No Man's World

X

Dave Carradine sat on the edge of his bunk. The Beatty one millimeter needle-beam, duration one-hundredth of a second, model of Fifty-eight, made on Ragnar, lay on an oiled piece of plastic cloth, in pieces. He methodically cleaned every part, with the sensitive-fingered touch that might have been better suited in playing some musical instrument than in making very sure that a weapon of destruction would not fail in time of need. He whistled soundlessly through his teeth as he worked.

He had excused himself from the little group in the lounge, retiring under cover of the almost-tearful operation of packing Jinny Jiloa off to bed. Now he was trying to sort out a few facts, to put alongside the mountain of speculation.

How far back into the mists of time the name Caradine went, he had no idea. He wasn’t even sure that the Caradine who had spread the report that the Earth had been blown up was in reality an ancestor. It was a nice thought, no more.

One thing, though, would have pleased that long-dead holder of his name. The Earth, instead of being merely reported through the new empires of mankind in the galaxy as being destroyed, had achieved the status of a legend, a fable, a fairy story for children. No one believed that Earth had even existed.

Which, at the time, would have made that old Caradine chuckle with pleasure. His ploy had worked better than he could have imagined.

The trouble was that now, in the present time, the ghosts of that dead Earth were rising to haunt the modern Caradine. He finished putting the Beatty together, clicked the safety on and slid it under the white shirt. He did not fasten that convenient magneclamp.

When Carson Napier came in, Caradine said, “Were you the only one, Napier? Or did they send a David Innes and a Greystoke, too?”

Napier shut the door carefully. His broad, powerful figure moved in the little cabin like some caged animal. He sat down.

“Nope, Caradine. They sent me. You’ll notice I call you merely that. Without the frills.”

“So you found me. Now what?”

Napier leaned back. The man who had paled and sweated when he had been told that his search was over had gone; in his place was a cool, confident, calculating operative.

“I like you, Cara—”

“You’ve been listening to too many fairy stories, Napier. Caradine was the name of the man who blew up the Earth in the old legends of a million years ago. I’m plain Mr. John Carter. Don’t forget that.”

Napier understood. Tapping was probably well in his line, too.

“As I was saying. I like you, Carter. Sorry about the name. That little girl—mischievous, lovable little monster. She’ll twist some man around her fingers one day.”

“I dare say. I’m tired. You can curse your luck you weren’t born thirty years later. Me, I’m for bed.”

The hesitation was minuscule. Then Napier grunted and bent down, began to pull off his shoes.

“You’re right. We can talk tomorrow. We’re going to have our work cut out to amuse that kiddie for a week.”

They both prepared for bed. Turning and plumping to make himself comfortable, Caradine snapped the photocell and turned off the cabin lights. Well, they could probably find someplace to talk, somewhere on this confounded Hor-akah ship that was tapped to the gills.

Unless Napier had been sent to kill him.

That made sense; too much sense.

A lot depended on the type of man Napier was. If he was the fanatical type, then he might kill Caradine here and now and to hell with the consequences. A brawl between passengers of different stellar groupings aboard a Horakah ship would arouse little interest in the breasts of die Horakah officials; they might boredly take the matter into their own hands and try and condemn the murderer in their own courts or they might send him back to his home group for their justice. Either way, justice being what it was, Napier wouldn’t get away with it.

So he might wait until a better opportunity afforded itself On AIpha-Horakah.

Or, he might arrange it to look like murder by someone else, or an accident.

Caradine closed his eyes and went to sleep.

Napier was under orders. Somehow, Caradine thought those orders would include talking to the putative victim before the execution.

The situation did not improve. Two men, sharing a cramped cabin aboard a starship, one man believing that the other might kill him. The unknown obviously nervy and jumpy; probably he, too, had visions of being killed first. And the final frustrating tightening of the screw—they were unable to talk freely. They felt strongly, yet could not prove, that they were under surveillance. Every room, every cubbyhole was tapped. What they said in their cabin, in the lounge, along the corridors, was piped up to the control sections aloft, there to be mechanically and electronically taped down, ready for the intent perusal of the Horakah security officer. No, they couldn’t talk. And that made them both bad-tempered.

Napier tried to short cut the tap in the toilet, bungled it somehow, and had to make a run for it. He burst into the cabin, flung himself on the bunk, and pretended to be reading a tape that had steadily been projecting onto the ceiling screen.

Everyone in this passenger flat was questioned. Napier got away with it. But the alert had been given, and now Cara-dine grimly knew that the security people would have proof that a spy or someone with a secret was aboard.

He made a fierce face at Napier, and then both men burst out laughing. The bond between them, this far from home, was strong.

But Caradine had seen a laughing man kill another.

Whatever Caradine had expected Alpha-Horakah to be like, when he at last made planetfall on the forbidden world he found that he had had no preconceptions. The name Alpha-Horakah had swollen grossly into a symbol. He’d just been thinking of the name, as a man thinks of an operation, and the name serves to cloak the actuality, the actuality of physical things.

First off, on landing, he might have been back on Gamma or on any other of the alphabetically-named Horakah planets. The spaceport was bright and fresh, with spring flowers everywhere and new paint glistening. The customs officials were charming and obliging. Caradine, his gun and his samples, were routed through with a minimum of fuss. He was recommended a hotel that would be used by all the outworld passengers from the starship.

He drove to the Blue Dragon in some expectancy.

The whole landing procedure had been too smooth, too pat, too entirely handsome and un-Horakah, to please him.

He could sense the spring-loaded trap behind all this delightful smelling cheese bait.

Once in his room, mellow and comfortable, he unpacked and then, ducking Carson Napier in the lounge, went to find his samples. They had been stored in the hotel’s big box room and he looked with some awe upon the brilliant Hor-akah custom stamps branding them as cleared. Well, Rawson and Sharon had been right. He wondered, not without a grim sense of foreboding, if they had survived the journey.

How unpleasant to open the alloy cylinder and discover two corpses—their disposal would present problems.

His key snapped the lock and his fingers lifted the seals. Rawson and Sharon stared up at him.

“You fooH” Rawson said, cross and terrified. “I told you not to come near us until we were there! Shut the lid down, fast!”

“Simmer down, friend. We’re there.”

They took some time to convince themselves that their ordeal was over. When he checked the layout of the cylinder, Caradine found some understanding of that. As they’d told him, the canister had been fitted up like a miniature space ship. They could have lasted comfortably another week.

Caradine reached in and helped himself to a biscuit from an open locker. Munching thoughtfully, he stared at his two smuggled accomplices. Well, hell, that’s what they were.

“Where are you two going now? No papers, no nothing.”

Rawson flexed his muscles. “Bit cramped. Apart from that, I’m fine. You okay, Sharon?”

She stretched one elegantly clad leg. The tight scarlet pants were like a second skin.

“Fine, when I’ve had a permanent—”

“But you won’t last an hour outside,” protested Caradine.

“We didn’t come here without thought, friend. I’ve a gun and I’ve plenty of Galaxos. That is a pretty potent combination. And I have some knowledge—limited, I admit—of conditions on Alpha-Horakah. And those conditions, friend Carter, are totally unlike anything you may imagine.”

Caradine said experimentally, “It all looks pretty much like Gamma so far.”

Rawson laughed. “Sure. That’s the setup for the suckers. They have a nice welcome mat. Beyond the mat lies—well, you’ll find out. Sharon and I stand over a hundred percent better chance of survival than you, Carter. And I say over a hundred, because your chances are precisely nil.”

Almost—almost but not quite—Caradine fell into the trap.

“You mean they’ll catch up with me after you’re caught. Is that it?”

Rawson looked annoyed.

“No. We won’t be caught, Carter.”

“Well, then. If you’re not caught, why should I be in trouble?”

Sharon was applying makeup. The box room was quiet and empty save for themselves and the newly-arrived passengers’ larger items of baggage. Caradine felt no great desire to rush off yet; he felt safe and he wanted to know as much as he could before these two flitted. Sharon lowered her mirror.

“Don’t bandy about with meaningless trivia, Carter. We know you’re here spying, too.”

“You know nothing of the sort. And have you considered that this box room may be tapped?”

“We have and it isn’t.”

Both Sharon and Allura seemed to know a great deal about tapping devices. A great deal more than Carson Napier had. But then, he hadn’t had their opportunities for studying the current models on the market.

“Well,” Caradine said, warming up, “if this room isn’t tapped, and I believe that from the way you’re talking, I’d just like to say that I consider you two to be a couple of low-down, murdering, double-crossing bastards.” He smiled genially.

Sharon colored and half-raised her hand. Because of that, Caradine supposed, Rawson had to show he was a hairy-chested he-man. He swung on Caradine.

People who did that to Caradine usually found out their mistake from a prone position on the floor, with a cracking headache and a lump on the jaw and, if they were exceptionally unlucky, a bruise on the back of the head.

Rawson was no exception.

He was unlucky, too.

Caradine watched him stand up, swaying, pulling his shirt straight. The man from Ahansic put a hand to the back of his head and the other to his jaw.

“Now get out of here,” Caradine said. “And don’t let me run across you again.”

As they moved to the door his right hand was held deceptively low. The magneclamp on his white shirt had come undone—that was his left hand—and Rawson knew enough not to try to outshoot him. Maybe that surly customs man on Gamma had talked, at that.

When they had gone, Caradine turned and kicked the alloy canister. “Bums,” he said, and philosophically set about setting fire to the box room.