The Universe — or Nothing, Meyer Moldeven [best color ebook reader txt] 📗

moved up behind Drummer, replacing Hodak who dropped back to rear guard immediately behind Zolan.

"Scarf knows about these utility passages, and that we would head for them," Drummer gasped over his shoulder. "What he doesn't know is which access and branches we took and where we'll surface. A slight advantage, if we act quickly."

They scampered and slithered for more than half an hour. "Looks like we're the only ones down here," said Brad.

Drummer halted to recover breath. The line closed up.

"Normal," Drummer gasped. "These passages were abandoned years ago, after we switched to local transmission from control modules suspended beneath the dome. Too much trouble to collapse the subsurface tunnels, I suppose. Also, we had to consider the surface effects of a collapse. Couldn't afford the chance. As you see, the network is still useful."

He shot a quick glance at Brad, then ahead along their route.

"Don't get the impression I've got to run from Scarf," Drummer said, heaving another deep breath, "or even to avoid him under ordinary circumstances. Obviously, he was drunk. My presence in the bar-room gave him an opportunity to enhance his image. Your companion's intervention, I admit, relieved the pressure, but the method he chose may prove unfortunate."

"Why this melodramatic escape?"

"To avoid a confrontation in which Scarf, backed up by his troops, would be in complete control; a confrontation in which you couldn't possibly hold your own. The encounter has already caused me embarrassment. I don't relish a repetition." Drummer paused. "And there's another reason."

"Oh?"

"I know who you are, and the circumstances that brought you and your associates to Planet Pluto. I want to know more."

"Why?"

"My answer to that depends on what I learn about you and your companions."

Drummer slowed to a fast walk, searching spaces between the bundles of the thick cables.

"So that you know," he said, "we're heading for my villa-dome about five kay from the city."

Drummer grunted that he'd found what he had searched for. Clawing under a flap, he uncovered a depression in the wall alongside a cable junction. He pressed himself in behind the junction and into a cranny, motioning to Brad. One by one, they squeezed through, and found themselves at the foot of a flex-ladder. Drummer climbed; they followed.

They emerged through a manhole into a kiosk next to a transit strip. Darting from the kiosk Drummer boarded the strip and nodded back to Brad to join him. Within moments they were all gliding toward an air lock leading to the outside.

Entering the air lock, they hurried into space suits from the public service rack, checked each other's seals and oxygen reserves, tested the communications and pressurization systems and crowded into the pressure-equalization chamber. Air lock and suit pressures up, balanced and checked, Drummer jerked a lever and, a moment later, they ducked under the rising panel to the outside.

Running along the ramp Drummer flashed his suit lamps at a parked robo-taxi. The signal activated the craft and it was in ready status when they reached it. Boarding first, Drummer keyed in coordinates. As the last Sentinel scrambled through the hatch he hit the lift button. The taxi rose and curved away.

Chapter THIRTEEN

The black skies and drab mounds of Planet Pluto were spotted with color. From where he stood on Drummer's enclosed patio, Brad looked through the transparent shields at ice-gray Charon low over scarred ridges to the west. Shifting his eyes slightly brought into focus the panorama of Coldfield's dome and its multi-colored lights. The orange-green cylinder of the Slingshot Logistics Depot gleamed in the black sky.

The Fandango force field around the depot shimmered. A wide gap separated the transports loading and unloading at the portals inside the force field from those outside waiting in line or in clustered formations until moorings inside became available.

The short taxi ride from Coldfield had been uneventful. The formalities of introductions behind them, the host and his guests had refreshed themselves, dined and rested.

Drummer joined Brad and followed his gaze to the orange-green cylinder and its gaggle of transports and tugs. The silence was brief.

Drummer said, "I've had your ship searched."

Brad shrugged, eyes scanning the scene outside, and replied dryly, "Hope it was worth your while. To us, it was transportation. Any old tub would have done. As it turned out, we were lucky."

"I'll accept that it's an 'old tub'. I gathered as much from the reports I received," Drummer said, "but I understand the primary systems are in good condition, considering the vessel's history and the spunnel shocks the ship must have experienced on the way. How does it all fit together?"

"How does it concern you?" Brad turned to face
Drummer.

"Come, now." Drummer shook his head impatiently. "Let's not act naive; it doesn't go with the rest of you. But," he added waving his finger at Brad as he turned away, "just so you don't make a habit of responding to my questions with diversions, be aware that I am a member of President Narval's Council of Advisors. Despite the incident with Scarf, I have considerable authority and resources at my command.

"I've checked through my confidential sources in the Inner Region," he went on, "and confirmed you are all convicted criminals that escaped from a Guardian Station prison. Now, for starters, how did you manage to get a lift by spunnel and make it this far without tearing that old wreck apart? Those vessels don't have navigational gear for trips to the rim, nor do they carry the required gear and supplies. Straight answer."

"We're spacers," Brad said. "One of us is an experienced maintenance engineer. Another is a space navigator. We've all knocked about the space-ways a bit on assorted jobs. I was Captain of a freighter before the Space Guard and the Transport Board took my ship away from me on trumped up charges, and then sent me up for five years of rehab. We teamed up on the Guardian Station, worked out the details, kept our noses clean and our eyes open, and, when the chance came, grabbed it. We did have a few breakdowns, but we kept her moving along until we could attach the ship to a convoy through the spunnel. We took our chances and made it."

Drummer shook his head. A muscle twitched in his jaw.

"The reports I received identified your former professions and gave me the rest of your personal histories. Frankly, it has me wondering: a ship's captain, paramedic-logistics type, a maintenance engineer, communications specialist, navigator, and a weapons technician. Wasn't it odd to have these special skills fall into place?"

"Not really," Brad countered. "I could have made up any kind of crew I wanted. The station has lots of spacers under lock and key. These folks happened to fit in with my plans, and they were as anxious to get out as I was. It worked. Now, what's the problem?"

"The problem," Drummer replied, "is that a half-dozen escaped convicts with exceptional space skills make it to Planet Pluto; that one of them defends a high level official in a tavern brawl, making for himself a mortal enemy of their sanctuary's chief security officer. To cap it, the escaped convicts are now guests in the home of the official that they defended in the bar-room scrape who, I might add, also happens to be a member of the President's Council. See the problem?"

"Crank this in," Brad remarked, "the citizen, who considers himself a high government official, moves about without a bodyguard thus inviting confrontations. Also, his attacker's arrival at the bar-room couldn't possibly have been predicted, let alone his drunken behavior and my colleague and I happening to be there. Add who it was that took the initiative for departure from the tavern, and that it was the high government official that invited the escaped convicts to his home. He wasn't threatened or coerced into extending his hospitality."

Drummer grinned, nodded. "You ordered Hodak to intervene. Why?"

"First, tell me more about Scarf."

Drummer shrugged.

"He's been with Narval since the beginning of the regime. Did, and still does, most of the dirty work that keeps any government in power, and he's better at it than most. He has a special hatred for dissidents to Narval's policies and uses spies, informers and killers to infiltrate their organizations and tear them apart. By the way, he also had your ship searched. Watch out for him. Now, my question."

"When Scarf began to hassle you, I had no idea of his identity or position. His words and actions in the bar-room gave me an impression that, if we got you out of that mess, you might reciprocate by helping us to get permission to remain on the planet, and maybe steer us to jobs. It was a chance. Now, as to your problem with us: is it insurmountable?"

Drummer studied Brad's face, trying to read his thoughts. "Not really, insofar as getting you and your friends temporary resident status," he said. "Scarf will not be easy with you and your friends, especially my rescuer, Hodak. I'll talk to my associates. The skills you have might be useful to us. Since you're a former ship's captain, I'll consider you spokesman for your colleagues."

Chapter FOURTEEN

President Narval invited all INOR ambassadors to meet with him in his conference suite; the subject was not announced in advance. The ambassadors sought guidance from their home governments. In response, they were instructed to attend, make no commitments, and report back immediately on the proceedings.

As the appointed time neared, the Presidential Security Guard, augmented by a detachment of heavily armed police, moved into the conference area. They took up positions at doors leading from the President's Suite, along the connecting corridors, and inside the Conference Room. All rooms, corridors and exterior approaches leading to the meeting site were physically and electronically searched, and the identity disks of all individuals passing through the area scrutinized and verified.

Shortly before the meeting, the President's Council entered and took seats along the wall, leaving the chairs around the table for the guests. A lackey scampered about, lifted the lids of beakers, peered in, made minute changes in the alignment of goblets, and scuttled out.

A view tank rose from a well at the front of the room, glowed, and cleared to show the Special Zone. Charon and its background of stars had been dimmed to reduce the clutter. In the foreground, the Slingshot Logistics Depot and its maze of ships, tugs, articulated cranes and flex-conveyers were portrayed busily engaged in loading and unloading the moored vessels, and the new arrivals that waited for their turn.

A flurry rippled through the room as a door panel slid back into its slot and the Ambassadors strode in from an anteroom. They were men and women of varying appearance: tall and short, slender and rotund, and cadaverous and fleshy. More than half wore the military uniforms and ranks of their nation, and the rest were in the colorful robes of their offices and governments.

Mostly in their middle years, they had the hard, arrogant look of ruthless power, survivors of craft and intrigue. Faces suspicious and wary, they took places around the table. None spoke.

A brusque announcement cut the silence. "The
President of Planet Pluto."

President Narval, haughty in appearance and adorned in red-black robes of office, entered to the sound of sliding chairs and rustling garments as all present rose to their feet. Narval's massive body, pear-shaped and tapering into short legs and diminutive feet, shuffled forward in top-heavy gait.

Drummer entered behind Narval and moved to stand silently beside a lectern adjacent the view tank.

Sunken between ponderous shoulders, Narval's hairless head was small and neckless, his face smooth-pale with thin-lipped mouth and a stumpy nose. Cold, deep-embedded eyes constantly shifted focus and direction. His small hands, fingers laden with rings, appeared to drip from his sleeves.

##

Lumbering to his raised chair at the head of the table, Narval laboriously stepped up and sat, lifted his hand to his mouth and nibbled at a fingernail. Finally, satisfied, he held the finger up, examined it and redirected his attention to his audience.

President Reen Narval had earned the fear and respect that he enjoyed. A victor of scores of battles for control of the planet's criminal syndicates and political machinery, Narval had left a trail of blood and broken bones behind him as a warning to challengers. Challengers to his rule did not survive.

A man of many talents, Narval had migrated to Planet Pluto from an independent colony orbiting Callisto. He had accepted expulsion from the place of his birth as the alternative to the court's sentence of labor in Callisto's encapsulated subsurface mines.

Educated and trained to practice law in the Outer Region's inter-satellite and interplanetary courts he had, instead, become a serious liability to his government and to his community.

At his disbarment, the investigating officer of the Callisto Ethical Practices Board had presented irrefutable evidence of Narval's numerous conflicts of interests, extortions, frauds and other crimes in the performance of his responsibilities as an officer-of-the-court. Removed from the judicial arena, he was proven to have also cheated in the Callisto gambling halls, swindled citizens of sound repute, and