Night Walk

eighteen

Some time before dawn Tallon began to get persistent cramps in his legs. He worked furiously at the knotted muscles, wondering if the drug was wearing off or if it was a natural effect of the cold.

“What’s the matter, darling?” Helen’s voice was sleepy.

“My legs are killing me. Forty is far too old for perching all night on a cold engine block. What time is it?”

“My watch is back in the hotel. It must be near morning, though; I can hear birds.”

“Birds are fine, but if you hear any people moving about in the cabin above us, get ready to move out.” He put his arm around Helen’s shoulders. She felt small and cold, and suddenly he was sorry for her. “Perhaps we should move out, anyway. Nobody’s going to leave the ship.”

“But if you go back into the city you’ll be picked up sooner or later. Your only chance of getting back to Earth is here at the terminal.”

“Some chance.”

There was a long silence before Helen replied, and when she did her voice was crisp and cool — just as it had been when he first heard her in the Pavilion. “They’d come out if I told them where you were, Sam. I could go in to the ship and say you were hiding out in another part of the field.”

“Forget it.”

“But listen, Sam. I could say I had just got away from you while you were asleep, and you were getting ready to jump some other ship.”

“I said forget it. Cherkassky, or whoever’s in there, would hear the plot mechanism creaking. Stories like that never work, not on a professional, anyway. When you tell a lie, you’ve got to make it so outrageous that everybody will believe it, because you wouldn’t say a thing like that unless it were true; or, better still, tell the truth, but do it in such a way that — ” Tallon stopped abruptly as he got an icy blast of insight into the meaning of his own words.

“Helen, did they tell you in the Pavilion why I was arrested in the first place?”

“Yes. You’d found out how to get to Aitch Mühlenberg.”

“What would you say if you were told I still had that information?”

“I’d say it was a lie. All that was erased, and you were checked and rechecked.”

“You’d be underestimating Earth, Helen. The colonies forget how good we can be at some things. It’s bound to happen, I guess. When you start off from scratch on a new planet, there’s bound to be a shift in priorities — one type of frontier is extended, another is drawn back.”

“What are you getting round to telling me, Sam?”

Tallon told her about the capsule that had snapped shut on a fragment of his brain, protecting it from all psychical and physical erasures, preserving in its submolecular circuits the information wanted by the Block. He felt Helen go rigid as he spoke.

“So that’s why your people are taking so much trouble to get you back,” she said finally. “I didn’t realize I was helping you to hand a whole planet over to Earth. This makes a difference.”

“You bet it makes a difference,” he said. “Don’t you know there’s going to be a war over that planet? If I get safely out of here that war won’t take place.”

“Of course it won’t take place; Earth will have what she wants.”

“I’m not thinking in terms of governments,” Tallon said urgently. “All that matters is the people, the civilians, the kids on red tricycles, who won’t have to die if I get back to the Block.”

“We all feel that way, but the fact remains that — ”

“I could have gotten away,” Tallon interrupted quietly. “I was at the ship and I turned back.”

“Don’t sound so tragic; it doesn’t work with me. We’ve already decided that the security police planned to let you lead them to the ship. Even if it had got off the ground, there would have been interceptors of some kind between here and the portal.”

“All right. So I would probably be dead. There would have been no megadeaths on my conscience.”

“Your nobility routine is even worse than mine was.”

“I’m sorry,” Tallon said stiffly. “My sense of humor seems to have atrophied in the past few months.”

Helen laughed delightedly. “Now you’re actually being pompous.” She leaned against him and kissed his cheek impulsively. Her face felt cold against his. “I’m sorry, Sam. You’re right, of course. What do you want me to do?”

Tallon explained his idea.

An hour later, in the pewter light of dawn, Tallon checked the ammunition in the automatic and stretched his legs in preparation for running.

His idea was a simple one, but there was a 90 percent probability that Helen would be separated from him when they put it into practice. And this time there would be no turning back. In the dew-chilled darkness of the crane’s engine compartment they faced that probability and accepted it. It was fully understood on both sides that even if he got off the ground — good though his ship would be, even by Earth standards — he might not reach the portal; and if he did reach it, their personal futures would diverge as sharply as those of their native worlds. They had said goodbye.

The plan was for Helen to make her way back to the slideway, unseen from the ship, then approach it in the normal way in full view. Her story was to be that Tallon had forced her to drive him to the city, and that she had been imprisoned after he had contacted the New Wittenburg cell members. Tallon had gone back there when he realized a trap was waiting for him on the Lyle Star. She was to give an address in the warehouse belt, and say she had escaped while Tallon and the others were sleeping. Afraid they would be waiting for her near the police stations or out on the streets, she had decided to go to the space terminal, the one place the Earthsiders would avoid. Then she was to tell them about the capsule.

Tallon felt slightly sick when he thought over the flimsy story. He was gambling that Cherkassky would not take time to think, would not even be able to think, when she told him what lay in Tallon’s brain. From being a semi-private vendetta on Cherkassky’s part, or even a political maneuver by Emm Luther, the incident would explode into the sort of major crisis that topples governments. How things went after that would depend on Cherkassky’s reaction. If he high-tailed it into the city, leaving Helen under guard in the ship, Tallon would go aboard and trust to the effectiveness of the vicious little automatic to clear the way for them both to get off the planet. Cherkassky might insist on taking Helen with him as a guide, in which case Tallon would have to try it on his own.

Seymour whined and twisted his head away from the ventilation louver, robbing Tallon of his view of the outside. He stroked the wiry head soothingly.

“Take it easy, boy. We’ll soon be out of here.”

He kept a tight grip on Seymour and held him back up to the narrow slot of light. There was the open ground clearance space at the bottom of the engine housing, and if the dog got out through it he would not want to come back. Tallon did not blame him, but he needed Seymour’s eyes more than ever now. It was just about time for Helen to show up among the early morning crews, who were drifting to their jobs. The terminal was coming to life again after the long night, and he got the thought, once more, that somebody might decide to make use of the crane he was in.

Suddenly Seymour’s myopic eyes picked up the coppery blur of Helen’s hair and a vague green area, which was her uniform.

She went up the ramp and into the Lyle Star. Tallon crouched in the darkness, chewing his knuckles, wondering what visible evidence he would get of the success or failure of the gambit. A minute dragged by; then two … three… . The time stretched out agonizingly, with no sign of any movement in or around the ship. And then his question was answered!

The sky went dark.

Tallon’s heart froze over with dread as he saw what was happening. A formation of six self-propelled guns drifted across the space field less than a hundred feet up, shutting out the light. Dark clouds of earth and stones flapped underneath them, swirling weightlessly in the eddy currents from their negative gravity fields. They fanned out and settled near the northern perimeter of the terminal about half a mile away, and at the same moment sirens screamed their deafening alert. The tiny figures of the technicians who had been moving among the spaceships halted as ululations of the sirens were replaced by a vastly magnified human voice.

This is General Lucas Heller speaking on behalf of the Temporal Moderator. The terminal is now under martial law. All personnel must proceed as quickly as possible to the southern end of the field and muster at the reception area. The entrances have been sealed, and anyone who attempts to leave by any other route will be shot. I repeat: shot. Do not panic, but obey these instructions immediately. This is a planetary emergency.

As the echoes of the voice rolled out across the rows of ships in flat waves, the sky was darkened again by laser rafts silently taking up positions over the field. Tallon felt his lips drawn out into a quivering, incredulous smile. His gambit had failed — and how it had failed! Cherkassky must have accepted the part of Helen’s story about the capsule, and seen through the rest. He must have guessed Tallon was near by and used the ship’s radio to proclaim an emergency.

Tallon watched numbly as the space port personnel quit work and took cars or ran to get to the slideway system. Within five minutes the huge field appeared completely lifeless. The only sign of movement was in the swirling dust curtains hanging from the sentient laser rafts.

Nobody had come out of the Lyle Star since Helen had gone into it, and he had no way of knowing what had happened to her. Tallon could think of nothing to do except sit quietly in the darkness and wait, although he had nothing to wait for. He pressed his forehead against the cool metal of the engine housing and swore bitterly.

Five more minutes passed; then Tallon heard the sound of feet scraping on concrete. He lifted Seymour up to the louver again, and saw several men in the gray uniforms of the E.L.S.P. coming off the bottom of the ramp. An open military personnel carrier tore along the line of ships and stopped by the group. Most of the men got into it and were driven away toward the city; two others went back up the ramp and disappeared into the ship.

Tallon frowned. It looked as though Cherkassky might be covering Tallon’s main bet by checking out the rest of Helen’s story, which made Tallon’s poiition doubly hopeless. And when the E.L.S.P. got to the warehouse address and found nothing there, she would be in as deeply as he was. Cherkassky was good, Tallon admitted, fingering the automatic longingly. If only he would come out of the ship, Tallon might be able to get close enough to finish what he had started the night he had shoved Cherkassky out the hotel window. Perhaps that was why he remained in the ship, even though he could no longer expect Tallon to walk into his net.

If he thinks I’m out here ready to risk everything for a last chance to kill him, Tallon thought, what would be his next logical move? Answer: order a thorough search of the area.

As if they had read his mind, the first E.L.S.P. appeared at that moment. They were several hundred yards away as yet, but the fact that he could see several gray uniforms in his limited segment of view meant they must be all over the place. Tallon leaned back against the flanged engine, holding the dog to his chest. There was nothing clever about his hiding place; it would be one of the first places the men would look when they got this far.

Weighing the automatic in his hand, Tallon sat in the darkness, making his decision. He could stay in the compartment until he was cornered, or he could opt to die in the open while making a one-in-a-million bid to get Cherkassky.

“Come on, Seymour,” he whispered. “I told you you’d be out of here soon.”

He clambered round the engine to reach the inspection hatch, hesitated for a moment, then edged the hatch door open, admitting bright fringes of daylight. He was sliding his foot out through the hatch when he heard the drumming of heavy tires and the whine of an auto engine approaching.

Tallon jerked his foot back and scrambled across the engine compartment again. The sound had come from the personnel carrier. It sped across the open space, braking hard, and slid to a standstill between Tallon and the Lyle Star. The same group of E.L.S.P. men leaped out and ran to the ship and up the ramp. In its present position, the vehicle would provide cover for his run to the ship, not that it would do much good, but at least he had no reason to hang back any longer.

“Come on, Seymour. This is it.”

Out across the concrete apron a man gave a thin, high-pitched laugh. With a sweet, icy thrill Tallon recognized the voice of Lorin Cherkassky. Why had he left the ship? Tallon pressed Seymour’s face to the slot, but the dog’s eyes kept rolling back and forth, providing only tantalizing flashes of the scene Tallon wanted to see. At last he made out the black-suited, white-collared figure of Cherkassky walking toward the personnel carrier, with Helen and several E.L.S.P. men. Cherkassky seemed to be smiling at her, but Seymour’s myopia made it difficult for him to be sure. What in hell, Tallon thought, has happened?

Belatedly remembering the eyeset, he flicked the number two stud, which still held Helen’s setting, and got behind her eyes, Cherkassky’s thin face and incongruously lush wavy hair filled came in view. His eyes were glistening with excitement as he spoke, and Tallon concentrated on his lips, reading the words as they were formed.

“… appreciate my position, Miss Juste. Your story sounded slightly fantastic under the circumstances; but now that my men have picked up Detainee Tallon at the address you gave us, what can I do but apologize for doubting you? Tallon struggled at first, but when he realized it was no use, he gave up and admitted who he was, so …” The view of his face was lost as Helen eyes turned from him to the yellow engine housing where Tallon was hiding.

Tallon wondered if she were as puzzled as he was. The adress Helen had given Cherkassky was one they had picked out of the air, knowing only that it must be somewhere in the warehouse district. But Cherkassky’s men had evidently gone to the designated address and found a man they believed to be Sam Tallon. Not only that, but the man actually admitted to being Sam Tallon!