win by it. You might get our lives but you'd never hold the four sheets for your own.'
The Koton stared unblinking.
Paddy continued. 'I'm going out there, and I'm going for the sheets. They're well hid. You'd never find them.'
'I could have a hundred thousand slaves on this spot next week,' observed the Koton tonelessly.
Paddy ignored him. 'I'll get the sheets. I'll lay them on that bit of black rock out there. Fay will stay here in the ship. When I set them down you'll call your ship, tell them where to come for you, where to pick you up.
'Then you'll get in your air-suit and come toward me and I'll leave the sheets and go to the ship. When we pass each other you'll put down your gun and go on. I'll continue toward the ship and so we'll take our leave. You'll get the sheets and in a day or so your ship will be here to take you home. Is that agreeable?'
Zhri Khuinga said, 'You allow me little scope for tricking you. You are strong and muscular. When I put down the gun what is to prevent you from attacking me?'
Paddy laughed. 'That little poison ball-whip you carry along your arm. That's what I'm afraid of. What's to keep you from attacking me?'
'The fact that you can outdistance me by running, and thus regain your boat. But how will I know that you are not giving me bogus data sheets?'
'You have binoculars,' said Paddy. 'I'll hold the sheets up for your inspection and you can watch me put them down. They're unmistakable-and with those binoculars you can read every bit of the text.'
'Very well,' said the Koton. 'I agree to your conditions.'
Paddy slipped into his air-suit. Before setting the bubble over his head he turned to the still seated Koton. 'Now this is my last word. By no means try to trick us or catch us off guard.
'I know you Kotons are devils for your revenges and your tortures and that you love nothing better than blackhanded treachery-so I'm warning you, take care or it will go ill with you and all your hopes.'
'What is your specific meaning?' inquired the Koton.
'Never mind,' said Paddy. 'And now I'm going.'
He left the ship. Fay and the Koton could see him through the dome, marching across the black sand toward the peak. He disappeared into the tumble around the base.
Minutes passed. He reappeared and Fay saw the glint of the golden sheets.
Paddy stood by the black rock, held the sheets up, face toward the space-boat. Zhri Khainga seized his binoculars, clamped the funnel-shaped eye-pieces over his eyes, stared eagerly.
He put down the binoculars.
'Satisfied?' asked Fay brittlely.
'Yes,' said the Koton. 'I'm satisfied.'
'Then call your ship.'
Zhri Khainga slowly went to the space-wave transmitter, snapped the switch, spoke a few short sentences in a language Fay could not understand.
'Now, get out,' said Fay in a voice she could hardly recognize as her own. 'You keep your part of the bargain, we'll keep ours.'
'There is much yet unsaid,' the Koton murmured. 'The tale of your insolences, your detestable audacities.'
Fay's body surprised even herself. Without conscious volition she sprang at Zhri Khainga, snatched the gun. It was hers. Clumsy now, juggling it, fingers shaking, she jumped back. Zhri Khainga gasped, leaned forward, flung out his arm. Poison-filled balls on elastic strips swished an inch from Fay's face.
XIV
Zhri Khainga, his face a strange pasty lavender color, assumed his air-suit. Menaced by his own gun, he backed out of the boat.
Paddy had been waiting. Now he stepped forward and the Koton ran out to meet him, bounding, hopping, peculiarly agile.
Paddy met him halfway. He paused, expecting the Koton to throw down his gun. The Koton ran past, aching for the golden sheets. Paddy hesitated-then, seeing no gun at the Koton's belt, turned and ran for the boat.
Fay let him in, Paddy pulled off the head-bubble, looked at Fay's tense white face. 'What is it then, Fay?'
'There's no power.'
Paddy's shoulders sagged and his hands paused at the zipper of the air-suit. 'No power?'
'We're marooned,' she said. 'And that Koton ship will be here in a few days-maybe less.' She stepped up on the deck, looked out the dome toward the Angry Dragon. 'And Zhri Khainga is waiting.'
'Och,' muttered Paddy. 'We'd walk out across that black sand and give up our breaths first.' He joined her on the control deck. 'Are you sure about that power now? I was fooled once myself.' He tried the controls. They were dead.
Paddy chewed his lip. 'That villain worked some sort of relay switch into the drive, that would cut off our energy once we landed. And how he must be gloating!'
'Now he's got the sheets,' said Fay, 'and he can hide from us until his ship comes. We could never find him.'
'It's rats we're like, on a sinking ship. Try the space-wave, Fay! Send out a call.'
She flipped the switch. 'Dead!'
Paddy shuddered. 'Don't be using that word so much.' He paced, two steps across the deck to port, four steps back to starboard, back to the center of the cabin. 'Now try the anti-gravity. That's on its own special unit and there's no connection.'
Fay slid the metal boss. Their weight left them.
'Now,' crowed Paddy, 'at least we'll leave the planet, for the surface will rotate away from under us.'
'Zhri Khainga will see us leave,' said Fay. 'He'll know what we're doing and he'll find us as easily as if we were crawling on our hands and knees in the snow.'
Paddy reached out, seized a stanchion, squeezed it. 'If this were only his neck,' he said between his teeth, 'I'd hang on while his heels pounded on the deck and laugh in his face.'
Fay laughed wanly. 'This is no time for day-dreaming, Paddy dear.' She looked out the port. 'We've already risen about a foot from the ground.'
Paddy narrowed his eyes thoughtfully. 'I know how to get a kick out of those tubes. It'll cost us a million marks and it'll give us a nasty jar, since there's no counter-gravity to the acceleration-but we'll do it.'
'Do what, Paddy?'
'We have four drive tubes on this little hull. There's lots of energy curled up and slumbering inside each one of them. Now if we let that energy come whirling out the after end we'll go forward. Of course, we'll ruin the tube.'
'Do you know how, Paddy?' Fay asked doubtfully.
'I think I'll just shoot the end of the tube loose and it'll be like breaking open a fire-hose.' He looked out the port. 'Now we're six feet off the ground-and look! there's that Koton! See him? Sitting there as calm and majestic as you please laughing at us. Here give me that gun, I'll make a Christian of him-and I'll shoot off our tube at the same time.'
He snapped the bubble back over his head, stepped into the lock, opened the outer port. Zhri Khainga quickly ducked behind a rock and Paddy regretfully held his fire. He turned, braced himself, drew a bead on the tip of the lower tube, gritted his teeth, commended himself to his natal saint and squeezed the trigger.
The tube split, an instantaneous spiral of blue flame lashed out, smote the ground. The boat lunged ahead, up at a slant.
Fay painfully got down from the elastic webbing, ran to the port.
