Part 13 (2/2)

When he came back to the flitter, Soriki was awake and stretching.

”Another day,” the com-tech drawled. ”And I could do with something besides field rations.” He made a face at the small tin of concentrates he had dug out of the supply compartment.

”We'd do well to be headed west,” Raf ventured.

”Now you can come in with that on the com again!” Soriki answered with unwonted emphasis. ”The sooner I see the old girl standing on her pins in the middle distance, the better I'll feel. You know”--he looked up from his preoccupation with the ration package and gazed out over the city--”this place gives me the s.h.i.+vers. That other town was bad enough. But at least there were people living there. Here's nothing at all--at least nothing I want to see.”

”What about all the wonders they've promised to show us?” countered Raf.

Soriki grinned. ”And how much do we understand of their mouth-and-hand talk? Maybe they were promising us wonders, maybe they were offering to take us to where we could have our throats cut more conveniently--for them!

I tell you, if I go for a walk with any of these painted faces, I'm going to have at least three of my fingers resting on the grip of my stun gun.

And I'd advise you to do the same--if I didn't know that you were already watching these blast-happy harpies out of the corner of your eye.

Ha--company. Oh, it's the captain--”

The hatch of the globe had opened, and a small party was descending the ladder, conspicuous among them the form and uniform of Captain Hobart. The aliens remained in a cl.u.s.ter at the foot of the ladder while the Terran commander crossed to the flitter.

”You”--he pointed to Raf--”are to come along with us.”

”Why, sir?” ”What about me, sir?” The questions from the two at the flitter came together.

”I said that one of you had to remain by the machine. Then they said that you, in particular, must come along, Kurbi.”

”But I'm the pilot--” Raf began and then realized that it was just that fact which had made the aliens attach him to the exploring party.

If they believed that the Terran flitter was immobilized when he, and he alone, was not behind its controls, this was just the move they would make. But there they were wrong. Soriki might not be able to repair or service the motor, but in a pinch he could take it up, send it westward, and land it beside the s.p.a.cer. Each and every man aboard the _RS 10_ had that much training.

Now the com-tech was scowling. He had grasped the significance of that arrangement as quickly as Raf. ”How long do I wait for you, sir?” he asked in a voice which had lost its usual good-humored drawl.

And at that inquiry Captain Hobart showed signs of irritation. ”Your suspicions are not founded on facts,” he stated firmly. ”These people have displayed no signs of wanting to harm us. And an att.i.tude of distrust at this point might be fatal for future friendly contact.

Lablet is sure that they have a highly complex society, probably advanced beyond Terran standards, and that their technical skills will be of vast benefit to us. As it happens we have come at just the right moment in their history, when they are striving to get back on their feet after a disastrous series of wars. It is as if a group of off-world explorers had allied themselves with us after the Burn-Off.

We can exchange information which will be of mutual benefit.”

”If any off-world explorers had set down on Terra after the Burn-Off,”

observed Soriki softly, ”they would have come up against Pax. And just how long would they have lasted?”

Hobart had turned away. If he heard that half-whisper, he did not choose to acknowledge it. But the truth in the com-tech's words made an impression on Raf, a crew of aliens who had been misguided enough to seek out and try to establish friendly relations with the officials of Pax would have had a short and most unhappy shrift. If all the accounts of that dark dictators.h.i.+p were true, they would have vanished from Terra, and not in their s.h.i.+ps either. What if something like Pax ruled here? They had no way of knowing for sure.

Raf's eyes met Soriki's, and the com-tech's hand dropped to hook fingers in his belt within touching distance of his side arm. The flitter pilot nodded.

”Kurbi!” Hobart's impatient call sent him on his way. But there was some measure of relief in knowing that Soriki was left behind and that they had this slender link with escape.

He had tramped the streets of that other alien city. There there had been some semblance of habitation; here was abandonment. Earth drifted in dunes to half block the lanes, and here and there climbing vines had broken down masonry and had dislodged blocks of the paved sideways and courtyards.

The party threaded their way from one narrow lane to another, seeming to avoid the wider open stretches of the princ.i.p.al thoroughfares, Raf became aware of an unpleasant odor in the air which he vaguely a.s.sociated with water, and a few minutes afterward he caught glimpses of the river between the buildings which fronted on it. Here the party turned abruptly at a right angle, heading westward once more, pa.s.sing vast, blank-walled structures which might have been warehouses.

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