Battle for the Stars

CHAPTER 13

The car had stopped in the front lane and a man was getting out of it. Birrel's grasp tightened on the shocker. But then an ample-figured, middle-aged woman got out of the car also. He looked back again at the man, and now he recognized the broad, ruddy face of the man he had met in the tavern the night before, the one who lived just down the road. Vinton. No — Vinson. He and the woman were coming toward the house.

"Is it trouble?” asked Lyllin's quiet voice from close behind him.

Birrel turned quickly. “No, just a neighbor, one of these farm people. You meet them. I'll be back in a moment."

He ran back along the hall to the back room where Tauncer and Harper lay bound to the beds. Tauncer had his eyes open now. Birrel hastily inspected the insulated wires to make sure both men were still fast. Then he went out, closing the door of the room. He came through the hall and closed the hall door tightly, too. He didn't think his captives could be heard, even if they yelled. If they did make themselves heard, he could always say he had a drunken friend back there, and go back and silence them with the shocker. But, with a vera-probe operator on the way, he did not want to put them out for that long, if he could help it.

When he got back into the living-room, Vinson greeted him jovially in his booming voice.

"A little early for a call, Commander, but we were going by and Edith wanted to meet you folks. Hope you don't mind."

Yes, he minded, Birrel thought exasperatedly. He minded like the very devil, but there was nothing he could do but smile, and shake his head, and go through the introductions.

Lyllin was aloof and hesitant again with these Earth folk. But Mrs. Vinson did not seem to notice that. She stared at Lyllin with open marvel and admiration.

"You came all the way from Vega with your husband. Think of it. Why, lots of women here on Earth have had their husbands go away into space, but not many ever went that far to stay with them."

Birrel, chafing inwardly, asked them to sit down. Immediately Vinson began talking about the problems of farming, the high cost of automatic tractors and autoharvesters, the fact that weather-control was still not all that it should be and related subjects about which Birrel knew nothing and cared less.

He began to feel caught in a minor nightmare. To sit here in an ancient farmhouse on Earth, listening to the gossiping of these worthy, but totally strange folk, while the conflict between Orion and Lyra could be rushing toward its climax, seemed insanely impossible. It was like one of those dreams, where you were trapped and tangled in ridiculously frail webs and watched disaster approaching you.

Birrel became aware that Vinson's booming voice had stopped and that the man was looking at him questioningly.

"I'm sorry, I was thinking of something else,” he said.

"I was just saying,” Vinson said, “that when I called on that chap who bought this place, he told me he wasn't going to live here, but was buying it for someone else. But I sure didn't figure that someone would be one of the old Birrel family!"

Birrel stared. Of course Karsh would have said something like that, and naturally everyone here would now assume that he was the new owner. And he could not contradict that assumption without a lot of explanations that he was in no position to make.

"About working your land here,” Vinson went on. “The fields aren't too good, but they could be got in shape again. I'll be glad to help on that."

"Why, thanks,” stumbled Birrel, “but you see, we'll be leaving very soon, going back to Vega—"

"Oh, sure, I know that,” Vinson said heartily. “But, of course, you're planning to come back here or you wouldn't have bought your folks’ old farm. Might as well get some profit and use out of the place till then. Now, we'll go over the land together and figure."

Birrel did not know what to say to that. No one had dreamed that such ridiculous but real problems as this would come up when this old farm had been bought as cover for a rendezvous. In fact, they never would have arisen, if Karsh had met him here as planned. The doing away with Karsh by Tauncer had pulled the foundation out from under everything.

Vinson misinterpreted Birrel's silence, and said quickly, “I didn't mean right now. Just dropped in for a social call but I thought I'd mention it. I'll come back later and walk over it with you."

He rose to his feet and Birrel felt sharp relief, as he and his wife went to the door.

"Sure would like to have you come over for dinner sometime before you leave,” Vinson said.

His wife added coyly, “You're our celebrities here now, you know. In the village they're talking about having a Welcome Home celebration for you."

When the two had left, Birrel turned and looked blankly at Lyllin. “A Welcome Home celebration. For God's sake, that's all I need right now."

He hurried back to the rear room, to find Tauncer lying quietly and Harper squirming restlessly.

Tauncer smiled. “You look worried, Commander. Things not going well? I'm afraid you're a little beyond your depth."

Birrel looked at him steadily, and asked, “Who's coming, Tauncer?"

Tauncer's smile faded into a wary look. “What do you mean?"

"You're expecting someone to help you or you wouldn't be so cocky,” Birrel said. “Who?"

"I haven't any idea what you're talking about,” Tauncer said lightly. But his smiling stopped.

Birrel's forebodings deepened. He prowled the house and grounds more vigilantly than ever, and every time a car hummed down the road or a flitter buzzed over, he stopped and listened.

The hot noon hours went by. The sun passed its zenith and now big clouds began to build in the western sky. Birrel began to chafe restlessly at this waiting. He realized it would take Brescnik a little while to find among the technicians of the Fifth a man who could operate a vera-probe. But, even so, he should have been able to get one up here by fast flitter by now.

The bastions of cloud in the west swelled higher, and humidity became intolerable. Birrel went out and looked around again. From a distance came the sound of Vinson's auto-tractors lumbering about the fields on their appointed programs. The sky darkened, and Birrel thought that a storm was building. He came back to the house to find the black cat sitting on the porch and looking at him with an insolent air of ownership.

Lyllin met him at the door. “No one?"

"No one,” he said. “What's the matter with Brescnik? A flitter will have trouble locating this place, if a storm comes up, and—"

A flash and then a crash of thunder interrupted him. Birrel swore. “That's fine."

"It won't last long, will it?” said Lyllin.

He gloomily said that he wished he knew. At that moment they heard a scratching and mewing outside the door.

"The cat,” said Lyllin. “I think it's scared of the storm and wants in."

"Let it go to the barn,” he said.

Lyllin smiled, and went to the door and opened it. The black cat stalked in, keeping well away from her, with its tail erect and a general look of being annoyed at the delay in answering the door.

Birrel started to say that for sheer insolence the cats of Earth took the palm, but another crash interrupted him and this time the old house shook to its foundations. The thunder came closer quickly, and now the flashes of lightning outside the rain-dashed windows were blinding.

Then as the uproar lulled for a moment, he thought he heard the buzz of a flitter close overhead. He raced back through the kitchen to the porch, and by another world-illumining flash he glimpsed the flitter making a rough landing between the house and the barn..

Birrel waited for the next flash. It showed two men climbing out of the flitter. He raised his shocker.

The two were running toward him through the rain, but it was too dark to see their faces. Why didn't another flash come? Then one did, and he saw them clear and close.

One was Joe Garstang. The other was a young officer with the badge of a Technic-First-Class, who looked a bit scared as they ran up onto the porch out of the smashing rain. Garstang shook himself and growled, “I've seen worse storms on other worlds, but I never saw one come up so bloody quick."

"What are you doing here?” demanded Birrel. “Why aren't you with your ship?"

"Brescnik told me to come along. By the way, this is your vera-probe operator. Vathis, T-first-class."

"Why did Brescnik send you? What's wrong?"

Garstang waited until the reverberations of another crash of thunder died away, and the old house stopped shaking. Then he said, with a puzzled look on his broad face, “We're not sure anything's wrong. But Brescnik's worried. Traffic — normal merchant traffic — is only running one way down at that spaceport. Ships keep going out, but none come in."

He paused, then added, “Brescnik thinks that the UW authorities are quietly evacuating the space port."

Birrel thought of that, and he did not like the shape or sound of it.

He asked, “You haven't any evidence why?"

Garstang shook his head. “Not a glimmer. All we have is a guess. You know what that guess is."

Birrel knew. If Charteris and Mallinson and the rest had some foreknowledge that Orion squadrons were on their way to strike, they'd get their ships off the spaceport. And if that was what it was, he had better get the Fifth off too.

But he would be going blind, if he took off now, with no information as to Orion's plans. His worries had suddenly increased tenfold, but he had to delay long enough to probe Tauncer.

He told Garstang rapidly about Tauncer. Without waiting for Garstang's reaction to that, he turned to young Vathis.

"You come along. I want the probe set up and used as quickly as possible."

They went to the living-room. Lyllin sat composedly there and Birrel noticed that the cat was sitting across the room from her, pricking up his ears at each crash of thunder. Garstang went over to speak to Lyllin, but Birrel took the young technician to the vera-probe in the corner.

"How long will it take you to set it up?"

Vathis looked over the apparatus. “It seems a conventional hook-up. Fifteen minutes."

"Make it ten,” said Birrel. Then he said, “Make it five.” At that moment, in the comparative lull between the crashes of the receding storm, there came a clangorous peal from the old-fashioned doorbell.

"You expecting somebody else?” said Garstang.

"Oh, Lord,” said Birrel. “That'll be Vinson, he said he'd come back. A neighbor here. You go ahead and get the probe ready, I'll get rid of him."

He hurried to the door and opened it. But the man standing outside it was not Vinson.

It was Mallinson. And despite the fact that he wore a streaming slicker, the tall, young bureaucrat looked as elegant as ever. He walked coolly in past the stricken Birrel, saw Lyllin and bowed to her, and then turned around. He said, “So this is Ferdias little spy-nest on Earth? Very clever, Commander."

There was, Birrel realized, not the slightest use in lying. Mallinson's glance through the open door of the next room, at Joe Garstang and the uniformed young technician and the partly set-up vera-probe, had ended the possibility of that. There was nothing Birrel could say. But there might be something he could do.

He reached into the pocket that contained the shocker. Mallinson, who was taking off his wet slicker, did not turn toward him but said casually, “Perhaps I should say that I have a number of men outside. I'm afraid they're getting pretty wet."