John Rackham (8 page)

"I
may look like my father," she said, "but I think my own thoughts. He
thinks you are dangerous. I think you are just wrong. Confused."

"Oh! About what?"

"So many things. It is in the way you
think. How can one man, or many men,
take a
planet?
Or hold it? Or own it? No one owns this planet. The words do not mean anything.
We, the Scartanni, do not
own
the
planet; we merely live here. It could have been anywhere else, or any other
people. It was none of our doing. It just happened!"

"You are aware of
other planets, then?"

"Of course!" She shrugged the
question away. "Suppose," she advanced, "you did own this
planet, as you term it, what would you do with it? What
could
you do with it, apart from live on it?"

"I would change it. A planet such as
this can support ten times, a hundred times as many people as it does now. And
great industries and products of all kinds."

"For what?" she demanded, just like
her father. "We have enough, and more than enough, for everything we need.
Why bother with more?"

"Why
bother to argue?" he retorted quietly. "You are going to have to
bother with more soon, like it or not."

"What does that
mean?"

"Never
mind. If I told you, you would just put it down to more wrong thinking on my
part, so let it slide. What's more to the point, what happens to me, now?"

"That will depend. When you have eaten
enough I will attend to your injury, and then it will be time to take you to a
session of our grand council. There we will decide what is to be done."

The
trial!
he thought, but
didn't bother to comment. It was an inevitability, and there was nothing he
could do about it now. He drained his cup of creamy stuff, savoring its faintly
yeasty flavor, and declared himself satisfied. She rose promptly and went out
and away with the tray, leaving the door standing open. He noted that, then
iooked at himself ruefully. He had nothing but his leather jacket and pants,
and boots. Where would he run to? In a moment she was back with another tray
and dressings.

"Just
sit still," she ordered. "This will hurt a little, but no more than
is necessary." She had to come close in order to deal with his scalp
wound, and he became aware, again, that she had some mysterious kind of power
to affect him. The only thing he was sure of was that it was not deliberate on
her part. He estimated her age as about twenty-five. Her shape was all that any
mature woman could possibly want, and the brief blue tunic-dress flattered it
effectively. Yet it wasn't her shape, her full curves that were revealed every
time she moved, nor the silk-satin texture of the skin so close to him. Bragan
had seen more, and better, and had been the object of deliberate enticement
often. He had learned to disregard such things, to consider himself immune to
them. Yet now he found his pulse unsteady and his breathing upset.

He clenched his fists and found them sweaty,
and cursed himself for being so foolish, now of all times. And he wondered
why? It was not intentional on her part. Her attitude was one of blithe
indifference to the fact that he was a man at all. And she was by no means
tender. Once she had lifted the edge of the plaster on his head enough to get a
grip on it she had it off with a quick heave that brought a yelp as far as his
throat and halted only by his clenched teeth.

She
proceeded to bathe the lump with hot water and massage it with strong fingers.
Then, to his relief, she applied a cool ointment and a new dressing. Nothing
tender there, indeed, and yet she had something—he veered away from that
thought in a hurry, to choose something less hazardous.

-
"Ryth—tell me—how are your people so well-organized? In touch with each
other? Obviously, however you knocked out our ships, you did it to some
prearranged plan. By some signal. Yet your radio was silent."

"Oh, that!" She patted the dressing
into place and subsided briskly by his side. "You didn't know? We have a
way of talking to each other over a long distance by wires from one place to
another. It is just as quick as by radio."

Telephone!
he thought. But then,
"What wires? We saw none!"

"Of course not. They are
underground."

So
simple and so obvious. He felt foolish as he echoed, "Underground?"

"Of
course underground," she said with great patience. "Where do you
think you are now?" He felt more foolish than ever.

"This is part of an underground
system?"

"It is. All our cities -md all dwellings
have an underground part where we can live when it becomes necessary. Now, I
will just put this stuff away safely and then it will be time to go. Be
ready!" She took the tray of dressings and was gone before he could think
to ask her just what she had meant by "necessary."

V

H
e followed heb
at a brisk walk out of the cell, into a long
tunnel that was just wide enough for two people to pass, and about seven feet
high. It was surfaced on all four sides with smooth stone and lit every yard
with inset lamps that glowed like pearl. He didn't know which was the bigger
upset to his mind, this seemingly endless warren of galleries and cubicles, or
her distracting self, striding and swaying fascinatingly in front of him. He
tried to rationalize her charm. It was because she was artless, natural, real,
unstudied—and he blundered on from one inadequate word to another until he was
utterly confused. He shunted away from the topic altogether and concentrated
his attention on the cellar-warren.

Every
so often, at regular intervals, there were marks and symbols in various colors,
and now, from all sides, other people began to join the quiet march, falling in
at his heels.
All
these tunnels,
he
thought,
they
must cover whole acres of area—and yet there was never so much as a mention of
them on the surface. The Scartanni had never discussed this, nor spoken of U.
Not at all.

Why? Why keep it secret?
The question nagged. Secrecy
after
the event, yes. That made a land of sense. But Bragan and his invaders
had studied this planet for weeks prior to invasion, and there had been not a
word about an underground. And why have it, anyway? Why would these people go
to all
this
trouble to live underground—when necessary? The silly and
senseless questions were all the more irritating because he felt that somewhere
in the back of his mind was an answer, a datum that he had missed.

Groping
for it distracted him so much, not only from the enticing shape in front, but
from everything else, that it was with a shock of surprise that he found bright
daylight overhead. Then, just ahead of him, Ryth was stepping nimbly up a
ladder to the surface. He followed, not quite so nimbly, and choked up when he
looked around and saw where he was. This was the main square of Stopa. There
was the City Hall. And there was his abortive sub-headquarters, with the
troop-shack and the stockade. Looking back he saw he had just emerged—from a
gutter!

Bits
of various puzzles began to fall into place now as he followed his dance-footed
guide. All the floors of these houses and buildings, even the good solid
roadways, were simply stout roofings for the fantastic underground galleries.
That much was plain, but he was no nearer knowing why the whole thing existed
that he had been before. And there was no more time to gnaw on it.

The big chamber of the building was almost
full. The Scartanni assembled stayed on their feet but packed in close with a
minimum of fuss and an efficiency that showed they had done this kind of tiling
many times before. Hallex Mor-din and seven other notables had made themselves
prominent by the simple expedient of standing on tables that were pushed right
back against the far wall. Other tables lined the walls to right and left, and
Bragan saw the sorry remnants of his force standing there. Troopers and
squad-leaders along one side, ship's crew, officers, and Otto Karsh on the
other. Bragan stared up, blundered and almost fell. Ryth grabbed his arm and
escorted him firmly to the end of the table where Karsh stood.

"This
is your place," she ordered. "Get up!" and she gave him a trim
shoulder and arm as boost. When he was standing, she put her back to the table
and stood facing her father. Bragan ran a fast eye over his men, what remained
of them, and they were a sorry-looking bunch, battered, bruised and bereft of
everything but their body-leather. He turned to Karsh finally.

"What the hell happened?" he
muttered. "How did they scupper the ship?"

Karsh had the look of a man who has been hit
hard in the face with a blun* object. His nose was rosy red and beginning to
swell and there were purple patches showing around his eyes. He growled,
"They somehow managed to dig a hole under us and then kicked away the
props." "As simple as that?"

"Simple,
hell! The ship fell, a dead straight drop, about fifty feet onto concrete. It's
scrap, right now. A total writeoff. The Scarts dug me out, several of the
others. For some, there was no need. Swann—never knew what hit him."

"That's a good way,
quick like that."

"Yes. We should be so
lucky. What happened to you?"

"Tried to make a run for it, but they
nailed me. Crack on the head, that's all. We have to switch plans, quick; move
to the cooperative stage."

"Right. You?"

"No." Bragan grinned sourly.
"Somebody has to stay true to Zorgan, and who better than me?"

"Watch
it!" Karsh warned. "The old man is giving us the eye!"

Bragan
turned to see Mordin regarding him with a frosty stare. Then he turned to the
throng and asked, in a voice that rang: "Are we ready to begin the
council? Any dissent?" There came none. Bragan scanned the audience,
estimated it at around a thousand. Then his eye caught the glint of light from
metal, high up, and he saw what had to be a microphone. That immediately
multiplied the audience by several orders of magnitude. Mordin raised his hand
in an intense silence.

"Because we have one here," he
began, "who styles himself the Supreme Executive of Zorgan, whatever that
may be, and because he himself has told me that he regards Stopa as being above
all other cities, and myself set above all other Scartanni—" Mordin paused
to let the surf-roar of scorn and amusement sweep the chamber, and Bragan shivered.
If he was any judge, this audience was in a grim-jovial mood, and that was bad.
Anger was simple, or mirth, or mockery, but this crowd was in a state of
whimsical imbalance where anything could happen.

"Because
of these and other things," Mordin resumed when he could be heard,
"we of Stopa will debate first, so that others may listen and learn from
what is said. Dissent?
I
hear none. Very well." He swiveled his
cold stare on Bragan. "You name yourself Denzil Bragan. You say you are
the

Supreme
Executive of Zorgan. Will you now tell us what that may mean, so we can
understand it?"

"I
will, gladly." Bragan could turn on a platform voice and manner when it
was needed. He had delivered many a lecture to a less promising audience than
this. He turned now to have the corner at his back.

"First
a small correction," he said. "I am not Supreme in Zorgan. I am
nothing so grand as that. Zorgan is a mighty empire that bridges the stars.
Tonight, when you look at the sky, look at that part which lies between the big
red star and the bright white one. That is Zorgan. Let me describe it for you.
You have a sun. This is one of its planets. Many suns have such planets, some
more than one. Imagine as many suns as there are Scartanni in this chamber now,
and each one with at least one planet like Scarta, with as many people on them,
or more, as Scarta has. Now try to imagine how many people there are. And all
are Zorgan."

"You mean they are all of one
kind?" Mordin demanded.

"They
are now. Once there was just the one planet, the birthplace of a powerful and
mighty people, the Zorgan. By degrees they perfected all the skills and arts of
war and weapons. They traveled in space to the next near planet and conquered
it, and made it work for Zorgan the way my arm works for me. Then another
planet—another arm." He had them, and he knew it. They were silent and
intent, following his pictures.