The Star Fox

The glow in Heim’s stomach spread outward. I’ve been responsible for lives before, he thought, and the old reflexes of command awoke. You construct a games theoretical matrix and choose the course with smallest negative payoff. His brain began to move. “Thanks, Endre,” he said.

“Could they be bluffing about spies in the police?” Vadász wondered.

“I don’t know, but the chance looks too big to take.”

“Then … we cancel the expedition, renounce what we have said about New Europe, and hope?”

“That may be the only thing to do.” It whirred in Heim’s head. “Though I do believe it’s wrong also, even to get Lisa home.”

“What is left? To hit back? How? Maybe private detectives could search—”

“Over a whole planet? Oh, we can try them, but—No, I was fighting a fog till I got the idea of the raider, and now I’m back in the fog and I’ve got to get out again. Something definite, that they won’t know about before too late. You were right, there’s no sense in threatening Yore. Or even appealing to him, I guess. What matters to them is their cause. If we could go after it—”

Heim bellowed. Vadász almost got knocked over in the big man’s rush to the phone. “What in blue hell, Gunnar?”

Heim unlocked a drawer and took out his private directory. It now included the unlisted number and code of Michel Coquelin’s sealed circuit. And 0930 in California was-what? 1730?-in Paris. His fingers stabbed the buttons.

A confidential secretary appeared in the screen. “Bureau de—oh, M. Heim.”

“Donnez-vous moi M. le Minister tout de suite, s’il vous plaît.” Despite the circumstances, Vadász winced at what Heim thought was French.

The secretary peered at the visage confronting him, sucked down a breath, and punched. Coquelin’s weary features.

“Gunnar! What is this? News of your girl?”

Heim told him. Coquelin turned gray. “Oh, no,” he said. He had children of his own.

“Uh-huh,” Heim said. “I see only one plausible way out. My crew’s assembled now, a tough bunch of boys. And you know where Cynbe is.”

“Are you crazy?” Coquelin stammered.

“Give me the details: location, how to get in, disposition of guards and alarms,” Heim said. “I’ll take it from there. If we fail, I won’t implicate you. I’ll save Lisa, or try to save her, by giving the kidnappers a choice: that I either cast discredit on them and their movement by spilling the whole cargo; or I get her back, tell the world I lied, and show remorse by killing myself. We can arrange matters so they know I’ll go through with it.”

“I cannot—I—”

“This is rough on you, Michel, I know,” Heim said. “But if you can’t help me, well, then I’m tied. I’ll have to do exactly what they want. And half a million will die on New Europe.”

Coquelin wet his lips, stiffened his back, and asked: “Suppose I tell you, Gunnar. What happens?”

VIII

“Space yacht Flutterby, GB-327-RP, beaming Georgetown, Ascension Island. We are in distress. Come in, Georgetown. Come in, Georgetown.”

The whistle of cloven air lifted toward a roar. Heat billowed through the forward shield. The bridge viewports seemed aflame and the radar screen had gone mad. Heim settled firmer into his harness and fought the pilot console.

“Garrison to Flutterby.” The British voice was barely audible as maser waves struggled through the ionized air enveloping that steel meteorite. “We read you. Come in, Flutterby.”

“Stand by for emergency landing,” David Penoyer said. His yellow hair was plastered down with sweat. “Over.”

“You can’t land here. This island is temporarily restricted. Over.” Static snarled around the words.

Engines sang aft. Force fields wove their four-dimensional dance through the gravitrons. The internal compensators held steady, there was no sense of that deceleration which made the hull groan; but swiftly the boat lost speed, until thermal effect ceased. In the ports a vision of furnaces gave way to the immense curve of the South Atlantic. Clouds were scattered woolly above its shiningness. The horizon line was a deep blue edging into space black.

“The deuce we can’t,” Penoyer said. “Over.”

“What’s wrong?” Reception was loud and clear this time.

“Something blew as we reached suborbital velocity. We’ve a hole in the tail and no steering pulses. Bloody little control from the main drive. I think we can set down on Ascension, but don’t ask me where. Over.”

“Ditch in the ocean and we’ll send a boat. Over.”

“Didn’t you hear me, old chap? We’re hulled. We’d sink like a stone. Might get out with spacesuits and life jackets, or might not. But however that goes, Lord Ponsonby won’t be happy about losing a million pounds’ worth of yacht. We’ve a legal right to save her if we can. Over.”

“Well—hold on, I’ll switch you to the captain’s office—”