Fugitive of the Stars

interested.

He wondered if Ardric were still alive.

He had a feeling that he was. Another lifeboat might have gotten away without anyone knowing or seeing it in the awful confusion of the wreck. No one would ever be able to check the actual number of bodies, nor know whether all the boats were accounted for. Any that were missing might have been vaporized by impact or broken up into chunks of drift. A good pilot might have gotten well clear before the final blowout and hidden his small craft in the fringes of the meteor swarm, moving with it, thus evading radar watch. He might have come down in a remote spot, some private field where he could land secretly, or he might have been picked up in space by some ship waiting beyond radar range.

He might be dead. Even if he had planned to get away, Ardric might be dead. You couldn't stage-manage a space-wreck with any great degree of certainty. If Ardric had indeed been in the pilot room when Wasek was trying to get him, Horne, there, then he was certainly dead. But why would he have been there? He had already called to Wasek for help, and disclosed Horne's condition, so if there were any survivors they would all know about it. Why would he wait around and take chances any longer?

It might be just wishful thinking, to be so sure that Ardric had got away. But Horne had to have something to hang onto. Otherwise there would not be any hope, and a man had to have some hope in order to go on living.

He needed that shred of hope very desperately when they gave him a preliminary hearing before the representative of the Federation Board of Inquiry. There were some local men present and a couple from the Pilots’ Association and the Space Officers’ Association. They listened while Wasek and several others testified as to what they had seen at the time of the wreck and later. They listened while Horne told his story of the two boys and the Nightbirds and the anti-Feds and the drugged brandy, and while he was talking he heard the way the words dropped like stones into cold water. And because the story sounded preposterous to the men who were listening, it began to sound so to Horne, and even his voice began to acquire a note of doubt.

For he had no proof. Not a single small fragment of proof. He was, to be honest, only speculating on what Ardric had done, and to them Ardric was a hero who had died at his post. All he could know for sure was what he himself had not done… namely, foul up the course and then get drunk.

He would never have any proof if he did not find Ardric.

The judgment of the Board representative was foregone. Horne was to be returned to Vega Center for trial according to the legal procedures of the Federation. And Horne knew what the outcome of that trial would be. Permanent loss of his ticket, a fine, imprisonment. They might just as well hang him and be done with it.

Wasek did not even look at him as he went out.

They took Horne back to the detention room and locked him in. He sat staring at the drab wall, thinking.

Thinking that a dead man would be hard to find, but that finding one was his only chance…

CHAPTER V

It was two days later before Horne made his move.

It was a forlorn hope, and he knew it. But if he was ever to find Ardric and clear himself, he had to start doing it now, before they took him back to Vega. The detention room was tight and the man who guarded him was careful. He could see only one way. He sent Wasek a message. If you'll bring me what money's due me, he wrote, I'll confess to the Board now that I was derelict in duty.

Horne was gambling on two things. One was that Wasek could not get another berth as captain until he was completely cleared of the Vega Queen disaster. A confession by Horne would clear him right away, and Horne thought he would come. The other thing was a little-known clause in the Space Code which he hoped his guard had never heard about.

He had sent his message just before sunset, for it was essential that Wasek should come after dark. He sat watching the bit of sky in the high loophole window turn from orange to pale yellow to dusk, and the velvety night of the planet came down, and nothing happened. He began to sweat. If Wasek didn't come until morning, or if he didn't come at all…

Wasek came. The door was unlocked and opened and the guard let the visitor in, then closed and re-locked the door from the outside.

Grim and bitter, Wasek shoved an envelope at him. “Here it is, your wages for the outward trip. Though what need you'll have of money where you're going, I couldn't say.'

'I'll need a lawyer, to work up a clemency plea,” Horne said sullenly, and took the envelope.

'I've notified the Board you'll make a full confession,” Wasek said. “They'll hear you in the morning.'

Horne nodded. “But first there's one thing…'

'What?'

'This,” and Horne swung with all his strength.

His fist caught Wasek on the jaw. The Captain staggered and slithered and Horne sprang forward and caught him with the solicitude of a lover, easing him down to the floor without a sound.

Wasek was not knocked out but he was so near to it that it made no difference. His eyes were glazed and his hands fluttered vaguely, and a slurred whisper came from his mouth.

Horne worked fast, taking Wasek's belt to tie his wrists behind his back, ripping a strip from his sleeve to make a gag that wouldn't choke the man to death. Then he fumbled frantically for the little pocket inside Wasek's jacket. The sweat sprang out on his forehead and his fingers were all thumbs, and for a moment he thought the thing wasn't there, but then he felt the flat, hard outline of it and in a moment held it out in his hand.

There was a clause in the Space Code which said that the licensed master of a ship had the right and duty to possess and carry at all times a semi-lethal weapon. The clause had been put there in older and wilder days, for good reasons connected with some classic mutinies. Most masters these days complied with the regulation by carrying a miniaturized pocket-stunner they never used, and Horne had gambled that his guard didn't know this, and it seemed now he hadn't.

As he straightened up with the little weapon, he saw that Wasek had come around. The look in his pale eyes was like a laser-beam of hate.

'I'm sorry,” Horne said. “You see, I was telling the truth the first time and I've got to prove it, and this is the only way…'

Under the blaze of those eyes, his voice trailed away. Then his anger returned and he said, “The hell with you.'

He went and knocked loudly on the door.

The guard came and opened it. The guard was a careful man but he was not a very fast one. He was not supposed to have any captives more dangerous than drunken spacemen to watch. He tried to get his weapon out but the stunner in Horne's fist buzzed like a baby rattlesnake and the guard went down. Horne dragged him in and laid him beside Wasek. He figured that Wasek would probably work himself loose before the guard woke up which gave him very little time.

He was keyed up for anything now, and when he went out into the corridor he was ready to use the stunner on anyone who got in his way. It was a slight anticlimax to find that there was nobody. The hour was late and the Port Authority building was not built or run like a prison. It was the simplest thing in the world for Horne to walk downstairs and out a side door.

The twisting streets of the spacemen's quarter took him in.

He knocked twenty minutes later at a door in an ill-lighted alley, and the face of a man looked out at him — one of those faces that seemed to have been dragged right through the slime and crime of a hundred planets.

'You'll remember me,” Horne said. “I was in court here when you were questioned in that vian-smuggling case two years ago. You were guilty as hell, but they couldn't prove it.'

The face smiled. “Ah, yes, Officer Horne. But we are in trouble now, are we not? We have broken detention or jumped bail, and come here for…'

Horne pushed past him into a dingy room and laid money on the table. “For enough of a disguise to get me past the port police, for a Spaceman First Class ticket, and for a berth on the first ship that goes to Skereth. There's