Double Star

«I see you, Captain Dak Broadbent,» the Martian squeaked, then added, «You will tell my nest?»

«I will tell your nest, Rrringriil.»

«I thank you, Captain Dak Broadbent.»

Dak reached out a long bony finger and poked it into the eye nearest him, shoving it on home until his knuckles were jammed against the brain case. He pulled it out and his finger was slimed with green ichor. The creature's pseudo limbs crawled back into its trunk in reflex spasm but the dead thing continued to stand firm on its base. Dak hurried into the bath; I heard him washing his hands. I stayed where I was, almost as frozen by shock as the late Rrringriil.

Dak came out, wiping his hands on his shirt, and said, «We'll have to clean this up. There isn't much time.» He could have been speaking of a spilled drink.

I tried to make clear in one jumbled sentence that I wanted no part of it, that we ought to call the cops, that I wanted to get away from there before the cops came, that he knew what he could do with his crazy impersonation job, and that I planned to sprout wings and fly out the window. Dak brushed it all aside. «Don't jitter, Lorenzo. We're on minus minutes now. Help me get the bodies into the bathroom.»

«Huh? Good God, man! Let's just lock up and run for it. Maybe they will never connect us with it.»

«Probably they wouldn't,» he agreed, «since neither one of us is supposed to be here. But they would be able to see that Rrringriil had killed Jock — and we can't have that. Not now we can't.»

«Huh?»

«We can't afford a news story about a Martian killing a human. So shut up and help me.»

I shut up and helped him. It steadied me to recall that «Benny Grey» had been the worst of sadistic psychopaths, who had enjoyed dismembering his victims. I let «Benny Grey» drag the two human bodies into the bath while Dak took the life wand and sliced Rrringriil into pieces small enough to handle. He was careful to make the first cut below the brain case so the job was not messy, but I could not help him with it — it seemed to me that a dead Martian stank even worse than a live one.

The oubliette was concealed in a panel in the bath just beyond the bidet; if it had not been marked with the usual radiation trefoil it would have been hard to find. After we had shoved the chunks of Rrringriil down it (I managed to get my spunk up enough to help), Dak tackled the messier problem of butchering and draining the human corpses, using the wand and, of course, working in the bath tub.

It is amazing how much blood a man holds. We kept the water running the whole time; nevertheless, it was bad. But when Dak had to tackle the remains of poor little Jock, he just wasn't up to it. His eyes flooded with tears, blinding him, so I elbowed him aside before he sliced off his own fingers and let «Benny Grey» take over.

When I had finished and there was nothing left to show that there had ever been two other men and a monster in the suite, I sluiced out the tub carefully and stood up. Dak was in the doorway, looking as calm as ever. «I've made sure the floor is tidy,» he announced. «I suppose a criminologist with proper equipment could reconstruct it — but we are counting on no one ever suspecting. So let's get out of here. We've got to gain almost twelve minutes somehow. Come on!»

I was beyond asking where or why. «All right. Let's fix your boots.»

He shook his head. «It would slow me up. Right now speed is more essential than not being recognized.»

«I am in your hands.» I followed him to the door; he stopped and said, «There may be others around. If so, shoot first — there's nothing else you can do.» He had the life wand in his hand, with his cloak drawn over it.

«Martians?»

«Or men. Or both.»

«Dak? Was Rrringriil one of those four at the Maсana bar?»

«Certainly. Why do you think I went around Robinson's barn to get you out of there and over here? They either tailed you, as we did, or they tailed me. Didn't you recognize him?»

«Heavens, no! Those monsters all look alike to me.»

«And they say we all look alike. The four were Rrringriil, his conjugate-brother Rrringlath, and two others from his nest, of divergent lines. But shut up. If you see a Martian, shoot. You have the other gun?»

«Uh, yes. Look, Dak, I don't know what this is all about. But as long as those beasts are against you, I'm with you. I despise Martians.»

He looked shocked. «You don't know what you are saying. We're not fighting Martians; those four are renegades.»

«Huh?»

«There are lots of good Martians — almost all of them. Shucks, even Rrringriil wasn't a bad sort in most ways — I've had many a fine chess game with him.»

«What? In that case, I'm — »

«Stow it. You're in too deep to back out. Now quick — march, straight to the bounce tube. I'll cover our rear.»

I shut up. I was in much too deep — that was unarguable.

We hit the sub-basement and went at once to the express tubes. A two-passenger capsule was just emptying; Dak shoved me in so quickly that I did not see him set the control combination. But I was hardly surprised when the pressure let up from my chest and I saw the sign blinking JEFFERSON SKYPORT — All Out.

Nor did I care what station it was as long as it was as far as possible from Hotel Eisenhower. The few minutes we had been crammed in the vactube had been long enough for me to devise a plan — sketchy, tentative, and subject to change without notice, as the fine print always says, but a plan. It could be stated in two words: Get lost!

Only that morning I would have found the plan very difficult to execute; in our culture a man with no money at all is baby-helpless. But with a hundred slugs in my pocket I could go far and fast. I felt no obligation to Dak Broadbent. For reasons of his own — not my reasons — he had almost got me killed, then had crowded me into covering up a crime, made me a fugitive from justice. But we had evaded the police, temporarily at least, and now, simply by shaking off Broadbent, I could forget the whole thing, shelve it as a bad dream. It seemed most unlikely that I could be connected with the affair even if it were discovered — fortunately a gentleman always wears gloves, and I had had mine off only to put on make-up and later during that ghastly house cleaning.

Aside from the warm burst of adolescent heroics I had felt when I thought Dak was fighting Martians, I had no interest in his schemes — and even that sympathy had shut off when I found that he liked Martians in general. His impersonation job I would not now touch with the proverbial eleven-foot pole. To hell with Broadbent! All I wanted out of life was money enough to keep body and soul together and a chance to practice my art; cops-and- robbers nonsense did not interest me — poor theater at best.

Jefferson Port seemed handmade to carry out my scheme. Crowded and confused, with express tubes spiderwebbing from it, in it, if Dak took his eyes off me for half a second I would be halfway to Omaha. I would lie low a few weeks, then get in touch with my agent and find out if any inquiries had been made about me.

Dak saw to it that we climbed out of the capsule together, else I would have slammed it shut and gone elsewhere at once. I pretended not to notice and stuck close as a puppy to him as we went up the belt to the main hall just under the surface, coming out between the Pan-Am desk and American Skylines. Dak headed straight across the waiting-room floor toward Diana, Ltd., and I surmised that he was going to buy tickets for the Moonshuttle — how he planned to get me aboard without passport or vaccination certificate I could not guess but I knew that he was resourceful. I decided that I would fade into the furniture while he had his wallet out; when a man counts money there are at least a few seconds when his eyes and attention are fully occupied.

But we went right on past the Diana desk and through an archway marked Private Berths. The passageway beyond was not crowded and the walls were blank; I realized with dismay that I had let slip my best chance, back there in the busy main hall. I held back. «Dak? Are we making a jump?»

«Of course.»