LITMIR.BIZ

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should have registered before now, whether Boux or human.

      Tension heightened again as the alien was drawn aboard. Matching velocities was a tricky business, and the manoeuvre always entailed a great deal of noise audible throughout the ship. A pity that super-science had never come up with a competent sound-absorber, Rhys-Barley thought morosely. The deck under him swayed a little.

      Deeping handed him a slip from Kyla records. There had been four ships of the Windsor class. Three had gone to the scrap yards over three thousand years ago. The fourth had been abandoned for lack of fuel during the great Boux invasion waves that had resulted in the collapse of the First Empire. Its name: Regalia.

      ‘That must be our pigeon. Let’s get down to Interrogation Bay, Captain,’ Rhys-Barley suggested. Together the pair adjusted their arm-synchs and stepped into the teleport.

      They reappeared instantly beside their captive. Aliens Officer was already there, enjoying a brief spell of glory, supervising the batteries of every type of recorder, scanner, probe and what-have-you the ship possessed in concealed positions about the Regalia. The latter looked like a small whale stranded in a large cave.

      The Preacher came first out of the airlock because he always went ahead anywhere. Then followed Calurmo and Aprit, stopping to examine the crystalline formations clinging to the lock doors. After them came Woebee and Little Light. Together they gazed at the severe functionalism and grey metal that surrounded them.

      ‘This is not a pretty planet,’ the Preacher observed.

      ‘It is not the one Little Light chose,’ Woebee explained.

      ‘Don’t be silly, the pair of you,’ Calurmo said, a little sternly. ‘This is not a planet. It is made. Use your senses.’

      ‘Let’s speak to those beings over there,’ said Little Light, pointing. ‘The ones behind the invisibility screen.’ He wandered over to Rhys-Barley and tapped his rediffusion shield.

      ‘I can see you,’ he said. ‘Can you see me?’

      ‘All right, cut rediffusion,’ snarled Rhys-Barley. The crimson on his face was no longer produced by the forces of gravity.

      ‘No evidence of any energy or explosive weapons, sir,’ Aliens Officer reported. ‘Permission to interview?’

      ‘OK’

      Aliens Officer wore a black uniform. His hair was white, his face was gray. He had a square jaw. The Preacher liked the look of him and approached.

      ‘Are you the captain of this ship?’ asked the Aliens Officer.

      ‘That question does not mean anything to me. I’m sorry,’ said the Preacher.

      ‘Who commands this ship, the Regalia?’

      ‘I don’t understand that one either. What do you think he means, Calurmo?’

      Calurmo was scanning the immense room in which they stood. His attention flicked momentarily to the little brain glands in the ceiling, that computed the lung power present and co-ordinated the air supply accordingly. Then he explored all the minute currents and pulses that plied ceaselessly in the walls and floor, adjusting temperature and gravity, guarding against strain and metal fatigue; he swept the air itself, chemically pure and microbe-proof, rendered non-conductive. Nowhere did he find life, and for a moment he recalled the land they had left, with the fish spawning in its rivers and the walrus sporting in its seas.

      He dismissed the vision and tried to answer the Preacher’s question.

      ‘If he means who made the ship go, we all did,’ he said. ‘Little Light did the direction, Woebee and I did the fuel – ’

      ‘I don’t like it in here, Calurmo,’ Aprit interrupted. ‘These beings smell of something odd …’

      ‘It’s fear,’ said Calurmo, happy to be interrupted by a friend. ‘Intellectual and physical fear. I’ll tell you about it later. They’ve got some sort of inertia barrier up and their emotions don’t come through, but their thoughts are clear enough.’

      ‘Too clear!’ said Woebee with a laugh. ‘They are afraid of anyone who does not look like themselves, and if anyone does look like them – they are suspicious! I say, let’s get back to the snows; that was a more interesting place to explore.’

      He made a move toward the ship. Instantly an arrangement of duralum bars and R-rays descended from the roof and held them in five separate cells. They stood temporarily disconcerted in glowing cages.

      The Aliens Officer walked among them grimly. ‘Now you’re going to answer questions,’ he said. ‘I’m sorry we are forced to use these methods to secure your attention. The speech-pattern separators that allow us to talk together work through the floor here and are relayed out to me via Main Base. I don’t imagine you can do us much harm over such a system. And nothing can get through the electronic barricade we’ve brought up against you. In other words, you’re trapped. Now let’s have straight answers, please.’

      ‘Here’s a straight answer for your speech-pattern separator,’ said Aprit. Just for a second he wore a look of concentration. At once smoke rose from the floor of the bay. A dozen different alerts clicked and whirred, relentlessly bearing witness to ruined equipment.

      Base signalled a two-day repair job required on language circuits.

      ‘Now we’ll use our system of communicating,’ Aprit said, mollified.

      ‘You shouldn’t be destructive,’ the Preacher reproved. ‘Havoc becomes a habit.’ Delighted with the chime of his maxim, he repeated it to himself.

      Aliens Officer went a little paler. He recognised a show of force when he saw one. Also, he was still hearing them perfectly despite the smouldering failure of his speech-pattern separators. A subordinate hurried up and conferred with him for a moment. Then the officer looked up and said to the prisoners: ‘At that act of destruction you released typical Boux configurations of thought. Do you admit your origins?’

      Pointing to the R-rays, Little Light said: ‘I am beginning to become uneasy, friends. This gadget surrounding us is as impervious as he claims.’

      ‘I think it would be very wise to withdraw,’ the Preacher agreed. ‘Shall we not have left the Arctic?’

      ‘That seems the only way,’ agreed Calurmo doubtfully. Redature always upset his stomach.

      Grand-Admiral Rhys-Barley pushed roughly forward. He was dissatisfied with the conduct of the interrogation. Also, he was worried. There was standard procedure for dealing with Boux; man’s deadly enemy, originating on fast-rotating planets with high-velocity winds, were fluid in form and could easily assume the shape of men. A Boux-man loose on a planet like Kyla I could do an infinite amount of damage – and Bouxmen were not easy to detect. Therefore, once Main Base was satisfied there were Boux aboard Pointer, they were quite likely to signal the flagship to proceed into the nearest sun. Rhys-Barley had other ideas about his future.

      He halted pugnaciously before Aprit.

      ‘What’s your real shape?’ he demanded.

      Aprit was puzzled. ‘You mean my metaphysical shape?’ he asked.

      ‘No, I do not. I mean that my instruments register close to the Boux end of the brain impulse-scale. And Boux can masquerade as anything they like, over limited periods of time. What I’m asking is, who or what are you?’

      ‘We are brothers,’ said Aprit mildly. ‘As you are our brother. Only you are a very bad-tempered brother.’

      The stun was shot into Aprit’s enclosure from the still-smoking floor. It struck with frightening suddenness. Pressure built instantaneously to a peak that would have spread a man uniformly over the walls of the enclosure in a pink paste. It would have forced a genuine Boux into one of his primary shapes. Aprit merely dropped unconscious to the deck.

      Little Light pointed crossly at the Grand-Admiral.

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