The Five Gold Bands (13 page)

Fay, Fay, Fay!” cried Paddy. “Why didn’t you leave the wretched world when you had the chance?”

She smiled wanly. “Paddy, I couldn’t leave you. I knew I should. I knew my life was more important to Earth than to you. I knew all the things that the Agency drilled into me— but still I couldn’t leave without trying to help. And they trapped the ship.”

They stood in a wide concrete hall, a hundred yards long, high-ceilinged, illuminated with a glow that seemed blue and yellow at the same time, like strong moonlight.

Paddy looked in all directions. “Can they hear us now?”

Fay said dully, “I imagine that every sound we make is amplified and recorded.”

Paddy moved close, and said softly into Fay’s ear, “They want to trade us our lives.”

She looked at him with wide eyes that still held traces of terror. “Paddy—I want to
live!
”

Paddy said between his teeth. “I want you to live too, Fay—and me with you.”

She said desperately, “Paddy, I’ve thought the whole thing out. And I don’t see what we gain by holding our tongues. The Kotons will get the space-drive—but what then?

“Earth wouldn’t have it in any event since we’ve got only four fifths. And the four fifths”—she breathed in his ear in a whisper so low he could hardly hear—“I can dictate from memory.”

“From—” Paddy gasped.

“Yes. I told you once I was trained for that.”

“Hmm.”

Fay said softly, “If we were able to keep silent no one would have space-drive. In ten years there’s be no more star travel. On the other hand, if we told what we know—and if we can get back to Earth—then Earth will have as much as we have now.”

“Which is as good as nothing,” Paddy said bitterly. “Of the thirty numbers you only know twenty-four. Twenty-four dial-settings.”

He paused, blinked. A picture came into his mind from a past that seemed remote as ancient Egypt. It was the interior of the manifolding shop on Akhabats, where the five Sons came to curl power into the tungsten cylinders. Five panels, each with three dials.

“Fay,” said Paddy, “I’m not fit to live.”

She looked at him in alarm. “What’s the matter?”

Paddy said slowly, “I see it all now and I see it clear. We’ve been abysmal fools. I’ve been the worse one. Now on these sheets”—he leaned to her ear—“remember the duplications?”

“Oh, Paddy!”

He said, “When I broke into that shop on Akhabats I saw a curling machine. There were fifteen control knobs. Those data sheets show six readings to a sheet—thirty in all. Does that mean anything?”

She nodded. “There are duplicates of the numbers too. Paddy—we had it all!”

“
All
of it,” said Paddy. “We didn’t need to come to Koto any closer than the Southern Cross.”

Fay winced.

“We’ve got to get away,” said Paddy with great energy.

“Somehow. Because in that little cap of yours you’ve got space-drive.”

Fay shook her head sadly. “They won’t let us go, Paddy. Even if we tell everything we know they’d still kill us.”

“Not till we’d blown the fuses in all their nerve-suits.”

“Oh Paddy! Let’s think—think!”

They thought. Paddy said, “He’s hot after us, that Zhri Khainga, he’s got the wind up. But why? Maybe word has got out to the other planets that he’s caught us and all the spies and agents and secret services are going into action and he doesn’t want to chance our holding out till the others get to see us.”

There was a moment of silence. “Think,” muttered Fay.

“Listen here,” said Paddy. “We’ll tell him that you’ll go out to get the sheets and I’ll stay as a hostage. Then you go to Earth and we’ll spring the news that we know all there is to know about space-drive. Then you buy me back for twenty space-drives more or less.”

“At the going rate,” said Fay dryly, “that’s twenty million marks. Are you worth that much?”

“That’s the best I can think up,” said Paddy. “There’s no other way of getting us both out alive and the drive to Earth.”

“Zhri Khainga won’t like it,” said Fay. “He’ll want us to trust him. After he gets the sheets—
then
he turns us loose.”

“I wonder,” said Paddy. “What?”

“Could it be that he’d agree to all of us going? We’d take him to you-know-where alone—and there we’d switch.”

Fay said breathlessly, “It would be fair that way and he’d be getting the quick action he seems to want. Let’s ask.”

Stepping gingerly past the ranked crew members, conscious of the oyster-colored gaze, Paddy and Fay entered the familiar cabin which had taken them so far.

Zhri Khainga followed them, the port was slammed shut, they were cast adrift from the mother ship. Paddy and Fay stood stiffly, silently by the control deck; Zhri Khainga took a seat back in the cabin and leaned back at his ease.

“Now,” he said, “I have complied exactly with your conditions. Here is your space-boat—we are alone. Take me to the hiding place of the data, I will call my own vessel, you may leave me and go your way in friendship. I have done my part. See to it that you keep good faith.”

Paddy looked at Fay, rubbed his nose uneasily. “Well, now, to tell the truth, we’d like to look the ship over. Some of your men—by mistake, I’m saying might be asleep in the bilges or checking stores in the forward locker.”

Zhri Khainga nodded. “By all means satisfy yourselves. In the meantime,” he turned to Fay, “perhaps you will put your ship on course.”

Wordlessly Fay climbed up into the seat, threw the boat into space-drive and the vessel which had brought them from Koto twinkled an enormous distance astern.

Paddy came back. “Nothing,” he grumbled. “Not hair nor hide.”

Zhri Khainga nodded his head sardonically. “It troubles you that I keep to the terms of the bargain?”

Paddy muttered under his breath. Fay sat looking into the blank outside the port. Suddenly she pulled back the space-drive arm. The boat surged and sang into normal continuum once more.

“Look outside, Paddy,” she said. “Around the hull.”

“That’s it,” said Paddy. He pulled an air-suit from the rack, stepped in, zipped up the seam, set the bubble on his head while Zhri Khainga watched without words.

Paddy vanished outside the lock and Fay waited beside the controls, covertly eyeing the Koton, trying to fathom the weft of plot and plan below the dome of the shaven pate.

“I am thinking,” said Zhri Khainga, “of great deeds. The wealth of any imagining shall be mine. I will give a quadrant of the planet to the plain of Arma-Geth—it shall be extended.

“Mountains will be leveled, the plain will be floored with black glass. So shall the statues dwell in the opulent silence and there will be my magnificent entity among them. I shall be magnified a thousand times. For all eternity will I tower—mine will be the life-loved pivot of history.”

Fay turned, looked out through the port. Where was Sol? That faint star? Perhaps.

Paddy entered the ship. Another figure followed him. In the bubble Fay saw the great-eyed head of a Koton.

“This is what I find strapped to the hull. Do you call that subscribing to our proposals?”

Zhri Khainga sat upright. “Quiet now, little man! Who are you to challenge my wishes? You should be glorying in your fortune, that you give freely what otherwise could be wrung from your lips.” He sat back in his chair. “But now— we are committed.”

The Koton who had entered the ship with Paddy had not moved from his first position. Zhri Khainga waved his fingers. “Out. Fly through space with your hands. You are not needed.”

The Koton hesitated, looked up at Fay, back at the Son of Langtry, slowly turned, let himself out the lock. They saw him push himself away from the ship and drift off alone and hopeless.

“Now,” said Zhri Khainga, “are you satisfied? We are alone. To the hiding place. Please be swift. There is much of importance awaiting my pleasure throughout the universe. Note that my gun is at hand, that I shall be alert.”

Paddy slowly joined Fay on the control deck. “Go on, Fay. Set the course.”

Delta Trianguli shone far and cold to the left. The dull black planet bulked below. Zhri Khainga, at the port, said, “Delta Trianguli Two; am I right?”

“You are,” said Paddy shortly.

“And now where?”

“You’ll see in due course.”

Zhri Khainga wordlessly seated himself once more.

Paddy went to the transmitter, sent out a call on the frequency used in the air-suit head-sets. “Hello, hello.”

They listened. Faintly came, “Hello, hello,” out of the receiver.

Zhri Khainga moved uneasily. “There are others here?”

“No,” said Paddy. “None but us. Did you get the line, Fay?”

“Yes.”

The dead face of the planet passed below—plains flat and dull as black velvet, the pocked mesh of mountains, which looked as if they had been dug by monstrous moles. Dead ahead rose an enormous peak.

“There’s Angry Dragon,” said Fay.

She set the ship down on the plain of black sand. The hum of the generator died, the ship was still.

Paddy said to the still-seated Son of Langtry, “Now listen close and don’t think to trick us, for sure you’ll never win by it. You might get our lives but you’d never hold the four sheets for your own.”

The Koton stared unblinking.

Paddy continued. “I’m going out there, and I’m going for the sheets. They’re well hid. You’d never find them.”

“I could have a hundred thousand slaves on this spot next week,” observed the Koton tonelessly.

Paddy ignored him. “I’ll get the sheets. I’ll lay them on that bit of black rock out there. Fay will stay here in the ship. When I set them down you’ll call your ship, tell them where to come for you, where to pick you up.

“Then you’ll get in your air-suit and come toward me and I’ll leave the sheets and go to the ship. When we pass each other you’ll put down your gun and go on. I’ll continue toward the ship and so we’ll take our leave. You’ll get the sheets and in a day or so your ship will be here to take you home. Is that agreeable?”

Zhri Khuinga said, “You allow me little scope for tricking you. You are strong and muscular. When I put down the gun what is to prevent you from attacking me?”

Paddy laughed. “That little poison ball-whip you carry along your arm. That’s what I’m afraid of. What’s to keep you from attacking me?”

“The fact that you can outdistance me by running, and thus regain your boat. But how will I know that you are not giving me bogus data sheets?”

“You have binoculars,” said Paddy. “I’ll hold the sheets up for your inspection and you can watch me put them down. They’re unmistakable—and with those binoculars you can read every bit of the text.”

“Very well,” said the Koton. “I agree to your conditions.”

Paddy slipped into his air-suit. Before setting the bubble over his head he turned to the still seated Koton. “Now this is my last word. By no means try to trick us or catch us off guard.

“I know you Kotons are devils for your revenges and your tortures and that you love nothing better than blackhanded treachery—so I’m warning you, take care or it will go ill with you and all your hopes.”

“What is your specific meaning?” inquired the Koton.

“Never mind,” said Paddy. “And now I’m going.”

He left the ship. Fay and the Koton could see him through the dome, marching across the black sand toward the peak. He disappeared into the tumble around the base.

Minutes passed. He reappeared and Fay saw the glint of the golden sheets.

Paddy stood by the black rock, held the sheets up, face toward the space-boat. Zhri Khainga seized his binoculars, clamped the funnel-shaped eye-pieces over his eyes, stared eagerly.

He put down the binoculars.

“Satisfied?” asked Fay brittlely.

“Yes,” said the Koton. “I’m satisfied.”

“Then call your ship.”

Zhri Khainga slowly went to the space-wave transmitter, snapped the switch, spoke a few short sentences in a language Fay could not understand.

“Now, get out,” said Fay in a voice she could hardly recognize as her own. “You keep your part of the bargain, we’ll keep ours.”

“There is much yet unsaid,” the Koton murmured. “The tale of your insolences, your detestable audacities.”

Fay’s body surprised even herself. Without conscious volition she sprang at Zhri Khainga, snatched the gun. It was hers. Clumsy now, juggling it, fingers shaking, she jumped back. Zhri Khainga gasped, leaned forward, flung out his arm. Poison-filled balls on elastic strips swished an inch from Fay’s face.

“
Ahhh!
” she cried. “Get out, now—get
out!
Or I’ll kill you and gladly!”

Zhri Khainga, his face a strange pasty lavender color, assumed his air-suit. Menaced by his own gun, he backed out of the boat.

Paddy had been waiting. Now he stepped forward and the Koton ran out to meet him, bounding, hopping, peculiarly agile.

Paddy met him halfway. He paused, expecting the Koton to throw down his gun. The Koton ran past, aching for the golden sheets. Paddy hesitated—then, seeing no gun at the Koton’s belt, turned and ran for the boat.

Fay let him in, Paddy pulled off the head-bubble, looked at Fay’s tense white face. “What is it then, Fay?”

“There’s no power.”

Paddy’s shoulders sagged and his hands paused at the zipper of the air-suit. “No power?”

“We’re marooned,” she said. “And that Koton ship will be here in a few days—maybe less.” She stepped up on the deck, looked out the dome toward the Angry Dragon. “And Zhri Khainga is waiting.”

“Och,” muttered Paddy. “We’d walk out across that black sand and give up our breaths first.” He joined her on the control deck. “Are you sure about that power now? I was fooled once myself.” He tried the controls. They were dead.

Paddy chewed his lip. “That villain worked some sort of relay switch into the drive, that would cut off our energy once we landed. And how he must be gloating!”

“Now he’s got the sheets,” said Fay, “and he can hide from us until his ship comes. We could never find him.”

“It’s rats we’re like, on a sinking ship. Try the space-wave, Fay! Send out a call.”

She flipped the switch. “Dead!”

Paddy shuddered. “Don’t be using that word so much.” He paced, two steps across the deck to port, four steps back to starboard, back to the center of the cabin. “Now try the anti-gravity. That’s on its own special unit and there’s no connection.”

Fay slid the metal boss. Their weight left them.

“Now,” crowed Paddy, “at least we’ll leave the planet, for the surface will rotate away from under us.”

“Zhri Khainga will see us leave,” said Fay. “He’ll know what we’re doing and he’ll find us as easily as if we were crawling on our hands and knees in the snow.”

Paddy reached out, seized a stanchion, squeezed it. “If this were only his neck,” he said between his teeth, “I’d hang on while his heels pounded on the deck and laugh in his face.”

Fay laughed wanly. “This is no time for day-dreaming, Paddy dear.” She looked out the port. “We’ve already risen about a foot from the ground.”

Paddy narrowed his eyes thoughtfully. “I know how to get a kick out of those tubes. It’ll cost us a million marks and it’ll give us a nasty jar, since there’s no counter-gravity to the acceleration—but we’ll do it.”

“Do what, Paddy?”

“We have four drive tubes on this little hull. There’s lots of energy curled up and slumbering inside each one of them. Now if we let that energy come whirling out the after end we’ll go forward. Of course, we’ll ruin the tube.”

“Do you know how, Paddy?” Fay asked doubtfully.

“I think I’ll just shoot the end of the tube loose and it’ll be like breaking open a fire-hose.” He looked out the port. “Now we’re six feet off the ground—and look! there’s that Koton! See him? Sitting there as calm and majestic as you please laughing at us. Here give me that gun, I’ll make a Christian of him—and I’ll shoot off our tube at the same time.”

He snapped the bubble back over his head, stepped into the lock, opened the outer port. Zhri Khainga quickly ducked behind a rock and Paddy regretfully held his fire. He turned, braced himself, drew a bead on the tip of the lower tube, gritted his teeth, commended himself to his natal saint and squeezed the trigger.

The tube split, an instantaneous spiral of blue flame lashed out, smote the ground. The boat lunged ahead, up at a slant.

Fay painfully got down from the elastic webbing, ran to the port. “
Paddy!
” She looked through the bull’s-eye in the lock, heart in her mouth.

Paddy lay crumpled, unconscious. The bubble around his head was cracked; air was whistling out—visibly, as the water-vapor condensed to fog. Blood was trickling from his nose, spreading along his face.

“
Paddy!
” cried Fay as if her soul were dissolving. She could not close the outer door as his leg hung out, twisted at an odd angle. She could not open the inner door lest she lose all the air inside the ship.

She bent her forehead into the palms of her hands, whimpered. Then rising, she ran to the air-suit rack. One leg—both legs—zip up the side—head-bubble, two snaps. She ran to the lock, tugged it open against the inner pressure and the blast of air nearly flung her out into space.

She caught hold of Paddy’s arm, pulled his weightless body in against the dying current of air.

“Paddy,” whispered Fay. “Are you dead?”

There was air in the cabin, warm clean air. Paddy lay on his bunk, one leg in a splint, a bandage around his head. Fay sat mopping at the trickle of blood which seeped from his nose.

Paddy sighed, shook in a delirium. Fay gave him a third injection of vivest—101, and spoke to him soothingly in a voice soft as summer grass.

Paddy gave a sudden jerk, then sighed, relaxed. Fay bent over him. “Paddy?” He breathed, he slept.

Fay arose went to the port. Delta Trianguli was a small cold ball of light astem, the planet inconspicuous among brighter stars.

Three days passed. There had come no cruising shark of a Koton ship. Perhaps they were safe. Perhaps Zhri Khainga preferred the thought of his golden sheets to revenge.

Paddy awoke on the fourth day. “Fay,” he muttered.

“Yes, Paddy dear.”

“Where are we?”

“We’re safe, Paddy, I hope.”

“Still no power?”

“Not yet. But I found what happened and we can fix it as soon as you get well. I’m trying to pull it apart—a busbar that was shorted and fused. It made a terrible mess.”

Paddy lay still a moment. His face twitched, his mouth pulled up at the corners in a grimace. He said, as if to himself, “Whatever happens, it’s the Son that did it to himself and his own people. It was his own treachery his own fault, and none of mine…”

Fay bent over him anxiously. “What do you mean, Paddy?”

Paddy muttered, “I planned all the time to tell him, since I’m no murderer, before he ever used the sheets.”

“What did you do?”

Paddy sighed turned his head away. “There’s a wealth of destruction in a dot, Fay—a little dot.” Fay peered at his face. Was he asleep? No. “Paddy, what are you talking about?”

“Fay,” said Paddy weakly, “the space-drive has been my fascination ever since I first heard about it and it’s like to been my death—twice, three, four, a dozen times. And one of the times was on Akhabats, where in my ignorance I thought I could burrow into the manifolding shop and curl them out by the dozen.

“I found that it wasn’t so simple but a very delicate matter. Power floods into the tube from one end and there’s fifteen coils and they pound it and kneed it and bind it and curl it like a big kick-hammer.

“When all the strengths are just right that great energy snarls and fights but it winds around on itself and there it stops—a tight little core of space-warp. But if one of the coils is off, then there’s a weak spot and all the energy breaks out and knocks the world apart.

“When I tried my hand at it on Akhabats there wasn’t any power in the line except a bit of static charge but the kick nearly blasted away the shop.”

“So?” asked Fay breathlessly.

“So—when Zhri Khainga, the Koton, pulls the switch—all hell will break loose.”

“But Paddy,” whispered Fay, “why? Those were the sheets we got from the dead Sons.”

“There’s two little decimal points that make the difference, Fay. Two little dots. On the Badau and the Loristan sheets, the duplicated numbers. I had just time for it. Two little marks.”

She straightened from her bent position, looked away.

“It was to be our ace in the hole,” said Paddy. “Sure I’d have told him about it over space-wave once we got clean away because I’m no hand for the killing, Fay. but now whatever happens is through himself since he cut off our power and it’s his hard luck.”

“It’s the ninth day, Paddy,” said Fay.

“Humph. Two days for the ship to pick him up, four days back to Montras, three days. It should be time for news.”

He turned on the receiver, functioning feebly from the power of the cell in his flash-light.

A Shaul spoke, and they strained their ear to hear.

“Attention—word from Zhri Khainga, Son of Langtry from Koto. Paddy Blackthorn, the convict and assassin, has been killed on a dead-planet hide-out by a Koton patrol-ship. No further details have been released. Thus the greatest manhunt in the history of space comes to an end and interstar traffic returns to normal.”

“Is that all then?” Paddy asked pettishly. “Merely that I’m dead? Sure that would be no news to me were it true. I’d be the first to know it. Are there no explosions, no disasters? Is Zhri Khainga so cautious that he doesn’t trust the data of his father and his unhealthy uncles? Why does he wait then?”

“Hush, Paddy dear,” said Fay. “You’ll excite yourself. Let’s get back to our work. In another day we’ll be repaired and send a warning message.”

“Och,” said Paddy. “The suspense is killing me. Why doesn’t he drop the other shoe?”

Exclaimed Paddy, “The news. Fay, it’s time for the news.”

Fay wiped her face with a greasy hand. “If you’d wait ten minutes we’d be done. There’s just the clip and welding to be done on that gang-switch, and then we’d get the news on ship’s power.

Paddy limped unheeding to the receiver and the thin whistle of space-wave sang through the cabin. Then, gong, gong, gong! rang the speaker—deep doleful sounds.

In a kind of numb attentiveness they heard the voice. “… stupendous crater… millions dead… for the dead Son, Zhri Khainga…”

Fay turned off the speaker. “Well, there it is. Don’t worry any more. It’s done. There goes Zhri Khainga and all his nerve-suits.”

“I wouldn’t have had it that way,” said Paddy dully.

She stepped over to him, took his face in her two small hands. “Look here, Paddy Blackthorn, I’m tired of your moping! Now you come help me put in that switch. Then we’ll fly home to Earth.”

Paddy sighed, stood up, threw his arms around her. “That will be wonderful, Fay.”

“First we’ll get rid of this space-drive information and then—”

“And then we’ll be married. We’ll buy up all of County Cork,” said Paddy with mounting enthusiasm. “We’ll build a house a mile long and as high as necessary and champagne will flow out of every spigot. We’ll raise the finest horses ever seen at Dublin Meet and the lords of the universe will tip their caps to us.”

“We’ll get fat, Paddy.”

“Nonsense! And once a year we’ll climb into our space-boat and we’ll visit all our scenes of adventure again, just for old time’s sake. Akhabats, Space-Ace, the Langtry planets—and this time they’ll be running after us, hoping for the privilege of carrying our bags.”

“And don’t forget the Angry Dragon, Paddy,” said Fay. “We could visit there and be all alone. But now—”

“But now?”

A minute later Fay stood back breathless. “First, that switch! Now you get back to work, Paddy Blackthorn. There’s only ten more minutes of it, and then we’re home for Earth.”