She hit him in the face with the backhand swing of her left.
She turned. Her right arm came swinging in in a wide sweep toward his face. Just before it hit, her right foot hit the floor, the brass heel cracked like a shot. It seemed to give the back of her hand a whiplike propulsion. The blow against his face was the crunch of breaking bones!
It had spun her to the right. Her left arm began a sweep back. Her left foot exploded on the floor. The back of her open hand impelled into his cheek and more bones broke!
This had carried her to the left. Her right arm went out. She turned back. The boot stamped! The hand crashed into his jaw!
The back of her left hand, the back of her right hand, one after the other like a remorseless machine, she drove him backwards.
The yellow-man had sixty feet of hall behind him. Step by punished step he was being driven backwards!
Blood was cascading down his chest. He was howling like a trapped animal!
Step by step, strike by strike she drove him back. A ghastly, precisely timed ballet of blood and punishment. Only those sounds, the stamp of a boot, the crash of the hand, the raging howl of the giant echoed in the room.
Fifty of the sixty feet he went, dying all the way.
And then he tried to counterattack!
He kicked at her! Had it connected it would have smashed her chest. But with perfect timing she seized the heel! Using his own momentum against him, she pulled the heel up until he lay horizontal in the air. Her foot lashed out at what remained of the giant's jaw.
Like a huge arrow he shot backwards. The electric shock machines were there. His head slammed into a machine arm. The sound was like an exploding melon! He crashed downward to the floor.
The Countess Krak was no cold killer now. She was a blazing fury. She followed up and stamped upon his chest, his arms, his face!
She drew off, panting, still angry. "You!" she pointed at the paralyzed cluster that was her crew. "Take him to the dispensary and get him patched up!" An assistant trainer crept to the yellow-man's side and felt in the mess for a heartbeat. The assistant trainer looked up. "He's dead." The Countess Krak was adjusting the chin strap of her cap which had been knocked askew. She said, "That'll teach him not to threaten Jettero!" Until that moment I had been only paralyzed. But when she said that, standing there fussing with her cap, standing there in the blood which now stained her new boots, a jolt of pure terror went through me.
I do not know how I got out of there. I was simply in the tubes flashing away from her.
I halted before I turned a corner to my room corridor. I tried to calm myself. I was trying to throw up and trying not to throw up. My hands were shaking. I tried to get out a chank-pop but my fingers were fluttering so I couldn't get the top off and it fell to the floor.
Only one thought was dominating me. Somehow, someway I had to get Heller out of there. If I remained a day longer I was absolutely convinced I would be dead. If the Countess Krak had any inkling of what was planned for Heller, what she had just done to the giant would be mild for me.
I had to coax myself out of the thought that I was already dead. They say that in total fear of one's life one can get very brilliant. I had to and I did.
Tugging at my tunic to straighten myself up, breathing as naturally as I could, I walked by the room guards and entered.
Heller had bathed and he was now lounging in a chair, feet on another one, listening to music on the Homeview.
I threw my cap on the bed and then sat down at the table. I didn't dare open a canister or he would see my shaking hands. I can control my voice: one is thoroughly trained to do that in the Apparatus.
"Jettero," I said, "has it occurred to you that this is a very dirty place?" He looked at me, languidly, still listening to the music. Then he smiled. "You say that to a Fleet spacer?"
"It is not a good place to be in. You are used to the finer surroundings of life." He thought that over, I had his attention now: he was no longer just listening to the music.
Would this work? A desperate prayer was running off in the back of my head and I hoped it was going to the Gods.
"You factually have completed all your studies," I said, my voice carefully matter-of-fact and calm. "There is no real reason to remain." Heller looked around the room. It was as though he was seeing it for the first time. The black floor, the shabby fixtures, the scarred black walls.
He looked at me. "Soltan, you are right! This fortress is uncomfortable!"He suddenly leaped up out of his chair. He took three steps one way, turned and took three steps back, steadying himself on the bed ends the way spacers will even when groundside.
His quick action startled me. I could not quite grasp the thought processes of his decision about something. I foolishly thought I had magically gotten the mission going!
He didn't say another thing about it all that evening. He just smiled and hummed and grinned to himself and was charming.
He even coaxed the Countess out of a bit of a cross mood she was in when the guards brought her. She felt she had made a spectacle of herself, not saying how or why. And she confessed she had ruined the new boots he had given her.
Heller simply told her there were plenty of boots where those came from and told some funny stories about spaceboots. I took it that his mind had now turned to travel. A good portent.
There was even a brighter sign. He got out the "revolts and pretenders" list covering Manco history and they soon had their heads together, canisters of green sparklewater in hand, and, while the music played on, went over the material.
I was so happy at the possibility of seeing the last of Countess Krak that I almost enjoyed Manco's history!
"See?" said the Countess Krak, a beautiful finger on a line. "There wasa Nepogat! Right here:" And the handmaiden Nepogat who had forsooth suborned the princely morals was banished from the Fortress of Dar and forbidden ever to return.
"Oho!" said Heller. "It doesn't say what princeling but do you suppose it could have been Prince Caucalsia?"
"Oh, it must have been," said the Countess Krak. "A woman spurned can do some very nasty things." I didn't follow it. They were inventing their own history.
After a while, Heller said, "Here's a whole list of Princes condemned without giving a single name. Do you suppose one of them could have been Prince Caucalsia?"
"I'm sure it was!" said the Countess Krak. "Isn't that the right period?"
"Indeed it is," said Heller. "So that proves it!" And they both laughed with delight.
I snickered to myself. Some engineer. I hoped I didn't have to walk on any of his bridges if he couldn't think any better than that.
I left them to it. I went and lay down in the filthy, cluttered closet I used for sleep, idiotically hopeful that I would shortly be out of the reach of the Countess Krak!
Chapter 2
A light shined in my face. "Officer Gris! Time to get going." I groaned and stirred in the stinking litter of the cubicle. I looked at my watch. A half hour before dawn?
"Time to get going," the guard insisted.
I dug around and found my cap under some old food scraps. I stumbled after him back to my room.
The place was a jumble of sound and motion! It was full of cartons and noise! The platoon usually split itself into two watches of twelve hours each, meaning seven guards on duty at a time: but there seemed to be more than that here.
Snelz was astraddle a backwards chair. He was holding a canister of hot jolt and using it to point directions to his men. They were packing the place up! They were all laughing and talking.
Heller was tying up a bundle. He was dressed in a race driver's suit, white with red slashes. He had a red visored cap on the back of his head, the kind they wear under their helmets. He looked fresh and clean and vitaclass="underline" how could he manage that this early?