The Star Fox

“And never told us?” Koumanoudes yanked at his harness. “I should’ve noticed where the sun is. Get away from that pilot board. I’m taking over.”

Heim’s eyes swung to Jocelyn. Her fists were clamped together and she breathed in deep uneven gulps.

Bragdon darted his hand into the carrying case by his seat. It lifted, and Heim stared down the barrel of a laser pistol.

“Sit back!” Bragdon ordered. “I’ll shoot the first one who unstraps himself.”

IV

When he cycled through the airlock, out of the flyer’s interior gee-field, Staurn yanked at Heim so violently that he staggered. He tightened his leg muscles and drew himself erect. However well balanced, the load of gear on him was monstrous.

Jocelyn had gone ahead, to cover the prisoners as they emerged. She looked grotesquely different in her airsuit, and the dark faceplate was a mask over her features. He moved toward her.

“Stop!” In spite of the helmet pickups being adjusted to compensate for changed sound-transmission parameters, her voice was eerily different. He halted under the menace of her gun. It was a .45 automatic, throwing soft-nosed slugs at low velocity to rip open a man’s protection.

He drew a long breath, and another. His own air was a calculated percentage composition at three atmospheres, both to balance outside pressure and to furnish extra oxygen for the straining cells. It made his words roar in the helmet: “Joss, what is this farce?”

“You’ll never know how sorry I am,” she said unevenly. “If you’d listened to me, back on the ship—”

“Your whole idea, then, was to wreck my plan,” he flung at her.

“Yes. It had to be done. Can’t you see, it had to! There’s no chance of negotiating with Alerion when … when you’re waging war. Their delegates told Earth so officially, before they left.”

“And you believed them? Don’t you know any more history than that?”

She didn’t seem to hear. Words cataracted from her; through all the distortion, he could read how she appealed to him.

“Peace Control Intelligence guessed you’d come here for your weapons. They couldn’t send an armed ship. The Staurni wouldn’t have allowed it. In fact, France could block any official action. But unofficially—We threw this expedition together and took off after you. I learned about it because PCI found out I was an, an, an old friend of yours and interrogated me. I asked to come along. I thought, I hoped I could persuade you.”

“By any means convenient,” he bit off. “There’s a name for that.”

“I failed,” she said desolately. “Vie decided this trip was his chance to act. We don’t mean to hurt you. We’ll take you back to Earth. Nothing more. You won’t even be charged with anything.”

“I could charge kidnapping,” he said.

“If you want to,” she mumbled.

Hopelessness gutted him. “What’s the use? You’d get yourself a judge who’d put you on probation.”

Vadász appeared, then Koumanoudes, then Uthg-a-K’thaq. The Greek cursed in a steady stream.

Without a captain, without a chief engineer, Fox will have to go home, beaten before one blow is struck, Heim thought.

He looked around. They had landed on the west bank of the Morh. It ran wide and luminous through a sandy, boulder-strewn dale walled by low bluffs. The mountains of Kimreth reared opposite the sun, still many kilometers distant, not quite real in the blue-gray haze of intervening air, but a titan’s rampart, dominated by the volcanic cone he had seen from afar. Underfoot the ground was covered by that springy mosslike red-yellow growth which was this world’s equivalent of grass. Overhead the sky arched plum-dark, clouds scudding on a wind that boomed in his audio receptors. A flock of airborne devilfish shapes drifted into sight and out again.

How far have we come? What’s going to happen?

Vadász moved to Heim’s side, touched helmets, and muttered, “Quickly, can we rush her? I do not think her aim will be good here.”

“Nor can we move fast,” Heim said. Though … would you really shoot me, Joss?

His heart thuttered and sweat smelt sharp in his nostrils. But before he could nerve himself to try, Bragdon was out, and there was no question whether that laser pistol would be used.

“G’yaaru!” Uthg-a-K’thaq shouted. “You hawe lewt the airlock owen!”

“I know,” Bragdon said. “And I’ve set the pilot a certain way. Better lie down.” He eased himself to a sitting position.

The flyer whined and leaped forward. The glare off its metal blinded Heim. He saw what seemed a comet arc off the ground, to a hundred meters, loop about, and plunge. Instinct sent him flat on his belly.

Some distance away, the flyer crashed. The explosive mixture of hydrogen and oxygen went off. Blue flame spurted upward. Thunder coughed, again and again, and Heim heard shards scream above him. Then there was only a thick pillar of smoke and dust, while echoes tolled away and were lost in the wind.