Asgard's Conquerors (8 page)

"And I'll want half of the ship," he added.

"The ship!"

"Well," he said, patiently, "it's not really your ship,
anyhow. It was Mickey's. It always should have come to me. I'm just a little
late in claiming it, that's all. I'm only asking half. Half of everything. What
other options do you have?"

"I'm not sure," I said, sourly. "But I bet they'd be
cheaper ones."

"Sure," he replied. "They aren't charging you for the
room, are they?"

I hadn't heard an offer like it since Jacinthe Siani had volunteered to
buy me out of jail on Asgard with Amara Guur's money. If it came to a contest,
I decided that I'd rather deal with John Finn than with Amara Guur—but it
wasn't the kind of choice a sane man would want to be faced with. I was in the
frying pan again, and I was only being offered a fire to jump into.

"I don't know yet what the Star Force intends to do with me,"
I told him.

He laughed. "If you wait to find out, it will be too late to stop
them. They only have a dozen men on Goodfellow, and they're mostly ones they
couldn't trust to do a good job in the real line of action, but they have a
couple of hundred combat soldiers on
Leopard Shark.
Once
you're in their hands, Superman and the Scarlet Pimpernel couldn't get you out.
This is your last chance, Mike. Take it or leave it."

It didn't seem to be much of a chance, but there didn't seem to be any
others.

"Okay," I said, defeated. "You're on. Spring me, and the
ship's half yours. Half the money, too. I presume that I can leave it to you to
get the paperwork ready?"

"You certainly can," he assured me. He sounded very pleased
with himself. He had every right to be. When I thought what I'd had to go
through to earn that money, the idea of cutting him in as a reward for opening
a door seemed pretty sick. But if I wasn't free, I couldn't spend my money,
could I?

"Get some sleep," said Finn. "I just have to make a few
preparations, and then we're away. I wouldn't do this for everyone, you know—but
you're nearly family."

I tried to smile. I never had a brother, but if I had, I wouldn't have
wanted one like John Finn. It was bad enough to have him for a friend.
Sometimes, though, friends are in such short supply that you have to take whatever
you can get.

It can be an unfriendly universe, sometimes.

4

I cannot
claim to be the galaxy's foremost expert on jailbreaks—although, as you will
learn later, I have more than a single instance of experience from which to
generalize. Nevertheless, I believe that I can confidently identify four
criteria that need to be fulfilled if the break is to stand much chance of
success. While not wishing to encourage delinquent behaviour, I am prepared to
pass on these pearls of wisdom.

Firstly, it helps a lot if make your break at a time when those people
who are interested in keeping you locked up are not paying attention. This
might be because you have arranged with your allies to create some kind of a
diversion, but is more likely to be because they are all asleep.

Secondly, it helps a lot if you can move around inconspicuously once
you are no longer in your place of imprisonment. Darkness helps, but even in
darkness it is a good idea not to be instantly recognisable as a fugitive to
anyone you may happen to meet.

Thirdly, you must have somewhere safe and cosy to go— either a vehicle
in which you can make a clean getaway or a place of refuge where you can be
securely hidden away while a search is conducted.

Fourthly, never—but never—put your trust in the supposed expertise of
an assistant who has always seemed to you in the past to be a confirmed
no-hoper.

Anyone studying these four criteria will immediately realise that John
Finn's grand scheme to liberate me from my secure quarters on Goodfellow was
bound to be a bit rickety. The fact that he could open the door was merely a
beginning, and counted for less than one might imagine.

One problem with trying to be inconspicuous on a microworld is that it
is very small and entirely artificial. It has no cycle of day or night, so the
internal lights are never switched off. Another is that everybody knows
everybody else by sight, and a stranger sticks out like a sore thumb. Your
average microworld has very few hidden and forgotten corners, and in any case
is crammed full of sensory equipment and alarms because it has to be
perpetually on guard against things going wrong. If its staff are engaged in
scientific research they could hardly work a regular eight hours out of
twenty-four, even if twenty-four hours did mean anything special, because they
have to fit their personal timetables into the timetables of their
observations.

Had I thought about all this very carefully, I would have realised that
John Finn's escape plan was far from certain to succeed. Unfortunately, I
didn't think about it carefully. I just assumed that he could do it. This was
not because I am the kind of person who readily puts his trust in his fellow
man, but because I was still feeling benumbed and disoriented by the horrible
shock of it all.

I don't know what time it was when he turned up again. I don't even
know what kind of time-system the microworld was using. But I was roused from
sleep to find that the dimmed light had been turned up a fraction, and that
Finn was trying to press some kind of weapon into my fist.

"What is it?" I asked him.

"Mud gun," he said. "Benign weaponry issued to police
forces in enlightened nations. Fires wet stuff that goes through your clothes.
Skin absorbs some organic that acts as a muscle relaxant. Makes you feel like
you do in dreams sometimes, when you want to move but can't.

Purely
temporary effect. Okay?"

I took the weapon. Then he gave me an overall made out of silvery
plastic. He was wearing one just like it. I put it on.

"Right," said Finn. "I reckon we should have a clear run
if we time it right. Keep your head down—if anyone does see us, they'll
probably figure you for one of my boys. I daren't dim the lights—any little
thing goes wrong makes people very nervous. We're going straight for the
umbilical. A few hundred metres. Stay close."

I nodded.

He stood for a while, studying his wristwatch. About three minutes
passed before he said: "Let's go."

We went.

He took me along at a brisk walk. My feet kept wanting to break into a
trot, but I controlled the impulse and stayed behind him. I wished that he'd
brought something to hide me in, but microworlds don't have that kind of mobile
equipment. Laundry baskets are rarely seen outside of old movies.

We got at least three quarters of the way before the unexpected
happened and someone came through a hatchway ahead of us. It was a tall,
white-haired man and he was seemingly engrossed in studying the display on a
small hand-held bookplate. I dropped in behind Finn, trying to keep my face out
of the direct line of sight. Finn marched bravely on, and greeted the man
cheerfully. The guy with the bookplate barely glanced up, and muttered a reply.
I thought we were safe for five whole seconds, until we had to pass through the
hatchway ourselves and I spared time for a quick backward glance.

The white-haired man had stopped and was staring after us, with a look
of puzzlement on his face.

"Move it," I said to Finn. "We've got to get out
now."

I still thought we could make it, with only a short dash ahead of us to
the spur that led out to the docking-spindle. They wouldn't catch us from
behind, and even if the Star Force had posted a guard in the dock we had the
mud guns. Once we were up the umbilical and into the ship, I thought, all we
had to do was detach. I couldn't believe that they'd actually try to shoot us
down.

We got to the hatchway leading to the spur without any obvious alarm
having been raised, but climbing the spur seemed to take a long time—subjective
time always seems to be distorted when you're in a gravity-cline. Finn was
ahead of me, and he hurled himself through the far end hatch, gun ready to
fire. I hung back for a second, intending to appraise the situation.

Fantasies were running through my mind in which Finn immobilised the
guards and the guards immobilised Finn, so that I could make it to the ship all
on my own. I'd have been prepared to take my chances then, and head out of
system cheerfully. I still wasn't ready for everything to foul up.

Needless to say, everything did foul up.

There was no guard in the docking-bay. When I came through, after my
anticipatory peep, Finn was already halfway to the umbilical. I had time for
one quick surge of elation before he bounced back from the wall, rebounding
into one of those mysterious metal cylinders, and cursed, with feeling.

The airlock protecting the umbilical was sealed tight. According to the
instruments, the umbilical was reeled in. There was nothing on the other end of
it.

"They've moved the bastard ship!" he wailed, obviously
somewhat put out by the unexpected turn of events. My heart sank.

"They couldn't!" I protested. "There's no way they could
get through the lock." I couldn't believe it. But there wasn't any time
for further expression of our astonishment. Back in the spur we'd just come
along, there was the sound of movement. We were being pursued.

Finn launched himself quickly back to the hatchway which closed off the
spur. He shut it, again bracing himself against one of the big cylinders—whose
presence certainly made it easier to pull oneself around in the no-gee—and then
began to push the buttons on the keyboard beside the lock. All of a sudden,
alarm bells began to ring, and a red light began flashing over the hatch.

He turned to me with a toothy grin on his face.

"Created a little emergency," he said. "Station systems
think the bay is breached. All hatchways sealed. They can't get in."

"Can we get out?" I asked, ingenuously.

"Not exactly," he admitted. "But we wouldn't want to
steal a shuttle, anyhow. Couldn't get further than Uranus in one of those
things. We need your ship."

Things were still moving a little too fast for me. "So where the
hell is it?" I asked.

"Only one place it can be. Inside the belly of a cargo-
transporter. They couldn't get into it, so they decided to haul it to Oberon.
That's where local Star Force command is."

"They said they'd impound it," I murmured foolishly. It
seemed to me that our goose was well and truly cooked, and that the only place
to go was back to jail.

But Finn was still busy. He was urgently punching keys beneath the
nearest wallscreen. He glanced back over his shoulder and nodded in the direction
of a locker.

"Spacesuits," he said. "In there. You do know how to put
one on?"

"Of course I do," I told him. "So what?"

"Got to create an emergency," he told me. "A real emergency."

I opened my mouth to reply, but didn't have time. The alarm bells
stopped ringing and the red lights went out.

Finn cursed, and hurled himself back toward the hatchway, stabbing
again at the buttons controlling the electronic lock. It was no good. He wasn't
the only software wizard around. The microworld was full of them.