The Mysterious Planet

CHAPTER 18 Hostage from Thule

JUAN DROPPED ONTO A CHAIR, and someone from the back of the room came up with a glass of some dark fluid. The boy gulped it down. He took one deep breath, and nodded.

“Simon’s escaping in his ship,” he gasped. “I tried to stop him. He knocked me out. He…”

Faskin shook his head. “He’ll be stopped! He can’t get the ship free, and if he does, he can’t get away from Thule. The fool!”

“No!” Juan stood up now, facing the president. “No! He’s kidnaped Emo. Using him for a hostage!”

The room was suddenly bedlam. There was a stunned silence that lasted less than a second, then a wild shouting as the Thulians milled toward Juan. Faskin had turned as nearly white as his orange skin would permit. But he was the first to recover and start trying to get order, banging a wand against a coiled copper strip.

Bob had gasped with the others. “It means war at once,” he shouted to his father. “They’d forgive bombing the planet quicker.”

Proof of this was already coming. In the days Bob had been on Thule, he had never heard an outright expression of hatred toward the Federation, and he had believed that the Thulians had gotten over all personal violence. But now they were shouting like a pack of savages, a few crying for death to all men from the Federation.

The guards were better trained, though. They were moving in to protect the three in front of the president.

Bob suddenly touched Juan on the shoulder, and turned. He leaped toward the bank of machinery on the wall and began running along it. Some of the crowd that had begun to come in from other offices must have been confused by his Thulian clothes, for they drew back.

He was almost to the door when the loud-speaker on the ceiling broke into sound, in the voice of the president. “Stop! Robert Griffith, stop! Men, stop him!”

But the sound had confused them for just long enough. Bob found the door and was through it, bowling over two people who were just dashing up. He sped down the hall, and was surprised to find Juan behind him. A quick glance back showed guards pouring out of the big doors, with drawn guns.

There was no time to take the escalator. Bob blessed the Thulian who had installed a brass handrail beside it, and was on that and sliding downward before the guns went off. He landed hard, with Juan coming down against his back. That knocked the breath out of him but he had already grasped the next rail.

Thulian clothes were a nuisance. They offered no protection to his legs. But he hardly felt the burn as he slid down the third rail. He was getting the knack of it now, and blessing the times he had slid down the banister when he was a kid.

Bob threw out an arm to catch Juan at the bottom of the last railing, and then pulled the younger boy around a corner. “Have we got a chance to stop Jakes?” he asked.

Juan blinked and shook his head. Then he nodded quickly. “You want… Yes, maybe. We must stop him!”

Bob nodded, and leaped forward as he heard the pursuing guards coming down the escalator, adding their own speed to that of the machine. He glanced at the street and saw a man opening the door of one of the cars parked there. With a single bound, he was across the sidewalk and throwing the man out of his way. Surprise worked in his favor. The man stumbled and fell. Then Bob was inside at the driver’s seat, Juan yanking the door shut.

He’d seen how the cars worked, though he had never driven one. The power seemed to be electric, needing no starter. He pulled the steering bar back, twisting it a little. The car leaped to life and tore away from the sidewalk. It almost ran into the opposite one, but Bob yanked it back. For two blocks, he weaved about while the car gained speed; but it was enough like driving a car on Mars so as not to cause too much trouble. He got the hang of it almost at once, and settled down to making speed.

Juan reached forward and found a button. A high whistle came from the car. “Maybe this will clear the way for us,” he choked out. He was having his second reaction from the physical exertion, but was getting control of himself.

Bob nodded. The whistle did help. But it also told him that the sound he had heard before was pursuit by the guards, and from the extra volume of their whistles, they probably had bigger and faster cars.

In a way, he had an advantage. Thule wasn’t geared to violence, and would be more confused than in a Federation world, where crime was still fairly common. But it also meant that he probably couldn’t count on the Thulians finding and stopping Jakes in time.

Fortunately, he knew the way to Center Park. He cut into a narrower street suddenly, having seen that it. was clear. He swung around a corner, realizing that there were advantages to three-wheeled cars. This handled much more quickly than the ones he had known.

“Thank God you found me,” he told Juan. “I thought you were all on Simon’s side.”

Juan shook his head. “No. Not for this. I thought you might be on his side and try to help him.

It was to the president I was reporting.”

It was a good thing that Juan had seen the risk such a trick would bring, Bob thought. Otherwise, Jakes might have gotten away with it—if he hadn’t already done so. While the situation had seemed hopeless before, nothing could be worse than the results of injury to young Emo.

“What will you do, Bob?” Juan asked.

It was a question that Bob had been about to ask himself, and he realized he had no answer for it. He hadn’t had time to think. He’d acted on pure instinct, get there first, and depend on what he found for his actions. It still seemed the only thing to do.

The sudden spat of something against the top of the car warned him that the guards meant business. They had cut off their whistle and almost caught him. He jerked the car into another side street, almost running down two pedestrians. He’d have cracked up long before if there had been any real traffic on Thule. Then he began zigzagging toward Center Park, trying to keep out of the line of fire from the pursuing guards.

Then another thought occurred to him. “Those tractor beams that hold down the Icarius—maybe he can’t work them! The Thulians found the papers and substituted false ones for them!”

“I know of that,” Juan answered. “No, it won’t stop him. He found that the papers had been changed. That is why he decided he must escape now, instead of when he had planned.”

Bob was counting on the fact that Jakes would have gone as quietly as he could toward the park. With Emo taken along by force, he would probably have had to move along by stealth, picking subways with no one in them, and lurking at the furthest ends of platforms. It should have taken him quite a while to reach the park that way.

Something spattered against the car again, just missing Bob’s head. Then the car bucked, and began to twist sideways. One of the bullets—real bullets, not wax ones—must have punctured a tire.

He fought it to the curb, and had the door open as it stopped. There were several people standing there, and he’d picked the place because of that. He leaped out, with Juan behind him, and dashed through the group. They would keep the guards from firing—perhaps long enough.

The trick seemed to work, and they still had a chance. The park was only one block away, now. But Bob couldn’t head there directly. He swung around a corner, then dashed across the street. The guards would expect him to take the shortest way, which was straight ahead.

Therefore, the only thing to do was to go around the opposite block.

His legs began to ache, and Juan was having trouble keeping up with him. He slowed down, recognizing his mistake too late. He should have stopped running at once.

Juan caught his arm, and pulled him into the lobby of a building. “Underground, then up,” he gasped.

It would be better than going around the block. This time, they tried to look casual as they moved down the escalator. With their rate of breathing, it wouldn’t have passed close inspection, but there seemed to be no one around to look.

A couple of men were standing on the next lower level, but they didn’t seem to notice anything unusual as Bob and Juan passed them. Then ahead there was the “Up” escalator.

They rode up it, keeping their eyes peeled for a sign of trouble in the lobby they were entering. It seemed quiet, and the street beyond was free of guards.

This time, as they turned the corner, they were facing directly toward the park. Ahead, through the shrubbery, Bob could see the needle nose of the little Icarius. It was still not too late!

They glanced about, then crossed the street quickly, and were behind trees that would conceal them from any passing guard cars. By sticking to the smaller paths, they remained fairly inconspicuous.

But now guards were beginning to arrive. Through the thin shrubbery, Bob could see their cars drive up, and men pile out of them. He viewed them with both alarm and hope. They might be able to stop Jakes’s crazy plan.

The shrubbery thinned out for a space, and Bob and Juan had to find a way around. He remembered that there had been another of the trees with low-hanging branches to the north of the little ship, and began threading in that direction, trying to see what was going on at the ship. But there was nothing to see that made sense.

Approximately fifty guards stood at the far side of the ship, with drawn guns. They were watching something eagerly, but Bob couldn’t see what.

The tree lay ahead then, and he slipped under it, and moved forward to draw back the branches for a view of the clearing.

Simon Jakes was already there, a wide grin on his face. In one hand, he held a long piece of string stretched out tightly and running back into the Icarius. With the other, he was busy taking a cover off one of the little tractor-beam installations that were holding the Icarius locked to the concrete base on which it sat. The cover came off, and he probed about expertly inside.

For a moment, his face tensed, as if something had to be done very carefully. Then he relaxed again, and tossed the tractor-beam gadget back easily.

“The right combination or it explodes—and just the right spots,” Juan breathed in Bob’s ear.

“He explained it to me once when I was to escape with him. It locks itself, one place to the ship, one place deep in the earth, until it is released. But what is he doing with the string?”

Bob could guess, but there was no need for it. Simon stood up and faced toward the crowd of guards.

“All right, you,” he called out. “Get over there fifty feet to the left. And you’d better make sure you keep any new arrivals from getting ideas. Hey, new arrivals!”

He was in his glory, the obvious hero, in complete control of the crowd against him, and on his way to perform what he thought were great deeds. The amazing fact was that somehow he now did manage to seem like a dominating, forceful man, in spite of his appearance.

Waiting until he was sure of enough attention, he pointed to the string. “You see this, all of you. Well, if you don’t already know it, this is all that’s keeping a switch inside that ship from closing. And when that switch closes, your president’s son is going to get five thousand volts right out of the engines through him. He’s in there. Don’t worry about that. He’s all tied up, but he’s perfectly safe—just as long as I keep this line good and tight.”

They obviously believed him, or were afraid to take any chances that he might be right. And they had already decided that Emo couldn’t be hurt without letting go of the string.

The crowd had already moved toward the new spot Jakes had selected. Some of the guards were moving about at the far edge, talking to others who were just arriving. And Bob saw more of them keeping a careful eye on all approaching cars, to make sure that no guard acted before he found the facts.

Jakes moved over to another of the tractor-beam devices, and waited until the watching guards were quiet Then he began working on the mechanism.

Juan clutched Bob’s arm. “What can we do? You know him better than I do.”

Bob shook his head. He’d known Simon as well as anyone had known him. But the boy was never easy to understand. And Bob had no idea whether Jakes would trust him now or not.

He’d been suspicious enough not to tell everything about his plans. And his experience with Juan, on whom he’d counted, had probably made him more suspicious.

Bob was still waiting for a break, hoping he’d have enough sense to recognize it when it came.

This time, Simon stopped in the middle of the operation to rest. Whatever he did to the gadgets must have required a cool nerve.

“How would he know what combinations these were set for?” Bob asked Juan.

“Thule made them all the same, I guess,” Juan answered. “Or so Simon guessed. He thought that the explosion was from a sudden, uncontrolled release of the energy of the beam—that it was not Intended to keep people from releasing the locks or examining the machine. They were not meant for war, really.”

Now Simon bent over and probed again. His face broke into a grin of satisfaction, and he picked up the device.

“All right,” he called out. “Now all of you keep back—well back. I’m going home.”

Winding the string up carefully as he went, he moved toward the lock of the Icarius. There, he opened the outer seal, placed the tractor-beam device Inside.

It had to be now or never, Bob decided. He broke out from under the tree and leaped toward the little ship. “Simon, wait!”

But either Jakes hadn’t heard him, or wasn’t interested. The little lock began closing before Bob was halfway there, and it snapped shut with a definite click, just as he reached it.

The guards who had been at the presidential chambers obviously considered it better to get in some action, and they also recognized Bob as someone they were to stop. With Simon inside the ship, it was time for them to do something.

The first bullet missed by several feet, but the second one was closer.