Worlds Apart (21 page)

"That's it," said'Phyllis.

That was the last day when Toni could really think clearly. After that she was fuzzy all the time. She didn't know how many days it had been. It seemed like months.

The curious thing was that it wasn't really unpleasant. The aches and pains and stiffness had stopped. Apparently her body had learned now to use ordinary rest for recuperation, since it couldn't have sleep. Besides, Toni knew she was soon going to tell them where Lemon was. Soon she would mumble it without knowing what she was doing -- she knew, unfortunately, that it was somewhere to the southwest of where the Clades was grounded, and calculated from what Pertwee had told her about distance that it was about a thousand miles away.

After all, she knew she had done more than anyone would have expected. The Clades were surprised that she still held out -- Phyllis admitted that she had given them all a grudging respect for Mundans. And whatever was happening at Lemon, surely they had had time now to get something worthwhile done. If Pertwee hadn't got through, her efforts had been wasted. If he had, the Mundans had had plenty of time to get out of Lemon, wherever good that would do.

There was a day of which she could remember nothing. They wouldn't have let her sleep, of course, but she must have gone around in a coma. Then a day when she found herself about to tell them where Lemon was, and came more awake than she had been for days with a mighty effort.

When at last it happened, she felt cheated. She was suddenly aware of Phyllis's voice through a mist asking her to repeat something. She hadn't the faintest idea what she had said. She was staring at Phyllis, who was exultant and yet faintly, inexplicably regretful as well.

"Oh, well," said Phyllis, "I think I got it. If you tell how far, I can let you sleep now. Otherwise you'll have to come to the control room."

"What did I say?" Toni demanded dazedly.

"Southwest, a little west."

"All right. A thousand miles," said Toni weakly. The resistance was over. It seemed childish to pretend it wasn't. She collapsed completely and never knew that Phyllis, at the risk of being thought soft, carried her to her bunk and covered her up.

But then Phyllis made all the capitol there was to be made out of reporting the location of Lemon, after all this time. She had done all she could to build up the legend of Toni's courage and devotion to duty (that, of course, was how it was phrased among the Clades), so that when she finally succeeded she would have done what was obviously a very difficult job.

The Clades was in the air at once.

2

Pertwee surveyed the valley of Lemon and felt a certain wry satisfaction about the destruction he had wrought.

When he came back to the village after giving the Mundans time to get clear there had still been a broad, plain track stretching away southwards -- the track of animals, many feet and every wheeled vehicle that could be pressed into service or thrown tugether. But Pertwee, having noted the track, was careful not to follow it. And two days later it would have been difficult to see. Two more days, and it was impossible.

Even the direction, however, had been a lie. Pertwee knew that Rog would not have left with him the responsibility of knowing in which direction they had gone. They hadn't gone due south.

Waiting, Pertwee had burned the fields. The last Mundan-Terran crop had been garnered from them; there was no point in letting the Clades see how easily and successfully wheat and corn and barley could be grown in Mundan soil. They might yet be deceived about Mundis. It didn't look an unduly friendly or desirable planet for Earthmen, and if they could be persuaded to keep that idea, so much the better.

Anxiety grew less, tension relaxed, as the days passed. Pertwee didn't think about what Rog would do. But a little time was clearly necessary even before the Clades came to Lemon and Pertwee tried to win more time, If the Clades had come while the track was still visible, of course, the whole effort would have been wasted.

There was quite a lot to do, at first. He burned the houses too, those that would burn. Not many of them would, for fire was such a constant hazard that the basic purpose of a house was rather as a protection against fire than anything else. Pertwee wasn't trying to obliterate Lemon. He merely wanted what remained to give away as little information as possible to the Clades.

As the days went by and there was less to do, the time passed more and more slowly. Pertwee began to fear that the Clades had found the Mundans without coming near Lemon. Perhaps, by supreme had luck, Rog had led his people right into the Clades' hands.

But one day he heard the sound of atomic engines and looked up. The Clades was coming over the hill. It came straight to Lemon, confidently.

Pertwee wore nothing but his shorts and sandals. He was living on a small store of food and water cached in one of the ruined houses. He stood out in the open and waited.

He had thought as little as he could about Toni since he saw her last, but he allowed himself to think about her now. Though he had known it was inevitable that she would break down in the end, he still felt unreasonably disappointed that she had. Just a short while ago, hours or minutes, she had told the Clades where Lemon was, knowing what the Clades were, knowing what they would do to the Mundans . . .

And with this, but quite separate, were fear and anxiety on Toni's account. Perhaps, having got all they wanted of her, the Clades had killed her. Perhaps she had not spoken until she was near to death. Perhaps she was alive but maimed, disfigured, minus an eye or a leg or an arm.

He didn't like it either way. He didn't want Toni to have surrendered easily; he didn't want her to be crazed or mutilated or dead.

The ship landed neatly and quickly. As before, a squad of men jumped to the ground; as before, Pertwee waited. Within ten minutes he was before Commodore Corey. Sloan was there, Mathers and Phyllis, As far as the Clades were concerned the situation hadn't changed, to go by their attitude.

"Your people have gone again, I see," said Corey. He tried to keep his voice cold and emotionless, but Pertwee sensed something in it -- the natural anger and frustration, and something else. "It's stupid. We must find them."

"Certainly," Pertwee admitted. "What have you done with Toni?"

"That can wait."

"No, it can't. I have something to say to you, obviously, or I wouldn't have been waiting for you. But I'm not going to say it until I see Toni."

He didn't feel nearly as confident as he sounded. He could feel the sweat forming on his back, and there was something crawling in his guts. He was afraid of torture and he was afraid of death, but showing his fear would weaken his position.

"You are not dictating to me," rapped Corey, Pertwee became interested. Corey was angry and afraid of something, at a guess. If so, the fear was new; there hadn't been the slightest sign of it before.

Pertwee was silent. Sloan coughed. "Sir -- "he began.

"Did I ask for your opinion, captain?" demanded Corey. And as Sloan shrugged, Pertwee guessed a little more. The commodores position was much more precarious than it had been. One could see that, by the way he dared his officers to speak, and yet had to pretend not to see their significant glances among themselves.

"I'm still waiting," said the commodore, turning back to Pertwee.

"So," Pertwee observed, "am I."

Sloan grinned openly. But suddenly Corey realized it wasn't too late to retreat yet, though it would be soon. "You can't see your wife just at the moment," he said in a milder tone. "She's sleeping."

"Forever?" demanded Pertwee bluntly.

"No, she will be perfectly all right after a few hours' sleep. She has merely been kept awake until she told us where Lemon was. Now, your message?"

Pertwee glanced at Phyllis, assuming that Toni had remained principally her charge. To his amazement she smiled faintly,fleetingy, at him.

"I'd like to see her first," he said.

Corey bit back a sharp refusal. He gestured to Phyllis. "Take him to see her," he said impatiently, "and bring him back here at once."

Pertwee hoped Phyllis would say something on the way, something to explain that fleeting, conspiratorial smile. But he didn't expect it, and it didn't happen. She acted like a robot. He wished he had the quick mind of Rog Foley. Rog, he was certain, would have guessed more than he had and would already be making use of what he had deduced.

Phyllis opened a door and for the first time for weeks Pertwee saw Toni. She was sleeping easily, quite unharmed, as far as he could see; again he was glad and sorry, glad she was safe, sorry she had given in so comparatively easily.

The robot unexpectedly came to life again. Phyllis must have seen his frown. "She took about ten times as much as we expected," she said. "When she spoke, she was asleep on her feet."

Pertwee turned to her quickly, but her expression warned him. They went back to the commodore's cabin without another word.

"Now, say what you have to say," said Corey.

Pertwee had been wondering whether to modify his plans in the light of what was going on, but he could see no advantage in doing so. Dissension among the Clades was all to the Mundans' advantage, of course; it was a pity there was no way in which he could aggravate it at the moment.

"You won't find my people," he said definitely. "You can search if you like -- so much the better. When you're satisfied they're no longer on Mundis, I'll tell you where they've gone, if you like."

The commodore frowned. "What nonsense is this?"

"By the time you reach them," Pertwee said calmly, "they'll be ready for you. So it doesn't matter whether you know where they are or not. It would really be better, though, if there /must/ be a demonstration of power, to have it soon."

"You're lying."

Pertwee shrugged. "You don't seem to understand, Corey, how the whole position has changed. When I was with you before, we had to get Word to Lemon somehow, so that you couldn't make a surprise attack. I was worried and afraid. But now the warning has been given. There can't be any surprise. Lemon, as you see, has been evacuated."

"Your people ran away and hid."

"You can put it like that if you wish."

"Where are they, then?"

"If they ran away and hid," said Pertwee patiently, "I'd hardly be telling you right away where they'd gone, would I?"

"Stop sparring with me!" the commodore flared.

Sloan said: "Excuse me, sir -- "

"Is this perhaps an intelligent suggestion?" Pertwee asked, seizing his chance. "You could do with it, Commodore. You're not doing this very well."

To his delight he saw that the rift was too deep for the Clades to join at once against him. If they would let a prisoner's words split them still further, Corey's command must be very precarious, and Sloan's ambition healthy and well-fed.

"When I want you to speak," the commodore told Sloan coldly, "I shall make the fact very clear. At the moment I don't."

Pertwee had been misled before by the reactions of some of the Clades, particularly Corey. They seldom spoke angrily. They couldn't afford to, in a society where one false step could be so dangerous. They had learned to become outwardly cool as the rage within them mounted, to speak slowly and carefully, weighing every word, to fight back viciously against attack or imagined attack but watching the whole situation closely, intently.

Corey turned back from Sloan and said in the same tone: "Where are the Mundans?"

"By this time," said Pertwee, "they must be on the third planet."

Corey's calculated coldness broke for a moment. "There is no third planet," he snapped.

Pertwee sighed. "Indeed there is. We nearly hit it twenty-two years ago, as we were slanting in to Mundis. We called it Outpost, because it's so far out. We couldn't even be sure it was a planet of this sun."

They couldn't be sure because they wasted no time on it, and their calculations were aberrated by lack of data on the movement of all their check points. However, its orbit was so vast and slow, billions of miles from the sun, that in twenty years it couldn't have moved much. It was a world about the size of Mars, cold and dead. Out there the sun of Mundis and Secundis was just another star.

Pertwee ignored all expressions of disbelief, went on with his story calmly, and presently saw with enormous relief that they were believing him. "We called it Outpost," he said, "because that's what it is. It's guarded, manned -- a fort in space, not only strong but also practically invisible. No one would suspect it if he didn't know it was there."

"Then why tell us?" demanded Corey. "Why give away the secret?"

"I've told you. If there must be some demonstration, let's get it over."

"You didn't want it before."

"I didn't want it before we were ready."

"Did you wait here to tell us this -- to put us off the scent?"

"No, I waited beenuse you have Toni."

"Why, if you kept the ship," said Corey shrewdly, "did you never visit Secundis?"

"Because we weren't ready. We would have, eventually. But we were afraid there might be dangerous bacteria there. Outpost is cold and sterile, perfectly safe. Mundis we had to risk, to have a place to live, But visiting Secundis was a risk we weren't ready to take yet."

Later there would be more questions. But he saw they almost believed his story. Corey asked just one more question:

"How strong are the defehses of this Outpost?"

Pertwee laughed. "You don't think my people would have let me stay behind to fall into your hands if I knew that, do you? I've never been to Outpost."

They believed that, too, because they would never, in such circumstances, have left behind a man who had valuable information.

And Pertwee saw, exultantly, that they were going to go to Outpost and the Mundans were going to be granted the time they needed. Corey did actually order a wide sweep round Lemon, and the ship spent some hours looking for the slightest trace of the Mundans, while Pertwee sweated and pretended to be completely indifferent.

However, the Clades was looking for a needle in a haystack, having already decided it wasn't there. After five or six hours no sign of anything alive but plants and trees had been seen, and Corey gave the order that lifted the ship out of the atmosphere of Mundis.