Asgard's Conquerors Read online

  Secondly, it helps a lot if you can move around inconspicuously once you are no longer in your place of imprisonment. Darkness helps, but even in darkness it is a good idea not to be instantly recognisable as a fugitive to anyone you may happen to meet.

  Thirdly, you must have somewhere safe and cosy to go— either a vehicle in which you can make a clean getaway or a place of refuge where you can be securely hidden away while a search is conducted.

  Fourthly, never—but never—put your trust in the supposed expertise of an assistant who has always seemed to you in the past to be a confirmed no-hoper.

  Anyone studying these four criteria will immediately realise that John Finn's grand scheme to liberate me from my secure quarters on Goodfellow was bound to be a bit rickety. The fact that he could open the door was merely a beginning, and counted for less than one might imagine.

  One problem with trying to be inconspicuous on a microworld is that it is very small and entirely artificial. It has no cycle of day or night, so the internal lights are never switched off. Another is that everybody knows everybody else by sight, and a stranger sticks out like a sore thumb. Your average microworld has very few hidden and forgotten corners, and in any case is crammed full of sensory equipment and alarms because it has to be perpetually on guard against things going wrong. If its staff are engaged in scientific research they could hardly work a regular eight hours out of twenty-four, even if twenty-four hours did mean anything special, because they have to fit their personal timetables into the timetables of their observations.

  Had I thought about all this very carefully, I would have realised that John Finn's escape plan was far from certain to succeed. Unfortunately, I didn't think about it carefully. I just assumed that he could do it. This was not because I am the kind of person who readily puts his trust in his fellow man, but because I was still feeling benumbed and disoriented by the horrible shock of it all.

  I don't know what time it was when he turned up again. I don't even know what kind of time-system the microworld was using. But I was roused from sleep to find that the dimmed light had been turned up a fraction, and that Finn was trying to press some kind of weapon into my fist.

  "What is it?" I asked him.

  "Mud gun," he said. "Benign weaponry issued to police forces in enlightened nations. Fires wet stuff that goes through your clothes. Skin absorbs some organic that acts as a muscle relaxant. Makes you feel like you do in dreams sometimes, when you want to move but can't.

  Purely temporary effect. Okay?"

  I took the weapon. Then he gave me an overall made out of silvery plastic. He was wearing one just like it. I put it on.

  "Right," said Finn. "I reckon we should have a clear run if we time it right. Keep your head down—if anyone does see us, they'll probably figure you for one of my boys. I daren't dim the lights—any little thing goes wrong makes people very nervous. We're going straight for the umbilical. A few hundred metres. Stay close."

  I nodded.

  He stood for a while, studying his wristwatch. About three minutes passed before he said: "Let's go."

  We went.

  He took me along at a brisk walk. My feet kept wanting to break into a trot, but I controlled the impulse and stayed behind him. I wished that he'd brought something to hide me in, but microworlds don't have that kind of mobile equipment. Laundry baskets are rarely seen outside of old movies.

  We got at least three quarters of the way before the unexpected happened and someone came through a hatchway ahead of us. It was a tall, white-haired man and he was seemingly engrossed in studying the display on a small hand-held bookplate. I dropped in behind Finn, trying to keep my face out of the direct line of sight. Finn marched bravely on, and greeted the man cheerfully. The guy with the bookplate barely glanced up, and muttered a reply. I thought we were safe for five whole seconds, until we had to pass through the hatchway ourselves and I spared time for a quick backward glance.

  The white-haired man had stopped and was staring after us, with a look of puzzlement on his face.

  "Move it," I said to Finn. "We've got to get out now."

  I still thought we could make it, with only a short dash ahead of us to the spur that led out to the docking-spindle. They wouldn't catch us from behind, and even if the Star Force had posted a guard in the dock we had the mud guns. Once we were up the umbilical and into the ship, I thought, all we had to do was detach. I couldn't believe that they'd actually try to shoot us down.

  We got to the hatchway leading to the spur without any obvious alarm having been raised, but climbing the spur seemed to take a long time—subjective time always seems to be distorted when you're in a gravity-cline. Finn was ahead of me, and he hurled himself through the far end hatch, gun ready to fire. I hung back for a second, intending to appraise the situation.

  Fantasies were running through my mind in which Finn immobilised the guards and the guards immobilised Finn, so that I could make it to the ship all on my own. I'd have been prepared to take my chances then, and head out of system cheerfully. I still wasn't ready for everything to foul up.

  Needless to say, everything did foul up.

  There was no guard in the docking-bay. When I came through, after my anticipatory peep, Finn was already halfway to the umbilical. I had time for one quick surge of elation before he bounced back from the wall, rebounding into one of those mysterious metal cylinders, and cursed, with feeling.

  The airlock protecting the umbilical was sealed tight. According to the instruments, the umbilical was reeled in. There was nothing on the other end of it.

  "They've moved the bastard ship!" he wailed, obviously somewhat put out by the unexpected turn of events. My heart sank.

  "They couldn't!" I protested. "There's no way they could get through the lock." I couldn't believe it. But there wasn't any time for further expression of our astonishment. Back in the spur we'd just come along, there was the sound of movement. We were being pursued.

  Finn launched himself quickly back to the hatchway which closed off the spur. He shut it, again bracing himself against one of the big cylinders—whose presence certainly made it easier to pull oneself around in the no-gee—and then began to push the buttons on the keyboard beside the lock. All of a sudden, alarm bells began to ring, and a red light began flashing over the hatch.

  He turned to me with a toothy grin on his face.

  "Created a little emergency," he said. "Station systems think the bay is breached. All hatchways sealed. They can't get in."

  "Can we get out?" I asked, ingenuously.

  "Not exactly," he admitted. "But we wouldn't want to steal a shuttle, anyhow. Couldn't get further than Uranus in one of those things. We need your ship."

  Things were still moving a little too fast for me. "So where the hell is it?" I asked.

  "Only one place it can be. Inside the belly of a cargo- transporter. They couldn't get into it, so they decided to haul it to Oberon. That's where local Star Force command is."

  "They said they'd impound it," I murmured foolishly. It seemed to me that our goose was well and truly cooked, and that the only place to go was back to jail.

  But Finn was still busy. He was urgently punching keys beneath the nearest wallscreen. He glanced back over his shoulder and nodded in the direction of a locker.

  "Spacesuits," he said. "In there. You do know how to put one on?"

  "Of course I do," I told him. "So what?"

  "Got to create an emergency," he told me. "A real emergency."

  I opened my mouth to reply, but didn't have time. The alarm bells stopped ringing and the red lights went out.

  Finn cursed, and hurled himself back toward the hatchway, stabbing again at the buttons controlling the electronic lock. It was no good. He wasn't the only software wizard around. The microworld was full of them.

  There was a telephone strung up beside the keyboard, and Finn snatched it from its perch. He punched out what was obviously an emergency code.

  "This is Jack Martin,
" he snapped. "If anyone comes through that hatchway, you'll have a real emergency on your hands. You could be trying to breathe vacuum. We've got suits, and we're not bluffing."

  I had an awful suspicion that things were getting out of hand. I wasn't sure that it was a good idea to threaten to sabotage the microworld. I had no idea what the penalty for that kind of sabotage might be, but it couldn't be a minor matter, even by comparison with desertion from the Star Force.

  The hatchway didn't open. There was a very long pause. The silence was suddenly rather oppressive.

  "Get the bloody suits!" said Finn, impatiently.

  "Hell, John," I said, "that's not something they're going to forgive. Maybe we'd better just give up, hey? Cut our losses."

  "You bastard, Rousseau," he said, as it sunk in just how far over the top he'd gone. "This is all your fault."

  I felt that this was more than a little unjust. I'd only had the problem, when all said and done. He'd supplied his own greed and his own recklessness. I realised that there must be more to this than met the eye, and that it wasn't just a sudden desire to get rich that had motivated his attempt to spring me. I guessed that he had needed a trip out of the system anyhow. I wondered again what it was that John Finn had done which required him to adopt a phony identity. Nothing trivial, apparently.

  He went to the locker, and opened it to expose the neat row of spacesuits inside. There was also a set of lighter suits—sterile suits, I assumed, for working in biologically- contaminated environments. At least one of the spacesuits would be tailored specifically for Finn. He looked at them for a whole minute, then seemed to change his mind, and began fiddling with the sterile suits. He took one out and passed it to me. He took a second one for himself, and began to pull it on.

  "It's no good," he complained, in a tone as tortured as if he was chewing on powdered glass. "There's only one thing we can do. We have to get your ship back."

  "How do you propose we do that?" I asked.

  "Blackmail," he replied, succinctly. "We have to make the threat stick. Trouble is, I can't evacuate anything but the docking-bay. Too many safety-devices. Leaves only one alternative."

  He got his suit on, and sealed it. He picked up the mud gun from where he'd laid it down. I could see his eyes staring at me from behind the faceplate. I could tell that he was thinking hard.

  The phone beside the hatchway began to trill. Finn ignored it, so I picked it up.

  "Martin?" asked the voice at the other end.

  "This is Rousseau," I replied.

  "Ayub Khan here. What exactly do you plan to do, Mr. Rousseau? I'm sure you know as well as we do that any damage you cause will endanger you at least as gravely as it endangers anyone else. There's nowhere to go, I assure you."

  "Mr. Martin thinks we have nothing to lose," I told him. "He thinks that now he's thrown in with me, the Star Force are going to shoot him too. He's not in a very positive frame of mind."

  "Martin has a lurid imagination," said Ayub Khan. "This is a civilized world—a scientific research station. The Star Force are not bandits."

  "But they won't be pleased with him, will they?"

  Finn had undone his helmet again, and he took the phone away from me. "Listen to me, Khan," he said, roughly. "You know as well as I do that I don't have much to lose. I think you already know who I really am, and what I'm wanted for. I'm not going to start blasting holes in your precious microworld but what I will do is take the plugs out of every one of your bloody incubators. I'll fill the whole bay with your precious bugs—which not only blows half your experiments, but leaves you facing one hell of a decontamination problem. Rousseau and I are already suited up. Now, how would you feel about ordering the cargo ship to turn around and bring the Mistral back, so that we can get aboard it? That way, we can all be happy—except the Star Force. Rousseau and I leave the system, your people carry on with their happy little lives and their precious research. Okay?"

  I couldn't tell whether there was any reply. After half a minute or so, Finn hung up.

  I looked at Finn, and he looked back.

  "You'd better suit up," he told me.

  "What for?" I asked. "What's in those tanks, anyhow?"

  "Ring dust . . . gunk from the outer atmosphere of the

  planet . . . sludge from Ariel and Umbriel."

  "What the hell was that about bugs?"

  He shrugged. "Stuffs lousy with bugs. Viruses, bacteria . . . God knows what."

  I suppose I must have looked at him as if he was mad. "The rings of Uranus are full of bacteria? That's impossible!"

  He gave me a filthy look. "Well, I sure wouldn't know about that," he said, contemptuously. "But I'll bet you your half of our ship that Dr. Ayub Khan feels a lot more strongly about what's in those tanks than he does about keeping Kramin and his bully boys sweet."

  The phone trilled again, and I picked it up.

  "Yes?" I said.

  "Very well, Mr. Martin," said Ayub Khan, who was obviously no good at recognising voices. "The cargo-vessel transporting Mistral has been directed to turn back. It will dock in approximately four hours. You may board it and depart."

  I blinked. I looked at Finn, and said: "You were right. They're bringing her back."

  "We win!" His exultation failed to cover up his surprise. He hadn't been at all certain that it would work. But even as I watched him, I saw the mood of self-congratulation build inside him. He was beginning to think that he was a very clever fellow indeed—if he had ever really doubted it.

  "Thank you, Dr. Khan," I said, rather leadenly. "That's most kind of you. We'll be happy to wait."

  It was a lie, of course—I was anything but happy.

  But I couldn't for the life of me see what else we could

  do.

  5

  The best-laid plans of mice and men, so the poet assures us, gang aft agley. The worst-laid plans can hardly be expected to fare much better. You will understand, therefore, that the four hours which stretched ahead of Finn and myself while we waited for our getaway ship to be brought back to dock was not a comfortable prospect.

  "You don't suppose they're going to let us get away with this, do you?" I asked of Finn.

  "Got a better idea?" he spat back at me. He still had his sterile suit on, but he'd unfastened the helmet so he could talk. I hadn't bothered to put mine on.

  I didn't have a better idea. In fact, I didn't have any ideas at all. But I had completely lost confidence in Finn's ideas. He seemed to me to have an over-ripe imagination, which obviously had a tendency to run away with him. Not for the first time I cursed my luck in running into him. Of all the people I had known in my life who might conceivably be found on a microworld orbiting Uranus, he was probably the only one who could have compounded my problems to this degree. Everybody else would have had sufficient sanity and kindness to leave me alone.

  "Why exactly are you calling yourself Jack Martin these days?" I asked him.

  He favoured me with a sour expression. "Because I'm a Star Force deserter," he told me. "Among other things."

  It didn't come as a tremendous surprise.

  "What other things?"

  "Nothing serious. Theft." He paused, then went on: "Was drafted when I got back after my stay on Asgard. If I'd stayed out there, I'd have been okay, but I couldn't stick the place. Creepy humanoids, cold, dark caves—like hell frozen over. Came back, pulled a couple of software frauds, set up the fake identity. Wasn't too difficult. But you can't move about on Earth or Mars these days without leaving a trail like an electronic skunk. Australia got too hot. Had to go back to the belt; had to get out of there, too. Been here for a year. Ayub Khan's on to me, but hasn't turned me in. Not because of his innate generosity, you understand. I'm not even particularly useful to him, in spite of my special skills—but it would be inconvenient to get a replacement. Isn't just the law, either. Got other people looking for me. When you're being hunted from both sides . . . I'd give a lot to get back to Asgard, even if it is hell frozen ov
er. Or a colony world, maybe. Never been to a colony. You?"

  "You're quite the little Napoleon of crime, aren't you?" I said. "I always knew you'd go to the bad, even in the old days. Mickey must be turning in his grave."

  "I'm not the only one here who's wanted for desertion, am I?"

  "You're the only one who's guilty."

  "Sure. You're a real war hero, Rousseau. You really did your bit for dear old Mother Earth, piddling around in absolute zero out on the galactic rim. Is it true that your bosses there were peddling android super-soldiers to the Salamandrans?"

  These were low blows, but I could see his point of view. The Tetrax had sold war-materials to the Salamandrans, including technics they'd developed as a result of our researches on Asgard. Maybe somewhere along the line, one of my discoveries had contributed a little. I wondered, though, whether the Tetrax had been selling stuff to our side too. It would be logical. The fact that humans aren't supposed to be biotech-minded probably made Tetrax systems all the more attractive as items of purchase.

  "Okay," I said to Finn, "I guess neither of us is Robin Hood. But it looks like we're outlaws from here on in— unless we change our minds and surrender."

  "Ho ho," he said, humourlessly.

  "I'm serious," I told him. "You could zap me with the mud gun and claim to be a hero. Tell them I blackmailed you into it because I knew your real name. Or I could zap you with the mud gun and tell them I only just found out what a ruthless desperado you are."

  He wasn't amused. "What did you find on Asgard?" he asked, changing the subject back to something less worrying.

  I decided that talking was preferable to silence, given the mood we were in. "I found out that the levels go a long way down," I said, without much enthusiasm. "There are thousands of them. There could be more surface area down there than on the homeworlds and colonies of all the galactic humanoids put together. If they were all populated there'd be an awful lot of people inside that world."