body. “You’re all right. Would you like a sedative?”
“I asked you what happened!” Langley wanted to smash the impassive face. “Go on, tell me, I order you.”
“Very good, sir. Two small, armed spaceships attacked us just outside.” The commander pointed to the sharded window. “While one engaged our boats, the other discharged several men in space armor with antigravity flying units, who broke into the suite. Some of them stood off our reinforcements coming through the door—one of them grabbed your slave—then we rallied, more men came, and they retreated. No casualties on either side, I believe; it was a very brief action. Luckily they failed to get you, sir.”
“Who were they?”
“I don’t know, sir. Their equipment was not standard for any known military or police force. I think one of our aircraft has slapped a tracer beam on them, but it can’t follow them outside the atmosphere and that’s doubtless where they’ll go. But relax, sir. You’re safe.”
Yeah. Safe. Langley choked and turned away. He felt drained of strength.
Chanthavar showed up within an hour. His face was carefully immobile as he surveyed the ruin. “They got away, all right,” he said. “But it doesn’t matter too much, since they failed.”
“Who were they, do you know?” asked Langley dully.
“No, I couldn’t say. Probably Centaurian, possibly Society. It’ll be investigated, of course.” Chanthavar struck a cigarette. “In a way, it’s a hopeful sign. When a spy resorts to strongarm methods, he’s usually getting desperate.”
“Look here.” Langley grabbed his arm. “You’ve got to find them. You’ve got to get that girl back. Do you understand?”
Chanthavar drew hard on his cigarette, sucking in his cheeks till the high bones stood out. His eyes were speculative on the American. “So she means that much to you already?” he asked.
“No- Well- It’s plain decency! You can’t let her be torn apart by them, looking for something she doesn’t know.”
“She’s only a slave,” shrugged Chanthavar. “Apparently, she was snatched impulsively when they were repelled from your quarters. It doesn’t mean a thing. I’ll give you a duplicate of her if it’s that important to you.”
“No!”
“All right, have it your way. But if you try to trade information for her—”
“I won’t,” said Langley. His lie had become a mechanical reflex. “I haven’t anything to trade—not yet, anyway.”
“I’ll do everything in my power,” said Chanthavar. He clapped Langley’s shoulder with a brief, surprising friendliness. “Now back to bed for you. I prescribe twelve hours” worth of sleep-drug.”
Langley took it without protest. It would be something to escape the sense of his own utter helplessness. He fell into an abyss without dreams, without memory.
Waking, he found that repairs had been made while he slept; the fight last night might never have happened. Afternoon sunlight gleamed off the ships patrolling beyond his window. A doubled guard. Locking the barn door—no, the horse hadn’t been stolen after all, had it?
His mind gnawed the problem like a starving dog with an old bone from which all nourishment has gone. Marin... because she had come near him, she was gone into darkness; because she had been kind to him, she was given over to fear and captivity and torment. So this was how it felt to be a Jonah.
Was it only that she looked like Peggy? Was it herself? Was it the principle of the thing? Whatever the anguish in him derived from, it was there.
He thought of calling Brannoch, calling Valti, throwing his accusation into their faces and- And what? They would deny it. He would surely not be allowed to go see them any more. Several times he called Chanthavar’s office, to be informed by a maddeningly polite secretary that he was out on business. He smoked endlessly, paced the floor, threw himself into a chair and got up again. Now and then he ran through his whole stock of curses and obscenities. None of it helped.
Night came, and he drugged himself into another long sleep. Drugs might be the way he ended up—or suicide, quicker and cleaner. He thought of stepping out on his balcony and over the side. That would finish the whole mess. A well-designed robot would mop up his spattered remnants and for him this universe would no longer exist.
In the afternoon, a call came. He sprang for the phone, stumbled, fell to the floor, and got up swearing. The hand that switched it on shook uncontrollably.
Chanthavar’s face smiled with an unusual warmth. “I’ve got good news for you, captain,” he said, “we’ve found the girl.”
Briefly, his mind would not accept it. The weary groove of futility was worn so deep that he could not climb out. He stared, open-mouthed, hearing the words as if from far away:
“... She was sitting on a bridgeway, rather dazed, when picked up. Post-anesthetic reaction, she’s coming out of it already. There was no deep mental probing done, I’m sure, perhaps only a mild narcosynthesis—no harm done at all that I can see. She’s been unconscious all the time, doesn’t know a thing. I’m sending her over now.” Chanthavar grinned.
The impact trickled slowly through the barriers of craziness. Langley knelt, wanting to cry or pray or both, but nothing would come out.” Then he began to laugh.
The hysteria had faded by the time she entered. But it was the most natural thing in the world to embrace her. She held him close, shaking with reaction.
Finally they sat together on a couch, holding hands. She told him what she could. “I was seized, carried into the ship, someone pointed a stun gun at me and then there’s nothing more. The next thing I remember is sitting on the bridgeway bench, being carried along. I must have been put onto it, led there in a sleep-walking state, and left. I felt dizzy. Then a policeman came and took me to Minister Chanthavar’s office. He asked me questions, had me given a medical checkup, and said nothing seemed wrong. So he sent me back here.”
“I don’t get it,” said Langley. “I don’t understand it at all.”
“Minister Chanthavar said apparently I was taken on the chance I might be of value... when they failed to get you. I was kept unconscious so I wouldn’t be able to identify anybody, asked a few simple questions under narcosynthesis, and released when it was clear I could be of no help.” She sighed, smiling a little tremulously at him. “I’m glad they let me go.” He knew she didn’t mean it only for herself.
He swallowed the drink he had prepared and sat without speaking for a while. His mind felt oddly clarified, but the past hours of nightmare underlay it.
So this was what it meant. This was what Sol and Centauri stood for, a heartless power game, where no one counted, no act was too vile. A stiffened robot of a civilization which should have been long in its grave but walked with corruption under its armor; a brawling, killing barbarism, stagnant and sterile even as it boasted of virility; a few ambitious men, and a billion harmless humans turned into radioactive gas. The moment one side felt it had an advantage, it would be on the other’s back, and the struggle would lay planets waste. This was what he was supposed to sanction.
He still knew little about the Society; they were surely no collection of pure-minded altruists. But it did seem that they were neutral, that they had no lunacies about empire. Surely they knew more of the galaxy, had a better chance of finding him some young world where he could again be a man.