Chapter XXV

Farradyne said, "Norma, hike below and see that our visitors stay taped to their chairs. I'm going to land this crate without interference."

Norma nodded and went down to the salon. "They're still penned," she reported over the Intercom.

Farradyne said "Aye-firm," and then made his first ranging-radar contact with Terra. He set his declaration drive accordingly and the integrator-needle crept over to the center-scale zero, informing Farradyne that zero separation from the surface of the spaceport would result in zero velocity of the Lancaster.

Then Farradyne fired up the radio and called: "Washington Tower. This is a Lancaster Eighty-One requesting landing instructions. Registry Six Eight Three. Farradyne piloting."

"Tower to Six-Eight-Three. Take Beacon Nine at one twenty thousand, Landing Area Five. Traffic is zero-zero, but eight, repeat, eight, Spaceguard cutters are in formation at sixty thousand." The voice changed in tone slightly. "Spaceguard, Code Watchung. Calling Watchung."

"Watchung to Tower, go ahead."

"Tower. Watchung, ware away from Beacon Nine. Lancaster Eighty-One coming in. Give position and course."

"Watchung to Tower: position azimuth six-seven zero, altitude sixty thousand, distance nine miles. Course twenty-seven North azimuth. Will miss Beacon Nine by thirty-three miles. Recheck?"

"Recheck and aye-firm, Watchung. Tower to Six-Eight-Three: did you follow that?"

"Aye-firm!" called Farradyne.

"Watchung to Six-Eight-Three: pilot identify yourself."

"Pilot Farradyne here, Watchung."

"Aye-firm. Watchung Five, assume command of Six, Seven, and Eight. Take alert pattern at two hundred thousand feet and stand by, Watchung Two, Three, and Four compute and take closing course on Six-Eight-Three and convoy to Landing Area Five. Farradyne, prepare to accept convoy."

"Deny, Watchung. Request reason."

"Prepare to accept inspection, Six-Eight-Three."

Farradyne growled angrily and dropped the radio formalities. "Why?" he snapped.

"You are suspected of hauling a cargo of love lotus. Prepare to stand inspection upon landing."

From down in the salon came the sound of cynical laughter. Brenner said, "We'll let your own people punish you, Farradyne. Hellblossom running, resisting arrest, kidnaping, operating with a forged license, a ship with a questionable registry!"

Farradyne knew what Brenner meant. Taped tight in his ship were Carolyn Niles, daughter of one of Mercury's leading citizens, and a schoolteacher named Hughes. There would be a lot of other witnesses prepared to perjure him into three hundred years of hard labor on Titan. He wondered how the enemy managed this; certainly they had not been prepared to lose their captured spacecraft so quickly. Yet the counter-preparations looked as though such an eventuality had been expected.

"Six-Eight-Three, respond!"

Farradyne snapped his mike-switch and said, "I resent the accusation, and demand an explanation!"

"There is no accusation, Farradyne. We have an anonymous tip-off. You are not accused of illegal operations, only suspect. Will you permit inspection?"

"No!" snapped Farradyne. "Deny!"

"Code Watchung: intercept Six-Eight-Three! Prepare to fire."

"Fire and be damned," said Farradyne in a growl. His hand reached for the toggle and shoved it home for ten seconds. When he turned the ultradrive off, they were far a-space and the radio was silent.

"Give it up, Charles," said Carolyn from below.

"Go to hell!"

Brenner said, "You might as well, Farradyne. No matter how you figure it, you'll either be grabbed by your own people or get picked up by ours. We can't lose."

* * * * *

Going below, Farradyne faced them. "And what happens if I dump you out of the spacelock and your cargo of hellflowers with you?"

"You could do that to Cahill," said Carolyn, "because Cahill was not registered as a paying passenger. I am, and when the authorities find me missing you'll be called to account."

"Just what do you suggest?" Farradyne asked.

"Surrender and turn this ship over to us. You will be detained as a prisoner of war and imprisoned among your own kind."

"Doing what kind of prison labor? Growing hellflowers?"

"Not at all. That, we wouldn't consider ethical."

"It's a cockeyed code of ethics you jerks have," growled Farradyne. "I suppose you want a gold medal for doping our women instead of dropping mercurite bombs and killing them."

"Let's not discuss ethics now. Surrender, and you'll be placed on a Terra-conformed planet, with every freedom among your own kind except the right to space flight."

"No, thanks," said Farradyne dryly. "I had four years of slogging in a fungus marsh. I'm disinclined to give up after one miss. It--"

"Charles!" cried Norma through the squawk-box. "Radar trace!"

Farradyne turned and raced up the stairs just in time to see the long green line of the radar settling down to a solid signal-pip at the extreme end. He flipped the switch that coupled the telescope to the radar and looked through the eye-piece. At the extreme range of the radar beam was a spacecraft, either the same starship that had chased him before or its sister ship. It was closing in fast.

Farradyne dropped into his chair and snapped the belt. He turned the Lancaster by ninety degrees and grasped the toggle on the ultradrive. Ten seconds later he resumed normal flight for a few seconds and then, at another angle, used the ultradrive again.

He paused long enough to take his space bearing, and then plunged the ship down between the orbits of Jupiter and Saturn, far to the South of the ecliptic.

"Norma," he asked quietly, "who is Howard Clevis' boss?"

"Howard reports to Solon Forester directly."

"Oh, fine," groaned Farradyne. "Getting to the Solon is no picnic. How do we go about it?"

* * * * *

A flick of color caught his eye and he turned to look at the radar. The line had wiggled slightly and as he watched, its extreme end formed into a signal-pip. Farradyne looked through the telescope and saw the starship again--or another one. Whether they had one with supervelocity tracking methods, or several hundred covering the solar system like an interception net, it made no difference. The enemy was on his trail.

Farradyne played with the high-space drive again and cut some more didoes back and forth across space, ending up this time not too far from Mercury.

From below there came a rapid conversation in multi-tones, like someone dusting off the keys on a pipe organ played in mute.

Farradyne swore, and then he sat there looking at the big chronometer on the wall, counting off the seconds. Seventy of them went under the sweep hand before the radar trace hiked up into the same, familiar extreme-range warning.

Deliberately, Farradyne turned his ship towards Terra and hit the ultradrive. "They called me a hot-pants pilot," he gritted.

Yellow-green Terra raced up and up and up through the spectrum and burst in size from an unwinking pinpoint of light to a shockingly-large disc that zoomed towards them. They saw its roundness come out of the sky in a myriad of colors until it filled the dome above them. Norma screamed; but by the time her voice had stopped echoing through the control room, Terra was past them by a good many miles of clean miss, and Farradyne had cut the ultradrive. He grunted unhappily because he was now as far from Terra on the other side as he had been before he took the chance. This mad use of the enemy ultradrive in ducking around the solar system was like trying to make a fifty-ton clamshell digger split a cigarette paper. At two light years per hour, their speed was enough to take them from Sol to Pluto in one second flat. He could not control it finely enough to do more than zoom off out of sight of the starship.

Farradyne shrugged, and patted Norma on the shoulder. "I doubt that my aim is good enough to hit the thing," he said. He turned the Lancaster end for end abruptly and tried a quick flick of the toggle. Once more Terra leaped at them, a swirling kaleidoscope of color, looming into monster size and then flicking past.

When they came out of it, Terra was behind them by a few million miles. Farradyne thought for a moment. "Maybe we--" he reached out and pressed the red button on the auxiliary panel--"are being tracked by the generator doodad they put below."

"But what are we going to do now?"

"Hit for Terra!"