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  Commander Krogson leaned back in his chair, his eyes veiled in deep thought. “Schninkle,” he said finally, thinking out loud, “I’ve got a hunch that maybe we’ve stumbled on something big. Maybe the Lord Protector is right about there being a plot to knock him over, but maybe he’s wrong about who’s trying to do it. What if all these centuries since the Empire collapsed a group of Imperials have been hiding out waiting for their chance?”

  Schninkle digested the idea for a moment. “It could be,” he said slowly. “If there is such a group, they couldn’t pick a better time than now to strike; the Protectorate is so wobbly that it wouldn’t take much of a shove to topple it over.”

  The more he thought about it, the more sense the idea made to Krogson. Once he felt a fleeting temptation to hush up the whole thing. If there were Imperials and they did take over, maybe they would put an end to the frenzied rat race that was slowly ruining the galaxy—a race that sooner or later entangled every competent man in the great web of intrigue and power politics that stretched through the Protectorate and forced him in self-defense to keep clawing his way toward the top of the heap.

  Regretfully he dismissed the idea. This was a matter of his own neck, here and now!

  “It’s a big IF, Schninkle,” he said, “but if I’ve guessed right we’ve bailed ourselves out. Get hold of that scout and find out his position.”

  Schninkle scooted out of the door. A few minutes later he dashed back in. “I’ve just contacted the scout!” he said excitedly. “He’s closed in on the power source and it isn’t a ship after all. It’s a man in space armor! The drive unit is cut off and it’s heading out of the system at fifteen hundred per. The pilot is standing by for instructions.”

  “Tell him to intercept and capture!” Schninkle started out of the office. “Wait a second; what’s the scout’s position?”

  Schninkle’s face fell. “He doesn’t quite know, sir.”

  “He what?” demanded the commander.

  “He doesn’t quite know,” repeated the little man. “His astrocomputer went haywire six hours out of base.”

  “Just our luck!” swore Krogson. “Well tell him to leave his transmitter on. We’ll ride in on his beam. Better call the sector commander while you’re at it and tell him what’s happened.”

  “Beg pardon, commander,” said Schninkle, “but I wouldn’t advise it.”

  “Why not?” asked Krogson.

  “You’re next in line to be sector commander, aren’t you, sir?”

  “I guess so,” said the commander.

  “If this pans out you’ll be in a position to knock him over and grab his job, won’t you?” asked Schninkle slyly.

  “Could be,” admitted Krogson in a tired voice. “Not because I want to, though—but because I have to. I’m not as young as I once was and the boys below are pushing pretty hard. It’s either up or out and out is always feet first.”

  “Put yourself in the sector commander’s shoes for a minute,” suggested the little man. “What would you do if a war base commander came through with news of a possible Imperial base?”

  A look of grim comprehension came over Krogson’s face. “Of course! I’d ground the commander’s ships and send out my own fleet. I must be slipping; I should have thought of that at once!”

  “On the other hand,” said Schninkle “you might call him and request permission to conduct routine maneuvers. He’ll approve as a matter of course and you’ll have an excuse for taking out the full fleet. Once in deep space you can slap on radio silence and set course for the scout. If there is an Imperial base out there, nobody will know anything about it until it’s blasted. I’ll stay back here and keep my eyes on things for you.”

  Commander Krogson grinned.

  “Schninkle, it’s a pleasure to have you in my command: How would you like me to make you Devoted Servant of the Lord Protector, Eighth Class? It carries an extra shoe ration coupon!”

  “If it’s all the same with you,” said Schninkle, “I’d just as soon have Saturday afternoons off.”

  XII.

  As Kurt struggled up out of the darkness, he could hear a gong sounding in the faint distance. Bong! Bong! BONG! It grew nearer and louder. He shook his head painfully and groaned. There was light from some place beating against his eyelids. Opening them was too much effort. He was in some sort of a bunk. He could feel that. But the gong. He lay there concentrating on it. Slowly he began to realize that the beat didn’t come from outside. It was his head. It felt swollen and sore and each pulse of his heart sent a hammer thud through it.

  One by one his senses began to return to normal. As his nose reassumed its normal acuteness it began to quiver. There was a strange scent in the air, an unpleasant sickening scent as of—he chased the scent down his aching memory channels until he finally had it cornered—rotting fish. With that to anchor on he slowly began to reconstruct reality. He had been floating high above the floor in the armory and the captain had been trying to get him down. Then he had pushed a button. There had been a microsecond of tremendous acceleration and then a horrendous crash. That must have been the skylight. After the crash was darkness, then the gongs, and now fish—dead and rotting fish.

  “I must be alive,” he decided. “Imperial Headquarters would never smell like this!”

  He groaned and slowly opened one eye. Wherever he was he hadn’t been there before. He opened the other eye. He was in a room. A room with a curved ceiling and curving walls. Slowly, with infinite care, he hung his head over the side of the bunk. Below him in a form-fitting chair before a bank of instruments sat a small man with yellow skin and blue-black hair. Kurt coughed. The man looked up. Kurt asked the obvious question.

  “Where am I?”

  “I’m not permitted to give you any information,” said the small man. His speech had an odd slurred quality to Kurt’s ear.

  “Something stinks!” said Kurt.

  “It sure does,” said the small man gloomily. “It must be worse for you. I’m used to it.”

  Kurt surveyed the cabin with interest. There were a lot of gadgets tucked away here and there that looked familiar. They were like the things he had worked on in Tech School except that they were cruder and simpler. They looked as if they had been put together by an eight-year-old recruit who was doing his first trial assembly. He decided to make another stab at establishing some sort of communication with the little man.

  “How come you have everything in one room? We always used to keep different things in different shops.”

  “No comment,” said Ozaki.

  Kurt had a feeling he was butting his head against a stone wall. He decided to make one more try.

  “I give up,” he said, wrinkling his nose, “where’d you hide it?”

  “Hide what?” asked the little man.

  “The fish,” said Kurt.

  “No comment.”

  “Why not?” asked Kurt.

  “Because there isn’t anything that can be done about it,” said Ozaki. “It’s the air conditioner. Something’s haywire inside.”

  “What’s an air conditioner?” asked Kurt.

  “That square box over your head.”

  Kurt looked at it, closed his eyes, and thought for a moment. The thing did look familiar. Suddenly a picture of it popped into his mind. Page 318 in the “Manual of Auxiliary Mechanisms.”

  “It’s fantastic!” he said.

  “What is?” said the little man.

  “This.” Kurt pointed to the conditioner. “I didn’t know they existed in real life. I thought they were just in books. You got a first echelon kit?”

  “Sure,” said Ozaki. “It’s in that recess by the head of the bunk. Why?”

  Kurt pulled the kit out of its retaining clips and opened its cover, fishing around until he found a small screwdriver and a pair of needle-nose pliers.

  “I think I’ll fix it,” he said conversationally.

  “Oh no you won’t!” howled Ozaki. “Air with fish is better than n
o air at all.” But before he could do anything, Kurt had pulled the cover off the air conditioner and was probing into the intricate mechanism with his screwdriver. A slight thumping noise came from inside. Kurt cocked his ear and thought. Suddenly his screwdriver speared down through the maze of whirring parts. He gave a slow quarter turn and the internal thumping disappeared.

  “See,” he said triumphantly, “no more fish!”

  Ozaki stopped shaking long enough to give the air a tentative sniff. He had got out of the habit of smelling in self-defense and it took him a minute or two to detect the difference. Suddenly a broad grin swept across his face.

  “It’s going away! I do believe it’s going away!”

  Kurt gave the screwdriver another quarter of a turn and suddenly the sharp spicy scent of pines swept through the scout. Ozaki took a deep ecstatic breath and relaxed in his chair. His face lost it’s pallor.

  “How did you do it?” he said finally.

  “No comment,” said Kurt pleasantly.

  There was silence from below. Ozaki was in the throes of a brain storm. He was more impressed by Kurt’s casual repair of the air conditioner than he liked to admit.

  “Tell me,” he said cautiously, “can you fix other things beside air conditioners?”

  “I guess so,” said Kurt, “if it’s just simple stuff like this.” He gestured around the cabin. “Most of the stuff here needs fixing. They’ve got it together wrong.”

  “Maybe we could make a dicker,” said Ozaki. “You fix things, I answer questions—Some questions that is,” he added hastily.

  “It’s a deal,” said Kurt who was filled with a burning curiosity as to his whereabouts. Certain things were already clear in his mind. He knew that wherever he was he’d never been there before. That meant evidently that there was a garrison on the other side of the mountains whose existence had never been suspected. What bothered him was how he had got there.

  “Check,” said Ozaki. “First, do you know anything about plumbing?”

  “What’s plumbing?” asked Kurt curiously.

  “Pipes,” said Ozaki. “They’re plugged. They’ve been plugged for more time than I like to think about.”

  “I can try,” said Kurt.

  “Good!” said the pilot and ushered him into the small cubicle that opened off the rear bulkhead. “You might tackle the shower while you’re at it.”

  “What’s a shower?”

  “That curved dingbat up there,” said Ozaki pointing. “The thermostat’s out of whack.”

  “Thermostats are kid stuff,” said Kurt, shutting the door.

  Ten minutes later Kurt came out.

  “It’s all fixed.”

  “I don’t believe it,” said Ozaki, shouldering his way past Kurt. He reached down and pushed a small curved handle. There was the satisfying sound of rushing water. He next reached into the little shower compartment and turned the knob to the left. With a hiss a needle spray of cold water burst forth. The pilot looked at Kurt with awe in his eyes.

  “If I hadn’t seen it, I wouldn’t have believed it! That’s two answers you’ve earned.”

  Kurt peered back into the cubicle curiously. “Well, first,” he said, “now that I’ve fixed them, what are they for?”

  Ozaki explained briefly and a look of amazement came over Kurt’s face. Machinery he knew, but the idea that it could be used for something was hard to grasp.

  “If I hadn’t seen it, I wouldn’t have believed it!” he said slowly. This would be something to tell when he got home. Home! The pressing question of location popped back into his mind.

  “How far are we from the garrison?” he asked.

  Ozaki made a quick mental calculation.

  “Roughly two light-seconds,” he said.

  “How far’s that in kilometers?”

  Ozaki thought again. “Around six hundred thousand. I’ll run off the exact figures if you want them.”

  Kurt gulped. No place could be that far away. Not even Imperial Headquarters! He tried to measure out the distance in his mind in terms of days’ marches but he soon found himself lost. Thinking wouldn’t do it. He had to see with his own eyes where he was.

  “How do you get outside?” he asked.

  Ozaki gestured toward the air lock that opened at the rear of the compartment. “Why?”

  “I want to go out for a few minutes to sort of get my bearings.”

  Ozaki looked at him in disbelief. “What’s your game, anyhow?” he demanded.

  It was Kurt’s turn to look bewildered. “I haven’t any game. I’m just trying to find out where I am so I’ll know which way to head to get back to the garrison.”

  “It’ll be a long cold walk.” Ozaki laughed and hit the stud that slid back the ray screens on the vision ports.

  “Take a look.”

  Kurt looked out into nothingness, a blue-black void marked only by distant pin points of light. He suddenly felt terribly alone, lost in a blank immensity that had no boundaries. Down was gone and so was up. There was only this tiny lighted room with nothing underneath it. The port began to swim in front of his eyes as a sudden strange vertigo swept over him. He felt that if he looked out into that terrible space for another moment he would lose his sanity. He covered his eyes with his hands and staggered back to the center of the cabin.

  Ozaki slid the ray screens back in place. “Kind of gets you first time, doesn’t it?”

  Kurt had always carried a little automatic compass within his head. Wherever he had gone, no matter how far afield he had wandered, it had always pointed steadily toward home. Now for the first time in his life the needle was spinning helplessly. It was an uneasy feeling. He had to get oriented.

  “Which way is the garrison?” he pleaded.

  Ozaki shrugged. “Over there some place. I don’t know whereabouts on the planet you come from. I didn’t pick up your track until you were in free space.”

  “Over where?” asked Kurt.

  “Think you can stand another look?”

  Kurt braced himself and nodded. The pilot opened a side port to vision and pointed. There, seemingly motionless in the black emptiness of space, floated a great greenish gray globe. It didn’t make sense to Kurt. The satellite that hung somewhat to the left did. It’s face was different, the details were sharper than he’d ever seen them before, but the features he knew as well as his own. Night after night on scouting detail for the hunting parties while waiting for sleep he had watched the silver sphere ride through the clouds above him.

  He didn’t want to believe but he had to!

  His face was white and tense as he turned back to Ozaki. A thousand sharp and burning questions milled chaotically through his mind.

  “Where am I?” he demanded. “How did I get out here? Who are you? Where did you come from?”

  “You’re in a spaceship,” said Ozaki, “a two-man scout. And that’s all you’re going to get out of me until you get some more work done. You might as well start on this microscopic projector. The thing burned out just as the special investigator was about to reveal who had blown off the commissioner’s head by wiring a bit of plutonite into his autoshave. I’ve been going nuts ever since trying to figure out who did it!”

  Kurt took some tools out of the first echelon kit and knelt obediently down beside the small projector.

  Three hours later they sat down to dinner. Kurt had repaired the food machine and Ozaki was slowly masticating synthasteak that for the first time in days tasted like synthasteak. As he ecstatically lifted the last savory morsel to his mouth, the ship gave a sudden leap that plastered him and what remained of his supper against the rear bulkhead. There was darkness for a second and then the ceiling lights flickered on, then off, and then on again. Ozaki picked himself up and gingerly ran his fingers over the throbbing lump that was beginning to grow out of the top of his head. His temper wasn’t improved when he looked up and saw Kurt still seated at the table calmly cutting himself another piece of pie.

  “You sho
uld have braced yourself,” said Kurt conversationally, “The converter’s out of phase. You can hear her build up for a jump if you listen. When she does you ought to brace yourself. Maybe you don’t hear so good?” he asked helpfully.

  “Don’t talk with your mouth full, it isn’t polite,” snarled Ozaki.

  Late that night the converter cut out altogether. Ozaki was sleeping the sleep of the innocent and didn’t find out about it for several hours. When he did awake it was to Kurt’s gentle shaking.

  “Hey!” Ozaki groaned and buried his face in the pillow.

  “Hey!” This time the voice was louder. The pilot yawned and tried to open his eyes.

  “Is it important if all the lights go out?” the voice queried. The import of the words suddenly struck home and Ozaki sat bolt upright in his bunk. He opened his eyes, blinked, and opened them again. The lights were out. There was a strange unnatural silence about the ship.

  “Good Lord!” he shouted and jumped for the controls, “The power’s off.”

  He hit the starter switch but nothing happened. The converter was jammed solid. Ozaki began to sweat. He fumbled over the control board until he found the switch that cut the emergency batteries into the lighting circuit. Again nothing happened.

  “If you’re trying to run the lights on the batteries, they won’t work,” said Kurt in a conversational tone.

  “Why not?” snapped Ozaki as he punched savagely and futilely at the starter button.

  “They’re dead,” said Kurt. “I used them all up.”

  “You what?” yelled the pilot in anguish.

  “I used them all up. You see, when the converter went out I woke up. After a while the sun started to come up and it began to get awfully hot so I hooked the batteries into the refrigeration coils. Kept the place nice and cool while they lasted.”

  Ozaki howled. When he swung the shutter of the forward port to let in some light he howled again. This time in dead earnest. The giant red sun of the system was no longer perched off to the left at a comfortable distance. Instead before Ozaki’s horrified eyes was a great red mass that stretched from horizon to horizon.