Flight of Exiles

15

Valery blinked back her tears.

“Dan! But I thought you…”

He was still some distance away from the desk, just close enough to be seen as a tall, lithe shadow. “That was Joe Haller on the shuttle. I asked him to take my place at the last minute.”

“What… what are you doing here?”

“The same thing I tried to do when your father first started this nonsense of looking for another planet.”

Val felt completely confused. “But… I thought…”

Dan laughed. “You made just about every mistake you could make, Val. You thought it was Larry, when all along it’s been me.”

“You’re the madman?” The question popped out of her involuntarily.

Still hovering off near the shadows, Dan said grimly, “Wrong again. I’m not insane. It’s not insanity when you fight to protect yourself from your so-called friends. Not when they’re laughing at you behind your back. Plotting against you. Taking everything away from you.”

“I… never laughed at you, Dan.”

“Not much.” His voice was getting hard, steel-edged. “You talked Larry into the Chairmanship. You probably got him to kill my father. Don’t tell me the two of you weren’t laughing at me.”

“Dan, you’re wrong…can’t you see?”

“I see perfectly. I’ve seen it all along. You kill my father. While I’m mourning him, Larry take over the Chairmanship and you takes over Larry. Then the two of you scheme to move the ship on to another planet, another star. Not where we’re supposed to go, where we’re destined to go. Oh no! You’ve got to have your way in everything, don’t you?”

Valery realized she still held the stunner in her hand. “Dan, it isn’t like that at all.”

“You even got your father to help you, didn’t you?” he went on. “Searching for other planets. I fixed him. But you wouldn’t let it rest there. Now I’ve got to take care of you, too—” His voice seemed to break.

“Dan? Dan, please.”

“No,” he said, almost sobbing. “Val, I loved you. I would have given my life for you. But you’ve always been against me. You’ve always loved Larry better than me. You’ve all been against me, all along.”

“Dan, you’re wrong. Come here,” she gripped the stunner firmly, “and let me prove how wrong you are.”

“Sure, I’ll come to you.” His voice grew stronger. “As soon as you toss that popgun away.”

Valery brought it up to fire, but Dan melted into the shadows before she could pull the trigger.

“It’s a very short-range weapon,” she heard his voice call to her, echoing mockingly. “And very directional. Now this laser I borrowed from the pressure suit is only a working tool… but at this distance it can burn your arm off the shoulder.”

A blood-red pencil-beam of energy shot past Valery’s ear.

She screamed and jumped, hitting the edge of the desk with her legs.

“The next one won’t miss, Val. Throw your gun away.”

She tossed it from her. The gun went spinning weightlessly into the darkness.

Dan stepped closer, close enough for her to see his face in the faint glow of the desk lights. He didn’t look wild-eyed or twisted at all. He seemed perfectly at ease, calmer than usual. Serene.

“What are you going to do?” she asked.

“What can I do?” he shot back. “You’ve left me no alternative. For a while, I tried to figure out some way of getting you to agree to cryosleep, so I wouldn’t have to kill you. But that’s not possible. Not now.”

“Dan, you’ve got to stop. You can’t kill everyone that…”

“Everyone that gets in my way? Everyone who takes what’s rightfully mine? Yes, I can kill them all. You just watch me do it.”

“You’re sick!”

“Sick of being cheated by those who claim they love me.” He gestured with the laser pistol. “Erase all your data tapes.”

“I…” Val’s mind was racing. “If I do, will you let me live?”

“That’s impossible.”

“I’ll go into cryosleep. You can take me down there yourself. Right away.”

He hesitated a moment. “Erase the tapes.”

She turned and flicked her fingers over the keyboard. Lights on the computer terminal’s face flickered on and off.

Turning back to Dan she said, “Well? You don’t have to kill anyone.”

Dan glanced at Larry’s inert form. “You want me to let him be frozen, too?”

“Yes.”

“So the two of you can awake together? Never,” Dan said firmly. “He killed my father.”

“No one killed your father,” Valery said, her voice rising. “It was an accident.”

“Don’t argue with me!” he shouted. “He killed my father and I’m going to kill him. He’s always been after everything that’s mine. Now he’s going to pay for it.”

“Then you’ll have to kill me too!” Val shouted back.

He pointed the gun at her. Val slid sideways, away from the computer terminal. “Look!” she yelled. “It’s not on erase, it’s on record! And I put the intercom on, too. Everything you’ve said for the past minute or two is being broadcast all over the ship. There must be an emergency crew heading up here right now!”

“You…” Now Dan’s eyes glittered dangerously, and his breath became ragged, gulping.

“It won’t do you any good to kill us, Dan,” Val said as calmly as she could manage. “Everyone knows now. Just give up and let the medics take care of you.”

With a bellowing roar, Dan fired the laser into the computer terminal. It exploded in a shower of sparks. Valery leaped upward as the desk lights blanked out, then angled to one side and desperately tried to put as much distance between herself and Dan as she could.

“I’ll get you!” He was screaming. “Both of you! All of you!”

Larry! Somewhere in the vast, completely darkened chamber, Larry’s unconscious body floated. If Dan found him first… Valery saw a gaunt framework of shadows moving up toward her. The main telescope. She put out both hands and grabbed at one of the girders, slowing her impact.

Hanging there weightlessly, she peered into the darkness, letting her eyes adjust to the dim starlight. There. A body floating silently off in the darkness. Is it Larry, or a trick of Dan’s?

The click and creak of a hatch opening made her turn her attention toward the sound. A shaft of light flickered through the observatory, and Valery caught the shadow of Dan’s form squeezing down through the hatch, then slamming it shut behind him.

She launched herself across the room toward Larry. Another hatch opened, off to the other side of the observatory, and a man’s voice called out:

“Miss Loring, are you all right?”

“I’m here! Get some lights and help me. Larry Belsen’s unconscious.”

Talk about irony, Larry thought.

He was sitting in Dan’s desk chair in the Propulsion and Power control center, one level below the observatory. The gravity was still low enough for his arms to tend to float up off the chair arms. Someone was holding a vibrator to the back of his neck, soothing away the roaring headache that the stunner had given him.

Valery was standing in front of him, looking very pale and frightened.

Half a dozen engineers and technicians were at their stations. All of them wore stunners on their belts.

“How does your head feel now?” a girl’s voice came from behind him.

Too stiff and aching to turn toward her, he replied. “Like somebody’s running a rocket engine inside it.”

The girl moved in front of him, where he could see that she was wearing a white nurse’s coverall. “I’ll get you a pain-killer.” She opened a kit on the desk.

Larry looked up at Valery. “So you thought it was me.”

Her eyes were red from crying, he noticed.

^UI was afraid it was you,” she answered quietly.

“Do you feel any better,” he asked bitterly, “knowing that it’s Dan?”

“Not much,” she confessed. Then she added, “But… I’m glad it wasn’t you. Even if you’d been doing it unconsciously.”

The nurse turned back to him and handed him an immense blue pill.

“I’ll get some water,” Valery said.

“Make it a bucketful,” Larry called to her. To the nurse, he asked, “Will this make me sleep?”

She shook her head. “No, it’s a selective depressant. If you want to sleep…”

“No, I’ve got to stay awake.”

Val came back with a plastic cup of water. Larry swallowed hard on the pill, nearly choked, but finally forced it down.

“Any idea of where Dan is?” he asked.

Val said, “No. Mort Campbell is heading up the emergency squad. They’re searching the ship for him.”

“Could you get Mort on the phone for me, please?”

She handled the desk phone, while Larry rubbed the back of his still stiff neck.

Campbell’s heavy-featured face showed up on the screen.

“Where are you?” Larry asked.

“Storage area seventeen. One of the maintenance men working on the extra shuttles said he heard some strange noises down here.”

“Anything?”

Campbell’s beefy face settled into a scowl. “Who knows? This area’s big enough to hide the whole ship’s crew. We’ve got kilometers of corridors and tubes to search, thousands of sections and compartments… a few dozen men can’t hack it. Not even a few hundred.”

“He’s got to be someplace. I’ll make sure that all the working and living areas are guarded. He’ll have to show up sooner or later… even if it’s just to get some food.”

“I know. But I wouldn’t count on that. Anyway, there are video monitors on all the important areas of the ship. I’ve got a special squad of people monitoring the viewscreens on the bridge.”

“Good.”

Campbell said, “I understand he’s armed.”

“He was. But I want him brought in alive. No rough stuff. If you have to fight, use the stunners.”

“He must really be sick.”

“And scared. Be careful with him. But don’t take unnecessary chances; he’s perfectly willing to kill.”

Campbell’s eyes flickered with just the barest hint of surprise. “Yeah, I guess you’re right,” he said.

The picture on the viewscreen faded.

Larry got to his feet. For a moment he felt a surge of dizziness. Val was beside him and he rested a hand on her shoulder.

“Come on,” he said. “We can be in better touch with the whole ship down on the bridge.”

“Wait a minute?” she asked. “I had an idea, while you were talking with Mr. Campbell.”

“What?”

“Dr. Hsai. He’s spent a lot of time examining Dan, talking with him …”

“And finding zero,” Larry grumbled.

“Yes, but he might be able to find something in his records… or maybe something he’ll remember… some clue to where Dan might be hiding, what he’s doing.”

Larry thought it over for half a moment. “It’s worth a try.” He turned to the nearest technician, who was seated at a monitoring console, watching the computer-produced graphs that gave second-by-second reports on the performance of the reactors and generators. “Your name’s Peterson, isn’t it?”

The blond youth smiled, obviously flattered that the Chairman knew his name. “Yessir, that’s right.”

“Would you please call Dr. Hsai and ask him to meet me on the bridge as soon as he can possibly get there?”

“Yessir. Right away.”

The oriental psychotech was already on the bridge, waiting patiently, when Larry and Val got there. All the way down the now fully lit connector tubes, padding down those spiraling metal steps, Larry had half-expected Dan to leap out at them. No sign of him. Nor of Campbell’s search parties and emergency squad.

It’s a big ship. Larry reminded himself. You could roam around for weeks without seeing another person, if you really wanted to.

All the technicians on the bridge were wearing sidearms as they sat at their consoles. And there were two grim-faced guards scowling at the door Larry and Val stepped through.

Dr. Hsai was unarmed, of course. Larry quickly explained what he was after.

The psychotech pursed his lips thoughtfully. “I must admit that nothing comes to mind right now. But I will review all my records. Perhaps there is something he inadvertently revealed that will help you.”

There’d better be, Larry thought. To Val, he muttered, “Dan could do a lot of damage to the ship, if he wants to.”

“But all the vital areas are protected now, aren’t they?”

He scanned the viewscreens and nodded. “They seem to be… but the ship’s too big. Too many soft spots. He could cut electrical connections, air lines, water pipes… anything.”

“Why would he do something like that?” she asked.

“How should I know?” Larry snapped. “Why would he do any of the things he’s doing? He’s crazy!”

She didn’t respond, but her chin dropped slightly.

“I’m sorry,” Larry said immediately. “I didn’t mean it that way. Guess I’m getting edgy.”

“I know,” Valery said.

The hours wore on. Larry finally had to sleep; he couldn’t stay on his feet any longer. He woke up two hours later and groggily made his way back to the bridge.

Mort Campbell was there, unshaven, bleary-eyed, sipping coffee from a steaming mug.

“Anything?” Larry asked.

“Nine dozen false alarms, that’s all.” Campbell sipped, then winced. “Cheez, that’s hot! No…everybody and his brother thinks they’ve seen him. But none of it checks out. Wherever he’s hiding, it’s a good place.”

Larry stood through two full shifts. Most of the time he remained on the bridge, although he put in a swing with one of Campbell’s search squads, spending several hours going through corridors and unused work and storage areas. All of them were sealed tight and lay under half a century’s worth of dust.

He had dinner with Val in the cafeteria.

“I’m going to assign a couple of men to guard you.”

“Me?”

“He was after you, wasn’t he?”

“That’s only because I showed him that Epsilon Indi’s closest planet is almost exactly like Earth. He wanted to destroy that evidence, to make sure we stayed here.”

“Oh… Now he knows you were lying to him.”

She grinned, a bit sheepishly. “No, I was telling him the truth. It was you that I lied to.”

“What? But you said …”

“It was a lie,” she replied. “To see if… well, if you were the one who’d try to… stop me from reporting to the Council.”

Larry stared at her. “You mean there really is a planet like Earth at Epsilon Indi?”

She nodded, grinning again.

“That’s fantastic! Fabulous!” Larry felt like jumping up on the cafeteria table. Then he remembered about Dan. “But I still want you guarded. He’s dangerous, and he might come after you. I don’t want you to be bait anymore.”

“I’ll be all right in my own quarters. Mother’s there, and we have a phone—”

“And there will be two guards with you at all times,” Larry said firmly.

“At all times?” Her eyebrows arched coyly.

Larry put on a sour face. “They’ll stay outside your door when you go home.”

“But…”

“No arguments, or I’ll make it four guards.”

She put her hands up in mock surrender. “Yessir, Mr. Chairman. To hear is to obey.”

“Stuff it.” Now he was grinning. “Uh… this might not be the right time, but—well, I still love you.”

“I know,” she said, much more softly. “I never stopped loving you.”

He leaned across the table and kissed her. Seven dozen people in the cafeteria stopped their meals to watch, but Larry couldn’t have cared less. Even if he had noticed them.

“He’s got to be someplace!” Larry fumed.

He was on the bridge again, talking to Mort Campbell, who was slumped tiredly on the chair of an unoccupied console.

“A man just can’t disappear for three days,” Larry insisted. “It’s a big ship, but you should have been able to flush him out by now.”

“I know, I feel the same way,” Campbell said, nodding his heavy head. “Either he’s damned clever or…”

“Or what?”

“Or he’s got friends helping him.”

Larry made a chopping motion with his hand. “No. That I can’t believe. A madman aboard the ship is one thing, but other madmen to help him? No.”

“He got Joe Haller to take his place on the shuttle, didn’t he?”

“We’ve gone through all that with Joe. He had no idea of what Dan was up to. Dan asked him to fill in for him, and he did. That’s all.”

Campbell threw his hands up in disgust. “Then where the hell is he? Why can’t we find him?”

“If I knew, Mort, I’d…”

“Emergency signal!” sang out one of the techs.

Larry went over to her like a shot. “What is it?”

The girl pointed to a flashing red light on the console in front of her, between two viewscreens. Her hands flew over the keyboard. One of the viewscreens brightened and showed a guard, bleeding from a gushing cut on his scalp. The blood was pouring down into his eyes.

“He…he’s here…”

“What’s the location?” Larry yelled at the girl.

“Airlock fourteen, level three.”

Campbell bolted from his chair and dashed for the nearest door.

Larry snapped, “Hook me into the intercom.”

The girl nodded and did things to her keyboard. “Okay now, sir.”

Leaning over her shoulder to speak into the microphone built into the console’s face, Larry said. “This is the Chairman speaking. Dan Christopher has attacked a guard at airlock fourteen, level three. All search squads converge on that location. All guard units, remain on duty at your assigned posts.” He started to straighten up, then had another thought. “Dan… Dan Christopher. Give up, Dan. You can’t win. We want to help you. Give up and you won’t be hurt.”

But it sounded empty, even as he said it.

Larry fidgeted on the bridge for about a minute longer, then said, “I’m going up to that airlock. Relay any calls for me to that location.”

He got there as the guard was being carried off to the infirmary on a stretcher. Campbell was standing inside the airlock, filling its cramped metal space with his formidable bulk. He had his hands on his hips.

Larry pushed past a dozen men and stepped through the airlock’s inner hatch to squeeze in next to Campbell.

“Well, now we know where he is,” Campbell said.

“What happened?”

Campbell jerked a thumb at the rack of pressure suits hanging outside the airlock, in the corridor. “He slugged the guard, took one of the suits, and went outside.”

“What? You’re sure?”

Nodding, Campbell answered, “Yep. Just checking the hatch here. It was open when we arrived a few minutes ago.”

“He’s outside?”

“He’s committing suicide.”

Larry thought it over for a few moments. “No. He’s moving to a part of the ship where he wants to be… My god! He can cut open bulkheads anywhere he wants to and blow whole sections of the ship into vacuum. If he does that in the living quarters…”

Even Campbell’s normal calm seemed shaken. “We’d better get all the living quarters on disaster alert. All hatches sealed…”

Larry nodded. “And guards on every airlock.”

“Right. Anything else?”

“Yes. Get a squad of volunteers together. We’ve got to go outside after him. And I’m going with you.”