He put his arm around her, mentally cursing Tom. Then, as he looked angrily after the cat, Birrel tensed.
Tom had started across the lawn toward the dark brush nearby. But the cat had stopped. And as Birrel looked, Tom recoiled from the brush, and then went away from the dark clumps, running in long bounds.
Birrel's thoughts raced. The cat had recoiled from those clumps of brush, exactly as it had recoiled from Lyllin. For the same reason? Because someone alien, not of Earth, was hiding in those shadows?
He listened, but could bear no suspicious sound. Yet his muscles were suddenly strung tight, Karsh would not approach this appointed rendezvous so secretly. If nonEartlimen were skulking in those shadows, it could only mean one thing.
Birrel rose and stretched and said casually. “Come on in the house and forget it, Lyllin. I could stand another drink.'
She silently went in with him. But the instant they were inside, Birrel dropped his casual pose. He made a lunge into the nearest bedroom and grabbed for the blankets there. Running back into the living-room, he tossed one of the blankets to the bewildered Lyllin with frantic speed.
'Wrap it around your head-quick!'
She was intelligent. But she was not used to obeying orders instantly and without question. She started to speak, but there was no time for explanations, if what he suspected was true. He grabbed the blanket out of her hands and started wrapping it many times around her head, speaking rapidly as he did so.
'Out there. Someone. If they want to be quiet about it, they're sure to use a heavy-duty sonic shocker. Hurry.'
He pulled her to the floor. The blanket swathed her bead. He wrapped the other blanket around his own head, fold after fold. They lay tense, not moving, waiting.
Nothing happened.
He thought how foolish they would look, lying on the floor with their heads swathed, if nothing at all did happen.
He still did not move. He waited. A series of small sounds began in the back of the house, just vaguely audible through the blanket-folds. A chattering of windows, the creaking and rattling of beams, the clink of dishes in the cupboards.
The sounds came slowly through the house toward them. Chatter, rattle, leisurely advancing. He knew then that he had guessed rightly. The sonic beam itself was pitched too high to hear, of course. But it was sweeping the house.
It hit them. Lyllin stirred suddenly with a muffled exclamation and Birrel gripped her arm, holding her down. He knew what she was feeling. He was feeling it himself, the sudden shocking dizziness, the buzz-saw sensation inside his head. The sonic beam, sound-impulses of high frequency pitched above normal hearing limits, worked nevertheless through the auditory nerve-centers, striking them many times a second and so overloading them that the kickback produced unconsciousness. Even through the many swathings of thick blanket, the beam could make itself felt. Without protection, they would both already have been out cold.
The shock passed. The beam was sweeping on to the front of the house. Birrel remained on the floor, his arm holding Lyllin down so that she could not get up. He had used sonic beams himself and he had a pretty good idea of how this one would be used.
He was right. After a minute the small, half-audible sounds of the house and its contents shuddering came back toward them.
Chatter-clink. Rattle-clink.
It hit him again, and he set his teeth and endured it. And again it passed them, and once more the dishes in the kitchen cupboards started talking.
Birrel suddenly thought of the unsuspecting Earth folk in the nearby farms, people like Vinson and the others, sleeping peacefully in their old houses without ever dreaming of what was going on in their quiet countryside. How could they suspect that people from far-off stars were among them tonight, pitted in secret struggle?
CHAPTER 12
The rattling and clinking sounds shut off abruptly. At once, Birrel unwrapped his head and twitched at Lyllin until she did the same. He made a warning motion to her, to keep down, and he himself crawled forward to the hall into which the front door opened. He had taken the little shocker back from her and he had it in his hand now.
There was a grotesque old table in the back corner of the hall. He got down behind it and waited. There was no sound at all.
Then there was a sound. Footsteps, on the porch outside, coming quickly and confidently toward the door.
A man came through the door. He wore a dark jacket and slacks, he carried a shocker, and he walked like a dancing panther. Birrel knew him, though it had been a long way off, on another world, that he had seen him last.
His name was Tauncer.
Behind Tauncer came an older man, as gray and solid and rough at the edges as an old brick. He looked like an Earthman. He was loaded down with a longrange Porto-communicator and some other pieces of equipment stowed in a carrying case that hung from his shoulder.
Taking no chances at all, and allowing himself to feel a deep and vicious pleasure, Birrel aimed the shocker and triggered it.
Even so, warned by some faint sound or perhaps only by the instinct of the hunter, Tauncer swung toward him in the instant before the shocker-beam — a short-range version of the big sonics-struck him. The impetus of Tauncer's turn made him hurtle halfway down the little hall to hit the floor headlong.
The brick-like man was slower. He had only managed to open his mouth and lift his hand halfway toward his pocket when Birrel's second burst dropped him quietly where he stood.
Birrel got up. He found that he was shaking slightly. He looked down at Tauncer and remembered a mocking voice on a distant world and he flexed his fingers in a hungry way, thinking how easily a man could die. Lyllin came into the hall and he said angrily, “You were to stay back there.'
She looked at the sprawled bodies. “Are they dead?'
'We're not out on the Sector frontier,” Birrel growled. “I wish we were. No, they're not dead.'
'Who are they?'
'They're agents of Orion,” he said. “That one there is the man who nearly caught me in the cluster. I've brought you into bad trouble.'
He rummaged the house until he found a coil of insulated wire, and bound the hands of the two men very securely behind them. Then he searched them. He did not find any documents, which was no surprise. He removed a shocker from the brick-like man, and took it and the Porto and the heavy carrying-case far out of reach.
The carrying-case contained a vera-probe projector with its tripod collapsed. Possibly the same one Tauncer had tried to use on him on the cluster world. Tauncer seemed extremely fond of the vera-probe, which must indeed be highly useful in his business. Probably he never travelled without one.
He gave Lyllin the shocker that Tauncer had dropped. “Watch them. Back in a moment.'
He went out and rapidly, carefully, searched the grounds of the old farmhouse. He found the sonic device, squatting heavily behind a bush. He stood by it for some moments, perfectly still, listening, but there was no sound except the monotonous stridulations of insects. There did not seem to be anyone else around. Tauncer and the Earthman must have come alone. Birrel frowned. He picked up the heavy sonic device and shoved it into a new hiding-place in the brush, and then stood for a second longer, uneasy and baffled. There was no sign of a flitter. They must have landed back in the woods to avoid betraying themselves by noise. But he could not search the whole woods, not tonight.
He went back to the house.
'They're coming around,” said Lyllin. She was sitting in a chair in front of the two bound men, watching them. She rocked back and forth in a rhythmic motion, making the old floorboards squeak. “Look,” she said, in a voice that was just a little too high, “I found out what this queer chair is for. It's rather pleasant.'
