The Five Gold Bands (3 page)

The Badau stroked his lump of a head. “My position as always has been that the smaller the extent of critical knowledge, the better. And even if we were all killed the Bank of Loristan would make the hiding-places of the data known to our successors.”

“Only after ten years,” the Eagle said dourly. “Ten years of doubt and confusion.”

Perhaps,” said the Shaul easily, “we could make public proclamation to the effect that in the event of catastrophe, the secret would automatically come to light. We need not mention the lapse of ten years, as that would focus attention on the Bank of Loristan. It’s popular knowledge that ten years is the period of grace on unrenewed safe deposit boxes.”

The Koton said sourly, “Why not entrust the data itself to the Bank of Loristan?”

The Shaul grinned. “There are several reasons why this would not be desirable. Assume this hypothetical catastrophe. Ten years and the mechanism of the Bank automatically ejects the lapsed boxes. There, before the eyes of a clerk, is the secret of space-drive. Secondly—”

“Your first reason is sufficient,” said the Koton. “Perhaps the present system is the best.”

“The mutual duplication of data protects us against loss of any one set,” the Loristanese pointed out, “and the splitting of the secret guarantees a continuance of our mutual dependence.”

The Shaul said abruptly, “Now as to the allocation for the five commercial units, eight hundred boat installations…”

One by one the Sons announced the needs of their worlds, and the total moved the Koton to grumble, “We shall be occupied three weeks on Akhabats activating the tubes.”

“That is the function of our office,” the Loristanese remarked.

“We’ll be a week building a new manifold,” said the Koton. “Some rascal of an Earther actually tunneled up into the ship, mark you. The fool threw the power switch and Akhabats is safe only because the main gang-bar had been removed for replating.”

The Loristanese shrugged, and his fat yellow jowls bounced. “Naturally the dials had been twisted. What could the idiot hope to achieve?”

The Eagle said, “The way of an Earthers mind is past conjecture.”

The Shaul made an impatient motion. “Is there any further question as to schedules? If not—”

“We have completed our business,” stated the Badau heavily. “Let us make the exchange and depart.” He unstrapped a think band from his wrist, passed ft to the Eagle on his left, who in turn handed a similar band to the Shaul, who gave his to the Loristanese, who passed his to the Koton, who passed a band to the Badau.

The Badau grunted in satisfaction. “We are finished for another year, save for the month of toil on Akhabats.”

Paddy made himself as inconspicuous as is possible for a man chained to the middle of a brightly-lit stone platform. They might be so engrossed in their talk as to leave him alone on the little world—which in any case would be equivalent to death, he thought glumly.

If the gravity unit were turned off, the air would puff off into the vacuum of space and he would strangle, blow up with the bends. No such luck, in any event. He felt the Koton’s saucer eyes upon him as the five arose. The Koton motioned to the guards.

The Koton said, “Remove the prisoner from the platform, execute him.”

Paddy said quizzically, “Would you like that translated, my Lord Koton?”

The Koton ignored him. Paddy watched the Kudthus approaching, purple-skinned giants in black leather uniforms. Either one would make three of him. Here came his death, thought Paddy. How would it be? By bullet—by the heavy Kudthu knives hanging at their belts—by the mere wringing of his neck in the big slab hands?

They towered over him with no more malice or hostility than a farmer selecting a chicken for the pot. One stooped with a key, fumbled at his chains, while the other took a grip on Paddy’s shoulder. Paddy’s heart was thudding, his throat was thick with sour-tasking fear. It was sad to die at the hands of strange careless things so far from Mother Earth.

His leg was free. Paddy in a desperate spasm sank to his knees, bit at the big Kudthu hand, grabbed the knife from the belt of the kneeling Kudthu, hacked at the other’s legs. The grip loosened. Paddy broke free, sprang like a rabbit down from the platform. The Shaul brought forth a small hand-weapon, sighted, fired. Paddy veered and the shaft of flickering blue ions cut past his ear.

The Kudthus came lumbering after him. big faces without expression. Another shaft of radiation sizzled past him and he dodged frantically. His mind ran wild. He’d run and run and run to the end of the world. The end of the world was close. Where then? The spaceboat? No, the Shaul stood near with hit weapon. Where to go? Around the other side? They’d hunt him down.

The concrete casement yawned at his feet, a dim-lit gap. There it was, a bolthole, where at least he could put his back to the wall, where they would not turn their guns for fear of disrupting the gravity…

The gravity!
Off with the gravity! Death to himself, death to all! Would it possibly be unguarded, vulnerable?

He flung down the steps four at a time, pulled by the increasingly strong gravitational field. He came to a little concrete-walled room. A black box ten feet long was mounted on skids with heavy leads running to a power bank. Paddy took a deep breath, plodded across the room, pulled the switch.

The power stopped, the field whisked off into nothingness. Paddy was weightless. Air puffed off into space at eleven hundred feet a second. A tremendous force pushed out Paddy’s chest as if by an explosion inside him. Breath gushed up his throat, spewed out his mouth and he felt a quick distension in his legs, his arms, felt his ears pounding, his eyes bulging.

He tottered to the switch, threw it back to full gravity. He was master on this little world, lord of life and death. Too late, he thought numbly—useless. The air had departed at the speed of sound and faster. It would return only at gravitational acceleration.

The vacuum would he nearly complete for an hour yet, while all on the little world died. But no—he felt the tingling at his skin slowly diminish, the throb of his throat lessen. He opened his mouth, gasped. Air—air in the little room at least, very rare yet, seepage from cracks, a film held by molecular attraction and the gravity of the asteroid itself, now concentrated around the gravity unit.

Paddy dragged himself up the stairs against the gravity, augmented as it was by his nearness to the unit. As he climbed he felt the atmosphere rapidly thinning. His head pounded in a near-vacuum as he peered over the casement.

The Kudthus lay sprawled twenty feet distant in the dark pool of their hemorrhages. The five Sons of Langtry lay dead in a little clump around the boat. Paddy blinked, taken aback.

The most appalling crime in the history of space had been committed. Genocide, defilement of holy places, treachery against the entire universe—no sin could rival his deed. The Five Sons dead by his hand!

Paddy licked his puffed lips. It seemed a great to-do for the mere pulling of a switch. They would have killed him without glancing to see whether his way was to kick or to twitch. He looked across the platform at the boat, stared past the luminous tubing at the five ships.

They lay in a quiet parallel rank. Ha, could not the fools sense the horror? Or their telescopes must tell them something was amiss. Of course they might be under orders to keep eyes away from instruments for fear that there might be lip-reading.

Paddy looked back to the boat with the longing of a lover. His sight was blurring pink, blood was running from his nose. The hundred feet to the boat was like a thousand miles. Two feet above the concrete casement meant strangulation. He backed down the shaft to breathe and gather his wits.

He considered. How would the gravity unit be turned off? By someone in a pressure suit, to escape his own doom. Would there be such a garment left at hand for the purpose? He found it hanging in the shadows behind the powerbank, and was into it with what speed he could provoke from his trembling fingers.

He fitted the dome over his head, turned on the air. Ah-h-h, what a blessed thing was the pure thick air with a taste like the finest water.

But no time to savor his air. Up—if he wished to escape the nerve-suit. He sprang up the steps, darted across the dead world. At the corpses of the five Sons of Langtry he stopped short. Around the Shaul’s thin forearm be found a glint of gold, unclasped the band. Then to the Koton, the leathery Badau, the Eagle and the butter-yellow Loristanese.

Jingling the five bands Paddy ran to the ship. Inside the port, throw home the dogs, to the pilot’s seat. He groped among the controls until he found the lift-valve. Inching it open he raised the ship a trifle above the surface, slewed it slowly around to the opposite side of the world.

Then, keeping the little asteroid between himself and the five ships as long as possible he turned the accelerator on full and the little ship fell out, out, out—into the deep well of space with stars flickering the shiny pebbles at the bottom.

Now—on with the space-drive and he was safe.
Safe!

He slumped back into the seat, fell into a torpor…

Paddy looked about his ship, letting the sight of glossy metal and glass, the fittings, fabrics, the exquisite equipment gladden his vision, luxuriating in the surroundings like a gourmet rolling the flavor of a fine sauce through his mouth.

Paddy rose from the couch, stretched like one reborn. The boat was a new life, a symbol of rebirth. His past seemed remote as if only a tenuous wisp linked Paddy Blackthorn of the Akhabats jail and Paddy Blackthorn standing on the deck-covering of crisp scarlet eggshell pile.

Paddy clapped his arms to his sides, grinned with honest joy. Not only was he free with his life—enough to rejoice about—but he had played a devastating joke on his would-be slayers. A magnificent joke to make his name one for history. It was the pattern of circumstances that exactly filled a socket in the human brain, the biter bit, the bully tripped up by the underdog in a gutter full of slops.

Paddy strolled here and there, surveyed his prize. It seemed to be engineered less for cruising than for use as an interplanetary pleasure-boat. It carried no large supply of stores, no arsenal.

The fittings were of a quality and precision befitting the ceremonial boat of the Sons of Langtry. The joinerwork was a rare wood from a far planet, showing a grain of black and golden-green. There was a brown-violet matanne upholstery on the couch and the scarlet carpet with the pile that was like stepping on candied rose-petals.

Paddy returned to the pilot’s platform, studied the astrogation instruments. A boat of this type, with no cost spared on its construction would embody new equipment, much of which might be unfamiliar to him. And as he glanced along the panel he found levers, dials, arms, whose use he did not comprehend. He left them untouched. For all he knew one might set off an emergency SOS call.

He turned to the wide couch, inspected the shiny heap of his loot—five bands of gold, each with a thin square compartment. Paddy stood back with a sensation close to awe. “Here,” he said, “is the treasure of the ages, which all the wealth of Earth would buy cheap… And it’s me, Paddy Blackthorn, who handles these lovelies.

“But now let’s open them and we’ll see how to curl space-drive into them shiny tubes so next time there won’t be that great explosion…”

He snapped off the lid of the first, withdrew a bit of stiff parchment. It was imprinted with heavy Badaic letters:

Paddy raised his eyebrows high. “And what’s this?” He was thunderstruck, apprehensive. Was there some colossal error?

“Ah, well,” said Paddy, “now we’ll see.” He opened the second band.

Like the first it contained a bit of parchment, written in Pherasic script which Paddy could not read. He passed on to the third, which was stamped with the neat Shaul cuneiform:

Paddy groaned, opened the fourth band. It held a key, engraved with the Loristanese loops and lines, nothing more. Paddy tossed it aside.

The parchment in the Koton band read:

Paddy flung himself back on the couch. “A bloody treasure-hunt, that’s what!” he cried. “And to think I’ve risked all for the only clues. Well, then, by Fergus, I’ll fling them from the port and have done with it!”

But he folded the four parchment slips carefully around the key, and replaced them in one of the bands, which he fitted on his own wrist.

“Now for home.” thought Paddy. “Peace and quiet and no more of this space-rampaging—and yet—” He rubbed his chin dubiously. He was by no means safe. He had escaped the asteroid with his skin, but the Langtry ships swarmed space like wasps in a shed.

He was safe from the rear. But was he safe from interception? Space-wave messages flew as swiftly as thought. The description of the boat and Paddy’s personal coordinates would reach every outpost in space. Paddy would be the quarry of the universe. Ordinary misdeeds would go unchallenged while the authorities combed the worlds for Paddy Blackthorn.

Exultation waned to fretful uneasiness. In his mind’s-eye he saw the placards, tacked up in every saloon, every post office, every transportation agency in the known universe—displaying his picture and the caption—

“And then,” grumbled Paddy, “there’ll be my fingerprints, my tongueprint, my psychograph. They’ll describe the hairs of my head and they’ll write at the bottom, ‘Catch this fiend and name your own reward.’ I’m cursed with the luck of the devil himself. There’s no haven for me on Earth, no place for me but the Thieves’ Cluster—and then how long?”

He rummaged through the chart index, found the proper code, punched the buttons and in front of him, projected by a series of lenses, appeared the sphere of space surrounding the Thieves’ Cluster.

At the edge a blue gleam of light indicated his own position with a white arrow indicating the vector of his position and course. Paddy sighted, gingerly changed course until the vector pointed at the Thieves’ Cluster.

He turned on the space-wave. It was staccato with coded messages. Let ’em rave, thought Paddy. Once in the Thieves’ Cluster, not even the Sons of Langtry could drag him forth. Of course they might send agents in to assassinate him. But would they? He was the only man alive who knew, if not the secret of space-drive, the whereabouts of the secret.