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There was a loud bang further back on the roof as the trap-door was thrown open. I hung quietly, listening, smiling at my success as I heard the searchers talking clearly.
“See anything, Bukai?”
“No.”
“Anyone on the roof?”
“No. Shall I come back inside?”
Well done, diGriz. The enemy outwitted again, you clever devil.
“No. Walk along the roof and look.”
They were machines, not men. Any intelligent man would not have ventured out on that icy roof. He would have known better.
Any intelligent man would not have found me. These machine-minded morons just followed instructions until they succeeded.
The slitherings and gruntings grew closer and closer—and my rope twitched as someone pulled at it. I looked up into the expressionless features of the searcher as he leaned over the end of the roof.
Fifteen
This was it. My eyes were adjusted to the starlight so that I saw his head jerk when he spotted me. Saw him sit up and turn his head about and open his mouth to shout.
“Ahiru.”
Then he slipped. And for the first time I saw expression on the face of a gray man. Horror. He grabbed for the nail holding the rope. And missed. His fingers slapped hard on the roof. Then he slid away. Faster and faster. I could hear the sound of his sliding, but he made no other sound. Nothing. Then he was gone and I covered my ears because I did not want to listen to what happened below.
What next? The chill seeped into my bones as I hung there in the night and waited. There were muffled voices inside the building. I couldn’t make out the words, then someone else joined the other man in the open trapdoor.
“Did Bukai say anything?”
“He spoke my name.”
“And he slipped and fell?”
“Yes.”
“That is not good.”
“It is not. He is better dead. A man who shows emotion like that.” Then the trapdoor closed.
What nice people. Bukai sure had friends. I suppose I felt sorrier for him than they did. Moral Philosophy! Before my fingers froze completely I pulled myself back up the rope and took a careful look. Trapdoor closed, roof empty. Back onto the peak and a slow and careful slither back. This was no time to slip and join the much-mourned Bukai.
After that I waited a long and frigid ten minutes, counting the seconds, until I was sure the room below would be empty. Or hoped it would be. The chill of the cold metal was biting through my insulated suit before I let myself pull at the door. My teeth chattering so hard I was sure they could hear them on the ground below. The room below was dark; they were gone.
There is a limit to the amount of stress a body can take and mine must have felt that it had had more than enough for the night. So when I rested on the floor for a bit while I thought about what to do next I instantly fell soundly asleep. So soundly that when I woke up, an unmeasurable amount of time later, I had no idea how long I had been sleeping. A minute or a day; there was no way to tell. What if everyone was awake? I would be trapped in here until nightfall. But how long were the days? I muttered curses at myself for falling asleep as I picked the lock as silently as I could. Opening the door with slow patience. The hall was empty. And the window across from the door was still black with night.
“Lucked out again, diGriz. Or maybe your subconscious timer is doing a better job than your conscious mind. Back to work.”
The sleep had refreshed me and I tiptoed through the building, senses, alert. All the doors were closed and I assumed that students and staff were sleeping off the strenuous affairs of the day. There was a light on in the headmaster’s office so I put my eye to the crack as I opened it. He was sitting in the chair, awake, waiting for me. I slid through and closed it behind me.
“It is you,” he said, and I saw that he had a glass of water raised to his lips. He set it down carefully on the desk.
“If that’s water I’ll have some,” I said, reaching for it. “It has been a thirsty night.”
“It is poison,” he said tonelessly as I picked it up. I put it right back down.
“Suicide?”
“Yes. If I had to. I had no idea who would walk through the door first.”
“Then they’re all gone?”
“Yes. They found nothing. One of them fell off the roof and was killed. Are you responsible for that?”
“Only indirectly. But I saw him fall.”
“They assume now that you have frozen to death in the snow. In the morning they will search for your body. It will not be a very stringent search because there is also some thought that you may have gone into the ocean.”
“I almost did. But now that this evening’s exhausting adventures are over I think we ought to go back to the topic under discussion when all the fun began.”
“Getting a message to the League.”
“That’s it. In the quieter moments tonight I have been giving it some thought. I have an idea that might just work. Are you tired?”
“Not particularly.”
“Good. Then I want to work in the electronics lab tonight. Can I do that—undisturbed?”
“It can be arranged. What do you want to do?”
“Dial up the library and get a diagram for a warpdrive detector. I assume you have enough parts and supplies here for me to build one?”
“We have the unit itself in our supplies. It is part of the training.”
“Even better. Let’s get to the lab and get started and I will show you what I want to do.”
With Hanasu doing the fetching and me doing the assembly my device soon took shape. When it was completed I stood it on the bench and stepped back to admire it. A metal tube a meter long, streamlined on the top, open at the bottom, with two metal vanes ru
“A work of art,” I said.
“What is its function?” Manasu asked, a realist to the end.
“It gets attached to one of your spacers—and that will be our next problem. If I place it carefully it will never be noticed because it is a duplicate of the standard flare ejector that all ships carry. Only this one doesn’t have flares—it has these.” I held out one of the carefully constructed cylinders of plastic. “Inside the plastic is a power source and a solid state radio transmitter. I have made ten of these radios, which should be enough. Here is what happens. Every time the ship reenters normal space its warpdrive will cut off. When this happens the receiver in the nose detects the fact—and it launches one of the radios. There is a built-in time lag of a half an hour. More: than enough time for the spacer to get on its way again. Then the radio switches on and begins broadcasting a strong signal on the League emergency wavelength. The signal contains my code identification and the location of this planet. And a call for help. Once the message gets through we simply sit back and wait for the space cavalry to arrive.”
“Very ingenious. But what if there is no receiver nearby when the ship emerges from warpdrive?”
“I thought you might ask that. We’re playing the law of averages. Most pilots use major navigation points most of the time. And most of these stars have a League station nearby. And most voyages make at least three downspace checks. One of the radio messages will have to be received.”
“Hopefully. But it is better than nothing. Suicide is still possible.”
“That’s right. Always always look on the su
“How will you affix it to the spacer?”
“With an atomic welder.” I held up my hand as he started to speak. “I know, no more fu
“There is a chainlink fence around it as you must know. And some guards at the gate. That is all I remember.”
“Should be easy to get by that setup. Then I’ll need your help with two things. I want to know when the next ship is leaving. And I’ll need transportation to the spaceport.”