Medusa: A Tiger by the Tail

Girl, too, although, in more than one sense, she was already dead.

About twenty minutes after takeoff the speaker came on. “Please remain strapped in your seats. We are about to dock.”

The man and woman both frowned, and she. turned to him. “That’s odd. I didn’t feel any deceleration.”

He nodded. “I wonder if something’s wrong?”

There were no windows, so there was no way of knowing, but I tensed up. Here we go, I thought, and got myself mentally ready for any move that could be made.

I felt a shudder and vibration, then three quick deceleration bursts, and we slid neatly into the dock. There was a hissing, and then the rear door slid open. The man unbuckled himself and walked over to the door, looking out, still puzzled. “This isn’t Centrum,” he said, confused. “I think this is the space station.”

I unbuckled myself, sighed, stood up and walked back to the door. “Just go back to your seat,” I told him, “and relax. I think this is my stop.”

CHAPTER THIRTEEN A Victim of Philosophy

The lock was of the modern, standardized type, with the shuttle docked in space against a long tubular entryway into the space station itself. I knew that all four planets had such stations, and that the Four Lords made good use of them. The_ master computer for Medusa was here, for example, but I was unprepared for the enormity of the place. It had good artificial gravity, perhaps a bit lighter than I’d become used to. From the entry tube you could look out through a transparent strip and see the gigantic structure stretching away from you on all sides. It was more than a mere space station; it was more like a small floating city several kilometers across, large enough to be self-sufficient in those things that would support a sizable population.

At the end of the long walk up the entry tube I came upon a second airlock chamber, which I entered without hesitation. If they’d meant to kill me they could have done so far more easily and less messily elsewhere. This second lock was pretty much an insurance measure against premature leak and emergencies, but it also served as a neat security cell. Up top was the ever-present monitor, almost certainly with a real person on the other end, and a series of small and unfamiliar-looking projections that could have been either decontamination or weapons.

The first door closed behind me, but the second did not open right away. Suddenly those projections flooded the chamber with a pale blue force field that had a rather odd effect on me. The sensation must have been similar to that of being suddenly struck deaf or blind or both, yet I could see and hear perfectly well. What I no longer could do was sense or contact the Wardens within my own body. They had cut off communications, somehow, and, in so doing, had reverted me to my original form. I could see and feel it happening, with no powers except my own brain.

The ray cut off quickly, and the outer door opened. I found it very difficult to move, though, as if heavy weights had suddenly been placed all over me. I wasn’t quite sure what they were doing, but I guessed that they, not I, were now sending to the Wardens in my body somehow, and they were telling them to produce this sensation. It was quite effective. I could still move and act normally, but any quick or sustained actions would be beyond me. I had walked into the trap, and now they had me good. I had a vague thought that I should have made a run for it back at Gray Basin, no matter what the risks, but it was a little late for that now.

A strong-faced Medusan woman in government black waited for me in the reception lounge, along with a monitor sergeant armed with some sort of small, light sidearm. It was certainly no laser weapon, and I guessed it to be some sort of stun gun, which made perfect sense in this situation. You could shoot hostages as well as the hostage-takers with no fear of permanent injury to either, and you were unlikely to burn accidental holes in the space-station wall.

“I am Sugah Fallon,” the woman announced, “director of this installation. You are, I would guess, the one called Tarin Bul, although I expect that that’s not your real name, either.”

“It will do,” I told her wearily. “I see you know a lot more about the Warden organism than even I expected.”

She smiled. “Research into the possibilities is never-ending, Bul. You would be amazed at the things we can do these days. Come. It must be days since you ate, so we’ll attend to that first.” With my every move physically restricted, I had little choice but to follow her. Besides I was starved, I had to admit.

The food was good, and it was fresh. “We grow it all ourselves,” Fallon told me with some pride. “In fact, we support a staff here of over two thousand permanent party personnel plus half again as many on transient business. It is from here that the entire monitoring system is guided.

All the records are here, and all are centrally coordinated and beamed by satellite to every city on the planet. Our laboratories and technical specialists are drawn from all four Diamonds worlds, and are the best in their fields.”

I really was impressed. “I’d like to see the whole thing sometime,” I said dryly.

“Oh, perhaps you might, but we will show you only a few departments today, I think. You’ll be fascinated by what we’re doing in those areas, I think.”

“Alien psychology?”

She laughed. “No, sorry, that’s off limits. You understand we have to be somewhat circumspect with you since we know that you carry some sort of broadcaster inside your head. Until that goes I’m afraid your movements will be rather limited here.”

“How do you know about that?” I asked, not bothering to deny it. This wasn’t a fishing expedition—they knew a whole hell of a lot.

“We know a bit from some of your compatriots. You may be interested to know that the agent sent to Lilith did manage to kill Marek Kreegan, although in a rather oblique way, and that Aeolia Matuze of Charon is also dead, partly thanks to your man there. On Cerberus, though, your man failed, and did a most interesting thing—-he joined our side without even making a. real attempt at Laroo.”

That was news, most of it welcome. Two out of four wasn’t bad at all, everything considered. Her comment further indicated that none of the other three had revealed that they were, in fact, the same person as myself. I wondered about the turncoat on Cerberus, though—was his conversion sincere, or some sort of ongoing ruse? The fact that he was alive and apparently influential indicated to me that he couldn’t be counted out.

“I suppose it’s too late for me to defect,” I said half-seriously.

“I’m afraid so. Defections under duress are so undependable. It really was nothing personal, either, that you failed. You accomplished a tremendous amount that we would have thought impossible, and you’ve caused a major reassessment of our entire monitoring system. In fact, if you hadn’t attacked the Altavar on your way out, you would still be free and a tremendous threat to us. Even so, you could have escaped. You have a weak spot, a sentimental streak, that your compatriots seem to lack. It’s what’s done you in.”

I shrugged. “I owed it to them to see what I could do. Besides, if I couldn’t pull it off, I was neutralized anyway, with no hope of ever really doing anything beyond living with the Wild Ones. Call it the testing of a theory —and the theory proved wrong. I simply underestimated the system. Just out of curiosity, though, I’d like to know when you got on to me.”

“We knew you were in Gray Basin when we sent somebody to check on the missing monitor at the station,” she told me. “However, we really didn’t have any idea of who you were until you punched Ching Lu Kor into the computer. Since the monitor you were pretending to be didn’t have knowledge of, interest in, or anything to do with that case, it raised a flag here. From that point on, of course, we had you. We were pretty certain it was you, since few others would have the combination of nerve and timing to pull off such a thing even that far.” She paused, then added, “You should have kept switching identities every hour or so.”

I nodded, then added, “I could still have gotten away if I hadn’t misjudged how long I’d slept. That was my key mistake and I admit it. One little mistake in a long string of successes, but that’s all you get in this business.”

“That’s why the system always wins. We can make a hundred mistakes, but you can make only one.”