Part 17 (1/2)

It was hard to know just who he was. What actually hap-pened as far as Hanardy was concerned, was quite simple: One of the defensive energy screens had gone down before the attack of the strange s.h.i.+ps; and ProfessorUngarnsent Hanardy to machine a new part for the screen's drive unit. While he was engaged in this, Leigh came upon him by surprise, attacked him, and tied him up.

Lying there on the floor, bound hand and foot, Hanardy thought in anguish: ”If I ever get loose, I'm gonna hightail it out of here!”

He tested the rope that held him and groaned at its un-yielding toughness. He lay, then, for a while, accepting the confinement of the bonds, but underneath was a great grief and a great fear.

He suspected that ProfessorUngarnand the professor's daughter, Patricia, were equally helpless, or they would have tried during the past hour to find out what had happened to him.

He listened again, intently, holding himself still. But only the steady throbbing of the distant dynamos was audible. No footsteps approached; there was no other movement.

He was still listening when he felt an odd tugging inside his body.

s.h.i.+vering a little, Hanardy shook his head as if to clear it of mental fog-and climbed to his feet.

He didn't notice that the cords that had bound him fell away.

Out in the corridor, he paused tensely. The place looked deserted, empty. Except for the vague vibration from the dynamos, a great silence pressed in upon him. The placehad the look and feel of being on a planet. The artificial gravity made him somewhat lighter than on Earth, but he was used to such changes. It was hard to grasp that he was inside a meteorite, hundreds of thousands of miles from the nearest moon or inhabited planet. Being here was like being inside a big building, on an upper floor.

Hanardy headed for the neatest elevator shaft. He thought: I'd better untie Miss Pat, then her pop, and then get.

It was an automatic decision, to go to the girl first. Des-pite her sharp tongue, he admired her. He had seen her use weapons to injure, but that didn't change his feeling. He guessed that she'd be very angry-very possibly she'd blame him for the whole mess.

Presently he was knocking hesitantly on the door to Patricia's apartment. Hesitantly, because he was certain that she was not in a position to answer.

When, after a reasonable pause, there was no reply, he pressed gently on the latch. The door swung open.

He entered pure enchantment.

The apartment was a physical delight. There were French-type windows that opened onto a sunlit window. The French doors were open, and the sound of birds singing wafted in through them. There were other doors leading to the inner world of the girl's home, and Hanardy, who had occasionally been in the other rooms to do minor repair work, knew that there also everything was as costly as it was here in this large room that he could see.

Then he saw the girl. She was lying on the floor, half-hidden behind her favorite chair, and she was bound hand and foot with wire.

Hanardy walked toward her unhappily. It was he who had brought William Leigh, and he wasn't quite sure just how he would argue himself out ofanyaccusation she might make about that. His guilt showed in the way he held his thick-setbody, in the shuffling of his legs, in the awkward way he knelt beside her. He began gingerly to deal with the thin wire that enlaced and interlaced her limbs.

The girl was patient. She waited till he had taken all the wire off her and then, without moving from the floor, began to rub the circulation back into her wrists and ankles.

She looked up at him and made her first comment: ”How did you avoid being tied up?”

”I didn't. He got me, too,” said Hanardy. He spoke eagerly, anxious to be one of the injured, along with her. He already felt better. She didn't seem to be angry.

”Then how did you get free?” PatriciaUngarnasked.

”Why, I just-” Hanardy began.

He stopped, thunderstruck. He thought back, then over what had happened. He had been lying there, tied. And then ... and then ...

What?

He stood blank, scarcely daring to think. Realizing that an answer was expected, he began apologetically, ”I guess he didn't tie me up so good, and I was in a kind of a hurry, figuring you were here, and so I just-”

Even as he spoke, his whole being rocked with the remembrance of how tough those ropes had been a few minutes before he freed himself.

He stopped his mumbling explanation because the girl wasn't listening, wasn't even looking. She had climbed to her feet, and she was continuing to rub her hands. She was small of build and good-looking in a bitter way. Her lips were pressed too tightly together; her eyes were slightly narrowed with a kind of permanent anxiety. Except for that, she looked like a girl in her teens, but cleverer and more sophisticated than most girls her age.

Even as Hanardy, in his heavy way, was aware of the complexity of her, she faced him again. She said with an un-girl-like decisiveness, ”Tell me everything that happened to you.”Hanardy was glad to let go of the unsatisfactory recollection of his own escape. He said, ”First thing I know, this guy comes in there while I'm working at the lathe. And is he strong, and is he fast! I never would've thought he had that kind of muscle and that fast way of moving. I'm pretty chunky, y'understand-”

”What then?” She was patient, but there was a pointedness about her question that channeled his attention back to the main line of events.

”Then he ties me up, and then he goes out, and then he takes those Dreeghs from the s.p.a.ces.h.i.+p and disappears into s.p.a.ce.” Hanardy shook his head, wonderingly. ”That's what gets me. How did he do that?”

He paused, in a brown study; but he came from the distance of his thought back into the room, to realize guiltily that the girl had spoken to him twice.

”Sorry,” he muttered. ”I was thinking about how he did that, and it's kind of hard to get the idea.” He finished, almost accusingly: ”Do you know what he does?”

The girl looked at him, a startled expression on her face. Hanardy thought she was angry at his inattention and said hastily: ”I didn't hear what you wanted me to do. Tell me again, huh!”

She seemed unaware that he had spoken. ”Whatdoes he do, Steve?”

”Why, he just-”

At that point, Hanardy stopped short and glanced back mentally over the glib words he had been using.

It was such a fantastic dialogue, that he could feel the blood draining from his cheeks.

”Huh!” he said.

”What does he do, Steve?” He saw that she was looking at him, as if she understood something that he didn't. It irritated him.

He said unhappily: ”I'd better go and untie your father before that last bunch of Dreeghs shows up.”

Having spoken, he stopped again, his mouth open in amazement. He thought: ”I must be nuts. What am I saying?”

He turned and started for the door.

”Come back here!”

Her voice, sharp and commanding, cut into him. Defen-sively, he put up between himself and her the thick barrier of stolidity which had served him for so many years in his relations with other people. He swung awkwardly around to face her again. Before he could speak, she said with inten-sity: ”How did he do it, Steve?”

The question ran up against a great stubbornness in him. He had no feeling of deliberately resisting her.

But the men-tal fog seemed to settle down upon his being, and he said: ”Do what, Miss?”