Taggart snorted, and got to his feet. “Listen, Harlow. I'm fresh from Survey Center and I can tell you this: Survey is in such a sweat over the possibility of this Cartel getting to the Vorn and their secret that they'll overlook any minor infraction of rules. But they won't overlook failure on your part.'
That, too, made sense, Harlow knew. He had realized from the first that he couldn't leave ML-441 without finding out anything.
'What we ought to do is take this wench and spank the information out of her,” he growled.
Taggart grinned. “I'd sure enjoy it. But she may not really know much, so we have to get her brother. I'll take on the job of doing it.'
Harlow said, “We will. We can't send men into danger on a mission that's against the rules, but we can go ourselves.'
He touched the intercom and spoke into it and presently Yrra came into the cabin. Taggart whistled softly in appreciation, much as Kwolek had done. But she looked anxiously at Harlow, and her fine brown eyes lit up when he told her.
'It has to be tonight, your people will be at our throats by tomorrow,” he finished. “The question is, can you lead two of us to where your brother's locked up without our being seen?'
'I'm almost sure I can!” Yrra said.
'Confidence is a wonderful thing,” grunted Harlow. “All right, Taggart, we'll start our jail-breaking mission in an hour. We'll have to circle out in a big curve to come at the town from the other side.'
Two hours later, he and Taggart and Yrra had made most of their big detour and were approaching the Ktashan city from the far side. They walked quietly in the darkness on the grass, and the wind brought them a heavy fragrance from flowering trees outside the town, mingled with a smell of acrid smoke from the crude vegetable oil lamps these people used. Beyond the trees the monolithic town was a blacker bulk dotted with softly lighted windows, looking for all the world like a single rambling stone castle that went on and on.
Yrra's warm fingers closed on Harlow's wrist. “From here I must lead.'
Harlow nodded, and he heard Taggart murmur, “All seems quiet enough.'
'Too quiet,” Harlow muttered. “Most of the people are out watching our ships and waiting for sunrise. Then it'll blow off.'
He and Taggart went forward in the dark, and Yrra led the way as silently as a shadow. From the sky the unfamiliar stars looked down incuriously, a spangled canopy made even more strange to Earthly eyes by the vast, brooding black blot of the Horsehead. Harlow looked up at that alien sky and wished that nobody had ever heard of the Vorn. We wished that the first sputniks and rockets had never happened and that man had had sense enough to stay on his own world.
He did not know just how desperately he would wish that before morning.
CHAPTER III
They walked in a dark, narrow street that was no more than a corridor cut out of the rock. On either side rose walls of the same stone, with here and there a door or shuttered windows. The doors and shutters were of metal, and no light came from them. Nor was there any sound except the clump of their boots, which seemed to Harlow's strained ears loud enough to wake the dead. He thought that this stone city would make a fine trap.
The makers of this place had been a patient folk. They had found a great solid outcrop of red sandstone and they had set to work to carve it into a city. How many centuries they had chiseled away at the soft stone, he could not guess. But rooms and walls and streets and narrow ways like this one had taken shape under the chisels, and as the people had grown they had worked ever farther and deeper into the outcrop until this staggering monolith town was the result.
'These are the ways between the grain warehouses,” whispered Yrra. “Now we must cross a street, and we must not be seen.'
Harlow was grateful that there was no street lighting, when they came to the wider crossways The only illumination was lamplight from windows along it, but that was enough to show a number of the Ktashan men and women. They were hurrying along the street, calling to each other in excited tones.
'They're talking about the arrival of your ship,” muttered Harlow to Taggart.
'Yes, I got it,” said Taggart unexpectedly, and then explained. “I studied copies of some of the language- tapes the first Survey party here made — the one before Dundonald. Nothing else to do on the way here.'
Harlow waited until there were no passersby within a block, then whispered the word. They skipped across the shadowy street into another narrow stone way.
As Yrra led deeper into the dark, monolithic maze, Harlow felt the whole weight of the place on his spirits.
How long until sunrise?
Why did Dundonald have to go Vorn-hunting anyway?
Why—
'Just ahead,” came Yrra's whisper. “There is a guard. You see him?'
They were in a stone alley so narrow that Harlow would have called it a hallway if it were not open to the stars. The vague light showed a Ktashan man, tall in his skimpy robe, standing in front of a metal door with a thing in his hand that looked like a metal bar ending in a blade.
Harlow said, “If we rush him, he'll let out a yell. Yrra, can you circle around and approach him from the other side — get him to turn his back on us?'
For answer, she slipped away the way they had come. Harlow heard Taggart move uneasily, and then glimpsed a gun in his hand.
'Oh, no,” he whispered. “No shooting. We could never explain that away to Survey Center, and anyway it would rouse the whole place.'
'All right, but it's going to make it tougher,” said Taggart. “That bar-sword looks like a mean weapon.'
Yrra's voice now came out of the dark from ahead. She was speaking to the guard, and Harlow gathered that she was asking to see her brother.
The Ktashan man turned toward her as she approached, and grunted, a gruff refusal.
'Now,” said Harlow.
He led the way, walking on tiptoes like a child playing a game. Then he jumped on the guard's back.
He got one hand over the man's mouth to prevent an outcry. But he hadn't bargained that this Ktashan would be as strong as a bull, and he was. The man tore at Harlow's wrist, and reached around with his other hand to get hold of Harlow anywhere he could.
It was humiliating to realize that while you were reasonably young and strong, you were up against someone a lot stronger. Harlow realized it, and clung frantically, and then there was a thumping sound and the man collapsed. He fell so suddenly that Harlow fell with him, and then he saw that the Ktashan was out cold. He scrambled up.
Taggart chuckled. “More ways to use a gun than firing it,” he said. He had rapped the guard over the head with the barrel.
Yrra was already at the metal door, tugging vainly at the catch. She turned and said swiftly, “It's locked.'
'I expected that,” said Harlow. “Stand back a little.'
He put on the heavy gloves he had in one pocket, and drew out from another pocket the compact little cutting-torch he had brought. He touched the stud and drew the thin, crackling tongue of flame around the lock.
A piece of the door that included the lock fell out. Harlow grabbed it just in time to keep it from clanging on the stone.
Taggart reached out and pulled the door open by the cut-out notch, and then let go of it and cursed feelingly and blew upon his burned fingers.
Yrra darted through into the dark beyond the door. They heard her call softly.
'Brai!'
