Donna Creery looked again at the viewports and sighed. "I don't know why Father isn't here," she said, "but we dare not wait any longer. I'll send him a message and we'll go. Even the Machine's normal radar beam might reach out this far; we've got to get out of range." She smiled. "It isn't only for your sake, you know. If that collar were triggered in this little ship . . ."
She pursed her lips gravely and shook her head.
15
Ryeland was deep in a dream of an armless, legless blonde with Oporto's grinning face coming at him with a sonic hacksaw. When the earth began to shake, his body vibrated like a harpstring . . . and he awoke. Donna Creery was leaning over him.
Uncomfortably he stretched and rubbed his tingling hands and ankles. It took him several seconds to wake up. Not unusual; the sleep that spans interplanetary distances is not lightly thrown off. They had put themselves under for what was to have been a voyage of a hundred and fifty days. Were they at the end of it already?
But Donna's face was worried, and there was a loud excited mewing from the ship's cargo lock. Ryeland groaned and tried to shake the aches out of his bones. Thank heaven they were in space, he thought. The mild thrust of Hohmann-minima orbits kept the endless contact of body-to-bed from producing the bed sores and bruises that would have been inevitable on Earth. "Steven!" the girl cried frantically.
"Sorry," he mumbled, shook himself and woke up at last. "What's the matter?"
"Chiquita's gone crazy!" He grunted and climbed up, peering into the cargo hold. The spaceling was flashing about the lock like a torn on the trail of a skulking mouse. She was mewing frantically.
"Are we here?"
"No, Steven! But Chiquita got so excited that she triggered the alarms and woke me up. We should be traveling for days yet!"
"All right. Let's see what's bothering her."
"But there's nothing to see. We're in deep space now, Steven. Far out beyond Pluto—and yet surely not as far as the Reefs. There couldn't possibly be anything here that could bother her. . ."
She stopped, listening.
Both of them heard it at the same moment. It was an irritated hammering sound.
They stared at each other.
It came again, a muffled banging on their ship's hull. "Let's take a look," Ryeland said grimly. The viewports showed nothing, but on the outer door of the airlock was a small window, shielded against chance radiation. Ryeland slipped the catch and slid open the shields.
A man stared in, with an expression of impatient annoyance.
A man!
Ryeland and the girl looked at each other and then at the face that peered in on them. It was quite impossible. But it was undeniably true.
The man did not even wear a spacesuit. He wore a ragged blanket, hammering on the valve of the airlock with the handle of a long knife. He was a lean little red-bearded man, not young.
Donna cried out suddenly. "Steven! I know him. His name is Qui-veras. Why, he brought Chiquita to Earth—to rescue Donderevo from the stockpile." She hesitated, then said abruptly: "Open the lock, Steven."
"What?"
"Open the lock, man!"
"But the air-"
"Oh, there's no worry about that," she said impatiently. "Look!" She pointed behind the man's head where a smooth-lined shape rippled. Another spaceling! No wonder Chiquita had been so upset; undoubtedly she had sensed its presence, a creature like herself though larger and darker. "He's got his own air. The spaceling carried it. How do you suppose he lives? Open the lock!"
Ryeland hesitated. Reason told him the girl was right; there could be no other explanation. Reason was certain; but his emotional conditioning against opening a door to the great exploding suck of space was too powerful to give in to mere reason without combat; it took a great deal of self-discipline for Ryeland to turn the valve key. But he did it. A metallic whine; a hiss of equalizing pressure. And the lock was open, and they were still breathing air—queerly scented air, with a faint, hot, chemical bouquet, but not unpleasant.
The little man hurried inside.
He whistled sharply and his spaceling followed. It was a red-nosed, stub-winged seal, its nose pulsing with red light. Its huge eyes peered around the chamber; it was whining shrilly with pleasure and excitement.
"Wait!" cried the little man. The spaceling was frantic, but obedient; it paused in the lock while the man spun the closing valve. Then Qui-veras said, "All right, Adam. Go meet your friend."
The two spacelings flew at each other.
Around and around the narrow cargo compartment they spun, mewing and purring in soprano-baritone counterpoint. Quiveras grinned. "Ah, the children! How happy to see each other they are!" He bowed and took off his rag of a hat. "And I, sir and madam. I am Quintano Quiveras, your humble servant."
He looked again at Donna Creery and smiled with real pleasure. "Ah, the Planner's daughter! It is good to see you! And you, sir; it is good to see you as well, though I do not as yet know your name."
"Steve Ryeland." He put out his hand, and gravely they shook.
Donna managed to say: "We're pleased to see you too, Mr. Quiveras. But-"
"But what is Quiveras doing here?" The man smiled and bowed again. "Ah, perhaps I may help. My Adam felt the presence of Chiquita here." He reached out and stroked the golden she-spaceling; the two of them hung poised, their flanks touching, just behind him. "So he wished to join you; and then, there is another reason." The smile left his face. "My Adam and I, we have been watching you for some time. Adam has excellent vision, apart from the way that spacelings have of knowing another spaceling is near even when vision is of no use. And Adam saw something. With his help, I saw it too."
"What's that?"
"Why," said Quiveras seriously, "perhaps you do not know it, but you are being followed by a heavy war rocket of the Plan of Man."
Involuntarily Ryeland's fingers stole up to touch his collar. Donna Creery's face turned chalk-white. Their signal to the Planner must have been intercepted; Fleemer knew where they were.
The equations of military affairs in open space admit of only one solution: The faster vessel could always force battle on the slower. The logic of the radar-pulse that would trigger the collar on Ryeland's neck made it certain that the battle could be decided only one way. If they fled, the Plan cruiser would overtake them. If they stopped their jets, it would calculate course and position from the last recorded points with no chance whatsoever of error. The jets made a magnificent target, their light and heat a beacon for a million miles. Every effort at escape would plot another blip on the Plan cruiser's thermal screens.
And then the radar pulse would detonate the collar.
Ryeland said harshly: "Can we fight? Are there any arms on the ship?"
Quiveras's gnarled face took on an expression of surprise. "Fight against the Plan? Oh, no, my young friend. We do not fight them; that is their way. We follow our way. We merely run away." He nodded. "We are some millions of miles from the Reefs, yes; it is a considerable journey. But at the end of the journey is freedom. Perhaps even—" he followed Ryeland's stroking fingers on the collar with his eyes—"freedom from that thing about your neck."
"We have no lifeboat!"
Quiveras pursed his lips. He pointed to the two spacelings, frolicking about.
Ryeland said with quick comprehension: "The jetless drive! Of course. They can get us away from our rocket, and as they do not use thermal propulsion, the Plan ship won't be able to spot them. But—the female is injured, Quiveras. She almost killed me before, in just a few minutes in space. Look." He indicated the ridged scars Colonel Gottling had left on her golden fur.