The music swung deafeningly upward. The girl, eyes agleam, moved inward, coming to life, dancing bouncily on the outer edges of her feet, lifting the knife, bending to circle and display it to the watchers, letting it sparkle in the dimmed spotlight. The hapless victim danced too, but it was the death-dance of a cocooned fly twitching at the end of his silken cord while waiting for the spider who had snared him to suck him dry.
Gardner clenched his teeth. He had seen death before, but never death administered so casually, so brutally.
The killing of an individual, he thought, is tragic murder. But the killing of a planet…
The girl came forward, knife held high, preparing now for the final moment, the climax, the moment of truth—
Then the lights went on.
Gardner felt the wrench back into reality with a painful, jarring tug. It was like being abruptly awakened, and even awakening from a nightmare can be a wrench. He knew that the impact on the others, who had been so closely bound up in the bloody little drama, must have been even more violent.
The dancers were frozen in midfloor, looking merely naked and no longer nude. Their eyes were vacant, their arms dangled limply, their shoulders slumped. Blood trickled in little runnels down their skin. They seemed totally bewildered at all around them, as though they had been transported here in the twinkling of an eye from some far-off cosmos where only the two of them had existed.
After the first frozen moment, Gardner reacted, glancing toward the door.
Four uniformed Lurioni stood there.
It’s a raid, he thought wildly. He was right. Once the immediate instant of surprise was over, the patrons of the bar came to life, jumping up, making a scrambling dash for the rear doors, the windows, any available exit they could find.
“Don’t panic,” Smee said quietly. “Come with me and we’ll get out of here.”
Gardner felt Smee’s powerful hand gripping his wrist once again, this time not holding him down but lifting him up, pulling him bodily from his seat. Gardner looked back and saw the four policemen marching into the bar, laying about them in vicious glee with heavy wooden truncheons. Half a dozen of the bar’s Lurioni patrons lay sprawled unconscious on the floor, blood welling from their scalps. The two dancers stood grotesquely together in the dance area, covered with their own1 blood. They were holding hands, joining forces in their mute, bewildered way against the sudden and violent encroachment of the outer world.
Then Gardner felt a sharp, socket-wrenching tug on his arm.
“Come on,” Smee whispered harshly. “Don’t stand around gawking. I know the way out.”
They darted toward the rear of the bar, and Smee put his shoulder to a door that led to the kitchen. Someone had bolted the door from within, but it gave way, with a great splintering of wood, after the fourth blow from the burly little man’s shoulder. Smee rushed through, beckoning behind him for Gardner to follow.
Breathless, Gardner raced along at Smee’s heels. He heard shouting behind him, but did not stop to see who was protesting. They passed through a small, incredibly dirty kitchen, made a sharp turn, then thundered down a dark flight of stairs.
Another locked door confronted them. Smee grabbed the handle, wrenched, pushed inward. The door gave way. He yanked it open and they stepped outside.
They found themselves in a deserted-looking alley. From behind them came the sounds of shouted pain, and rising above that the keen, piercing shrieks of Lurioni laughter.
For a moment they stood still, catching their breaths. Gardner felt himself trembling from the exertion, and impatiently stiffened in a half successful attempt to regain control.
“We’re safe here,” Smee said. “But we can’t stay here. Someone from one of the adjoining buildings might see us down here and telephone the police.”
“How do we get out?”
“Just follow me.”
Smee led him along the alleyway in a direction that traveled away from the raided building. As they walked, Gardner demanded angrily, “Why didn’t you tell me that you were taking me to an illegal place? What would have happened if the police had caught us and given us some kind of truth-check? You could have wrecked the whole project.”
Smee turned around and stared at him blandly. “I assure you I had no idea we were going to be raided.”
“But you took the chance.”
“I did not. The place isn’t illegal. Besides the police never arrest anyone.”
“Huh? But why did they come busting in there, then? It looked like a raid to me.”
The short man snickered. “The police must have been bored tonight,” Smee said. “They felt like having a raid, so they had one. The place was breaking no law. Those knife-dancers are perfectly permissible.”
“What was the excuse for the raid, then?”
“Preventive discipline, I think they call it here. It means that a pack of policemen break into a place and bang people around with truncheons just to show them that there is some law on Lurion, and that they enforce it strictly.”
“That’s a lovely law enforcement system.”
“It’s the way this planet works,” Smee said. “That was why I wanted you to stay for the show.”
“You knew it was going to be raided?”
“No. I knew there was a chance of a raid. There always is, wherever you go on Lurion. I simply wanted you to see the dance, to see the forms of entertainment that pass for good clean fun on this world. You were lucky enough to see how they keep the law here, too.”
“It was risky. Suppose one of us got beaten to death by the police?”
Smee shrugged. “You risk your life every time you step outside your room. What do you want to do, hibernate until the team is complete?”
Gardner shook his head. “No, no, you’re right. It’s good to see what sort of a world this is.”
“I keep going,” Smee said. “I need constant reassurance. But every day I prove to myself again that this planet is evil; that nothing worthwhile will be destroyed when this planet is destroyed.” He shouldered his way out of the alley and into the street. “I wish I didn’t have to keep thinking about it. But you don’t snuff out a world as calmly as you’d cap a candle.”
“I know,” Gardner said hollowly. “I’m learning that a hundred times a day.”
A light late-evening drizzle was falling, now; the air was warm and muggy, and his clothing clung stickily to his skin. But, inside, Gardner felt chilled. Smee looked completely sober now.
“We’d better not see each other again,” Smee said. “Not until the time comes. We’ll only depress each other otherwise.”
“All right. Not until the time comes.”
“I’ll leave for Continent East at the end of the week.”
“Don’t rush about it,” Gardner said. “Good night, Smee. And thanks for letting me see that show tonight. It makes me feel easier about what we have to do.”
“Good night,” Smee said.
Chapter V
They parted, going in separate directions. Smee trudged off wearily to the left and Gardner headed the Other way. After a while he paused, standing alone in the rainy Lurioni night. The night was moonless, and the mugginess even hid the stars behind a purplish haze.
Oddly, the strange exhibition of sadism and vicarious cruelty that he had just witnessed had calmed and soothed, rather than upset “him. It was the kind of unmitigatedly evil entertainment that he had hoped to find flourishing on Lurion.