AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Then the scaly devil said, “You will tell us who this person is, and nothing bad will happen to this village.” Yes, his kind were learning ruthlessness.
But still no one spoke. Some of the little devils hefted their weapons. Others examined the crowd, doing their best to identify the person in the recording, which kept repeating over and over. They didn’t seem to be having any luck, though. Some of the villagers started to laugh at them.
The little scaly devil who spoke Chinese said, “You tell us who this person is, and you take everything this person has.”
They were indeed learning. There was always someone, someone full of greed, who would pounce on an offer like that. And, sure enough, someone pointed at Liu Mei and shouted, “She did it! She’s the one! She’s a Red!”
Little scaly devils skittered forward to seize Liu Mei. Liu Han vowed a horrible revenge on the traitor. Maybe he also thought of that, for he kept right on pointing. “And there’s her mother, and there’s her mother’s comrade! They’re both Reds, too!” If he could remove the Communist presence from the village, maybe he could escape vengeance.
More scaly devils aimed their rifles at Liu Han. Numbly, she stuck her hands in the air. A little devil frisked her, and found a pistol in her pocket. That raised a fresh alarm. The scaly devils tied her hands behind her back, and served her daughter and Nieh Ho-T’ing the same way. Then they marched them back toward their helicopters.
I was captured once before, Liu Han thought. Eventually, I got away. I can do it again. She didn’t know if she would, but she could. She was sure of it. Because of that, she didn’t give way to despair, however tempted she might have been. Something will turn up. But, as she climbed into the helicopter, she couldn’t imagine what.
Glen Johnson grimly pedaled away on one of the Lewis and Clark’ s exercise bicycles. Sweat flew off him and floated in little, nasty drops in the exercise room. His wasn’t the only sweat floating around in the chamber, either. Several other crewmen and — women also exercised there. In spite of the ventilation currents that also eventually got rid of the sweat, the place smelled like a locker room right after a big game.
After what seemed like forever, an alarm chimed. Panting, Johnson eased upon the pedals. His heart pounded in his chest. It usually took things easy in weightlessness, and resented having to go back and work for a living. But he’d keep on living longer if it did, so he exercised. Besides, he’d get in trouble with the powers that be if he didn’t.
He unhooked the belt that held him onto the bike. The rest of the people in the chamber were doing the same. One of the troubles with strenuous exercise was that it made him look at a sweaty, tousled woman and not think of anything except how tired he was.
Lucy Vegetti, the sweaty, tousled woman in question, was looking at him, too. He wondered what that meant, and hoped to find out some time when his interest wasn’t quite so academic. But the mineralogist, after wiping her face on her sleeve, told him at least some of what was on her mind: “I heard last night that somebody had spotted another Lizard spy ship.”
“News to me,” Johnson answered. People were gliding out of the chamber to change and sponge off in the two adjoining smaller rooms, one for men, the other for women. In five minutes, another shift of exercisers would mount the bikes.
Lucy looked worried. “How are we supposed to do what we came out here to do if the Race keeps spying on us?”
She’d asked the same question when she and Johnson discovered the first Lizard spy craft. He shrugged. “We’ve got to do it. If we don’t, we might as well pack up and go home.”
She shook her head. “No, that would be worse than not trying at all. It would be giving up. It would tell the Lizards they’re stronger than we are.”
“Well, they are stronger than we are,” Johnson said. “If they weren’t, we wouldn’t have to worry about any of this folderol.” Reluctantly, he pushed off toward his changing room, adding, “See you,” over his shoulder.
“See you,” Lucy said. Johnson sighed. He hadn’t seen as much of her as he would have liked. She kept him thinking she was, or could be, interested, but things had gone no further than that. She didn’t tease; that wasn’t her style. But she was cautious. As a pilot, Johnson approved of caution-in moderate doses. As a man, he wished Lucy’d never heard of it. But, by the rules that had shaped up aboard the Lewis and Clark, the choice was all hers.
A damp sponge made a poor substitute for a hot shower, but it was what he had. After he’d cleaned up and put on a fresh pair of coveralls, he was about to go to his cubicle and either read or grab a little sack time when the intercom blared to life: “Lieutenant Colonel Johnson, report to the commandant’s office immediately! Lieutenant Colonel Glen Johnson, report to the commandant’s office immediately!”
“Oh, shit,” Johnson muttered under his breath. “What have I done now? Or what does that iron-assed son of a bitch think I’ve done now?”
He got no answer from the intercom. He hadn’t expected one. He wished Brigadier General Healey had yelled for him a couple of minutes earlier. Then, in good conscience, he could have reported to the commandant all sweaty and rank from his exercise period. He wondered if Healey kept close enough tabs on his schedule to know when he’d have sponged off. He wouldn’t have been surprised. Healey seemed to know everything that happened aboard the Lewis and Clark as soon as it happened, sometimes even before it happened.
Alone among the officers on the spaceship, the commandant boasted an adjutant. “Reporting as ordered,” Johnson told him. He half expected the spruce captain to make him cool his heels for half an hour before admitting him to Healey’s august presence. Hurry up and wait had been an old army rule in the days of Julius Caesar. It was older now, but no less true.
But Captain Guilloux said, “Go on in, sir. The commandant is expecting you.”
Since Healey had summoned him, that wasn’t the biggest surprise in the world. But Johnson just nodded, said, “Thanks,” and glided past Guilloux and through the door into the commandant’s office. Saluting, he repeated what he’d told the adjutant: “Reporting as ordered, sir.”
“Yes.” As usual, Healey looked like a bulldog who wanted to take a bite out of somebody. He’d wanted to take a bite out of Johnson when the pilot came aboard-either take a bite out of him or boot him out the air lock, one. He still wasn’t happy with Johnson, not even close. But Johnson wasn’t his biggest worry. His next words showed what was: “How would you like to stick a finger in one of the Lizards’ eye turrets?”
He couldn’t mean it literally-so far as Johnson knew, there were no live Liz
ards within a couple of a hundred million miles. But what he likely did mean wasn’t hard to figure out: “Have we got permission from Little Rock to blast their spy ship to hell and gone, sir?”
“No.” Healey looked as if having to give that answer made him want to bite, too. “But we have got permission to explore the possibility of covering the damn thing with black-painted plastic sheeting or aluminum foil or anything else we can spare that’ll make it harder for them to monitor us.”
Johnson nodded. “I’ve heard there’s a second ship in the neighborhood, too.”
Before he could say anything else, Brigadier General Healey pounced: “Where did you hear that, and from whom? It’s not supposed to be public news.” Johnson stood-or rather, floated-mute. He wasn’t about to rat on Lucy Vegetti, even if she hadn’t given him a tumble yet. Healey made a sour face. “Never mind, then. What you heard is true. We can only hope there aren’t any others we haven’t found.”
“Yes, sir.” Johnson considered. “Well, if that’s so, how much trouble can we give them? Blind ’em, sure, but can we jam their radar and their radio receivers? If we can’t, is throwing a sack over them worth the trouble we’ll get into for doing it?”
Now Healey turned the full power of that high-wattage glare on him. “If you’re yellow, Lieutenant Colonel, I can find somebody else for the job.”
“Sir, as far as I’m concerned, you can go to the devil,” Johnson said evenly.
Healey looked as if he’d just got a punch in the nose. Unless Johnson missed his guess, nobody’d told the commandant anything like that in a hell of a long time. He wished he’d said something worse. Goddamn military discipline, he thought. Alter a couple of deep, angry breaths, Healey growled, “You are insubordinate.”
“Maybe so, sir,” Johnson replied, “but all I was trying to do was figure the angles, and you went and called me a coward. You’ve got my war record, sir. If that doesn’t tell you different, I don’t know what would.”
Brigadier General Healey kept on glaring. Johnson floated in place, one hand securing him to the chair bolted to the floor in front of the commandant’s desk, the chair in which he’d be sitting if there were gravity or a semblance of it. When he didn’t buckle or beg for mercy, Healey said, “Very well, let it go.” But it wasn’t forgotten; every line of his face declared how unforgotten it was.
