Across the way there was a mighty explosion, and the Spacer ship next to Ben’s blossomed into a ball of yellow flame. Some of his companions were making dashes for their ships with girls on their shoulders; two had already been relieved of their booty and were struggling in the arms of police. Ben heard the whine of bullets as they ricocheted off the metal promenade.
For a moment it looked hopeless. Then Ben heard the whir of antigravity generators, and one of the raiding ships lifted suddenly from the ground, followed by another and another. At least some of them are getting away, he thought grimly. He measured the distance to his own ship, then rolled the girl off his shoulder and held her like a shield against his chest as he faced the spotlights of a converging circle of guards. He ducked around the folding chairs and tables strewn in his path as an attempt was made to barricade him. Then he concentrated on careful use of his tangle-gun charges to hamper his assailants. Six or seven more ships lifted as he made his way across the promenade, and then the open hatch of his own ship loomed nearby. With the last of his strength he hoisted the girl up into the hatchway and fell into the ship behind her, slamming the hatch shut with a clang.
It was only then that he saw the blond-haired youth inside the ship, aiming an automatic pistol at his chest from across the cabin.
Ben Trefon was never certain exactly what happened next, nor exactly how it happened. There had been times before when he had moved almost by instinct, assessing a situation and acting upon it in the same split second; sometimes Spacers’ lives depended upon that kind of instinctive action. He knew that with the girl on the floor he had nothing to shield him, and he knew the youth’s pistol could kill him.
In a matter of minutes, the police outside would have the hatch pried open. The answer was clear in the same split second. His only possible safety was in space.
Without hesitation Ben slammed his hand down on the control bar, fully activating the null-grav units.
In the same movement he dove across the cabin at the intruder. He heard the gun go off, a million miles away, and felt searing pain in his shoulder. Then he and the youth were rolling on the cabin floor, fighting for control of the hand that held the gun. Ben grabbed the young man’s wrist, slammed the gun hand on the deck, and heard the weapon clatter across the room. The youth caught Ben in the chest with his feet, hurling him across the cabin and diving for the lost gun. Through it all the girl puffed and struggled in the tangle web, shouting encouragement to her would-be rescuer and hurling imprecations at Ben.
Suddenly, it was over. Ben’s hand closed on the pistol, and he twisted to his feet, holding off his attacker with a warning gesture. The Earthman looked at him, and started for the hatchway. Ben shook his head. “Better take a look outside first,” he panted.
The Earthman followed Ben’s eyes to the view screen, and stared in horror. Throughout the fight the ship had been rising on its null-gravs; now Earth was a huge disc in the sky, dwindling visibly as the atomic engines took hold and hurled the ship away from the planet. The intruder shook his head helplessly as he watched his home planet receding before his eyes. “We’re—in space,” he said weakly.
“You got away.”
Ben frowned at him and, a little confused, peered at the girl. There was a similar nasal twang in their voices, and now Ben could see a similarity in their faces too. Both of his captives had the same stubby noses, the same sandy hair and the same crop of freckles. Both were watching him with angry blue eyes.
For a moment Ben didn’t comprehend. Then he burst into helpless laughter.
His part of the raid had gone according to plan—almost. His orders had been to kidnap a girl, and by the moons of Jupiter he had kidnapped one.
The trouble was, he had also kidnapped her brother. And that, unfortunately, was not part of the plan.
3. Too Many Prisoners
BEN TREFON’S first overwhelming impulse was to get rid of the intruder, somehow: land again and throw him off the ship, release him in a lifeboat, do anything, but get him off the ship at any cost. He simply could not be allowed to stay. The Spacer Council would never tolerate it, and neither would common human decency. Kidnapping a woman was one thing. Kidnapping a man was something else entirely, for it violated one of the most basic laws of Spacer relations with Earthmen.
Ben gripped the pistol, glaring at his unwelcome captive and rubbing his aching shoulder. It felt as though a mule had kicked him there; actually, the discharged bullet had barely scratched the skin, but to Ben it seemed the final insult. Why did it have to happen to him? Everything going exactly as planned, the kidnapping squad working as a perfectly organized team, the Earthmen behaving exactly as predicted—and now the fly in the ointment.
Of course it was easy to see what had happened. The youth must have realized the futility of trying to stop Ben on the ground after seeing the tangle-guns doing their harmless but effective work. So he had done what must have seemed logicaclass="underline" waiting outside the hall until he saw where Ben was taking the girl, and taking advantage of the delaying action on the promenade to sneak aboard the ship before Ben got there. Not counting on the Spacer’s resourcefulness, and not understanding how null-gravity engines worked, the youth must have thought he could prevent Ben from getting off the ground if he could only get into the ship’s cabin.
Probably thought I had to crank up the motor like an air compressor, Ben thought sourly. Obviously the Earthman hadn’t even known they were spaceborne until Ben had pointed to the view screen. And now, as Earth rushed away from the little ship, Ben was beginning to wish fervently that he hadn’t moved quite so fast. Earth’s women were a critical and necessary link in the Spacer’s pattern of survival, and as long as kidnapping was the only way to recruit them, kidnapping was part of the game. If an Earth man came into space voluntarily, that was his own lookout, but to force a man out into the area of heavy cosmic radiation was something else altogether.
Because nobody knew for sure how many hours in space an Earthman could tolerate before he became finally and irrevocably a Spacer.
Staring at his unwelcome passenger, Ben searched his mind for a solution. Take him back again?
Impossible now. Anti-aircraft shells were bursting all around the ship, blossoming into yellow flares of violence. Every few seconds in the view screen he could see a large flare as one of the deadly ground-to-air missiles caught up with a fleeing Spacer ship, exploding on contact and blowing the ship into fragments. Twice Ben had felt his own ship jar slightly as it automatically fired its own space-to-space rockets to fight off attacking Earth missiles that had picked up his ship in their homing sights.
But something else was going on down on the planet’s surface, something that didn’t fit the pattern of Earth defenses against Spacer raids that Ben had learned so carefully. In half a dozen areas on the dark side of the receding planet Ben could see wave after wave of yellow sparks that flickered for a few moments and then blinked out. They looked for all the world like the rocket flares of ships being launched, and Ben felt the hair on the back of his neck prickle for a moment even though he knew the idea was ridiculous.
Whatever the flickering lights were, one thing was certain. He was not going to land his ship again just to unload a stowaway, not through this kind of barrage. And a lifeboat would never make it down.
Maybe when they reached the Spacer orbit ship the commander would send the Earthman back after the send-off barrage had slackened and hope that he hadn’t absorbed enough radiation to matter.