Corridor of the Suns

“The men who hold us here are my enemies as they are yours,” Evers told him. He began to talk more rapidly, hesitating often as he tried to remember the unfamiliar phrases, telling how he and Lindeman and Straw had gone to Andromeda and of the terrible surprise that had awaited them on the fringe worlds there. He concluded, “We came back to stop what they are doing to your worlds. My people, our government, would stop it if they knew. But we had to prove it, and in trying we were discovered, and one of my friends is dead and one is senseless and I am in this cell with you.”

The K’harn had listened with feverish attention, and some of the tenseness and menace went out of his attitude. He began to walk back and forth in the narrow cell — the swift, gliding spidery walk of his race.

“And the evil goes on and the worlds of my people are ravaged, and I can do nothing!” he said. “If I had been slain like Oll, it would have been better. I thought you one of my enemies, and attacked you so that I would be slain.”

Evers said, “Oll? Schuyler said that he’d captured two of you K’harn scientists — and that one was killed trying to escape—”

The K’harn said, “That was Oll. I am Rrulu of Ky. We two were taken when they looted the House of Knowledge. They have kept me here — how long? They have tried to make me speak, and I would not.”

Evers nodded. “They want you to explain the workings of the instruments of Knowledge.”

“I guessed that,” said Rrulu. “I will die before I speak or tell them anything. They are murderers.”

Evers had learned enough of the K’harn temperament to understand the peculiar loathing that Rrulu put into that last word. The culture of the K’harn was a purely pacific one. Developing on the fringe worlds of Andromeda with no enemies and no lack of resources to cause fight between themselves, they had become a people to whom violence was a grotesque and horrible thing.

“We have never killed,” said Rrulu. “We thought that only beasts killed. And that was our weakness, when the robbers came. But we shall learn to kill!”

He came closer to Evers. The only light in the little cell was from one tiny bulb in the high ceiling, but it was light enough to show the terrible resolve on that unhuman face.

“I have thought much in the time I have been here,” said Rrulu. “In the past, we have only created. But the instruments that create can be altered so that they will destroy. If I ever get back to my people—”

He stopped, and Evers saw the hopelessness that came into his strange eyes.

“You can get back, Rrulu!” he exclaimed. “At least there is a chance, if you will do as I say.”

The K’harn looked at him. “How? The door is locked. There is always a guard in the corridor outside. I have tried more than once and could not break out. Oll was killed, trying.”

“Not that way,” said Evers. “We’ve got to use our wits. There will be ships of law arriving here ten hours or so from now. What we have to do is use our wits to stay alive till GC gets here.”

He went on to explain to Rrulu that Sharr was in hiding in the warehouse of loot, unsuspected by anyone, and that when the GC cruisers arrived, the Valloan girl could come out of hiding and tell the GC men everything.

Evers added, “We’ve got to stall until then. Schuyler put me in here because I speak your language. I am to offer you safe return to your own galaxy if you will explain the workings of the machines and instruments they brought from Andromeda.”

Rrulu stiffened. “Those things are the looted instruments of Knowledge from our worlds. I saw them taken, I saw K’harn shot down defending them. I will not help these killers. Not now, not ever.”

Evers said hastily, “I know. I don’t want you to. What I do want you to do is to bluff Schuyler along, make a pretense of being willing to explain all those gadgets.”

But it seemed that deception was as new and difficult a concept to the K’harn’s thinking, as violence had formerly been.

“I will tell them nothing,” he said.

Evers began to sweat. He feared now that the obsession of hatred which dominated Rrulu was going to cross out their only chance. He tried another approach.

“You say you’ve thought up a way by which your people could adapt their scientific instruments into weapons, to use against Schuyler’s ships?”

Rrulu’s eyes blazed. “Yes — by reversing our synthesizers. You do not understand our science. But we create metal, plastics, any element, by mechanisms that generate a force which causes free sub-atomic particles, free energy, to cohere into matter. The same mechanisms could be quickly reversed to de- cohere any chosen elements into energy again. We could utterly destroy invading ships!”

“Then if you could return to Ky, you could teach your people how to defend themselves,” Evers said. He added quickly, “But my way is the only way you can live to return — by pretending to yield to Schuyler.”

Slowly, the K’harn’s expression changed. He was silent for moments, and then said, “I will do as you say.”

“Good!” breathed Evers. “Now listen. They’ll be back soon to ask me what your answer is. I’ll say that you’re tired of imprisonment, and will explain the instruments and their powers, with me as interpreter.”

“But then they will demand that I do so at once,” objected Rrulu. “And they will at once find out that it is all deception, that I mean to tell them nothing.”

“I’m betting that they won’t ask you to start explaining things right away, but wait till later,” Evers said. “Don’t you see — the GC ships will be here before long. Schuyler has to keep you and I and Lindeman strictly under cover until the GC has come and gone. He’ll wait till after they’ve left, before starting to question you.”

Evers concluded grimly, “But he won’t get a chance. When GC gets here and Sharr comes out and blows the gaff on the whole thing, Schuyler is through right then.”

He could see that Rrulu was doubtful and uneasy about the whole plan. The K’harn, lacking the human capacity for intrigue, was poorly fitted for such a bluff. Evers anxiously drilled him over and over, warning him that he must appear beaten, not defiant.

Of a sudden, there was a sound at the door that brought Evers sharply around. It was the sound of the lock outside the door being turned.

“Here they are,” said Evers. “They didn’t give me as much time to persuade you as I’d expected. But remember, if we bluff them now, it’ll work.”

He could hear the lock turning this way and that, for what seemed to his tautly strung nerves an interminable time. Finally the door swung open.

In its opening stood Sharr.

The Valloan girl was silhouetted against the brightly lighted corridor outside. She had a gun in one hand, and her lithe body was tense as she peered into the comparatively dark cell.

Evers bounded forward. “Sharr! For God’s sake, how — what—”

Her hand grasped his sleeve and her green eyes were brilliant as she babbled up to him.

“I’ve found you! I was afraid they’d killed you! I found the other — Lindeman — but he’s stunned, sleeping. I—”

“But why did you leave the warehouse?” Evers demanded. “Did they find your hiding-place?”

“No!” said Sharr. “But I saw them taking you away. I had to try to reach you, before they tortured or killed you. I had the gun you’d given me, and I got through the darkness to this house, and slipped in a servant-door, and hid and watched. When I saw one of the men who had taken you come up from below, I came down here. There was another guard—”

Evers felt the death-knell of his hopes. Everything had depended on Sharr, whose presence on Arkar nobody suspected, remaining in hiding until the GC came and she could emerge and tell them the truth. Instead, she had come out and used the consummate skill of the hereditary thieves of Valloa to seek and find him.

His whole plan was in ruins, for it was still hours till the GC cruisers would arrive and he did not now think they were likely to live that long. Yet how could he reproach Sharr, when she had risked her own safety to find them?

“You shouldn’t have—”, he began, and then he stopped. Sharr’s face had gone white, and her eyes, looking over his shoulder into the shadowy cell behind him, were distended. Her mouth opened on a scream.