The COMPLEAT Collected SFF Works, page 65
"For this reason," Kerron went on, "the Earth party has been moved out of Crew Quarters and given the freedom of the ship. You will find mixing with other races interesting, I expect. Just remember to keep silent regarding the Agency; it is for your own good."
An hour later, in an outfit loaned him by Naydrad, Lockhart went looking for Hedley. Despite what Kerron had told him he expected to see the Earthmen together; they all had too much on their minds to go sightseeing around the ship. He found them in a small passenger lounge, and his entrance went unnoticed because they were crowded against the view-port watching the Grosni ship. It was taking off.
Boiling clouds of dust and smoke obscured its outlines and softened the incandescent glare around its stern. Even through the hull of their ship its reaction motors screamed and thundered with a sound that could be felt rather than heard. Slowly it began to rise; veering, overcompensating, then veering again, it staggered drunkenly upwards trailing a long blue spear of light after it. Lockhart bit down on his lip, swaying tensely in sympathy with that gyrating ship, thinking desperately that he should have advised the Grosni to wait a while before moving. A Human patient would have been on his back for days.
By some miracle the ship remained vertical. With steadily mounting velocity it screamed upwards to become a shrinking blue star in the sky, then nothing. Lockhart released his bruised lip and forced his fists to unclench.
"Well, well," came Fox's voice, followed by an admiring whistle. "You look real cute, Doctor."
Lockhart tried not to show embarrassment as all eyes turned toward him. He was wearing the silver blouse and diagonal red sash of a Chief Medical Technican, shorts and calf-length boots. Lockhart had shied at wearing the outfit, but Naydrad had insisted that he was more than qualified to wear it. But Lockhart felt uncomfortably conscious of his bare knees.
"So you saved our bacon again, Doc," Hedley said, waving toward two chairs beside him. "Come and sit down. There have been developments since you've seen us last. I want to talk to you."
Lockhart was suddenly glad to sit down. All their problems were solved. He could relax.
"If you mean about Kerron taking us to Harla," he said, "and giving us the freedom of the ship, I've heard it, from him."
"Oh," said Hedley. He gave a half-angry toss of his head, then went on. "Doctor, I'm uneasy about all this. We've been too lucky. This trip to Harla should have been the trickiest part of the job, but we're having no trouble at all."
"Speak for yourself," Lockhart said tartly.
Hedley grinned. "Yes, of course. You've been having all the trouble so far, and are directly responsible for this good luck I've been worrying about." His brows drew together and he fell silent, still worrying.
Lockhart ignored him, his eyes traveling idly about the room. Kelly was missing, he saw, and he had left Cedric singing madrigals—he supposed they were madrigals—in his bath, but everyone else was there. Draper, Simpson and Fox were talking quietly together at the view-port. The Keelers were in a corner by themselves. Mrs. Keeler was chiding Junior in a tired, despairing voice, knowing that she was wasting her breath. Her husband was staring moodily at the floor. Deep lines had been cut into his forehead and around his mouth. Plainly he blamed himself for landing his family in their present fix.
The Keelers puzzled Lockhart. The FBI man seemed very fond of his wife, and though he gave the impression of being easy-going, his job proved that he was not the type to stand any nonsense, especially from an eight-year-old son. Young Keeler was an ex-quiz kid, of course, a species prone to spoiling by too much fame at a tender age, but Keeler seemed strangely awkward with the youngster.
He was basing a lot on just a few impressions, he knew, but Lockhart suspected that Keeler had acquired his family ready-made. Mrs. Keeler had perhaps been a war-widow with a grown son when Keeler married her. Perhaps the marriage had been recent, and the holiday in Ireland had been their honeymoon.
A fine honeymoon it had turned out to be.
"You know," said Hedley, breaking suddenly into Lockhart's thoughts, "Kerron gave us the freedom of his ship just a few minutes after you'd left. Kelly must have convinced him that you were quite a Doctor. And while you were over there, the ferry-ship took off. Peculiar."
Lockhart was silent; not in thought, but because he suddenly felt too tired to think. Across the room Junior was prowling about with his space-blaster cocked. It was the same gun he had soaked Fox with in Portballintrae, but it was empty now and he had not yet found a way to refill it from the water dispensers in the ship. He looked slyly around, then darted out into the corridor. Lockhart moved instinctively to stop him, but relaxed. There should be no danger out there now.
But Hedley was looking at him as though expecting some comment. Lockhart said, "Er, I'm surprised the Retlonians let the ferry-ship take off."
"Kerron was anxious to report the situation to his superiors, he said, and he agreed to filling the ferry-ship with natives provided one of his officers could take his message along. That's why the ferry wasn't blown out of the sky. And another thing. When you were busy with our large friend another ship landed and started embarking refugees. It was a Government ship, belonging to what I suppose we'd call the Federation Navy, sent here by one of the first Retlonian craft to flee. I was with Kelly and Kerron and saw it arrive."
Hedley paused. He looked down at his large brown hands and went on. "I suggested that Kelly, being a Federation Agent, should contact the ship and arrange a transfer for us. I would have felt a lot easier on a Government ship. From Kerron's face I couldn't tell what he thought of the suggestion, but Kelly didn't like it at all; she thought we'd be better off where we are."
Lockhart felt himself tightening up again. He had thought they were all safe, that it would be just plain sailing from here on in. Maybe they were safe. Maybe they just didn't know enough of the background to realize that Kelly's suspicious behavior was correct in the circumstances. Sardonically he remembered that only a short time ago Hedley had manfully defended the girl against his suspicious mind.
"So you suspect her of something," Lockhart said. "What?"
"I don't know, I just don't know," Hedley said irritably.
"She knows the ropes here better than we do," Lockhart said reassuringly. "I wouldn't worry about it too much if I were you. Where is she?"
"With Kerron, probably," Hedley said shortly.
"Now that we're on our way to Harla," Lockhart said, "it's time she gave us an idea of what to expect there. How are we supposed to act in this Galactic Court, for instance?"
Lockhart broke off as an officer entered the lounge and approached Hedley. He folded his arms, bowed and politely requested that the Earth party move to the main passenger lounge as this one would shortly become untenable. It appeared that the wiring under the floor required attention.
Whether they liked it or not they were going to meet the other passengers.
THE SHEKKALDOR left Retlone and put the necessary distance between it and the system's gravitational field for its hyperdrive to function accurately. Then it executed the shift through nowhere which brought it out somewhere else. That, despite Naydrad's explanation of the process, was how Lockhart thought of it, and in this case "somewhere else" was the system of Karlning. They landed and disembarked the passengers who were natives of the planet, which took about half an hour. In another hour the routine of the port had been completed and the ship was ready to leave.
But six hours later they were still there.
Hedley said, "What's Kerron hanging around for? He said he was going to take us to Harla as fast as he could."
The same question was beginning to worry Lockhart. He continued his slow pacing along the corridor without saying anything. Kelly might know the answer, but the girl just wasn't available these days. He hadn't seen her since the landing on Retlone. And he was becoming as jumpy as Hedley.
Sometimes he shared the agent's doubts about the girl, but then he would remember how she had looked at the concert in Paris, and on Mount Errigal. Mostly he thought of the way she had clung to him during that dance in Portrush. Kelly was probably not avoiding the Earth party so much as Lockhart himself. She was a Galactic Citizen who had allowed herself to relax before a barbarian named Lockhart. She was probably keeping away from him in case he got the idea that it had been more than that.
Kelly's lack of contact with the Earth party had been a source of anxiety at first. Remembering her warnings about the shipboard code of behavior and manners, designed to avoid friction between individuals of widely differing cultural backgrounds, they had been worried about meeting passengers without a detailed knowledge of it. But to the Shekkaldor's passengers the Earth party could do no wrong. Any lapses were either laughed off or ignored. The Grosni incident was responsible for that. And Fox.
Fox could blow a mean mouth-organ. A passenger had heard him playing dolefully to himself in a corner of the main lounge, and now ... well, Sinatra never had a more enthusiastic and near-hysterical following. The craziness of it all made Lockhart wonder if Galactic citizens were so very superior to people like himself after all.
His thoughts were rudely interrupted by Hedley gripping his arm.
"Look!" the agent said, pointing through the view-port which they were passing. "The ferry-ship!"
It was the ship that had landed on Earth, transferred them to the Shekkaldor and later taken a load of Retlonian refugees and Kerron's report to Harla. Now it was returning, gliding silently downwards with its broad fins catching the sunlight.
"Maybe that's what Kerron has been waiting for," Hedley began thoughtfully, when the sound of running feet behind them made him stop. They turned quickly.
Junior was moving so fast that he ran full tilt into Lockhart's legs. Grabbing two small fistsful of Lockhart's shirt he gasped out, "Come quick!"
"What's wrong?" Hedley asked sharply.
Junior's eyes turned to Hedley. They were big and wide.
He fought for breath for several seconds, then panted, "It's Mr. Simpson and Mr. Draper. Pop says they're dead."
From somewhere inside the ship there was the unmistakable sound of a revolver shot. It was repeated twice.
Chapter Thirteen
THEY REACHED the main lounge in seconds, then stopped abruptly just inside the entrance.
Fox stood half-crouching in the center of the floor, a harmonica in his left hand and a heavy automatic pistol in his right, but there was nothing ludicrous about the look on his face. His gun pointed steadily at the figure in an Astrogation section uniform who was half-sitting and half-lying against the wall. The officer was bleeding from the nose, there was a hole in the sleeve of his pale blue tunic and a little blood was trickling down past his wrist. The shattered remains of a needle gun lay near the hand.
Keeler stood a few feet from Fox. The FBI man's gun covered the twenty-odd passengers currently inhabiting the lounge. His stance was more relaxed, but his freckles showed prominently. On the floor between them Simpson and Draper lay in abandoned attitudes, like unstrung puppets.
Lockhart went across to them, but he knew that he could do nothing. The needle gun was a very civilized weapon, he thought bitterly; it was painless, but one of those poisoned needles anywhere on the body meant death in seconds. Hedley spoke from behind him.
"What happened here?"
Fox was muttering steadily to himself, his eyes boring into the face of the officer on the floor. Hedley repeated himself, sharply.
"I ... I didn't see it all," Fox said, his eyes shifting briefly towards Keeler.
"I saw it," Keeler said thickly.
"Well?"
"My son was hiding behind that," Keeler said, pointing to a large, heavily upholstered chair. His voice was without inflection and his eyes would not meet Hedley's. "An officer came in and my son jumped out on him from behind it. He yelled for the officer to 'stick 'em up' and he pointed his gun at him."
Lockhart could see the bright plastic toy lying on the floor. It had been stepped on several times and showed it.
"This officer," Keeler went on, indicating the man lying against the wall, "drew a needle gun and stepped back, aiming it at the boy. Fox, Draper and Simpson were sitting close by. They jumped up. Simpson shouted that it was only a toy and grabbed the officer's arm. The needle gun went off. Simpson was still falling to the floor when the officer took aim and fired at Draper, who had made no movement other than rising from his chair. Draper fell. Fox closed with the officer and landed a couple on his face, knocking him where you see him. Then Fox drew his gun and held it on the officer and I thought he was going to kill him.
"I didn't know what repercussions that might have," Keeler said, wetting his lips nervously. "So I sent Junior to get you. Shortly afterwards the officer tried to grab his needle gun, which was lying near him. Fox shot him in the arm, then fired twice at the weapon."
Keeler met Hedley's eyes then for the first time. His freckles still looked like brown paint splattered on parchment, and his eyes were dark with pain. "I'm awfully sorry," he said.
But he had nothing to apologize for, except Junior.
Curtly, Hedley waved the apology aside. He said, "Doctor, Simpson and Draper were armed. Shoulder holsters. Give me their guns." He snapped his fingers. "Quick!"
Simpson had a .38. Draper had favored a Webley .45, a veritable cannon of a weapon. As Lockhart passed the guns to Hedley he wished suddenly that he had known the two men better. He felt he should feel sorrier that they were dead, and he was ashamed that he did not. But Simpson had been nondescript and unobtrusive to the point of self-effacement, which probably explained why Hedley considered him one of the best men in the department. It was difficult to grieve for a man like that, however. And Draper, big, slow-moving, taciturn Draper had not exchanged a dozen words with Lockhart since their first meeting.
Hedley had been very fond of Draper, Lockhart remembered. He felt suddenly anxious. Why had Hedley asked for the guns? What was he going to do with them?
Lockhart could not guess how this incident was going to affect their relations with Captain Kerron. Some very clear thinking was needed here, and quickly. But looking at Hedley's pale, immobile face, and at his burning eyes, Lockhart knew that the agent was not thinking at all.
Abruptly Hedley was not looking at him, but staring at something over his shoulder. Lockhart twisted around to see what it was.
"Drop those weapons onto the floor. At once!"
It was Kerron, Lockhart saw. The Captain was standing inside the other entrance to the lounge.
"Quickly!" Kerron repeated harshly. "I could have had all of you killed without warning had I so desired. Drop them!"
The Captain was not armed, but the six officers ranged on each side of him were, and their hands were very steady. Lockhart whirled around to find that the entrance Hedley and he had used was also filled with officers holding needle guns. One of them was also holding a red-faced and silently struggling Junior. The Keeler boy had been unable to give warning of what was happening, but Lockhart could see teeth-marks on the restraining officer's thumb. He almost liked Junior at that moment.
The guns of Hedley, Fox and Keeler thudded against the floor. Lockhart straightened up.
"The right to carry weapons is the prerogative of every Federation Citizen," the Captain began angrily, "and I allowed you to retain yours in the belief that you were sane, responsible beings. I was mistaken, you are nothing but—"
"He killed two of my men," Hedley snapped, "and for no reason at all."
"Simpson might have been an accident," Keeler put in loudly. "But he deliberately aimed at Draper. I saw it."
Several of the passengers began protesting to the Captain as well. Lockhart realized that Fox must have made an awful lot of friends among them.
"Quiet!" Kerron shouted. He pointed to one of the passengers. "You—what happened?"
The recital was practically a verbatim repetition of Keeler's. The Captain cut it off as the passenger was about to add opinions to the facts, and turned to Hedley again.
"My Astrogation officer was threatened by a weapon."
"But it was a toy," Hedley said angrily. "A child's plaything which emits a harmless jet of water."
"The officer did not know that it was harmless," Kerron said harshly. "The shock of having it pointed at him, and of two of your men jumping up seemingly to attack him from the flank, could cause a panic reaction during which he would think it necessary to kill your men in self-defense. I am unable to blame him for his action."
A deprecating cough made Kerron break off and glance aside. One of the passengers had something to say.
"Before midday I was visiting my cabin," the man began nervously. "It's close to those occupied by the ship's officers. I saw the Earth boy and the officer in question together in the corridor. The boy had his weapon and the officer was playing with him in such a way that he must have known with certainty that it was a toy. He could not, therefore, have been afraid of it when the boy later surprised him."
The Captain's eyes bored into those of the passenger while he spoke, but it was Kerron who lowered his gaze first. "This alters things," he said to Hedley, then he swung toward the recumbent Astrogation officer. "You! Get onto your feet. All of you, follow me. And put those things away," he said impatiently to the armed officers surrounding him. He turned and began leading the way to the control room.
LOCKHART had never in all his life experienced such a tongue-lashing. Even Hedley's ears had been red. It was not that Kerron had accused them of anything specific. He simply ripped the whole Earth culture to shreds. Speaking very softly he had begun by dissecting a civilization which allowed its children to amuse themselves with "toys" which were simply training models for the full-sized and lethal weapons which, he had no doubt, they would use just as frequently when they reached maturity.
Kerron admitted that the culture held much of value—its music in particular displayed an emotional depth and a sensitivity that was unique in the Galaxy—but this barbarous aspect of Earth's civilization he found repellent.
