“Why no!” said Ker, “Look, this money is no good to me now, Jonnie. Look!”
Jonnie propped himself more comfortably on the bureau edge and obediently looked.
Ker, with a glance at the door to make sure he had his back to it and that only Jonnie could see, dramatically threw aside his lapels and pulled the tattered tunic apart.
There was a brand on his chest.
“The three bars of denial,” said Ker. “The criminal scorch. I don't think it's any news to you I was a criminal. That's one of the holds Terl had on me. That's why he felt he could trust me to run around and teach you. If I was returned to Psychlo, having been found to hold false papers and employment, I’d be vaporized. If Psychlo recaptured this place they'd be sure those of us alive were renegades, and they'd examine us and find this. My papers are false. I won't burden you with my real name: not knowing it you can't be hit as an accessory. Got it?”
Jonnie didn't have it at all, especially since the Psychlos would kill him on sight and not be troubled at all about “accessory.” He nodded. All this wasn't getting anywhere. Where had Chrissie put the bandanas they'd found?
“And if in addition they found two billion Galactic credits on me, they'd do a slow vaporization!” said Ker.
“Two billion?”
Yes, well it seemed old Numph had been screwing the company for the whole thirty years of his duty tour here. Things not even Terl had dug up; things like commissions from the female administrators who charged; things like double prices on kerbango; maybe even selling ore to aliens who picked it up in space shifts...who knew? But Numph slept on four mattresses, and Ker thought it was funny they crinkled like that and he liked only one mattress, so he'd ripped open an end and there it was!
“Where?” said Jonnie. “Out in the hall,” said Ker.
The midget Psychlo closed his coat and Jonnie beckoned at the guard in the small door window. Ker darted out through the door, loose chains dragging, alarming everyone out there, and came back lugging a big box which he dumped. Then he rushed out and got another box. Although a midget, only a bit taller than Jonnie,
Ker was very strong. Before anybody stopped him and despite the flapping chains, Ker shortly had the room bulging with old kerbango boxes, and every one of them was overflowing with Galactic credits!
“There's more in his numbered accounts on Psychlo," said Ker, “but we can't get that.” He stood there panting a big smile, very proud of himself. “Now you can pay the renegades like the Chamcos in cash!”
Captain MacDuffhad been trying to tell Jonnie they'd checked the boxes while making sure there were no explosives and still ask what was this stuff? all the while wanting to know how Jonnie had sent a message to the compound without it being known to the sentries, and was it all right that they had let Ker bring it? He was flustered. He had a Pyschlo running around flapping chains and Jonnie was laughing.
“And you want-?” said Jonnie to Ker.
“I want out of that prison!” wailed Ker. “They hate me because I was over them. They hated me anyway, Jonnie. I know machines. Didn't I teach you to run every machine there is? I heard they have a machine school over at what you call the Academy. They don't know anything about those machines. Not like you and me do! Let me go help teach them like I did you!”
He stood there so pathetically, so pleadingly, he was so convinced he had done the right thing, that Jonnie laughed and laughed and shortly Ker's mouthbones started to grin.
“I think it's a great idea, Ker," said Jonnie. At that moment he looked up and saw a frosty Robert the Fox in the door. Jonnie shifted to English. “Sir Robert, I think we have a new instructor for the schoolmaster. It 's true he's a great machine operator and he knows them all.” He smiled at Ker and said in Psychlo, “Terms of employment, a quart of kerbango a day, full pay and bonuses, standard company contract omitting only burial on Pyschlo. Right?” He knew very well Ker probably had buried a few hundred thousand credits on his own.
Ker started bobbing his head emphatically. He had held a few hundred thousand against a rainy day. He held out a paw to bash paws with Jonnie. That done, he was about to leave when he turned and came very close to Jonnie, speaking with the Psychlo equivalent of whispering.
“I got one more thing for you, Jonnie. They put Terl in a cage. You watch Terl, Jonnie. He's up to something!”
When the midget Psychlo had left, Robert the Fox looked at these bales and bales of money.
“Job bribery,” said Jonnie, “comes high these days! Turn it over to the Council.” He was laughing.
“This is Galactic money, isn't it?” said Robert the Fox. "I’m going to contact a Scot named MacAdam at the university in the Highlands. He knows about money.”
But he was wondering at seeing Jonnie dressed. He was more than glad Jonnie had cheered up even though he thought the lad foolhardy for letting a Psychlo so close to him: one rake of a set of claws could cost one half his face. Then he realized Jonnie was hobbling forward, going out. He looked his question.
“I may not be able to hold the sky up,” said Jonnie, “but I don't have to wait forever for it to fall either. I’m headed for the compound.”
He had to talk to the Chamco brothers. He had heard they were making absolutely no progress on repairing the transshipment stage and without that they never would find out about Psychlo.
Chapter 3
It was a long way to the heliport, and especially long when you had only one working leg and a cane on the wrong side. The elevators weren't working and probably never would again. Hobbling along, Jonnie had just begun to appreciate what a great job had been done cleaning up this place when he heard running feet behind him and a sharply barked order in Russian. Two men appeared, one on either side of him, who gripped each others' arms in a chair lift, boosted him into it, and were running with him down the stairs to the heliport.
Somebody must have alerted the standby pilot there, for he was standing beside a mine passenger plane with the passenger door open.
“No!” yelled Jonnie and pointed with his good arm at the pilot side. What did they think he was, a busted-up invalid?
Of course, he was just that. But
Colonel Ivan popped up at the pilot door and opened it. The two Russians literally threw Jonnie into the pilot's seat.
A little confused, the standby pilot started to close the passenger door but was brushed aside by three Russians who, out of breath, had come tearing down the stairs. They leaped into the plane with a clatter of assault rifles.
Colonel Ivan was magically on the other side of the plane helping Robert the Fox and two kilted Scots into the ship and then got in himself.
The pilot was a Swede. He was getting into the copilot seat and saying something in a language Jonnie could not understand. Maybe a South African from the Mountains of the
Moon? No, the pocket of whites there among the Bantu had been contacted too late for anyone to be fully trained yet. Then he realized the pilot was only there for local runs, really a cadet.
Jonnie wrapped himself up in the seat belt, pinning down his relatively useless right arm, and looked around at his passengers. The Russians were in baggy red pants and gray tunics and were finishing getting into their gear. As he turned, Colonel Ivan ripped the bandana off his head and clapped a round, flat, fur cap on him. Jonnie took it off to get it on straight and saw it had a red star set in a gold disc on the front of it.
“We charge!” said Colonel Ivan. Evidently he had worked very hard at his English. Jonnie grinned. They sure were an international contingent!