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file:///G|/Program%20Files/eMule/Incoming/Gordon%20R%20Dickson%20-%20The%20Ali
en%20Way.txt
... No, he was wrong. Perhaps an eighth or sixth of the local sunlight period"
of the planet here had gone by while he had lain dead to the world.
His neck ached slightly behind his ear, and there were other sore spots about
him. He must, he thought, have knocked himself out when he fell.
But the guards chasing him evidently had not found him-
His thoughts broke off suddenly. Voices struck on his ears. The voices of two
natives standing some little distance off. He raised his head slightly and saw
he was lying in a narrow gap between the two walls of metal. The gap, like a
roofless tunnel, ran toward the open space between the conveyor belt end and
the door to outside.
"... not possible," one of the speaking Muffled People was saying.
"We've looked everywhere."
"But you left the place to carry Rogers to the ambulance?"
"Yes, sir. But Corry stood guard outside the door there while we did that.
Then, when we came back, we all searched the whole place. There's no one
here."
"Sort of a funny day," said the second voice. "First that short or whatever it
was, downstairs, and then Rogers thinking he saw something or someone, and
breaking his leg." The voice moved off, from the open area, back at an angle
toward a further part of the factory building.
"Well, forget it, then. I'll write it up in my report, and we'll lock the
building behind us until an inspector can look it over."
There was the sound of the small door opening.
"What's anybody going to steal anyway?" demanded the first voice, now also
moving away. "Put a half million tons of space warship under one arm and carry
it out?"
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"Regulations-" The closing of the door cut off the words. There was silence in
the dimness, which stretched on and on.
Jase stirred in the darkness.
For a moment he was afraid he had broken a limb in his fall into this narrow
space. But all his arms and legs responded. It was as he had thought-he was
only bruised. Gratitude welled in him for the fact that he was only two
seasons adult. An older man, with brittle bones ... it did not bear thinking
about.
He was not wedged in here so tightly as to be trapped, he found. He wriggled
his way forward between the two surfaces until some other object blocked his
way. He climbed up over this-another section of ductwork, it seemed-and
emerged a second later into the open area.
It was empty, clear of natives as if it was actually the deserted building it
pretended to be.
The local sun was well up in the center of the sky as he slipped out of the
building. No one was in sight At a half-speed, limping run, he dodged along in
the shade of a flanking building. Two minutes later he was safely through the
gate and into the shelter of the trees paralleling the dirt road on each side-
headed back toward his. small, one-man ship.
The native fisherman was no longer beside the creek. No one at all
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file:///G|/Program%20Files/eMule/Incoming/Gordon%20R%20Dickson%20-%20The%20Ali
en%20Way.txt seemed to be in sight in the warming day, with the sun now
approaching the zenith overhead. He made it back to his ship, and only when he
was safely inside its camouflaged entrance did he allow himself the luxury of
a feeling of safety.
For-at that, he thought-he was not yet completely safe. He simply had a ship
in which to make a run for it now, in case he was discovered. He throttled the
feeling of safety down. It might lead to carelessness, and it would be
nightfall before he could risk taking off. And that meant it must be nightfall
before he took the final step in the securing of his
Kingdom.
He got rid of the loathsome mufflings he had had to wear and tended the sore
parts of his body. They were annoying, but a week or so would see them healed
and forgotten. The button containing the recorder was intact on his jacket.
The record of everything he had done would be available within it. No more
would be needed back on the Homeworld, except Kator's own unique and valuable
knowledge of how the Muffled People reacted.
Now-if night would quickly fall...
He waited, schooling himself to patience and dreaming of the faces of the sons
he would have. He would name the first one Aton, after Aton
Maternaluncle, the second Horaag, and the third Bela. As soon as they were out
of the pouch long enough to comprehend the concept of Honor, he would tell
each of them, personally, of the man from whom the name they bore was derived.
And of the part those three honorable men had played in the Founding of their
father's Kingdom on the planet of the Muffled
People.
He himself, the Kator, would live out his days and die here. But perhaps the
second or third generation of his descendants would return, as was their right
under his first son or grandson, to found a palace of the
Katori on Homeworld. And, in time, from that palace of the Katori, would come
one-perhaps several-more, to Found new Kingdoms of their own.
He would not know this. Long dust, his bones buried on this world of the
Muffled People would never know. But his genes in the bodies of his
descendants would know and Honor their name and call themselves truly of the
Ruml. The Ruml, honorable as a race, ever growing, ever evolving toward that
far and unimaginable future when man had burnt away all dross from his
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character and no longer knew anything but Honor. -
... At last, the yellow sun, reddening and darkening, began to touch the
horizon in the screen attached to the light collector outside the ship.
Shadows flooded across fences and growing grain and under the clumps of trees.
He sat down at the communications board of his small ship and keyed in voice
communication,, through an untappable channel via the collapsed universe, with
the Expedition ship on the moon.
The speaker crackled at him.
"Keysman?"
He said nothing.
"Keysman? This is the Captain. Your channel is sending. Can you hear us?"
He held his silence, the skin of his face stiffened slightly with emotion.
"Keysman!"
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He leaned forward at last to the voice collector of the transmitter before
him. He whispered into it.
"No use ..." His whisper broke and became a voice, strangled and husky.
"Natives ... surrounding me, here. Captain ..."
He paused. There was a waiting silence from the other end, then the
Captain's voice spoke again.
"Keysman! Hold on! We'll get a ship down to take you out-"
"No time ..." he husked. "No way out. Destroying self and ship. May you have
water, have shade, have ..."
He reached out to his controls and sent the little ship leaping skyward into
the deepening dark. As it rose, he fired a cylindrical object back into the
ground where it had lain.
Seconds later, the tiny, brief, but incredibly violent glare of rainbow colors
that was the explosion of a collapsed-universe drive field lit up the peace of
the county evening.
But Jase at the controls of the small ship was drilling upwards through the
darkness. He headed back toward the moon, but he did not hurry. He went on
conventional drive until he reached the practical limits of the atmosphere; [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]