Raiders From the Rings Read online

  The escalators were their first concern. Already they were carrying loads of people down, a tangle of struggling arms and legs, but moving down inexorably. As they saw the Spacers crowd through the entranceway, some dove headfirst down the escalator chutes. Ben threatened the crowd at the escalator entrance with his tangle-gun, motioning them back until the moving staircase had carried its load down and stood empty. Then he tossed a grenade down the chute, and the escalator gears ground to a halt. There was another explosion as a grenade smashed the elevator doors and another as the cables were wrecked. In less than two minutes the hall was sealed up, with no exit unguarded. Two large men rushed Ben with angry shouts; he waited coolly until they were close enough, then triggered the tangle-gun, aiming at their feet. The egg-shaped gray pellet smashed on the floor beneath them, sending up twisting black tendrils of tangle web that stopped them as though they had been poleaxed. Both tumbled to the floor, struggling against the powerful adhesive of the tangle web, bound tighter and tighter as its molecular structure tightened the more they fought to extricate themselves. Nobody ever died from an encounter with a tangle web, but anybody caught in one would be held for hours in its tenacious tendrils, able to breath but not much more, until the molecular activation gradually seeped away and allowed the victim to release himself.

  For the first time, Ben had a moment to look around. He was in a hall such as he had never seen before. One of the walls was lined with crowded bookshelves; there were chairs and tables scattered around for lounging, and against the far wall was a big stone box set into the wall with a roaring fire of wood — precious wood! — burning inside. In another large room off to the right were handball courts and a basketball floor, and off to the left — Ben stopped and peered in amazement, hardly believing his eyes. He was looking into another room, with a huge tank of water sunk into the floor. Even now people in skin-tight clothes were struggling to get out of the water and up onto the dry floor. At first Ben thought that the tank was occupied only by men. Suddenly, he realized that some were wearing tight rubber caps and decidedly were not men.

  He shouted to his companions:

  “Here we go, boys! Over here!”

  A dozen Spacers were now in the hall, guarding the exits with tangle-guns. Half a dozen joined him at the entrance to the pool, and began roaring with laughter at the wet, dripping Earth people crowding against the wall. “All right,” Ben said sharply. “You men peel off to the right here. No funny business and nobody will be hurt.”

  The men stood frozen, looking first at the girls huddled at the side of the pool, then at the advancing Spacers. “Come on, mover! Ben said. Reluctantly the men began to move.

  Ben and two others crossed the room while the rest of the Spacers covered them from the doorway. The girls crowded back against the wall. Some were sobbing; others just looked angry or indignant.

  “Volunteers first,” Ben said.

  Nobody budged. In the main hall a renewed clamor was arising, and Ben heard a rattle of gunfire from somewhere outside. “Come on, we can’t wait all night.” He motioned the first girl with his tangle-gun. “You, now. Get moving.”

  “Moving where?” the girl snapped angrily.

  “Out of here,” Ben said. “You’re going for a ride.”

  “You can’t do this,” the girl returned. “You can’t just walk in and kidnap — ”

  “Ma’am, you’d be surprised,” Ben said. “You can argue later. Right now you can either walk out or be carried out. Which is it to be?”

  Furious, the girl stalked past him. Another followed as he motioned to her, and another. At the same moment three of the Earthmen rushed one of the guards. All three were stopped by tangle webs, and one, struggling helplessly, tumbled headfirst into the pool.

  “Haul him out,” Ben shouted to the guard. “The idiot will drown. But the next one that interferes gets tossed in.”

  By now almost a dozen girls had been taken into custody by waiting Spacers, and they started across the main hall toward the door. Now the Earthmen, goaded to ill judgment, tried to move in in a body; tangle-guns popped, and the men shouted and strained at the sticky webs. Ben’s gun recoiled in his hand as he placed a shell under the feet of an onrushing man; the attacker twisted to get free of the entangling strands and tumbled to the floor, roaring with anger and shaking his fist at Ben in helpless rage.

  But Ben was busy helping his companions single out the girls who gave some outward appearance of spirit and fight There was no way to guess from a casual glance what kind of mauki a girl might become, but experience had proven that the cringing ones would be more burden than blessing in the long days of re-education and indoctrination that lay ahead of them. In a few moments the full quota of girls was filled except for one; Ben’s eye caught a small, attractive girl who had been edging through the group toward the far side of the room.

  Ben pointed a finger at her. “You,” he said. “Come along.”

  The girl’s bathing cap had come off, revealing a crop of sandy-colored hair. There were large freckles across her nose and cheeks, and a dangerous light in her blue eyes as she stopped and turned toward Ben.

  “You don’t want me,” she said. “I’m pretty ugly.” As if to demonstrate her undesirability, she looked cross-eyed and stuck her tongue out at him in a horrible grimace.

  Ben grinned. “You’ll do,” he said. “Come on, hop!”

  “But I like it here.” The girl was waving her hands frantically, as if trying to signal. Ben thought for a moment he glimpsed a light-haired youth flip his hand in an answering signal.

  The hubbub outside was increasing. One of the guards at the door shouted at Ben. “Let’s go, boy. We’ve got a goon squad coming up on us outside.”

  “All right,” Ben said to the sandy-haired girl. “Move on, or I’ll carry you.”

  The girl gave him a long, angry look and, then started past him toward the door. As she came near she jumped at him, quick as a cat, brushing his tangle-gun aside with one hand and hitting him full in the chest with her knees. Ben crashed to the floor, the girl still on his chest, kicking with one foot at the hand that held the tangle-gun. Fighting off nails and teeth, Ben twisted his body out from under the girl, jerking her ankle and toppling her over on her back. She kicked him in the shin, and jumped to her feet again with a cry, once more rushing him. But this time he was ready. He stepped aside swiftly, shooting out his leg to trip her. Seconds later a tangle-gun charge popped on the floor, and the girl was busy trying to fight off the twisting adhesive strands that wrapped around her arms and legs. Without ceremony Ben took one arm and the opposite leg, hoisted her to his shoulders like a sack of meal, and headed for the door at a dead run.

  In the main hall there was a confusion of noise and moving figures, and out on the promenade there was gunfire. Some of the searchlights had already gone out on the waiting ships, and Ben found himself tripping over people in the dim light. Then a giant flare burst outside the recreation hall, and a dozen Earthmen, gathering their wits, started converging on him and his wriggling burden. He still gripped his tangle-gun, and cleared a path, but people were grabbing at his arms and legs as he twisted across the room. Two men blocked his way at the door; he headed straight for them, saw one of them dive for his legs, deftly side-stepped and shoved the man’s hulk into the path of the other as he burst out onto the promenade.

  Once outside, he paused to make sense out of the confusion. A squad of Earth police had arrived and were trying to deploy themselves to prevent the Spacers from regaining their ships, but with the girls as hostages the raiders were safe from gunfire. A shout went up from the onlookers as Ben came out the door, and three uniformed men headed in his direction. Somebody shouted, “There he goes! Get him!” And then, “Hold it — he’s got a girl!”

  Across the way there was a mighty explosion, and the Spacer ship next to Ben’s blossomed into a ball of yellow flame. Some of his companions were making dashes for their ships with girls on their shoulders; two had alread
y been relieved of their booty and were struggling in the arms of police. Ben heard the whine of bullets as they ricocheted off the metal promenade.

  For a moment it looked hopeless. Then Ben heard the whir of antigravity generators, and one of the raiding ships lifted suddenly from the ground, followed by another and another. At least some of them are getting away, he thought grimly. He measured the distance to his own ship, then rolled the girl off his shoulder and held her like a shield against his chest as he faced the spotlights of a converging circle of guards. He ducked around the folding chairs and tables strewn in his path as an attempt was made to barricade him. Then he concentrated on careful use of his tangle-gun charges to hamper his assailants. Six or seven more ships lifted as he made his way across the promenade, and then the open hatch of his own ship loomed nearby. With the last of his strength he hoisted the girl up into the hatchway and fell into the ship behind her, slamming the hatch shut with a clang.

  It was only then that he saw the blond-haired youth inside the ship, aiming an automatic pistol at his chest from across the cabin.

  Ben Trefon was never certain exactly what happened next, nor exactly how it happened. There had been times before when he had moved almost by instinct, assessing a situation and acting upon it in the same split second; sometimes Spacers’ lives depended upon that kind of instinctive action. He knew that with the girl on the floor he had nothing to shield him, and he knew the youth’s pistol could kill him. In a matter of minutes, the police outside would have the hatch pried open. The answer was clear in the same split second. His only possible safety was in space.

  Without hesitation Ben slammed his hand down on the control bar, fully activating the null-grav units. In the same movement he dove across the cabin at the intruder. He heard the gun go off, a million miles away, and felt searing pain in his shoulder. Then he and the youth were rolling on the cabin floor, fighting for control of the hand that held the gun. Ben grabbed the young man’s wrist, slammed the gun hand on the deck, and heard the weapon clatter across the room. The youth caught Ben in the chest with his feet, hurling him across the cabin and diving for the lost gun. Through it all the girl puffed and struggled in the tangle web, shouting encouragement to her would-be rescuer and hurling imprecations at Ben.

  Suddenly, it was over. Ben’s hand closed on the pistol, and he twisted to his feet, holding off his attacker with a warning gesture. The Earthman looked at him, and started for the hatchway. Ben shook his head. “Better take a look outside first,” he panted.

  The Earthman followed Ben’s eyes to the view screen, and stared in horror. Throughout the fight the ship had been rising on its null-gravs; now Earth was a huge disc in the sky, dwindling visibly as the atomic engines took hold and hurled the ship away from the planet. The intruder shook his head helplessly as he watched his home planet receding before his eyes. “We’re — in space,” he said weakly. “You got away.”

  Ben frowned at him and, a little confused, peered at the girl. There was a similar nasal twang in their voices, and now Ben could see a similarity in their faces too. Both of his captives had the same stubby noses, the same sandy hair and the same crop of freckles. Both were watching him with angry blue eyes. For a moment Ben didn’t comprehend. Then he burst into helpless laughter.

  His part of the raid had gone according to plan — almost. His orders had been to kidnap a girl, and by the moons of Jupiter he had kidnaped one.

  The trouble was, he had also kidnaped her brother. And that, unfortunately, was not part of the plan.

  3

  TOO MANY PRISONERS

  BEN TREFON’S first overwhelming impulse was to get rid of the intruder, somehow: land again and throw him off the ship, release him in a lifeboat, do anything, but get him off the ship at any cost. He simply could not be allowed to stay. The Spacer Council would never tolerate it, and neither would common human decency. Kidnaping a woman was one thing. Kidnaping a man was something else entirely, for it violated one of the most basic laws of Spacer relations with Earthmen.

  Ben gripped the pistol, glaring at his unwelcome captive and rubbing his aching shoulder. It felt as though a mule had kicked him there; actually, the discharged bullet had barely scratched the skin, but to Ben it seemed the final insult. Why did it have to happen to him? Everything going exactly as planned, the kidnaping squad working as a perfectly organized team, the Earthmen behaving exactly as predicted — and now the fly in the ointment.

  Of course it was easy to see what had happened. The youth must have realized the futility of trying to stop Ben on the ground after seeing the tangle-guns doing their harmless but effective work. So he had done what must have seemed logical: waiting outside the hall until he saw where Ben was taking the girl, and taking advantage of the delaying action on the promenade to sneak aboard the ship before Ben got there. Not counting on the Spacer’s resourcefulness, and not understanding how null-gravity engines worked, the youth must have thought he could prevent Ben from getting off the ground if he could only get into the ship’s cabin.

  Probably thought I had to crank up the motor like an air compressor, Ben thought sourly. Obviously the Earthman hadn’t even known they were spaceborne until Ben had pointed to the view screen. And now, as Earth rushed away from the little ship, Ben was beginning to wish fervently that he hadn’t moved quite so fast. Earth’s women were a critical and necessary link in the Spacer’s pattern of survival, and as long as kidnaping was the only way to recruit them, kidnaping was part of the game. If an Earth man came into space voluntarily, that was his own lookout, but to force a man out into the area of heavy cosmic radiation was something else altogether.

  Because nobody knew for sure how many hours in space an Earthman could tolerate before he became finally and irrevocably a Spacer.

  Staring at his unwelcome passenger, Ben searched his mind for a solution. Take him back again? Impossible now. Anti-aircraft shells were bursting all around the ship, blossoming into yellow flares of violence. Every few seconds in the view screen he could see a large flare as one of the deadly ground-to-air missiles caught up with a fleeling Spacer ship, exploding on contact and blowing the ship into fragments. Twice Ben had felt his own ship jar slightly as it automatically fired its own space-to-space rockets to fight off attacking Earth missiles that had picked up his ship in their homing sights.

  But something else was going on down on the planet’s surface, something that didn’t fit the pattern of Earth defenses against Spacer raids that Ben had learned so carefully. In half a dozen areas on the dark side of the receding planet Ben could see wave after wave of yellow sparks that flickered for a few moments and then blinked out. They looked for all the world like the rocket flares of ships being launched, and Ben felt the hair on the back of his neck prickle for a moment even though he knew the idea was ridiculous.

  Whatever the flickering lights were, one thing was certain. He was not going to land his ship again just to unload a stowaway, not through this kind of barrage. And a lifeboat would never make it down. Maybe when they reached the Spacer orbit ship the commander would send the Earthman back after the send-off barrage had slackened and hope that he hadn’t absorbed enough radiation to matter.

  For the moment, though, they were stuck with each other. Ben shook his head in disgust. “You really take the stupid prize,” he said to the youth. “You made your big mistake when you climbed aboard this crate.”

  The intruder was still staring at the view screen as though it were lying. “I don’t see how it’s possible,” he said. “There wasn’t any recoil.”

  “Null-grav engines don’t recoil.”

  “And there’s no way off this thing?”

  “You’re so right,” Ben said.

  On the floor of the cabin the girl had given up struggling in the tangle web, finally realizing that if she lay perfectly still the adhesive bands stopped tightening around her arms and legs. The youth looked down at her and shook his head. “Sorry, kid,” he said softly. “It looks like we’re o
ut of luck. He’s pulled away clean.”

  Tears were forming in the girl’s eyes. “You shouldn’t have tried it. You should have just let me go.”

  “Well, it’s all over now. Maybe it won’t be too bad for you. And if he has any decency maybe he’ll make it quick for me.” He gripped the girl’s shoulder for a moment, and turned to face Ben. “All right,” he said. “I’m ready any time.”

  Ben blinked. “Ready for what?”

  “Don’t make it tough,” the youth said desperately. “You’ve got the gun in your hand.”

  “You bet I have,” Ben said. “I’m keeping it, too. Now if you’ll kindly step way back, I’ll break that web loose so the girl can breathe.”

  The Earthman didn’t budge. “Look,” he burst out. “You’ve got your prize, you’ve got what you came for. What more do you want?”

  Ben stared at him. “You think I’m going to shoot you?”

  “Well, what else? I don’t want to be a guinea pig for any of your infernal Spacer experiments.”

  Ben snorted. “Friend, I’ve got trouble enough just having you aboard this ship alive. I’d have a real mess on my hands if I brought you in dead, with your sister here to testify. Now get back against that wall and shut up before I put you in a tangle web.”

  The Earthman moved back, obviously confused. Ben was angry; the intruder’s words didn’t make sense to him, and he didn’t feel like pondering mysteries right then. Watching his captive out of the corner of his eye, he checked the control panel, adjusted the drive a fraction of a degree, and started the automatic probe signal that would establish contact with his sister ships. Then he knelt by the girl and started to cut the adherent strands of the tangle web with a small hand unit.