“You’re the only one who can help him now,” Leoh said.
Geri. The look on her face. Her voice: “You wouldn’t know what decency is.”
“Very well,” said Odal. “I’ll try.”
He had expected to feel either an excitement at the thought of pleasing Geri, or a new burden of fear at the prospect of returning to Kor’s hands. Instead he felt neither. Nothing. His emotions seemed turned off-or, perhaps, they were merely waiting for something to happen.
It was late at night when Odal, closely guarded, arrived at the dueling machine. He was wearing black from his throat to his boots, and looked like a grim shadow against the antiseptic white of the chamber.
Leoh met him at the control desk. The Acquatainian guards stood back.
“I’m sorry it took so long to get you here. Every minute’s delay could mean Hector’s life. And yours.”
Odal smiled tightly at the afterthought.
The old man continued, “I had to talk to Martine for two whole hours before he’d permit your release. And I roused Sir Harold from his sleep. He was less than happy.”
“If I recall the time differential correctly,” Odal said, “it’s nearly dawn at Kor’s headquarters. An ideal time to arrive.”
“But is their dueling machine on?” Leoh asked. “We can’t make the jump unless the machine on the receiving end is under power.”
Odal thought a moment. “It might be. When Kor was… experimenting with me, they used the machine early each morning. It was always turned up to full power when I arrived for the day’s testing. They probably turn it on at dawn as a matter of routine.”
“There’s one way to find out,” said Leoh, gesturing to the dueling machine.
Odal nodded. The moment had come. He was returning to Kerak. To what fate? Death or glory? To which allegiance? Kor or Romis? Kill Hector or save him?
And the picture he held in his mind as they adjusted the neurocontacts and left him in the dueling machine’s booth was the picture of Geri’s face. He tried to imagine how she would look smiling.
It was late at night, dark and wind swept, when Hector skidded the stolen shuttle craft to a bone-rattling stop deep in a ravine a few kilometers from the Intelligence Ministry.
He had come in low and fast, hoping to avoid detection by Kerak scanners. Now, as he stood atop the dented shuttle craft, feeling the wind, hearing its keening through the dark trees in the ravine, he focused his gaze on the beetling towers of the Intelligence building, silhouetted darkly atop a hill against the star-bright sky.
Looks like an ancient castle, Hector thought, without knowing that it was.
He ducked back through the hatch into the equipment storage racks, pulled out a jet belt, and squirmed into it. Then he went forward to the pilot’s compartment and turned off all the power on the ship.
Might need her again, in case I can’t get to the dueling machine.
It took him ten minutes to grope his way back to the hatch in darkness. Ten minutes, three shin-barkings, and one head-banging of near concussion magnitude. But finally Hector stood outside the hatch once more. He took a deep breath, faced the Intelligence building, and touched the control stud of the jet belt.
In the quiet night, the noise was shattering. Hector’s ears rang as he flew, squinting into the stinging wind, toward the castle. Maybe this isn’t the best way to sneak up on them, he suspected. But now the battlements were looming before him, racing up fast. Cutting power, he tumbled down and hit hard, sprawling on the squared-off top of the tallest tower.
Shaking his head to clear it and get rid of the ear-ringing, Hector got to his feet. He was unhurt. The platform was about ten meters square, with a stairway leading down from one corner. Did they hear me coming?
As if in answer, he heard footsteps ticking up the stone stairway. Shrugging off the jet belt, he hefted its weight in his hands, then hurried over to the top of the stairs. A man’s head came into view. He turned as he ran up the last few steps and started to whisper hoarsely, “Are you here, Watchman? I…”
Hector knocked him unconscious with the jet belt before he could say any more. As he struggled into the Kerak guard’s uniform, pulling it over his own cover-alls, Hector suddenly wondered: How did he know it was a Watchman? Maybe he’s been alerted by the star-ship captain. If that’s the case, then these people are against Kanus.
Once inside the guard uniform, Hector started down the steps. Three more guards were waiting for him at the bottom of the flight, in a stone-faced hallway that curved off into darkness. The lighting wasn’t very good, but Hector could see that there men were big, tough-looking, and armed with pistols. He hoped they wouldn’t notice that he wasn’t the same man who had gone up the stairs a few minutes earlier.
Hector grinned at them and fluttered a wave. He kept walking, trying to get past them and down the corridor.
“Hey, you’re the…” one of the guards started to say, in the Kerak language.”
Hector suddenly felt sick. He could barely understand the Kerak tongue, much less speak it. He kept his grin, weak though it was, and walked a bit faster.
The second guard grabbed the first one’s arm and cut him short. “Let him through,” he whispered. “We’ll try to get the word to our people downstairs and get him into the dueling machine and out of here. But don’t get caught near him by Kor’s people! Understand?”
“All right, but somebody better cut off the scanners that watch the halls.”
“Can’t do that without running the risk of alerting Kor himself!”
“We’ll have to chance it… otherwise they’ll spot him in a minute, in a guard uniform four sizes too small for him.”
Hector was past them now, wondering what the whispering was about, but still moving. As he rounded the corner of the corridor, he saw an open lift tube, looking raw and new in the warm polished stone of the wall. The tube was lit and operating. Hector stepped in, said, “Dueling machine level” in basic Terran to the simple-minded computer that ran the tube, and closed his eyes.
The computer’s squeaky voice echoed back, “Dueling machine level; turn left, then right.” Hector opened his eyes and stepped out of the tube. The corridor here was much brighter, better lit. But there was still no one in sight.
It was almost like magic. Hector made his way through the long corridors of the castle without seeing another soul. He passed guard stations where steaming mugs sat alone on desk tops, passed open doors to spacious rooms, passed blank view screens. He saw scanning cameras set high up on the corridor wall every few meters, but they seemed to be off. Once or twice he thought he might have heard scuffling and the muffled sounds of men struggling, but he never saw a single person.
Then the big green double doors of the dueling machine chamber came into view. One of them was open, and he could see the machine itself, dimly lit inside.
Still no one in sight!
Hector sprinted into the big, arched-ceiling room and ran straight to the main control desk of the machine. He started setting the power when all the lights in the chamber blazed on blindingly.
From all the doors around the chamber, white-helmeted guards burst in, guns in their hands. A viewscreen high above flashed into life and a furious man with a bald, bullet-shaped head shouted:
“There he is! Get him!”
Before Hector could move, he felt the flaming pain of a stun bolt smash him against the control desk. As he sank to the floor, consciousness spiraling away from him, he heard Kor ordering: