leave, if the First did not guard the induction centers and send them to his labor camp for trying…”
Without giving the other time to react, Martin broke off and quickly described how the sealed underground missile arsenal had been opened by volcanic activity and the First’s rebuilding a surface launching facility, adding a rough estimate of the number of grave markers outside the camp stockade.
“… Earlier the First told us that he could proceed with his plans without our help,” Martin went on. “I’m afraid that he intends making a show of force, probably the air detonation of a nuclear device over an uninhabited area, timed so that the fallout would be carried out to sea by the wind. This would demonstrate his power to the independents and force them into his Estate. But winds can change direction suddenly, the contamination lingers and could affect the genetic structure of generations of Keidi to come.
“My guess,” Martin continued quickly, “is that the missile project personnel comprises three distinct types. The majority are the slave laborers, who have no control over the situation and are waiting to share the fate of their friends who have died of radiation sickness. There are the guards who are fanatically loyal to the First and, like all fanatics, have minds impervious to the logical argument. Then there are a few, a very few, aging technicians who may not be as expert at reassembling the old and perhaps damaged equipment as they would have the First believe.
‘There is a strong probability of a catastrophic accident.
“A lot of this is supposition,” he went on, “but only in the unimportant details. You must agree that the project has to be stopped, the surviving laborers evacuated and given treatment that only Federation medical science can provide, and the launching facility demolished and re-sealed. To do this I must escape.”
The doctor looked toward the lander for a moment, then said, “If what you say is true, then a great many people on Keida will be obligated to you. But I am not convinced. I suspect an inspired and imaginative piece of verbal misdirection. Your arguments are both cogent, suggesting that there is little mental confusion in your mind, and so fantastic as to be the product of hallucination. Are you using me, applying die nonmaterial pressures which can affect only a doctor, as the First intends using you.”
“Yes,” Martin said, “to escape.”
“But you’re not fit enough to escape,” the doctor said impatiently. “The guards would stop you before you had staggered ten paces toward your vessel. I cannot go to it for you because that screen pushed back everyone and everything else that tries to penetrate it, myself included. I tried out of curiosity, while taking my morning walk. Off-worlder, you cannot escape.”
Martin shook his head, and gasped at the explosion of pain. When he could speak again, he said, “You could go to the screen and speak a certain phrase to the ship. Even if there are others nearby and you have to speak quietly, the sound sensors will hear and translate it. The words are ‘I think, therefore I am in trouble. Can you memorize that?”
“I think you should return to the cell,” the Keidi said. “Your injury appears to be troubling you.”
“No, wait,” Martin said desperately, but the could think of nothing else to say, nor did he rise.
“There have been rumors that the First was guarding induction centers,” the doctor said, “to prevent loss of population. I can understand that even though I disagree with it. But using dissidents to excavate a nuclear weapons arsenal and rebuilding the launching towers… No, that is deliberate misdirection. There is no proof that the arsenal exists, or even, with the instruments available to me, that the First was exposed to radioactivity or…”
“But there is indirect proof,” Martin broke in. “The First is deeply concerned for his granddaughter and the newborn, and would normally stay as close as possible to them before the birth. Why, then, did he remain far down the ward if he was not afraid that he carried something which might.damage the genes of the newborn?…”
He broke off, wishing that instead of speaking he had bitten oft his tongue. The doctor had swung around and was glaring down at him.
“You know all that happened in the birthing ward,” the Keidi said angrily, “yet you concealed the knowledge even from me?”
“Not everything that happened,” Martin said, desperately trying to retrieve the situation. “Our instruments were able to show the approximate location of the ward. That was why, when we realized that we were not being taken to see the First’s granddaughter, we tried to escape. The people in the ward showed as formless blurs except for the First, whose radioactive contamination made his trace unmistakable. My intention was not to deceive you but to avoid further complicating the situation.
“Please help me,” Martin went on, searching vainly for eloquence. “I wish only what is best for Keida.”
The doctor grasped Martin’s arm and drew him to his feet. “The First makes exactly the same claim,” he said. “I will return you to your cell.”
On the latitude of Frontier Camp Eleven, darkness fell quickly, and that may have been the reason why Martin fell several times on the way back. Dizziness and nausea were still making it impossible to think, but not to feel sorry for himself. When the Keidi put an arm around his back to support him by both elbows, his reaction was angry and despairing.
“You don’t believe me,” he said bitterly, “and now you don’t believe that I’m unwell. Why are you bothering to help me?”
The Keidi made an untranslatable sound. “If I assisted only the patients who told me the truth, I would have very little work to do.”
The doctor took him to the cell, then left to check on the condition of his other patient. Martin fell onto his bed, refusing to allow Beth to remove the warm boots or to give him any of the cold, unappetizing porridge she had made from water and food concentrates. Shortly afterward she spread the extra blankets they had been given over him, positioned the two muffling pillows, and crawled in beside him.
“I’m cold,” he said unnecessarily through chattering teeth, “I want to sleep.”
“With a bad head injury,” she whispered, “is it wise to let yourself sleep? What does the doctor say?”
“Nothing, damn him,” Martin replied. “I told him what to do, and everything we know or suspect about the First, but I don’t think he believed a word of it.”
Her body stiffened in disappointment and her arms tightened around him. She did not speak.
“Don’t worry,” he said. “We’ll think of another way. But later.”
He was woken by Beth shaking his shoulder violently. The cell was in darkness but the light outside the grill was brightening and fading erratically, the guards were talking at the tops of their voices, and even louder were the muffled detonations of what sounded like a major thunderstorm.
“Dammit, I think you would sleep through the Crack of Doom!” Beth said fiercely. “Just listen to that! It could be natural, a freak storm, even though it seems to be scaring the hell out of the guards. Or then again, our darling main computer likes to show off, and maybe it thinks we might need a diversion as well as a rescue. We haven’t checked it for some time now; it may be planning something.”
“We’ll soon find out,” Martin said excitedly. He swung his feet to the floor, and wondered if his head was going to explode or just fall off. “Start shouting for the doctor. Try to find out if he’s come back from his morning walk.”
“Right,” Beth said, and took a deep breath. The lights came on at her first shout and the doctor who had evidently been on the way to see them, arrived before the guards could send for him. He stood in the open doorway, breathing heavily, his focusing muscles twitching silently and with pale areas of discoloration showing on the dark, Keidi features.
Beth went over to him and gently took his arm, then led him to the bedside where she sat him down between Martin and herself. The caged translator he was gripping in the other hand carried her words, but the guards were too busy trying to reassure each other to listen.
“Don’t be afraid,” she said. “It is only very bright lights and noise, a projection, and nobody will be harmed. But in case the First holds you responsible for it and wants to chastise you…”
There was a silent flare of blue light, and their rusting bed was standing incongruously on the polished metal deck of the hypership’s matter transmitter module.
“…We thought it better to bring you along,” she went on, sliding off the bed and walking quickly to the module’s computer terminal.
“First, I have to arrange for medical attention for our patient,” she said, while her fingers moved over the input keys, “and cancel all the melodramatic meteorological effects down there. Then later I’ll bring up the lander on automatic. It’s needed to return you to the city, or back to Camp Eleven if you prefer it. Unfortunately, we can’t
