Captive of the Centaurianess Read online

  A knock on the door interrupted, and the steward bore in the luggage marked "Wanted on Voyage." When he was gone, the cabin occupants got busy unpacking and stowing. Dyann changed into a fur-trimmed robe, confirming Ray's guess that the scenery was gorgeous. Urushkidan slithered to the deck, extracted from his trunk several books, papers, penstyls, and a humidor, and appropriated the dresser top for these.

  Unease touched Ray. "You know, sir," he said, "apart from the honor of meeting you, I wish you weren't aboard."

  "Why not?" demanded the Martian huffily.

  "U-u-uh-h ... it was your formulation of general relativity that showed it's possible to travel faster than light."

  "Among many oter tings, yes," said Urushkidan through malodorous clouds.

  "I can't believe the Jovians are interested in your work for its own sake. I suspect they hope to get your guidance in developing that kind of ship. Then we'd all better beware."

  "Not I. A Martian is not concerned wit te squabbles of te lower animals. Noting personal, you understand."

  Dyann took forth a small wooden image and placed it on the shelf above her bunk. It was gaudily painted and fiercely tusked; each of its arms held a weapon, one being a Terrestrial tommy gun. "Qviet, please," she said, raising an arm. "I am about to pray to Ormun the Terrible."

  "An appropriate god for the likes of you," sneered Urushkidan.

  She stuffed a pillow from the bunk into his mouth. "Qviet, please, I said," she reproached him with a gentle smile, and prostrated herself before the idol.

  After a while, during which she had chanted a prayer full of snarling noises, she got up. Urushkidan was still speechless, with rage. Dyann turned to Ray. "Do you know if this ship has any live animals for sale?" she asked. "I vould like to make a sacrifice too."

  II

  After the Jovian Queen got under weigh, her captain announced that, given the present planetary configuration, she would complete her passage, at a steady one Terrestrial gee of positive and negative acceleration, in six standard days, 43 minutes, and 12 ± 10 seconds. That might be braggadocio, though Ray Tallantyre would not have been surprised to learn it was sober truth. He soon started wishing the time would prove overestimated. His roommates wore on his nerves. Urushkidan filled the place with smoke, sat up till all hours covering paper with mathematical symbols, and screamed if anybody spoke above a whisper. Dyann meant well, but limited vocabulary soon caused her conversation to pall; besides, she was mostly off in the gymnasium, working out. When she wasn't, her forcefulness often reminded him of Katrina Vanbrugh, occasioning shudders.

  On the second day out, he slouched moodily into the bar and ordered a martini he could ill afford. The ship's food was so wholesome that he wasn't sure he could choke any more down otherwise. The chamber was quiet except for Wagnerian music in the background, discreetly enough lit that the murals of pioneers and soldiers weren't too conspicuous, and not very full. At one table sat the colonel who had accompanied Ray aloft, still clutching his briefcase but talking with quite human animation to a red-headed female tourist from Earth. Her shape, in a skin-tight StarGlo gown, left small doubt as to his objective. The purity of the Jovian race, "hardened in the fire and ice of the outer deeps, tempered by adversity to form the new and dominant mankind," had been set aside for a while in favor of international relations.

  She didn't look as fascinated as she might have. If I had some money, sighed within Ray, I bet I could pry her loose from him.

  For lack of that possibility, he fell into conversation with the bartender. The latter informed him, in awed tones, that yonder he beheld Colonel Ivan Hosea Domenico Roshevsky-Feldkamp, late military attache of the Confederation's Terrestrial embassy, an officer who had served with distinction in suppressing the Ionian revolt and in asserting his nation's rightful claims to Saturn.

  Things got livelier when a couple of fellows entered from second class. North Americans like Ray, they were quick to make his acquaintance and ready to stand him drinks. After an hour or two, they suggested a friendly game of poker.

  Oh, ho! thought the engineer, who was less naive than he often appeared. "Sure," he agreed. "How about right after dinner?"

  Joined by a third of their kind, they met him in a proper stateroom and play commenced. It went on for most of the following two days and evenings. Fortune went back and forth in a way that would have impressed the average person as genuine. Ray kept track, and made occasional bets that ought to have proven disastrous, and when he was alone ran off statistical analyses on his calculator. He was winning entirely too much, and the rate of it was increasing on far too steep a curve. These genial chaps were setting him up for disaster.

  When he was a couple of thousand Union credits to the good, he let febrile cupidity glitter from him and said, "Look, boys, you know I'm traveling on the cheap, but I do have money at home and this game is too good for kiddie antes. Suppose I lase my bank to transfer some credit to the purser's office here, and tomorrow we can play for real stakes."

  "Sure, Ray, if you want," said the lead shark, delighted to have the suggestion made for him. "You're a sport, you are."

  At the appointed hour, he and his companions met again around the table, lit anticipatory cigars, and waited.

  And waited.

  And waited.

  Ray had found the redhead remarkably easy to pry loose from the colonel.

  She thought it would be great fun to go slumming and join him in the third-class dining room for the captain's dinner. First class was too stuffy, she said. He escorted her down a corridor, thinking wistfully, and a trifle wearily, that soon the trip would end and he'd disembark in Wotanopolis as broke as ever. She'd made him free of the luxury and spaciousness of her section, but since he avoided the bar—and possible embarrassing confrontations therein—she tacitly assumed that he would pay for refreshments ordered from the staff. Besides, she liked to gamble, and the ship's casino was not rigged.

  The sight of Urushkidan distracted him from his generally pleasant recollections. Awkward under Earth weight, the Martian was creeping along toward the saloon reserved for his species; the choice between mealtime segregation and decorum by either standard had been made long ago. He condescended to give the human a greeting: "Well, tere you are. I hope you habe not been found obnoxious."

  The trouble actually began with Dyann Korlas, who appeared a moment later in finery of leather boots, fur kilt, gold armbands, necklace of raw gemstones, and polychromatic body paint. Striding up behind Ray, she clapped a hand on his shoulder which almost felled him.

  "Vere have you been?" she asked reproachfully. "You vent avay, and you vere so long."

  The redhead blushed.

  "Oh, hello," Ray said, feeling a touch awkward himself. "What have you been up to?"

  Dyann's glance scuttled back and forth. "I think better we ask vat have you have been up to," she laughed. "Ah, you dashin, glamorous Earthmen!"—looking down on him by about fifteen centimeters. She pushed in between him and his date, amiably linking arms with both. "Come, ve go feed together, no?"

  They reached the companionway leading to the dining room, and there stood three much too familiar figures. Ray felt a thunderbolt go through his head. He'd not counted on this.

  "Hey, Tallantyre!" exclaimed the largest of his poker buddies. Somehow the entire trio seemed bigger than before. "What the hell happened to you? We were going to have another game, remember?"

  "I forgot," Ray said around a lump in his gullet.

  "Aw, you couldn't've," another man replied. "Look, a sport like you wouldn't quit when he's way ahead, would you?"

  "We still got time for a session," added the third.

  "But I don't have any more money," Ray protested.

  "Now, wait a minute, pal," said the largest. "You want to be a good sport, don't you? Sure you do. You don't want to make any trouble. It wouldn't be good for you, believe me."

  The trio crowded close. Backed against the bulkhead, Ray stared past them. Passengers on t
heir way to dinner ignored the unpleasantness, as people generally do. An exception was, of all possible individuals, Colonel Roshevsky-Feldkamp. Though his table was in first class, he must have been getting a drink in the bar—or was his presence more significant than that? Certainly he stood and watched with his iron features tinged by smugness.

  Did he put these gullyhanses up to accosting me? Ray wondered wildly. He could very well be bearing a grudge and—and—would this kind of threat be possible without some kind of sub rosa hint that the ship's officers won't interfere?

  "Now why don't you come on back to my cabin and we'll talk about this," proposed the largest. Three tight grins moved in on the engineer. The redhead squeaked and shrank aside.

  Dyann scowled and touched the hilt of her sword. "Are these men annoyin you, Ray?" she asked.

  "Oh, no, we just want a quiet little private talk with our friend," said the chief card player. He closed a meaty hand on the engineer's arm and tugged. "You come along now, okay, Tallantyre?"

  Ray ran a dried-out tongue over unsteady lips. "Dyann," he mumbled, "I think they are starting to annoy me."

  "Oh, vell, in that case—" She grinned happily, reached out, and took hold of the nearest man.

  Something like a small explosion followed. The man went whirling aloft, struck the overhead, caromed off a bulkhead, hit the deck, and bounced a couple of times more before lying stunned.

  Almost by reflex, his companions had attacked the amazon. "Ormun is kind!" she shouted in joy and gave one a mouthful of knuckles. Teeth flew.

  The third had gotten behind her. He plucked the dagger from her belt and raised it. Ray seized his wrist. Bigger and stronger, he tore loose with a force that sent the engineer staggering, and followed. Ray lurched against Roshevsky-Feldkamp. Without thought for anything except a weapon to use when the knife confronted him, he yanked the colonel's briefcase free, raised it in both hands, and brought it down on his enemy's head. It made a dull thwack and stopped the gambler in his tracks. Ray hit him again. The briefcase burst open and papers snowed through the air. Then Dyann, having put her second opponent out of the game, turned to this third and proceeded with martial arts practice.

  Save for the redhead, who had departed screaming, spectators milled about at a respectful distance. Now Roshevsky-Feldkamp advanced from among them, livid. "I'm terribly sorry, sir," gasped Ray, who didn't think he needed such a personage angry at him. "Here, let me help—"

  He went to his knees and began to collect scattered papers and stuff them back into the briefcase. In a dazed fashion he noticed that a number of them bore diagrams of apparatus. A polished boot took him in the rear. He skidded through the mass of documents. "You unutterable idiot!" Roshevsky-Feldkamp yelled.

  "You vould hurt my friend?" Dyann said indignantly. "I vill teach you better manners."

  The colonel drew his revolver. "Stand where you are," he snapped. "You are both under arrest."

  Dyann's broad smooth shoulders sagged. "Oh," she said in a meek voice. "Let me yust carry him"—she pointed at the gambler who was totally unconscious—"for a doctor to see." Bending over, she picked him up.

  "March," the Jovian ordered her.

  "Yes, sir," she said, and tossed her burden at him. He went over on his backside. She kicked him in the belly and he too lost interest in further combat.

  "That vas fun," she chuckled. "Vat shall ve do next?"

  "You," said Urushkidan acidly, "are a typical human."

  Through the open door of a cabin which had been declared the ship's brig for his benefit, Ray gazed in appeal at his visitor, who had come by request. There was no guard; a chain around his ankle secured the Earthling quite well. "What else could I do?" he pleaded. "Try fighting the entire crew? As was, it took every bit of persuasion I had in me to get Dyann to surrender."

  "I mean tat you fought in te first place," Urushkidan scolded. "I hear it started ober a female. Why don't you lower species habe a regular rutting season as we do on Uttu? Ten you could perhaps act sensibly te rest of te year."

  "Well—Please, sir! You're the only hope I've got. They won't even tell me what's become of Dyann."

  "Oh, tey questioned her, found she cannot read, and dismissed te charges of mayhem and mutiny. Roshevsky-Feldkamp himself agreed she had acted 'in te heat of te moment,' alto' I beliebe I detected a sour note in his boice. She will be all right."

  "I'm glad of that much," Ray said, a trifle surprised to notice his own sincerity. "Of course, no doubt the Jovians figured punishing one of our first interstellar visitors would raise more stink on Earth than it could be worth to them. But what's her illiteracy got to do with it? And how do you know they inquired about that?"

  "She mentioned it to me afterward. I ten recalled how carefully I had been interrogated, like ebery witness, to make sure I could not habe seen what was in te colonel's papers from tat briefcase. Obbiously tey are top secret and I suspect tey are information about Eart's military situation, gatered by spies for him to take back in person. You are being held prisoner because you did see tem."

  "What? But damn it, I never stopped to read anything!'

  "You must habe unconscious memories which a hypnoquiz could bring out. If noting else, tat would alert te Union to te existence of a Jobian espionage network. Dyann lacks te word-gestalts, she could not retain any meaningful images, but you—Well, tat is your bad luck. I suppose ebentually te Terrestrial embassy can negotiate your release, after te Jobians habe had time to cober teir tracks on Eart."

  "No, not then," Ray groaned. "They'll never bother. There's a warrant out for me at home. Besides, old Vanbrugh will be only too pleased to see me get the rotary shaft."

  "Banbrugh—te Nort American member of te World Council?"

  "Uh-huh." Ray slumped where he stood, "And to think I was a plain underpaid engineer till Uncle Hosmer left me a million credits in his will. I hope he's frying in hell."

  Urushkidan's eyes bugged till they seemed about to push off his spectacles. "A man left you money and you resent it? Ten why habe you talked about being poor?"

  "Because I am. I spent the whole sum."

  "Shalmuannasar! On what?"

  "Oh, wine, women, song, the usual."

  Urushkidan winced as if in physical pain. "A million credits, and not a millo inbested."

  "Meanwhile I got into high society," Ray explained. "I made out as if I had more than I actually did, not to defraud anybody, only so as not to be scoffed at. Katrina Vanbrugh—that's the Councillor's daughter—got the idea I'd make a good fifth husband, or would it have been the sixth? I forget. Well, she's not bad-looking, and she has a headlong way about her, and the upshot was that we became engaged. Big social event. Except then a reporter grew nosy, and found out my fortune was practically gone, and Katrina decided I'd only been after her money and now she and her parents were a laughingstock. . . . Vanbrugh had me charged with criminal misrepresentation. Quite false—oh, maybe I had shaded the truth a little, but I honestly didn't think it'd make any difference to Katrina when I got around to admitting it, she being as rich as she is—the family just wanted revenge. How could I fight that kind of power? I panicked and skipped. Maybe that was foolish; certainly it's made my case worse. The upshot is that the Jovians can do anything to me they feel like."

  He flung out his arms. "Sir, can't you put in a good word for me?" he begged. "You're famous, admired, influential if you choose to be. Couldn't you please help?"

  The Martian inflated himself in the equivalent of simper, then deflated and said with mild regret, "No, I cannot entangle myself in te empirical. It is too distracting, and my work too important. My domain is te beauty and purity of matematics. I adbise you to accept your fate wit philosophy. If you wish, I can lend you a copy of Ekbannutil's Treatise on te Insignificance of Temporal Sorrows."

  Ray collapsed onto his bunk and buried face in hands. "No, thanks."

  Urushkidan waved affably and waddled off.

  Presently the spaceship entered orbit around
Ganymede. A squad of soldiers arrived to bring Ray down to the moon. Roshevsky-Feldkamp took personal charge of that.

  "Where am I going?" the Earthling asked.

  "To Camp Muellenhoff, near Wotanopolis," the colonel told him with pleasure. "It is where we keep spies until we have completed their interrogation and are ready to shoot them."

  III

  Dyann Korlas needed a couple of Terrestrial days to decide that she didn't like Ganymede.

  The Jovians had been entirely courteous to her, offering a stiff apology for the unfortunate incident en route and assigning her a lieutenant in the Security Corps for a guide. Within limits, he indulged her curiosity about armaments, and she found her conducted tours of military facilities more impressive than anything corresponding that she had seen on Earth. However, granted that plasma-jet spacecraft, armored gun carriers, and nuclear missiles had capabilities beyond those of swords, bows, and cavalry, still, they took the fun out of combat and left nothing to plunder. She missed the brawling mirth of Kathantuman encampments among these endlessly and expressionlessly marching ranks, these drab uniforms and impersonal machines.

  The civilians were still more depressingly clad, and their orderliness, their instant obedience before any official, their voluminous praises to her of the wonders of Symmetrism, the tiny apartments in which they were housed, soon made her nerves crawl. The officer caste did possess a certain dash and glamour which she would have enjoyed, had it not been exclusively male. She had found the Terrestrial concept of sexual equality interesting, even perversely exciting; but the Jovians had not simply changed the natural order of things, they had turned it upside down, and she found herself regarding them as a race of perverts.

  The standard sights were often fascinating. Below ground, Wotanopolis was a many-leveled hive of industry; she admired especially the countless engineering accomplishments which made human life here so triumphantly safe and ordinary. The views above ground were often magnificent in their stark fashion: Jupiter like a huge moon, softly lambent, in a twilit heaven; an auroral shimmer in the phantom-thin air, where the force-fields created by enormous generators warded off radiation that would otherwise have been lethal; crags, craters, mountains, glaciers; a crystalline forest, a splendidly leaping animal, the marvel that life had arisen here too, here too.