O Pioneer!

XXVII

Giyt could see that Hagbarth’s mouth was moving. That was how he knew that the man was saying something, or from his expression, most likely furiously bellowing something, but just what Hagbarth was bellowing was drowned out in the thunderous crash and rumble from the doll factory. Giyt saw that the door to the factory was bulging toward them. For a moment he thought it would fly open, but it didn’t; it swelled and shuddered, but it held. As the echoes of the explosion died down, Hagbarth gave Giyt a petulant look. “What the hell have you done now?” he asked, and didn’t wait for an answer. With Kettner he raced to the door and tried to pull it open. It resisted. Kettner set down the minicarbine to get a better grip on the door, while Tschopp was staring after the other two, open-mouthed incredulous and scarlet-faced angry.

Even a nonviolent man can find a little violence in him now and then. Giyt didn’t even pause to think. From behind Tschopp he kicked at the back of the man’s knees. As Tschopp went sprawling Giyt was already running, as far as he could get from the men with the guns—down the corridor, around a turn, through an open door, down another short hall.

The hall ended in a doorway with a glowing orange sign over it. The sign was in the curlicues of the Delt language, but Giyt knew what it was: That door went to the outside world.

He paused for the fraction of a second to consider. Did he want to go out into the freezing polar night again. Did he have a choice?

Put that way, it was a simple decision. When he grasped the handle it was cold to the touch. When he pushed the heavy door open the blast that came in was colder still. He hesitated, thinking about just what it was going to be like to be out, dressed as he was dressed, in that fierce Arctic gale; but he knew the others were not far behind him. Outside, at least, the dark might hide him.

He stepped through, hugging himself against the freezing blast, and let the door close behind him.

That was the first disappointment.

Outside in the open, it wasn’t really that dark. Overhead the colors of the aurora washed across the sky, rust-red and pale blue; they weren’t bright, but they were widespread, in places obscuring the icy bright stars. The aurora gave light enough to see by, surely. If Hagbarth and the others followed him out, the one that held the carbine could pick him out in a moment, and then—

Then it would be very bad for Evesham Giyt.

He floundered to where the winds had scoured away most of the snow and began to run, his lightweight shoes crunching against the gritty crust left from some earlier snowfall, his feet already feeling as though they were beginning to freeze. He expected at any moment to hear shouts from behind him, and then, no doubt, the pippity-pop of the minicarbine. Or did you ever hear the shot that got you? Weren’t the bullets moving faster than sound? So perhaps he would hear nothing at all, but he would feel something, all right. What he would feel would be the punch-punch-punch of a dozen rounds from the minicarbine stitching themselves across his back . . . and that would be the last thing he ever felt, in the moment when life would come to an end for Evesham Giyt.

The second disappointment was that there was nowhere to hide.

Giyt thought wildly of clawing out a foxhole in the snow, maybe covering himself with the stuff. He didn’t think about that for long. Even assuming it was possible, assuming he could do that kind of work with the bare hands that were already stiffening up, he knew what would happen then. Either Hagbarth and the others would find him anyway, or he would simply freeze to death.

Then he stopped short as reality hit him.

What he was doing was making it easy for Hagbarth and the others.

They weren’t likely to shoot him. Why would they bother, when shooting him meant they would have to explain away the bullet holes? While if they simply left him alone he would die of the cold. He could hear what Hagbarth’s semi-pious explanations would be: “I guess the poor son of a bitch must have done something stupid that caused the accident, you know? And then he ran away, probably trying to hide, maybe in shock or something, and then he must’ve got outside somehow. It’s really too bad, and I’m going to hate having to tell his wife, but, Jesus, look at the damage the bastard caused!”

So hiding out here was no good. To have any chance at all of surviving, Giyt needed to get back to the warmth inside.

He looked around wildly, each breath a separate hurtful thrust of pain in his nostrils. Instinctively he had been running back toward the rocket port, so the building that was just ahead of him had to be where Mrs. Threewhiteboots and her mate were overseeing the instruments at the plenum.

There had been an outside door there too, he remembered.

There was, and just by the door, parked, was a Centaurian hovercar. He tried the door of the car, but it was locked, and his fingers were getting numb.

Perhaps the Centaurians could help? If he could get the door to the plenum open from outside . . .

As it turned out, he couldn’t. There was no external handle on the door, and not even anything for him to grip and try to pull it open.

But when he had hammered on it long enough, freezing, despairing, it opened a crack and a long Centaurian snout poked inquiringly out to peer at him.

It was hard enough for Giyt to try to explain what had happened, his limbs numb, his teeth chattering. It must have been even harder for the Centaurians to comprehend him through the vagaries of the translation program. But Mrs. Threewhiteboots was quick to figure out what he was trying to say. “Damn right,” she said. “Something require being done. Never liked that stinky Large Male Hagbarth—no offense other Earth humans, all right? So okay, we hide you someplace. Warm you up. Come.”

As it turned out, not all the tiny doors along the corridors were for Petty-Primes; Mrs. Threewhiteboots held one open while her husband scuttled ahead, clucking and mewing to the chorus of tinier clucks and mews that came from inside. A door that was built large enough to allow passage for a Centaurian was not meant for humans, but Giyt somehow managed to bend his stiffening body low enough to squirm through.

At least it was warm inside the Centaurian lounge. It was dimly lit, and it also smelled quite horrible, likely because of the half-dozen pups that were squirming around one of those elevated Centaurian sleeping pads. “New litter,” the female said proudly, cuffing them out of the way. “Exceptionally handsome lot, don’t you agree? Now you come closer here, I hug you to defrostedness.”

Her fur was soft, her body blessedly warm. The pups didn’t like the idea of this alien monster preempting their mother’s embrace, but the male spoke sharply to them and they curled up sullenly against Giyt’s back. When he tried to talk Mrs. Threewhiteboots shushed him peremptorily. “You get blood running again, then have conversation. Not yet.” But then, as he felt life returning, he felt also a nearly overpowering urge to drift off to sleep. He resisted it; his story could not wait. Haltingly he told Mrs. Threewhiteboots what he wanted to do.

“You bet, sure,” she said. “Show proof of total iniquitousness of other large males six-species gathering, good idea. So we take you to rocket, all right, let damn ugly Large Male Hagbarth try to stop us.”

“But he has a gun,” Giyt remembered to say between bouts of yawning.

That produced a considerable silence. Then Mrs. Threewhiteboots murmured something to her mate, who turned and pushed his way out of the door. “Hate damn guns,” she said morosely. “That make things tough, right? But we do best we can. Mr. Threewhiteboots go check things out. Now you sleep a little, understand me?”

It was an invitation hard to refuse. Against his better judgment Giyt let his eyes close. Perhaps Mr. Threewhiteboots would come back with help. Or perhaps he would raise the alarm, and the several dozen other persons in the polar complex, human or otherwise, would turn away from the broadcast of the opening ceremonies long enough to overpower Hagbarth’s few and convoy him to the rocket, and then to the Hexagon to show his chiplets to the council meeting…

But perhaps Hagbarth would not want to be overpowered.

And he and his bullies did have that gun.

The gun made all the difference.

Of course, Giyt reasoned, it would make no sense for Hagbarth to start a shooting war here and now. Everything was against it. Hagbarth wasn’t ready for anything like that. Especially right now, with the six-species council in session, and capable of summoning quick reinforcements from the parent planets. Most of all, Hagbarth’s illicit armory had vanished with the explosion of the Kalkaboo bombs; that was another reason why this would not be a good time to start his putsch. Shooting anybody would certainly not be a sensible thing to do.

But, on the other hand, who had ever described Hoak Hagbarth as sensible?

A sudden twitch of alarm from Mrs. Threewhiteboots made Giyt open his eyes. That was a strange sensation, for what he saw was no different either way. Eyes closed, eyes open, there was only blackness. Was this what blindness felt like?

But it wasn’t his eyes that were at fault. “Is power out,” Mrs. Threewhiteboots said worriedly. “Power never out. Is bad thing. You stay here inside lek where no one can see, Large Male Giyt, I look.”

That was an order he could not obey. As she peered out of the door Giyt was shoulder to shoulder with her. Power was out, all right. The principal illumination in the corridor was from one distant, palely glowing panel of green emergency lighting on the ceiling. He could see the plenum at the end of the hall, but the brilliant readout displays were gone, leaving only one fast-moving line of symbols on one wall. There were brighter moving lights just beyond there, too. Someone—no, several someones—were there with pocket torches. And he heard voices.

One of the voices was raised in anger, and it belonged to Hoak Hagbarth.

Mrs. Threewhiteboots moaned something, then reared upright to peer down the hall. Something small was skittering rapidly toward them. It turned out to be her mate, who leaped into the fur of her back, chattering at her. She listened for a moment, then turned and shoved Giyt back inside. “They coming, maybe! Go in! Close door!”

The power was out, and so were communications. Mr. Threewhiteboots (his mate explained to Giyt) had gone to the communicator; but that was when the power went—shut off, most likely, by Hagbarth himself to make things even tougher for Giyt. While Mr. Threewhiteboots was trying to get the emergency circuits working to sound the alarm, two large Earth-human males had come in. “They asking you. Large Male Giyt,” the female reported. “My husband hear you name, but nothing else; he not have translator. They talk at him, but he not understand nothing. Then they point stinky gun at him. He run.”

“Hell,” Giyt said. Communications dead, access to the rocket blocked: Was there any way out of this? He thought rapidly. “Are they still there?”

“Think not. Don’t want to look. You want?”

“No. Well, maybe I do, but not right away. They won’t stay around. Then maybe I can—”

But he stopped there, because he knew, before he said it, that they would never let him get to the rest of the complex. They would let no one in or out until they had made sure Giyt was not still inside.

Then he remembered what was parked by the outside door.

He took a deep breath, then opened the door a crack, listening. The Centaurian pups were whining softly, but he heard nothing else, and it was dark outside. When he poked his head out there were no lights.

There would be no better chance than this. “Mrs. Threewhiteboots,” he said, “do you have a key card for the hover? If I could get around the outside to the rocket pad—”

She made a snuffling sound that might have been amusement, “What you do with keycard? You think you driving Centaurian hover?”

“Maybe you could tell me how to do it.”

“Maybe you being very ridiculous, Large Male Giyt. Never happening; driving instruments quite complicated. Also what you think those large males do, they finding us here and you gone? No, not giving keycard. Driving vehicle own self, most fearfully.”

Mrs. Threewhiteboots delayed only to scrabble in a compartment for a body-shawl and a set of flat disks like snow-shoes. When she had strapped them to her little feet she muttered to her husband, and the two of them led Giyt to the door.

The hovercraft started quickly and moved easily over the drifts. It took only a few minutes to reach the rocket launch pad.

And then they stopped, looking at each other, looking back at the dome they had left. There were more of those handheld lights moving around outside that door. They undoubtedly belonged to some of Hagbarth’s people, searching for them. If they went back there, they would be caught.

But there wouldn’t be much point in trying to do that, anyway. The pad was empty. The suborbital rocket itself was gone.