“You could be so. We kill the weaklingss young.”
“It’s been done by my race, now and then, but the custom never lasted long. Something in our nature seems to forbid it.”
“And yet you can desstroy a world for your own ambitions. I shall newer undersstand you.”
“I doubt we’ll ever understand ourselves.” Langley rubbed his neck, thinking. “Could it be that because we’re non-telepaths, each of us isolated from all the others, every individual develops in his own way? Your people have their emotional empathy; the Thrymans, I’ve read, share thoughts directly. In cases like that, the individual is, in a way, under the control of the whole race. But in man, each of us is always alone, we have to find our own separate ways and we grow apart.”
“It may be. I am astonished at what I hawe learned of your diwersity. I sometimess t’ink your folk iss the despair and the hope of the uniwerse.”
Langley yawned. He ached with weariness, now that the stimulant had worn off. “To hell with it. I’m for some sack time.”
He was wakened hours later by the crash of an explosion. As he sat up, he heard blasters going off.
14
Another blowup shivered through walls and into Langley’s bones. Somebody screamed, somebody else cursed, and there were running feet in the corridors. As he tumbled into his clothes and snatched his energy gun out, he wanted to vomit. Somehow they had failed, somehow the rebellion of pawns was broken and the game went on.
He flattened himself against the archaic manual door of the room given him and opened it a crack. There was a stink of burned flesh outside. Two gray-clad corpses sprawled in the passage, but the fight had swept past. Langley stepped out.
There was noise up ahead of him, toward the assembly chamber. He ran in that direction with some blind idea of opening up on the attackers from behind. A bitter wind was clearing smoke away and he gasped for breath. A remote part of him realized that the entry port had been blown open and the thin mountain air was rushing in.
Now—the doorway! He burst through, squeezing the trigger of his blaster. There was no recoil, but the beam hissed wide of the back he wanted. He didn’t know how to aim a modern gun, how to outwit a modern mind, how to do anything. Understanding of the technique came just as someone spun around on a heel and kicked expertly with the other foot. Langley’s blaster was torn loose, clattered to the floor, and he stared into a dozen waiting muzzles.
Valti’s crew was gathered around Saris Hronna. Their hands were lifted sullenly, they had been overpowered in the assault and were giving up. The Holatan crouched on all fours, his eyes a yellow blaze.
Brannoch dhu Crombar let out a shout of Homeric laughter. “So there you are!” he cried. “Greetings, Captain Langley!” He towered over the tight-packed fifty of his men. The scarred face was alight with boisterous good humor. “Come join the fun.”
“Saris—” groaned the American.
“Please.” Brannoch elbowed a way over to him. “Credit me with some brains. I had purely mechanical weapons made for half my party, several days ago—percussion caps of mercury fulminate setting off a chemical explosion—thunderish hard to shoot straight with ’em, but at close quarters we can fill you with lead and he’s powerless to stop it.”
“I see.” Langley felt surrender in himself, the buckling of all hope. “But how did you find us?”
Marin entered. She stood in the doorway looking at them with her face congealed to a mask, the face of a slave.
Brannoch jerked a thumb at her. “The girl, of course,” he said. “She told us.”
Her inhuman composure ripped. “No!” she stammered. “I never—”
“Not consciously, my dear,” said Brannoch. “But while you were under your final surgery, a posthypnotic command was planted by a conditioning machine. Very powerful, such an order -. impossible to break it. If Saris was found, you were to notify me of the circumstances at the first opportunity. Which, I see, you did.”
She watched him with a mute horror. Langley heard a thundering in his head.
Very distantly, he made out the Centaurian’s rumble: “You might as well know, captain. It was I who took your friends. They couldn’t tell me anything, and against my wishes they... died. I’m sorry.”
Langley turned away from him. Marin began to weep.
Valti cleared his throat. “A nice maneuver, my lord. Very well executed. But there is the matter of several casualties among my own people. I’m afraid the Society can’t permit that sort of thing. There will have to be restitution.”
“Including Saris Hronna, no doubt?” Brannoch grinned without humor.
“Of course. And reparations according to the weregild schedule set by treaty. Otherwise the Society will have to apply sanctions to your system.”
“Withdrawal of trade?” snorted Brannoch. “We can do without your cargoes. And just try to use military force!”
“Oh, no, my lord,” said Valti mildly. “We are a humane people. But we do have a large share in the economic life of every planet where we have offices. Investments, local companies owned by us—if necessary, we could do deplorable things to your economy. It isn’t as rigid as Sol’s, you know. I doubt if your people would take kindly to...say... catastrophic inflation when we released several tons of the praseodymium which is your standard, followed by depression and unemployment when a number of key corporations retired from business.”
“I see,” said Brannoch, unmoved. “I didn’t intend to use more force on you than necessary, but you drive me to it. If your entire personnel here disappeared without trace—I’ll have to think about it. I’d miss our gambling games.”
“I’ve already filed a report to my chiefs, my lord; I was only waiting for their final orders. They know where I am.”
“But do they know who raided you? It could be fixed to throw the blame on Chanthavar. Yes. An excellent idea.”
Brannoch turned back to Langley. He had to grip the spaceman’s shoulder hard to attract his attention. “Look here,” he asked, “does this beast of yours speak any modern language?”
“No,” said Langley, “and if you think I’m going to be your interpreter, you’ve got another think coming.”
The heavy face looked pained. “I wish you’d stop considering me a fiend, captain. I have my duty. I don’t hold any grudge against you for trying to get away from me; if you cooperate, my offer still stands. If not, I’ll have to execute you, and nothing will be gained. We’ll teach Saris the language and make him work anyhow. All you could do is slow us up a little.” He paused. “I’d better warn you, though. If you try to sabotage the project once it’s under way, the punishment will be stiff.”
“Go ahead, then,” said Langley. He didn’t care, not any more. “What do you want to say to him?”
“We want to take him to Thor, where he’ll aid us in building a nullifier. If anything goes wrong through his doing, he’ll die, and robot ships will be sent to bombard his planet. They’ll take a thousand years to get there, but they’ll be sent. If, on the other hand he helps us, he’ll be returned home.” Brannoch shrugged. “Why should he care which party wins out? It’s not his species.”
Langley translated into English, almost word for word. Saris stood quiet for a minute, then:
“Iss grief in you, my friend.”
“Yeah,” said Langley. “Reckon so. What do you want to do?”
The Holatan looked thoughtful. “Iss hard to say. I hawe little choice at pressent. Yet from what I know of today’ss uniwerse, iss not best to aid Sol or Centauri.”
“Brannoch has a point,” said Langley. “We’re just another race. Except for the Society offering you a little better deal, it doesn’t affect your people.”
“But it doess. Wrongness in life, anywhere in all space, iss wrongness. Iss, for instance, chance that some day someone findss out a for traweling faster than light met’od. Then one race on the wrong pat” iss a general menace. Also to itself, since other outraged planetss might unite to exterminate it.”