The Early Pohl (25 page)

"Wouldn't take you, huh?"

Nolan turned. "Sure," he said. "He had to go arrange it with the captain. I'll go out with him when he comes back for his clearance papers."

"Clearance papers!" the official barked. "Good Lord, man, they've had those for hours. That man isn't coming back!"

III

Nolan, swearing incandescently, flung his heat-suit voucher at the officer, grabbed the first suit in the rack and was in the main lock, waiting for the inner door to close, before he put it on. He had already sealed the suit and stepped out on the field when he noticed what the excited hammering of the port official on the lock door should have told him.

The suit had only a single oxygen tank in its clip—and the gauge showed "empty"!

He hesitated only a moment. His eye caught a glimpse of the
Dragonfly,
etched sharply against the black horizon by the field's blazing floodlights. Its smooth lines were suddenly blurred and indistinct. The grav-web was building up around it. In a moment it would be gone!

"Damn!" yelled Nolan, to the sole detriment of his own eardrums. Already the slight amount of air in his suit was nearly used up. But as soon as the web reached full focus the
Dragonfly
would blast off and Woller would be beyond reach for a long time!

Nolan swore fervently, then sealed his writhing lips to save air. He set off in a slow, heavy trot for the shimmering spaceship. He was breathing pure carbon dioxide and staggering nicely by the time he pushed his way through the thickening resistance of the grav-web to the massive outer door of the lock.

His bulging eyes caught the lever that opened the lock, guarded by a scoop-shaped streamshield. He yanked it blindly, saw the heavy panel roll aside, stumbled in.

Some member of the crew must have been watching—someone with compassion, unexpected enough in a ship of Woller's. The lock door clanged shut behind him and clean air hissed in. Nolan tore frantically at his faceplate and gulped deeply, dizzyingly.

The metal flooring shuddered. He felt an intolerable weight drag at his water-weak body as the ship took off. He hadn't made it by much, at that. A couple of seconds more and he would have been left.

"Boy!" Nolan gasped. "Somebody sure doesn't want me along on this ride."

The inner door was sliding open. Nolan stepped out into a well lit corridor, almost colliding with the flabby bulk of the Venusian.

The mate glared at him darkly, the hand on his waist poised suggestively above the butt of a pyro.

Before he could speak, Nolan said mildly, "You're a thieving louse. But I'm on the ship, and I won't hold it against you. Only—don't try that again."

The mate flushed. "The captain didn't want to take you," he mumbled. "I was going to send your dough back soon's we touched ground."

"Sure," Nolan agreed. "Having my full name and address the way you do, it'd be easy. Well, skip it. Where's my cabin?"

You wouldn't call it exactly hospitable, the way the mate stalled as long as he could, obviously trying to cudgel his feeble Venusian brain into some plan for getting rid of the unwanted passenger. But Nolan finally got his cabin.

It was the smallest and worst on the ship, of course, but the ship was a beauty. Nolan smiled in real appreciation when he saw the room. The furniture was glow-tinted plastic; the bed was covered with Earth silk.

"Beat it," he told the mate, and watched the door close behind him. Then he sat down to chart a course.

Woller might recognize him.

That was the first danger. True, Nolan had been reported dead and Woller knew nothing to the contrary. It was only a miracle that Nolan wasn't dead, in fact. Only the incredible chance of his being picked up in midspace, where he floated helplessly, one shoulder brutally pyro-scarred and half the air gone from his suit, had saved him then.

That had been one miracle, for even the ranging, avid patrol boats hadn't been able to find him after his mad leap from a lock of the ship that was carrying him to the moon.

But that miracle had occurred. And the second miracle was that the pleasure craft that saved him was piloted by a man who lived outside the law but had an iron-clad code of honesty—who wouldn't turn Nolan in for the bounty money on fugitives. Pete Petersen's scrawny shoulders bore no wings, but he'd seemed like an angel to Nolan that desolate day, when he'd seen the flare of Nolan's desperate signal rocket and swung round in a wide arc to pick him up, eventually to take him to the lawless safety of the Belt.

To everyone but Petersen, Steve Nolan was dead. And the little shots of gray now running through Nolan's dark hair, the scar that crossed one tanned cheek, gave him a new personality. He looked slender and dangerous as a lunging rapier, and every bit as cold.

But Woller would have good cause to remember Nolan. Woller had sat there in the courtroom, back on Earth. He'd sat there the whole dragging week of the trial, with Nolan's eyes on him every minute. He looked directly at Nolan, even while he was in the chair, telling the lies that linked Nolan with the Junta—the secret, revolutionary group of outer-planet malcontents that sought to overthrow Tri-planet Law's peace and order.

Nolan's lips contorted savagely as he recalled that. A traitor! His sole crime had been that he knew too much about Woller, his boss!

Woller had been clever about it. The law itself had removed Nolan, a menace to his lawless schemes. When Nolan, on his own initiative, had talked and bribed his way into seeing a confessed and condemned saboteur of the Junta for an interview, he'd found to his sick astonishment that the man was one he had seen in Woller's own office, not two months before.

He'd been childishly simple about it, had confronted Woller and demanded an explanation. Woller had put on his friendliest face and promised one—later. . . .

And then Woller had turned the dogs loose.

Within an hour Nolan was in jail for the bribery of the prison officials. The next morning came the incredible indictment: Sabotage for the Junta!

Nolan grimaced, recalled the careful, hideous network of lies and forgeries, the distorted evidence, the perjuries. But he had been one man, and Woller represented vast power.

Then abruptly there was a knock on the door. Jolted out of his thoughts, Nolan started, then called: "Just a minute."

This was the moment—and he had no plan. His pyro slid out into his hand. He broke it, stared at the twenty-four potent heat charges. They would be plan enough for him, if he got a clear shot at Woller. But if he should be disarmed, if Woller should suspect.

A moment later, the pyro hidden beneath his shirt again, he opened the door. It was the Venusian second, as before.

"Captain wants to see you," he growled. "Come on."

The
Dragonfly
was a single-deck craft, the captain's cabin located topside of the deck and amidships. Nolan looked around curiously, despite his internal tension, as he followed the Venusian along. The plastic keel panel underfoot showed an infinity of stars. There was one, large and bright, outstanding among the lesser stars. Nolan recognized it-the Sun, parent star to the farflung planet they'd just left. Now it was dim and feeble, but by the time they got within sight of the Inner Worlds it would be a ravenous thing, reaching out to destroy them with lethal radiations.

Out of curiosity, he asked, "When are you going to opaque?"

"Huh?" The Venusian looked startled for a second; then his blubber-drowned little eyes became shrewd. "Oh, about Orbit Saturn, I guess."

Nolan suppressed a sudden frown. He asked carefully, "Say, how do you do it on these new-type ships anyhow? All the ones I've been on, you had to have the panels filter-shuttered before they lifted gravs."

"Paint," the mate said curtly. "Okay, here we are."

He stood aside, pointed to a door with a glowing golden star embossed on it. Nolan nodded and entered, but his thoughts were racing.

Paint the panels! It would take the whole crew, and they'd never get it off. If they opaqued with paint the ship would be blind for weeks. The filter shutters-great strips of polarized colloid—were the only solution to the problem of keeping out the worst of the sun's dread radiations, but admitting enough light to guide the ship. But they had to be put on externally, before the ship took off. Mars? This ship, ports transparent as they were, would never dare approach the sun's blinding energies closer than Jupiter!

No wonder they didn't want me,
Nolan thought grimly.
They're not going within a hundred million miles of Mars!

The thought froze in Nolan's mind as he entered the captain's cabin. First he saw the captain, a tall, demon-black Martio-Terrestrial, standing before his own desk. Then his eyes flicked past, toward the florid-faced man who sat behind the desk, fumbling with a cigarette lighter.

And then, for the first time in three years, he was face to face with Alan Woller.

Nolan might have showed a flicker of emotion in his face. Heaven knows, the blast of iron hatred that surged up through his body was powerful enough. But Woller was lighting a cigarette. The second that it took him to finish it and look up was time enough for Nolan to freeze.

"Vincennes is my name," the captain was saying. "What's yours?"

"Matthews. I'm sorry to have forced my way onto your ship, but I had to get to Mars."

Woller looked up then,, and a sudden trace of consternation flashed into his eyes. It died away, but a doubt remained.

He stared intently at Nolan, then said: "Why?"

Nolan smiled easily. "A lot of reasons—all of them personal. Who are you?"

Woller stood up. "I own this ship," he said coldly. "I didn't ask you aboard. Now that you're here, you'll answer my question or get off."

The time for a showdown had arrived.
Well,
Nolan thought,
it had to come some time
. He was strangely relaxed.

He shrugged. "You've got a point there," he admitted. "Well—"

He frowned and raised his hand as though to scratch his head, changed the motion in mid-air. And with the speed of a hopped-up
narcophene
smoker, the thin-snouted pyro was in his fist, slowly traversing a lethal arc that covered both men.

His voice was taut as he spoke. "It's your ship, Woller, but I'm taking it over. Woller—Alan Woller—look at me.
Do you know who I am?
"

Woller stared deep into the icy eyes confronting him. The doubt flared again in his own. His jaw dropped slack. His brows lifted and he whispered, "Nolan!"

Nolan didn't bother to nod. He said grimly, "Your hands—hold them where they are. You, too, Vincennes. I've come a long way for this and I don't mind killing. You taught me that, Woller. A man's life is nothing. Mine was nothing to you, when it endangered the dirty little treacheries you were working."

The life seemed to have gone out of Woller and left only a hulking, pallid carcass, propped up by the internal pressure of its own fear. There was murky horror crawling in his eyes.

Steve Nolan looked at him and his thin lips curled into a snarling grin. But those were only his lips. Strangely, there was no triumph in his heart, none of the fierce pleasure he'd dreamed of all those dreary years. There was only dull disgust, and the hint of a long-dead hope for rest again. Rest, and the common things of life on the Earth which was forbidden to him.

Woller could die before him now, and he would be avenged. But Woller alive could say the words that would wipe out the banishment, would return him to the green star that was home. Woller could be made to confess—

"I ought to blast you now," he said in a soft, chill tone that was like a whip to Woller, jerking him upright. "I ought to, and I will if I must. But you can live if you want to."

Woller was licking his lips, his face a mask, only his panic-stricken eyes alive.

"You can live," Nolan repeated. "A full statement about the Junta frame, in writing. Write it out and thumbprint it, and we'll telestat it to the nearest TPL station. Then you can have the lifeboat, Woller, and as much of a start as TPL gives you. Are you willing to pay that much for your life, Woller?"

Woller's lips were stiff but he forced the words through. "Go to hell."

Nolan nodded, and the deadly weariness settled down over him again. "I see your point, of course," he said slowly. "Tri-planet doesn't come out here much and a man is reasonably safe from them. But you, Woller—power's your life blood. And a man on the run can't have much power. I know."

His finger curled on the trigger of the pyro and Woller, staring avidly, desperately, whitened at the mouth. His lips moved as though about to form words-Nolan's trigger-sharp senses caught a hint of movement behind him.
Fool!
he thought desperately.
The door!
He tried to hurl his body aside, out of the way of the door that opened behind him. But he couldn't do that and keep the pyro leveled on the two men at the desk. He saw Woller, exultant hatred leaping into his purpled face, plunging for a drawer of the desk; saw the door opening and someone stepping through. Then, just as he was leveling the gun on Woller again, he saw the flashing swing of the other man in the room. Forgotten Vincennes—with a heavy nightstone paperweight held bludgeon-like in his hand, leaping in at him! He had no chance even to try to turn. The weight was coming down on the side of his head. All he could do was try to roll with it.

But the momentum was immense and the heavy weight struck him down to the floor, drove him headlong into unconsciousness. . . .

Somebody was kicking him. Nolan groaned once, then compressed his lips as he remembered where he was.

He opened his eyes and rolled over. The blubbery Venusian second was standing over him, face sullen but eyes glinting with perverse pleasure. He raised his heavy spaceman's boot again—

"Hold it," said Woller from the desk. They were still in the cabin.

Woller got up, came over, looking down at Nolan. His bearing was confident again; he exuded an aura of brutal power.