It was a hell of a lot better than all right. I wished I had thought of it myself. What I said was an inadequate, 'Thank you.'
She spared me a quick glance. 'Yes. But, Dannerman, what do we do now?'
That was what I needed to figure out.
It was great to be back on Earth again, but I was still a long way from Arlington.
I took a moment to get a better idea of what I had to work with. The Horch fighting machines had been surgically efficient in their assault. As far as I could tell, none of the fittings of the sub had been damaged, but I didn't see much that was helpful. There had been two Beloved Leader warriors on the sub, both now dead. There had been four Horch fighting machines, three of which were now scrap; the Bashfuls had put up a pretty good fight before they died. Beert's personal robot seemed unharmed. So did the Dopey, who had stopped his terrified whining and was staring from one to the other of us as Pirraghiz and I talked.
There was something I needed to know about that Dopey. So, watching him, what I said to Pirraghiz was, 'The first thing we do is kill the Dopey, so he can't make any trouble.'
Pirraghiz stiffened in surprise. The Dopey didn't. He just kept looking back and forth at the two of us, with an occasional frightened glance at Beert. Even his tail plume didn't change color. So either he was a wonderful actor, or he didn't understand the Horch language we were speaking.
As Pirraghiz began to object I said, 'Cancel that.' I pointed to the wounded Doc. 'Can he drive this thing?'
She gave me a strange look, but then she mewed at the Doc and he mewed back. 'Yes, he can. Wrahrrgherfoozh is engineer for this vessel. He can operate any part of it, but he wants to know where to drive to.'
Another good question. If I can see some kind of a map, I'll tell him.
More mewing. Then, 'The locators are turned off, Danner-man,' she reported. 'They are part of the communication system.' While I was absorbing the notion that we were somewhere in the Atlantic Ocean, and blind, she added, 'However, Wrahrrgherfoozh says it is possible for him to alter the system to receive only and not to transmit. But that will take some time.'
That lifted a huge weight from my soul. 'Tell him to do it, then!'
'He is badly hurt, Dannerman. I do not think we can save that arm.'
That was when Beert spoke up. He had been quietly talking to his Christmas tree, and he said, 'Dan. I have used my machine to work on many devices of the Others. Perhaps it can help.'
I looked at Pirraghiz. 'Can it?' And when she nodded, 'Then tell them to get on with it! I mean, please.'
The Christmas tree scuttled over to the board, Pirraghiz explained to the Doc what was going on, and I had my first chance to say anything to Beert. He was standing silent, his head darting this way and that, his arms slumped by his side. He looked dejected.
I said, 'Beert? Listen, I'm sorry that I got you into this.'
He turned the head toward me, but all he said was, 'Yes.'
There was nothing to be done for the dead warriors. The one surviving fighting machine was poking at the ruins of the other three, but it didn't look like they were going to be repairable for a good long time. If ever.
By then the Dopey had managed to collect himself. He fixed his little kitten eyes on me and spoke up. 'Sprechen-sie Deutsch?' he asked. He was looking at me. 'Panamayoo Paruski? Parlezvous-'
I cut him off, 'Try English.'
He switched at once, gazing at me intently. 'I must ask, why are you here? Do you have any understanding of what fate awaits you for daring to bring a filthy Horch into a vessel of the Beloved Leaders?'
'They have to catch us first,' I said. It was oddly pleasing to be speaking my own language again, even with this creature.
'But they surely will,' he said reasonably. 'Then it will be terrible for you. You have only one chance to avoid the worst of the punishment, and that is to destroy the Horch and his machine with that projectile weapon of yours. At once. And then-'
'Forget it,' I said.
But-
I put it more strongly. 'What I mean is, shut up. I'll talk to you later, but if you don't keep quiet now, I will turn you over to the filthy Horch.'
That didn't stop him, either. I turned my back on his arguments and spoke in his own language to Beert: 'Do you think you could get your fighter to scare him? Not kill him. Just make him be quiet.'
Beert's head lifted to gaze at me. 'Then you don't really want him killed?'
'Of course I don't, Beert. What use is he dead? I want him alive to be interrogated. Do you think I would actually murder an unarmed person?'
He gazed at me in silence for a moment. Then he said, 'I was not sure.'
CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN
It didn't take the Doc and the Christmas tree as long as I feared to get some of the systems running, and then the wall over the controls blossomed into a display. A golden dot marked our position. There weren't any other dots nearby, which I thought was good, and at the top of the picture was an irregular mass which I took to be the coast.
I grunted at him as I tried to figure out what to do. Back in those New Jersey summers with Uncle Cubby, my parents had sometimes taken me out for a fishing trip in Uncle Cubby's seldom-used cabin cruiser. I wished I had paid more attention to the charts. What I saw looked nothing like any coastline I remembered.
Then I saw one of the problems. I was accustomed to maps in which up was always north. Evidently the Beloved Leaders had no such prejudice. I guessed the land had to be east, and-once I craned my neck to peer at it sidewise and got the Doc to widen the view-it made sense. Island that forked at one end, like an alligator's opened jaws, narrow body of water behind it and then the mainland-'Long Island,' I announced. 'Great! That water over on the left has to be New York Bay. That's where we want to go! Tell the Doc, Pirraghiz!'
She didn't move right away. She was looking at me puzzledly again. So was Beert, and I realized I had used the English names for what I saw, since the Horch language didn't have any. When I explained to them that 'New York Bay' was one of the busiest harbors on Earth, and we would have no trouble making contact there, Beert swung his neck around closer to me. 'First answer a question for me, Dan. What will you do when you get there?'
'Call the Bureau,' I said promptly. 'See if they can get this sub under wraps before the Others can see what we're doing-'
I stopped there; what I had just said didn't sound right to me. Before I could figure out what it was, Beert went on. 'And then?'
To tell the truth, I hadn't thought much about that 'then.' Especially about what then would mean for him and Pirraghiz. 'Why,' I said, 'I guess we'll let the Bureau figure out what to do next.'
'What you mean,' he said meditatively, 'is that you will turn this vehicle, and us, over to your human spy organization. Who will question us, and no doubt do their best to copy its technology, both Others and Horch.'
'I guess that's about the size of it,' I admitted.
He sighed-that shrill Horch whistle of released breath that meant resignation. He didn't say anything. He just nodded to Pirraghiz, who spoke to Wrahrrgherfoozh.
The Doc touched only a few dots on the board, but I felt the results at once. The submarine was turning and beginning to accelerate. The picture on the wall whirled to a new orientation, and we were beginning to go home.
That felt good. It felt like things were going to work out after all. It even felt as though I were going to get that steak before long, and sleep that night in a real bed… and maybe even see Pat…
But we weren't there yet.
