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  Squadron Commander Simmons’ permanent rank was Pilot Officer, Senior Grade, and he wasn’t particularly anxious to return to it. He ran his fingers regretfully over the golden comets on his shoulder straps. This was his last mission. Negotiations for an agreement whereby the Saarians would turn over part of their stellite to Earth for protection against the Polarians and the remainder to the Polarians for protection against the Solar Alliance were almost completed. Escorting Space Marshall Kincaide back to Earth would be his last flight as commander. After that . . . His fingers were creeping up to the golden comets again when a crisp voice snapped him out of his reverie.

  “Word from the spotting room, sir. They swept the courier and there is a ship alongside her. A big one! She looks like a Polarian star class cruiser, commander. Her nose turrets show up plain as day!”

  Simmons’ fist crashed down on the general alarm button. “All hands to battle stations! Prepare to proceed under full emergency power! You!” he barked at Kit. “Make a run for it. Throw on your boosters and take evasive action! We’ll get to you as fast as we can.”

  “Beg pardon, sir,” said Kit, “but before I took off they gave me strict orders not to touch the controls. Said I’d get lost for sure if I started fooling around with them.”

  “I don’t give a damn what they said,” roared the commander. “I’m giving you a direct order to make a run for it. And above all, don’t let that pouch fall into enemy hands. If it looks as if you aren’t going to get clear, destroy it. Is that clear?”

  “Yes, sir. But about that pouch . . .”

  “Carry on,” snapped Simmons. The screen went dark. Kit looked up unhappily at the sweeping second hand of the clock above the instrument panel and prepared to obey orders, to his best ability.

  Squadron 7 hurtled through the gray nothingness of hyperspace in a tight cone. In the lead ship Commander Simmons sat hunched before his blank combat screen, battle ready, his fingers spread over the controls that bound the whole squadron together into a flashing thunderbolt of destruction.

  A flat mechanical voice echoed from the concealed speaker behind him.

  “Request permission to snap out, sir.”

  Without turning his head, Simmons grunted, “Permission granted.” There was a sudden wrenching and then the combat screen lit up as the squadron flipped into normal space. There was the usual exasperating moment of waiting for the detector beams to bridge the distance to the objective and back, and then two sharp silhouettes leaped into being. Simmons’ executive officer pointed excitedly at the larger of the two.

  “It’s a Polarian all right, sir!”

  Simmons nodded tensely.

  As the squadron closed in, the smaller silhouette began to move rapidly away from the larger one, zig-zagging as it went.

  “He’s making a run for it!”

  For a moment it looked as if the courier might make it. Then with an easy twist like a shark pursuing a mud turtle, the larger silhouette overtook the smaller one.

  Suddenly the battle screen began to shimmer. Action was lost in a spreading cloud of light points. Commander Simmons punched the spotting room call button.

  “What the hell’s going on down there?”

  An apologetic voice answered. “The big ship’s jamming, sir. There’s nothing we can do until we get within range of the visuals.”

  Minutes went by and still the screen remained blank. Then suddenly it cleared and the two ships could be seen again. There was little change in their positions. Then again the little ship changed course suddenly and began to pull away. The cruiser made no effort to follow.

  “Two minutes to target, sir,” called a voice from the wall speaker.

  The courier drew farther and farther away. Commander Simmons was just beginning to relax when without warning from the nose of the great cruiser darted a flashing speck.

  “There’s a homing torp after him!”

  The courier seemed to realize its danger and began to take evasive action but the tiny point kept on its trail, closing in with relentless persistency.

  A second later the two points touched. A blinding burst of actinic light flared up on the screen and then nothing was left but a glowing spreading cloud of radioactive gas.

  The enemy cruiser hung motionless for a moment and then with a flick, vanished as its great converters warped it into hyper-space.

  Commander Simmons’ comets seemed to grip his shoulder tabs as if they had a permanent place there.

  “Set course for Saar! If it’s war they want, war is what they will get!”

  He adjusted his look of command and glared sternly around at such of his staff as were on duty in the control room.

  “Gentlemen, it may take twenty years, but the Pelican will be avenged!” He frowned as he detected a certain lack of enthusiasm in the “Aye, aye, sirs” with which the more civilian-hearted members of his staff responded.

  “Service before Self,” he barked, and then, chest out, shoulders back, and chin in, he marched from the control room.

  On Saar negotiations were procceding as usual. Prince Tarz and Space Marshall Kincaide were glaring at each other in sullen silence while the Saarian emissary fidgeted forgotten at the end of the table. Finally the little man spoke in a quiet voice.

  “Please, gentlemen, you know how these scenes upset me. Couldn’t we adjourn until you are in a better frame of mind?”

  Kincaide looked down at him in disgust.

  “If you’re not happy here, why don’t you go home? We’ll send word to you when it’s time for you to come back and sign the treaty.”

  Prince Tarz nodded. It was the first time he and Kincaide had agreed upon anything for days.

  “Let’s get back to work,” grunted Kincaide impatiently. He pulled a topographical map of the northern hemisphere toward him and indicated an irregular area marked in red.

  “My government contends that . . .”

  The Saarian interrupted for the second time. “That area contains some of our best grazing land!”

  Prince Tarz gave a wolfish grin. “It is unfortunate, but think of the protection you’ll be getting. If anyone ever tries to bother you, we’ll drive them out. I don’t see any way that occupation can be avoided—unless of course you’d prefer to detail a couple of your own battalions for defense detail.”

  “You know that we have no troops,” said the Saarian with dignity.

  Tarz winked at Kincaide. “Then draft a few.”

  The little man caught the exchange of amused looks.

  “You find it amusing that our culture is such that my people are incapable of any act of true violence, don’t you? This is not a matter for laughter, but for thought. I have warned you before that if you insist on thrusting yourselves upon us, terrible consequences must follow. On your heads be it, then.”

  “Nuts!” said Kincaide. Turning back to Tarz he stabbed his finger down on the map and protested violently.

  As voices began to rise again, the Saarian shuddered and slipped down in his chair. He didn’t think they would come to the point of actually striking each other, but even the threat of violence nauseated him.

  Kit did the best he could but his best wasn’t good enough. Trying to carry on evasive action in an old clunker whose worn plates begin to buckle at a 5G side-thrust is a rather pointless procedure. His run for it lasted exactly fifteen seconds. Then, with an effortless spurt of its great planetary drives, the cruiser flashed up to his side and gripped the Pelican securely with her magnagravs. As he was hauled closer to the great ship, he followed out the last of his orders. The sealed package addressed to Space Marshall Kincaide was tossed regretfully into the incinerator chute.

  Kit wasn’t happy about being captured but there didn’t seem to be much he could do about it so, after switching his number two screen to BOW CLOSE so he could see what was going on, he busied himself with collecting his few belongings in his flight bag.

  Lovingly he took down a framed photo from the bulkhead and gazed regretf
ully upon his past greatness. There next to a small shed that bore a very large sign, AJAX CARRIERS, rested the Ajax fleet, an old flare-jetted DeWitt open-system lunar cargo rocket. Beside its open cargo hatch stood the Ajax staff, owner and chief pilot Kittridge Carpenter, and his chief of maintenance and supply, Egghead Shirey, who in addition to being the mechanic, kept the books, collected the bills, and loaded and unloaded the ship.

  Kit sighed as he placed the picture gently in his bag. Egghead was doing all he could to keep the business running but he couldn’t swing it alone. It would take Kit’s presence and a fistfull of money to get the Ajax Carriers. back off the rocks. And now—Kit stared gloomily at the telescreen.

  The cruiser’s midship landing hatch was gaping open, but the man at the magnagrav controls seemed to be having trouble estimating relative speeds. At last after several false swings the Pelican was jockeyed in through the landing hatch and lowered roughly to the hangar floor.

  A clanging vibration ran through the deck plates of the cruiser and up into his ship as the great entrance hatch clanged shut. And then his vision screen went blank as air hissed into the hanger compartment and frosted over the scanner ports. Kit sat watching the external pressure needle climb until it reached Earth normal. When it did, he climbed down into the pressure chamber and undogged the locks on the outside port. There did not seem any point in hanging around. The actual surrender was only a formality that he might as well get over with. When he stuck his head out the hatch and looked down, he almost changed his mind.

  Waiting for Kit on the flight deck were several unsavory-looking characters clumped together in a disorderly knot. Over their massive shoulders were slung tawny thurk skins, and partially covering the stubble on their scowling, unshaven faces hung the false green beards that were the traditional battle wear of Polarian fighting men. As Kit started down the ladder that led from the exit hatch of the Pelican, they began to howl up at him. They carried a miscellaneous assortment of blunt objects in their hands and seemed intent on making as immediate and forceful a presentation of them as possible. Kit scurried back through his memory trying to pick up something in the way of a guide to survival. There had been a training film on What To Do If Captured—but the only thing he could remember from it was that it was highly important that one reveal nothing more to the enemy than his name, rank, and serial number. Unfortunately, the menacing crowd down below seemed more interested in collecting blood than information.

  He was tempted to reverse his direction but a moment’s reflection convinced him that forcing them to cut their way into the Pelican to get him wouldn’t improve their tempers. Somewhat whitefaced, he continued on down to the deck, raising both hands above his head in token of surrender.

  The green-bearded warriors closed around him in a muttering semicircle. Kit licked his lips nervously and fumbled behind his back for the first rung of the ladder. He tensed, ready for a quick pivot and a fast scramble, when a massive officer pushed his way through the ranks and came to a stop in front of him.

  The bright green ringlets of the ceremonial beard that draped the lower half of his face only half concealed the three days’ growth of stubble underneath. His tunic was smudged with food stains and his bloodshot eyes had a mean and crazy look in them as they eyed Kit with the intentness of a hound dog surveying a chunk of raw meat. Kit felt an immediate and pressing need to talk things over. He wracked his brain in an effort to salvage something of the two weeks course in extra-terrestrial, the lingua franca of the spaceways, he’d had at OCS, but all he could remember was pigna snakratvik, ‘have you lost your toothbrush.’ Considering the condition of the other’s teeth, it hardly seemed like a politic question.

  With a scowl, the officer gestured to the blaster that hung at Kit’s side and barked, “Therka!” Kit meekly unbuckled it and handed it over, butt first as the regulations provided. The other gripped the heavy weapon and with an ugly chuckle raised it up until it was aligned with a point roughly one inch above Kit’s snubbed nose. The landing area grew suddenly silent as one grimy finger began to crook down on the firing stud. The officer’s eyes narrowed as he slowly began to count, “Urp! . . . Det! . . . Twik! . . .”

  Kit’s lesson in Polarian numerals was suddenly interrupted by the dissonant clang of a gong. Then it sounded again, and from the other side of the hangar deck came a procession of white robed figures. Their leader was a slight elderly man but the wand he bore impressively before him had an unpleasant resemblance to a human thigh bone. He stopped a short distance from Kit and addressed the warriors “briefly. They responded with short snarls of protest and then reluctantly began to struggle away from the binding area. Only the officer remained.

  “I am the Soother of Souls. The position is somewhat equivalent to that of chief chaplain in your forces. It’s a bit messier, though. When we sacrifice a captive, I have to examine his entrails to see whether Thweela is kindly disposed toward our venture.”

  Kit gulped and changed the subject in a hurry.

  “What’s behind all this? One minute I’m cruising along minding my own business, and the next I’m the prisoner of a bunch of loonies whose only interest in life seems to be finding newer and more interesting ways to beat my brains out. What gives?”

  “You’re an Earth man,” said the Soother of Souls, as if that explained everything.

  “So what?”

  “Earth always takes! She masses her fleets off a little system, points her guns, and takes. I think maybe Polarius will change things. She’s got big ships—big guns too. Thweela will drink much blood soon!”

  “Why pick on me?” protested Kit, “I’m not mad at anybody. All that I want to do is get home before my business goes bankrupt. What have you got to gain by taking me prisoner?”

  “You’ll find out,” said the Soother of Souls cryptically and then turned as the officer beside him tugged at his sleeve, gestured toward Kit, and growled something.

  “What does he want?” asked Kit nervously.

  “Captain Klag says he’s leaving now. He says he’ll see you at dinner.”

  “Tell him I’m not hungry.”

  “That’s irrelevant. You are the dinner. The ritual banquet is an old Polarian custom. By eating the enemy we rob him of his power. A long time ago we used to use a spit and roast him over a fire. Now we use diathermy so as not to spoil so much meat.”

  As Kit’s face went white, Captain Klag gave a satisfied smile and swaggered away. The high priest barked a quick command and suddenly the hangar deck became a hive of activity as his followers tossed their robes to one side and went efficiently to work.

  A cart was trundled up carrying what Kit recognized as some soil of remote control rig. Four of the priests grabbed it and quickly muscled it up the ladder and into the hatch of the Pelican. They remained inside for several minutes, and then one stuck his head out and nodded to the high priest. A moment later all four came out of the ship and closed the hatch behind them.

  While the first crew was working inside the Pelican, another had trundled out a space torpedo and was busy arming its atomic warhead and adjusting its homing controls. They set it carefully on the guide rails that lead to the exit hatch and then, after a careful check, waved a go-ahead signal to the high priest. He called a quick order. Robes were reassumed, the procession reformed, and, with a bang of the ceremonial gong, double-timed toward the entrance port that led to the interior of the ship. Kit brought up the rear, assisted by two husky priests.

  As the hatch banged shut behind them, Kit stole a glance back through the transparent port. The Pelican rose slowly from the deck and with a short spurt from her rear jets vanished through the exit hatch into the blackness of outer space. A moment later the homing torp vibrated slightly and began to move slowly in pursuit.

  It was pitch dark in the cell block. Kit slumped on the iron ledge that served him for a bunk and tried to estimate how long it had been since they had brought him down from the flight deck and locked him up. On the way down ther
e had been the muffled thunder of drive tubes and then, just as they clanged the grilled door shut on him, the familiar wrenching as the cruiser twisted into hyper space.

  His stomach was his clock and for obvious reasons he tried to avoid thinking about any part of the eating process. Being a prisoner of war under normal circumstances was bad enough, but to be the piece de resistance at a ritual banquet was a course of another color. What he had to do was obvious; it was the how that was putting pinwheels in his brain. There were scout ships on the landing stage, but to get to them he would first have to get out of the cell. And then, even if he could slip down to the flight deck undetected, there was still the problem of getting the launching port open so he could blast out.

  The only thing he knew for sure was that he had to get out, and he had to get out fast.

  Suddenly a dim light blinked on overhead and he heard the sound of a hatch opening at the other end of the cell block. There was the sound of footsteps and a moment later he could distinguish an approaching figure in the semi-darkness. It stopped in front of his cell and looked in.

  Kit glanced down at the gleaming, sharp battle sickle that hung at the other’s side. A horrifying suspicion grew that this could very well be the ship’s butcher come to prepare him for dinner. Drawing his shoulders back, he said in a voice whose sternness was somewhat spoiled by a slight quaver, “I am an officer in the Solar Fleet and I demand to be treated as such. Interspatial law provides extreme penalties for the mistreatment of prisoners!”

  The other answered his protest by hoisting up the broad, flat tail of the thurk skin that was draped over his left shoulder and blowing his nose on it noisily.

  When he made no overt move Kit advanced to the front of his cell, tapped himself on the chest, and said slowly, “Me Earth,” and pointing toward the other, “You Polarius. Friends.” Then he stretched his hand out through the bars, “Shake.”