Part 5 (2/2)

Abruptly he laughed. ”Madam, you do underestimate yourself and amaze me!” Just as abruptly, with a jerky movement, he tugged the replica of an ancient pistol out of the broad belt under his long s.h.i.+ning black coat.

Both women tensed-alid swiftly Manjanungo reversed the weapon.

”My pistole-my stopper, Seera, which is ever set on Three. Death by disintegration ray. Haha-a disintegrator ray-gun!”

Taking two jackbooted steps forward, he extended the weapon to Seera, who shrank from it. ”Here! Now you too are armed, Lady Seerava. Careful now! Don't use it on me, dear Seera!” And he chuckled.

She took it gingerly. Hefted it, examined it, squeezed it exploratorially. With her fingers wrapped around the downcurving arc of the grip, she aimed at a chair close to neither Manjanungo nor Najendra, and squeezed. Nothing happened.

”Hmp.” She looked questioningly at him, brows lofty.

81.He laughed. ”True, with an ordinary stopper one does squeeze the grip. Thus.”

He drew a normal stopper, a simple-looking blue-black cylinder, carefully changed its setting, and without warning swung it at Najendra and squeezed.

s.h.i.+p's Mate Najendra stiffened, quivering tightly all over. She looked shocked, surprised, without motor control, and ridiculous.

”Setting number One, you see. Merely Freeze, as it is called. Wouldn't really want to hurt her-can't go about disintegrating Captain Lortice's first mate!”

With an amiable chuckle he lowered the weapon. Najendra staggered at the abrupt release from the awful nerve-jangling grip of the beam. Her quaking ceased, but she looked drained.

”My apologies, my dear First. Only a demonstration-a little Freeze will never hurt you and I was of course too considerate to use setting Two-the Dance setting.” He smiled engagingly.

”That pistole,'” he went on, looking back at Seera, ”has a trigger. The little arced item depending just in front of the grip. Right, that's it. It actuates the stopper barrels built into the pistole.”

Seera continued gazing at Najendra, her face drawn into an expression of concern. ”You-you beamed her- made her helpless, just to ...”

He flipped his fingers in a manual shrug. ”It is nothing, the first setting. Only as a demonstration for yer, dear Seera. She is fine. Aren't yer, First Mate?”

”P...OS.”.

”This grows tiresome,” Seerava said, in a Most n.o.ble Lady tone of voice. ”What shall I disintegrate, then?” She shot a worried glance back at Najendra.

”Why must yer disintegrate anything, Seera?”

82.”To prove that you have not given me a harmless 'weapon' as a trick. We are proving trust, remember?”

”Ah. Well, it disintegrates only living matter- organic matter,” he advised. ”Ah-zoological matter, that is. People, animals. So long as they are . . . warm. Yet you can test it, for though I could find that insulting, in truth I would have yer know that my gesture is more than a gesture, and no trick. I gave yer a deadly weapon to prove that I am not threatening yer, but genuinely want yer to join me. You can direct it at something metal, though, as a test of my sincerity. Anything. Ah-here.”

He took a folding knife from his pocket and tossed it carefully onto the bed before her, between the sheet-draped legs necessarily parted by her sitting position.

”Beam that,” he said.

He and Najendra watched while Seera did. They could see the beam only faintly. Only just visible, that beam of the most horrid of personal weapons. And yet the neatest ever devised, for a disintegrator did after all clean up after itself.

Nothing happened to the knife. Nothing visible.

”Cease your pressure on the trigger,” the pirate Man-janungo said. ”Now extend your other hand to the knife's blade. Don't touch it! Can yer feel anything? Please do not say what.”

”Yes!”

”s.h.i.+p's Mate-we are working on trust, here. Can you briefly explain stopper setting Three to a Most n.o.ble and beautiful lady with no knowledge of such dreadful things?”

Najendra spoke in a low, dull voice. ”Setting Three affects only animal life-forms as he-as the Admiral said. It disintegrates them utterly, painlessly. It otherwise affects only metal, really. Oh, I suppose that over a 83.long period of time the ray directed at something such as wood might perhaps s.h.i.+ver it, sonically?-disrupt the molecules? I am not sure. Its effect on metal is to heat it. The first two settings affect living beings, only. If that is indeed a stopper and it is indeed set on Three, Poof, the knifeblade should have warmed. Hold the beam on metal long enough and it becomes hot, truly hot.”

”It is quite warm,” Seera said, and raised the pistol in a seemingly instinctive two-handed grip, aiming briefly, and squeezed the trigger.

Her target had time only for the beginning of a horrified outcry.

Then he seemed to s.h.i.+mmer, to turn opalescent, and then . . . and then he vanished, to become only motes of dust and less than dust, adrift in the cabin. Pirate Admiral Manjanungo's career was at an end. Manjanungo had been disintegrated, in every component.

”d.a.m.n,” Najendra whispered.

At the sound of her voice, Seera swung the pistol to cover her. The lady's finger still lay on the trigger, but without pressure.

”You . . . will pardon me, Lady Seera, if I am badly shaken. Astonished, rather than commiserating with him or grieving for him. You have made your choice and I presume you saw that he was insane, as I did. Politely put, 'dangerously psychotic,' with garnish. Nor have you done wrong-my purpose here was to take him. I am on this s.h.i.+p as a spy, and of course have been all along. Just now I had the opportunity but did not because . . . well, my reason is unworthy. I was fascinated. I saw your shock and sympathy for me. I wanted to see what you would do.”

”Ever a distasteful boy, and now gone quite fobby- psychotic, as yer say. I knew what I must do when he 84.demonstrated that dreadful weapon on yer because you happened to be here ... a 'peasant' and inconsequential, to him. Then I realized that I could not merely take the weapon and aim and shoot-I had to be sure that it really functioned, else he'd have known what I intended. He is quite capable of killing, isn't he, Najen-dra?”

”Was. Pos, quite capable,” the first mate of Lewuvul said, nodding. ”Firm. He has killed a fair number of innocents, and enslaved many, many. I am not named Na-jendra, Lady Seerava. This is neither my true color nor the true color of my hair-though my eyes are natural. I am an agent of TransGalactic Order-The Gray Organization, TGO, pos-and my name is Janja-Janjaglaya Wye.”

Lady Seera considered one more in a series of surprising revelations, one of which was that she had had the will to kill Jacath Manjanuago. After a moment she lifted her wrists so that the pistol she still held in both hands was pointed at the ceiling.

”Well, Janja, I am not in disguise. I am Seera and I may be about to faint. Vomit, perhaps. I'll try not to, though-am trying. I have never had occasion to sho-shoot anyone . . . uh, that monster has two men and three Jarps loyal to him on this s.h.i.+p, and his own s.h.i.+p is just . . . right out there,” she said in a weakly declining voice accompanied by a vague gesture.

”Uh . . . firm. I wish that I could have let you know who I am, that I was and am on your side, because now we are in trouble. We'd have been better off to take him alive, but of co-oh.”

Janja broke off, for Lady Seera had jerked and jerked again, and made a gagging noise, and she began throwing up.

7.

”A sunflower and a TGO agent?” Vermillion said, rolling oversized round eyes. ”Via, Najendra-I mean Janja-you are something. What . . . what's going to happen to me, TGO agent?”

”You're pardoned.”

”Here and now?”

”Here and now, Vermillion.”

Vermillion stared at her, hardly able to believe. ”Like that? No strings?”

Janja shook her head. ”You're pardoned, s.p.a.cefarer Vermillion, for having been party to mutiny. Since this is Lady Seerava's s.h.i.+p and she was not taken off it, I don't see any kidnap. She won't bring any charges, either.”

”You are something,” Vermillion said, shaking its head so that the metal on its translation helmet flashed.

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