Whispering her name, he drew her to him, looking down into her face before he kissed her. She Page 48

  didn't resist. Finally he released her and said contritely, "I'm sorry. You have trouble enough."

  She smiled and brushed her hair back from her face. "Sorry?"

  "Not that sorry," he laughed. He looked down at her. "Where were you going when Stagg caught you?"

  "I heard your call."

  "I was trying to warn you about the detector net," he explained.

  "And I stumbled right into it," she exclaimed ruefully. She searched his face. "Did you..."

  "Hear your warning? Yes."

  "You see, Alek, you are a telepath."

  "Not much of a one," he denied. "It only seems to work during some kind of emergency."

  "It's that way with many telepaths," she explained. "People have the idea that we can read minds at will, talk with one another just as we do vocally, but it simply isn't true. Some telepaths can only converse with people to whom they are emotionally close."

  "Does that hold for you?"

  "No," she answered hesitantly.

  "It certainly doesn't hold for Simon," he declared. "I have the feeling he reads me like a book."

  "Probably," she admitted, "he's very sensitive."

  "How about Johnny?"

  "He's extremely perceptive, Alek."

  "I've felt that," he acknowledged, "but his tests didn't indicate it."

  "Tests?"

  "The ones made by the psymaster."

  She paused before answering. "He wasn't very sensitive at first," she explained. "Some telepaths grow into it. Like you," she added.

  "At times I wonder."

  "You're an extremely powerful transmitter, Alek."

  "So Johnny said."

  "He likes you," she declared.

  "I'm glad for that." He eyed her gravely. "You have to get to a safe place, both of you. Wig's brought a groat hound."

  "Groat hound?" The words dropped from her lips like a sentence of death.

  "A deadly animal," he explained. "You can't take a chance."

  She looked tremulously at him. "Would Wig...?"

  "He'd do anything," he broke in harshly. "Why do you think he brought the groat? Do you know that he has a warrant of execution? Signed by the

  Imperator, no less."

  "Warrant of execution?" she asked fearfully.

  "For your brother," he explained. "Now it's just a scrap of paper. Not that he'd admit David's death."

  "He has to admit that," she said sharply.

  "Does he?" He laughed mirthlessly. When she didn't answer, he told her of the figures he'd seen going toward the meadow. "Five adults and a child,"

  he said.

  Her face went blank. "I suppose they were villagers," she answered tonelessly.

  "You know who they were," he accused.

  "Please, Alek." He saw her struggle with her thoughts before she continued, "They were escaping, Alek."

  "Escaping?" He couldn't conceal his astonishment. "To where?"

  "I can't tell you that."

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  "Does it involve Mr. Olaf?"

  "No, this is different."

  "If they can escape, why can't you and Johnny?"

  "Please, Alek, not now."

  "All right," he replied heavily. Her answer left him baffled.

  She said contritely, "It's not my secret to tell."

  "I'm not pressing you," he answered stiffly.

  "I know you're not, Alek, but I want you to know that Johnny can't escape, not in the same way.

  That's why Mr. Olaf's coming, to get him before

  Philip Wig finds him."

  "Then you'd better keep Johnny away from here," he warned.

  "I would if I could, Alek."

  "Why can't you?"

  She looked away. "It all goes back to the question I can't answer."

  He asked quizzically, "Johnny's a strange boy, isn't he?"

  "Why do you ask that?" She raised her head quickly and he caught the sudden fear in her voice.

  "Mr. Olaf...coming all the way to Engo to rescue him?"

  She said pleadingly, "There's a reason, Alek. You'll know in time."

  "I can wait," he answered wearily. "Just keep yourself safe."

  "I will," she promised. She looked up at him, her face a blur in the darkness. "Now kiss me, Alek. I have to go."

  Eight

  AN ORANGE MOON, speeding toward its half-phase, was rising over the night-locked Kavu mountains when Selby slipped from the freighter and hurried toward the forest off to one side of the village.

  It had been a perturbing day.

  Two squads of 404 agents, led by Sergeant Trukel with the groat, had left early to scour the entire area lying between the field and the purplish mountains, where Wig suspected the exiles were hiding. In addition, Lieutenant

  Stagg's men had extended the detector system to cover every known trail and clearing in the same area. But it did not yet extend into the small meadow adjacent to the village. Stagg made a point of mentioning that.

  "Can't see that anyone would go there, aside from occasional lovers," he told Selby.

  Selby grinned. "Could be," he assented, grateful for the tip. He liked the big lieutenant, and knew that Stagg had no sympathy for Wig's attempt to trap the exiles.

  Not that he'd said anything, but it was there in his eyes and voice, a cold contempt whenever the executor or his men were mentioned. Selby knew that Captain Welker felt the same. He ran a taut ship, carried out his orders, but was never seen in the presence of the Department 404 men unless summoned.

  The net was one thing. But worse, Simon was missing. Cromwell had brought him the news late in the afternoon. "He hasn't been around all day,"

  the freighter captain confided worriedly.

  "Perhaps he's staying in his shack," Selby suggested hopefully.

  Cromwell shook his head. "He always suns himself on clear days. Says it's good for the bones."

  "Could he have gone to join the others?"

  "How could he, with the detector net Wig's throwing up?"

  A good question, Selby thought. He considered it. "He could avoid the paths and open areas, move through the woods."

  "Not those woods," declared Cromwell. "They're loaded with poisonous snakes and quagmires.

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  A man could sink over his head before you could snap your fingers. I've heard plenty about that."

  "He still might," Selby persisted.

  "I doubt it."

  "I'll check the shack."

  "Is that safe?" asked Cromwell. "Wig won't like it."

  Selby considered it. "I'm running an independent investigation," he decided finally. "I don't know what he can do about it."

  "Plenty," asserted Cromwell. "He's just plain vicious. So are those rat-faced aides of his."

  "Jonman and Conrad? Yes, they're vicious," he assented, thinking that he worried more over Sergeant Trukel and the groat. The beast was the unpredictable, in his thinking.

  Selby found the communication shack deserted. He intuitively knew it would be even before he swung open the creaking door. His eyes roved the unmade bunk, Simon's rough-hewn easy chair covered with soft catmel pelts --

  the gleaming communication and tracking equipment so out of place on this primitive world.

  Odds and ends of personal articles were strewn about, but of the old man, there was no sign.

  Closing the door behind him as he left, Selby glanced at the SocAd ship.

  A few troopers lounged outside, paying scant heed as he crossed the clearing.

  Where was Wig? Jonman? He hadn't seen them all day. The thought bothered him, but Simon's disappearance perturbed him more. Despite his earlier optimism, it didn't seem likely that the old man would vanish of his own volition. As caretaker of the station, he represented Engo's sole link with the outer universe; and with Mr. Olaf, he reflected.

  But assuming Simon didn't vanish of his own volition, what then? He searched his mind, finding no answer. He'd have to get the information to

  Lora, he thought. Or did she know?

  Now, crossing the field, he wondered if he were on a fool's errand. If he contacted her telepathically, he might succeed only in drawing her into the detector net. The thought brought a slight panic. Yet, if she sensed something wrong, and was waiting...The possibility spurred him to greater speed.

  He skirted the area where he knew Wig's detector beams were placed and plunged into the forest, uncomfortably aware of what Cromwell had said about poisonous snakes and quagmires.

  Occasionally he paused to cock his head and listen. The forest was alive with sounds that came even above the murmur of the river -- slithering, rustling noises that made him edgy. Several times he caught the glow of small eyes and thought they probably belonged to catmels, the bushy-tailed animals the exiles trapped for trade.

  Although progress was difficult, he eventually reached the forested strip that lay between the village and the meadow. Pausing, he peered around, his senses attuned. There was only the river, the muted sigh of the wind in the agora branches.

  "Lora! Lora!" He called the name telepathically, closing all his other senses as he attempted to listen with his mind. Nothing, nothing at all, not even the vague impressions he so often got at odd times. It was as if his mind were a blank slate, scrubbed clean of all stimuli from the outer world.

  "Lora!" He repeated the call, and the answering silence was a thunder in his brain.

  The realization that the girl was beyond his reach was a torment. Last night he'd reached out, touched her mind and she'd answered; now she was gone.

  There was only the lonely forest, the dark sky, the racing orange moon which from time to time caused the ground to tremble under him as it sped toward perigee; but there was nothing of humanness.

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  He waited for a while longer, testing the night with his call, then struck out toward the meadow.

  When he came to the edge of the forest he stopped, reaching out with perceptors he but dimly understood and over which he had scant control. Instantly he knew someone was there. The realization had scarcely struck him when he heard a growl and a huge shape lunged upward from the ground. As he raised his arm to ward off the attack, Johnny's voice cut through the night.

  "Down, Rok!" Instantly the huge dog subsided back into the tall grass.

  Peering ahead, Selby saw the whitish blur of Johnny's face turned toward him from the low knoll.

  "Hello, Mr. Selby," Johnny called softly.

  "Is it safe to come over?" he asked edgily.

  "He won't hurt you."

  "Quite a guardian," he commented, thinking of the dog's menacing lunge.

  He sat on the grass beside the boy.

  "He's always been that way," Johnny explained. "Mr. Simon calls him a one-man dog."

  "Oh?" Selby felt a faint surprise. Rok had been David's dog. He asked casually, "Had him long?"

  "Ever since he was a puppy," Johnny told him.

  Selby felt a sudden stillness inside him. David had brought the dog to Engo from the distant planet of his birth, yet Johnny claimed having him since he was a puppy.

  He had the sharp memory of Lora's sudden fear when he'd remarked, "Johnny's a strange boy, isn't he?" And she'd said that Johnny was extremely perceptive, which he'd already discovered.

  But Hallam Vogel's records didn't show that at all. He had found Johnny quite ordinary; David had been the perceptive one.

  Selby had the wild thought that the boy next to him wasn't Johnny Sloan at all, but was David Gant. If Johnny had died and David had taken his name...No, that was impossible. David Gant had been tall for his age, blonde, light-skinned. And crippled. The record had been explicit. But the boy next to him was dark, stocky, short -- an exact picture of Johnny Sloan's record. All but the IQ. Johnny was anything but ordinary.

  He brought his jumbled thoughts into order. David Gant had been the pk.

  There was scant doubt of that. And David was dead. He knew that from Simon, Lora, and Johnny, and he'd seen the grave. Everything was too pat, he reflected. Something was terribly wrong, but what? He wanted to ask Johnny bluntly, but refrained, fearing that the boy would withdraw. He couldn't afford to alarm him. He decided on another tactic.

  Glancing sideways at the boy, he said, "Last time you said you weren't afraid of me?" He made it a question.

  "I'm not, Mr. Selby."

  "How can you be so certain?"

  "You asked me that, too," Johnny countered.

  "I know," he agreed. "You said that you could see in my mind that I was all right, but I'm wondering if there might not be another reason."

  Johnny said slowly, "I was told."

  "By whom?"

  "Mr. Simon."

  "Simon?" Selby felt a distinct shock. He had expected the boy to name Lora.

  "He says you're not like the others," Johnny explained. "He thinks you're more like Captain Cromwell."

  "I take that as a compliment, Johnny."

  The boy looked at him. "Why did you ask how I felt?"

  "Because I want you to trust in me, believe in me."

  "I do, Mr. Selby."

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  "Did Simon tell you anything about Philip Wig?"

  "He's an evil man," Johnny replied.

  "And dangerous," he cautioned.

  "Mr. Simon told me that."

  "You know about the detector beams, I suppose?"

  The boy nodded. "I go around them."

  Startled, Selby asked, "You know where they are?"

  "Mr. Simon told us."

  "How would he know?" Selby looked sharply at him and took a wild guess.

  "From Lieutenant Stagg's mind?"

  "Mostly," Johnny acknowledged. "He couldn't get them all but he got the main ones."

  "Simon must be extremely sensitive," Selby reflected.

  "He knows just about everything," Johnny asserted. "He told us about the groat."

  "He did? You have to be very careful," he cautioned.

  "Naw, I can sense it," he replied disdainfully. "So can Rok."

  Selby eyed him thoughtfully. "Do you know where Simon is?"

  "Not right now. I haven't been listening."

  "I haven't seen him around lately," he said casually.

  "Mr. Simon?" Johnny looked at him, then closed his eyes and turned away.

  For a long moment he was silent, then looked back again, his face puzzled. "I can't hear him, Mr. Selby."

  "Can you usually contact him?" Selby asked sharply.

  "Well, not always."

  Selby saw the worry in the boy's face and let the subject drop. For a while they sat silent again.

  The river, the wind in the agora trees, the orange half-moon now high in the east -- everything combined to paint a picture in Selby's mind of a planet which no longer was so alien. Not when he considered people like Simon, Lora Gant, the boy next to him whom Hallam Vogel had certainly underrated. Johnny Sloan was as sharp as they came. The latter thought gave him a twinge of unease.

  Finally he said, "I hear Mr. Olaf is coming to take you away."

  "In a few days," Johnny replied.

  "He must be a good friend."

  "He is, Mr. Selby."

  "Does he come here often?"

  "I've never seen him," the boy admitted, "but I knew he sends us lots of things."

  "Never seen him?"

  "No, just Mr. Simon."

  "Then he's been to Engo before?"

  "Yes," the boy answered simply.

  Selby suppressed the urge to question him, afraid of going too far. He wanted to ask of the people he'd seen going toward the meadow, and of Lora's remark that they were escaping, but sensed it wasn't the time. Something warned him that the boy, so talkative now, suddenly could become mute. He didn't want that to happen.

  Instead, he asked, "Why do you come here alone...at this time of night?"

  Johnny brought his eyes around, searching Selby's face. "I was talking with someone," he said finally.

  "With Mr. Olaf?"

  "No."

  "Who?" he persisted.

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  "I don't know."

  "You don't know?" he asked wonderingly.

  "I've never seen him," Johnny explained.

  "Oh, then you talk telepathically?" As Johnny nodded, he asked, "What do you talk about?"

  "Our bridge."

  "Bridge?" Selby stared at the dark river, trying to grasp the boy's meaning.

  Johnny caught his glance and said, "No, not there -- not over the river."

  "A bridge to where?"

  Johnny glanced away without answering and Selby asked, "What bridge, Johnny? I don't understand. Who is the man? Where does he talk to you from?"

  "From there," Johnny said. He flung a hand upward, pointing toward the twin galaxies that formed the Magellanic Clouds.

  "He talks to me from there."

  "He talks to me from there." Selby stared disbelievingly at the sky, Johnny's words ringing in his ears. Was the boy mad? Deluded? Making a fool of him? No man could communicate across so vast a gulf, not even with the best equipment ever conceived. No ship could cross it. Even with the miracle of travel through the time stream, the great Federation ships were restricted to their own galaxy. In time, scientists intoned, and they spoke in terms of many thousands of years. And yet...

  Selby began shaking suddenly, violently, filled with the knowledge that the boy was neither deluded nor making a fool of him. The awareness came in a burst of prescience. Talking across that gulf...For an instant he felt a stark fear. With it came the realization of why the government of nearly three thousand planets would send an expedition to the very rim of the galaxy to murder a ten-year-old boy. The power was monstrous. Gradually his terror passed, replaced by an overwhelming sense of humility and awe.

  All at once Selby realized he had to know. Could Johnny raise sticks, make the great shaggy brute he called "Rok" float in the air? What other things incomprehensible to the human mind could he do? He swung around to ask but Johnny was gone, nor was there any sign of the dog.

  He was alone on the knoll. Shivering uncontrollably, he looked upward.

  The Magellanic Clouds were scarcely more than white shadows in the black sky.

 

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