'Now we take the lifeboat,' said Cantrell. He gestured distastefully at the little bullet of metal lugged to the wall. 'It's said to be the least pleasant way of travel known to man.' He turned to the control panel and set a simple course around the sun that would maintain itself after the fuel was wholly gone.
Jammed into the little craft, cans of food floating about their ears and a hammering roar of exhausts in their heads, they strained to see through the little port that was the only communication from the outside. Boyle yelled something inaudible.
'What?' shrieked Cantrell into his ear.
Boyle drew a great breath and pointed with one thumb at the little crescent of light behind them—the Andros. 'I said,' he shrieked, 'that it's a good thing we got away from those submicroscopic Einsteins.
They gave me an inferiority complex.'
Cantrell grinned briefly and strained his eyes to see until the world they had made was quite invisible in the black of space.
Forgotten Tongue
'Hands up, scum,' grated a voice. 'You're going for a jump.'
Pepper raised his hands and coughed drily. 'Forget it,' he said. 'You can't get away with this.' He felt a knee jolt the small of his back in answer.
'Walk,' said the voice.
The street was narrow, and the buildings flanking it had no lights. This was the Industrial, one of the three great divisions of New York Sector.
Plants were resting their machinery for two hours out of the twenty-four, Pepper realized. As he walked along, as slowly as he dared, the clopping of metal soles against the pavement sounding behind him, he cursed himself for an imbecile, coming alone and unarmed through this bleak part of town.
'How long,' he asked tentatively, 'have you been gunning for me?' He wanted to find out how many of them there were.
'Keep moving,' said the voice. 'You don't get news out of us, scum.'
He kept moving. They were headed in the direction of the Industrial Airport. That meant, probably, that he'd be crated like a gross of drills and accidentally dropped from a mile or so in the air. There would be protests; threats, recriminations. Then the customary jeering retort from the Optimus Press: 'If a Lower wishes to disguise himself for purposes of his own and is damaged in the process, we fail to see how this is any reflection on the present able administration. Honi soit—'
Not daring to give way to panic, knowing that it would mean an immediate and ugly death, Pepper walked on and tried to keep his knees from buckling.
'Look,' he began again. 'We can make a deal—'
'Shut up!' snarled someone. 'And stay shut. I'd like to—'
'Let him talk, Captain,' said another voice. Pepper stiffened as he heard it, for the dialect was unmistakably the throaty whine affected by the Optimus as the 'pure' speech.
'Never mind,' Pepper said. The sound of that voice was his death-warrant, he knew. Loyalists had been known to take bribes and deliver, their masters never. 'How do you like this part of town, Cedric?' he demanded. 'How does it strike you?'
'Why Cedric?' the voice of the Optimus asked one of the Loyalists, ignoring Pepper. 'Supposed to be funny, Mr. Fersen,' said the Loyalist.
Then Pepper heard a blow and cry. 'I'm sorry, Mr.—sir—please—'
'Let that be a lesson,' said Pepper. 'Never tell the name. But don't worry, Mr. Fersen—I never heard of you.'
'I'm just in,' said the voice of the Optimus with a note of strain and disgust. 'I'm just in from Scandinavia.'
'In that case,' said Pepper, 'you'd do well to get back there. Because here comes a gang of Lowers that mean you ill.'
Approaching them were people he knew. There was Marty who worked in a glass plant, Pedro who managed an autokafe; hard faces gleaming under the wide-spread street lights.
Bats and clubs appeared in their hands. 'Hello!' yelled Marty. The distance was about twice the width of the street.
'Dash it!' whined the voice of the Optimus. 'Dash the luck! You'll have to fire into the thick of them.'
The next thing Pepper knew was that he was dashing for the knot of Lowers down the street, zig-zagging wildly as projectiles buzzed about his ears. Even then he did not forget the rules he had been taught in Training School; he ran with a calculated, staggering gait that would—
at least in theory—unsettle any marksman.
His friends met him halfway; he was taken into their midst, lost in the little group of a dozen or so.
'They won't attack,' he gasped. 'It's too near the shift. They'd be mobbed—torn to pieces.'
'Easy,' soothed Marty. 'Take it easy. They're breaking—going back.
Jupiter—if I only had a camera to get those faces! Who are they?'
Pepper grinned feebly. 'I never got a look at one of them,' he said.
'There was an Optimus with them by the name of Fersen. Do you know him?'
'Yes,' said Marty. 'I know him. He's a scientist. He's so thoroughly damned brilliant that even the Lowers' technical journals reprint his articles. He's a psychologist—experimental.'
'Let it go,' said Pepper. He shook his head. 'What happened? How come you came to meet me—armed?'
'Something new of mine,' said Marty. 'We were trying it out. You can call it a psychological eavesdropper. We call it a modified Geiger-Muller counter reset for cerebrum-surface potential composition. It's thoroughly impractical, but we were waiting for you and I turned it on you for a demonstration. Before it blew out the thing showed that something had upset you terribly.
'Pedro thought it must have been a babe walking down the street.
That's the Latin mind. When you didn't come we put two and two together and found a slight case of Optimus.'
'Yes,' said Pepper absently. 'It's usually that.'
It usually was. The Fusionists were nominally in power throughout the whole hemisphere, but the hand of the Optimus tended to grow clumsier and clumsier, showing through the thin veil of the Continental Congress. The Fusionists had been elected generally on the most immense wave of enthusiasm ever to sweep a new party into office.
Their appeal had been almost irresistible—to combine the best features of both classes and work for harmony.
The Old Malarky, it soon developed. The Fusion officials— 'Fightin'
Bob' Howard, Oscar Stoop, 'Iron Man' Morris—had been bought and paid for. Things were growing bad, worse than they had ever been before. The Lowers were arming. Every issue of their newspapers contained inflammatory statements, direct slurs against the government and the Optimus Party.
Money was being spent like water by the Optimus; whole factories had been turned 'Loyalist' by promises of tripled wages and security. The Loyal Lowers League was growing slowly, very slowly. There was a basically prejudiced attitude among the factory workers against turncoats of that stamp. This, of course, only widened the gulf between authentic Lowers and those who had joined the League. Things were in a very bad way indeed. Everybody on the continent was waiting for the next election. There was much wild talk about revolution and gutters running with blood.
Pepper was examining the psychological eavesdropper that had saved him some unpleasantness a while ago, tinkering with it and attempting to set it right.
'Well?' grunted Marty.
