"I thought it would be you two.... No, don"t move!"
A big muscular figure silhouetted against the starlight, and a smaller, puny, thin-legged figure. Raj Shiva and his co-pilot.
"A hundred credits each, Handus," Raj Shiva said as he ran down the ramp. "Can you keep the girl from getting away?"
Handus rushed down at his heels.
Pandit met Raj Shiva at the foot of the ramp. Pandit was a big man by Ophiuchan standards, but Raj Shiva was bigger. "Run, Sria!" Pandit cried, and met the giant with his knife.
Raj Shiva parried the blow with his forearm, then his big hands moved swiftly and the knife clattered to the floor. Sria ran for the ramp, her bare feet padding swiftly against the stone floor. Handus was waiting for her at the foot of the ramp in an awkward crouch. She had a glimpse of Raj Shiva and Pandit straining together, then Handus struck her with his balled fist. It was a puny blow, but Sria staggered back, her jaw numb. Laughing shrilly, Handus leaped at her. She was shoved back, tripped over something, and fell. For a moment all the lights blinked out inside her head.
Inside--no! Raj Shiva and Pandit stumbled about the room, struck something, there was a loud popping sound, a tinkling, and the lights in the storage room went out.
"Where is she?" Handus called. "I can"t find her!"
She heard him groping about, heard the others struggling together. She got to her feet and stood perfectly still, waiting for anything. She wished she had a weapon--something--she was only a woman--
Then a voice whispered: "Hurry, Sria! Hurry!"
"Pandit?"
He took her arm in the darkness. She couldn"t see him. They went to the crates and wrestled one on their trundle-sled.
"Not the open one?" Sria gasped.
"No. No."
They heard footsteps.... Saw a figure for a moment silhouetted against starlight. Handus was fleeing, probably for help.
They took their sled out into the night and dragged it across the sand toward their waiting jet. They loaded the crate in the cargo bay. While Pandit was finishing the job in the darkness, Sria sat down at the controls.
"Ready?" she shouted above the whine of the jets.
Pandit said that he was. She hardly heard his voice.
A moment later, she took the small cargo jet up.
She heard Pandit moving in the small cabin behind her. She said: "We ought to take it to the League authorities, don"t you think?" She had to shout to be heard above the whining roar of the jets.
"Why?"
"I was able to read the writing. It"s Procyonian, Pandit. Do you know anything about the Procyonians?"
"Well, a few centuries ago, they were the most warlike people in the galaxy. It was rumored they had a cache of thermonuclear bombs hidden somewhere, after such weapons were outlawed in the twenty-fifth century.
The cache was never found, until tonight. We found it, Pandit."
"But Orkap and--"
"That"s true. It was found by the Denebians first. Don"t you see, Pandit? Orkap and the others, private Denebian traders. It wasn"t the government. It never is the government these days. But unscrupulous individuals, Pandit, armed with two dozen hydrogen bombs--why, they could take over their own world on threat of imminent destruction, or some outworld plum they had their eye on, or--"
"I see." Pandit"s voice was barely audible above the whine of the jets.
"It"s a job the Galactic League can handle," Sria went on. "Now that it"s out in the open--or will be as soon as we get to the s.p.a.cefield.
You"ve done your work, Pandit, and your people won"t forget you for it.
As for me, my work here is finished too."
"Your work?"
Above the roar of the jet, Sria shouted: "Yes. I am Johnny Mayhem." She smiled in the darkness. Johnny Mayhem, she thought, in a girl"s body.
Well, he"d been young men and old, weak and strong, sick and healthy, human and alien outworlder--so why not a girl too?
All at once Pandit"s hand lay heavily on her shoulder. She turned around and in the darkness but with the lights of the instrument board on it saw the gleam of a knife blade. The face beyond the blade, leering from darkness, was not Pandit"s. She hadn"t actually known it was Pandit. She hadn"t seen him. She"d hardly been able to hear his voice.
It was Raj Shiva.
"Fly us to Denebian Exports," he said, "or I"ll kill you and do it myself."
"You"re making a mistake. Your people belong with the Galactic League, not with a handful of adventurers who--"
"The Denebians are right," Raj Shiva said fanatically. "My people would be better off left alone."
"I"m flying this jet to the s.p.a.ceport--and the League."
"I"ll kill you. I know all about you, Mayhem. You"re not a woman, really. You"re not even a native. That"s a dead body, isn"t it? But if I kill it--again--while you"re in it, you die to. You"ll do what I say!"
This very night, unless something was done about it, the cache of thermonuclear weapons would be s.p.a.ce-bound, the first hydrogen bombs loose in the galaxy for almost five hundred years. Wouldn"t mankind ever begin to learn? Mayhem-Sria thought wearily. He knew the answer, of course: most men would, but the few who refused could bring destruction to an entire galaxy....
Moments before, apparent success of a mission. Now, failure. Or death.
Or both.
Sria"s hand flashed out suddenly and struck the instrument board. The jet plummeted earthward with a loud whining sound. Sria felt herself shoved back by the tremendous acceleration into the cushions of the pilot chair. She heard a wild exclamation from Raj Shiva, but couldn"t turn around to see what had happened. Grim-lipped, she kept the ship hurtling Earthward. She knew it was dangerous and might even prove disastrous. Her body could take so much, then she would black out. But if she didn"t maintain the dive until the last possible instant, Raj Shiva would get control of the ship and its vital cargo. She was only a girl, but she was protected by the crash-padding of the pilot chair. Raj Shiva, unprotected, was behind her somewhere....
Down through the thin upper atmosphere of Ophiuchus IX screamed the small ship, its heat-dial blinking on and off in warning as friction scorched its thin sh.e.l.l. The scream of air became more deep-throated as the atmosphere became thicker....
Ten thousand feet.
Eight thousand.
Six.
Sria"s eyes saw black. Her breath was labored. Needles of pain darted in her skull, plucked at her eyes. She opened her mouth to scream but heard nothing. She felt as if she must be forced clear through the protective cushions of the pilot chair.