Night Walk (20 page)

Tallon wondered if she were as puzzled as he was. The adress Helen had
given Cherkassky was one they had picked out of the air, knowing only
that it must be somewhere in the warehouse district. But Cherkassky's
men had evidently gone to the designated address and found a man they
believed to be Sam Tallon. Not only that, but the man actually admitted
to being Sam Tallon!
nineteen
Tallon switched back to Seymour's eyes and watched Helen, Cherkassky,
and the others approach the personnel carrier. In a few minutes his way
to the ship would be clear, thanks to that other Tallon, whose miraculous
appearance was utterly mystifying.
However, Cherkassky was going to find out the truth, sooner or later,
and when he did nothing would save Helen from his anger. She was walking
quietly with the others, apparently unconcerned, but Tallon saw her
look toward his hiding place now and then. This was it, he thought --
the last time he would ever see her -- and all he could do was watch
her leave with that monster Cherkassky. In those few seconds Tallon felt
himself grow old.
"Helen," he whispered.
At the sound of her name, Seymour twisted violently in Tallon's arms,
jumped to the ground, and went scampering across the open space toward
the group.
Tallon, still tuned to the dog's eyes, saw the figures expand in his vision.
Cherkassky's pinched face turned toward the dog -- and Tallon -- with a
sudden tight look.
As Seymour neared the group he began swerving to get to Helen, and the
scene he was transmitting became too unstable to be satisfactory.
Tallon reselected Helen's eyes and saw the little dog bounding forward,
one of the men waving his arms to shoo Seymour away, and -- in the
corner of her vision -- Cherkassky pointing at the crane and speaking
rapidly. Cherkassky's shrill commands filtered into Tallon's hiding place.
Swearing savagely, Tallon lunged across the engine compartment, hampered
by not being able to see anything but what Helen was seeing, and burst out
through the inspection hatch. He saw his own feet appear under the crane
at the far side, as viewed by Helen; then his gray figure appeared,
running hard, and heeled sharply as it came round the corner of the base
of the bright yellow crane.
Guided by Helen's eyes, Tallon ran desperately toward the ship. His legs
were numb from the long wait in the confined space, forcing him to run
with a grotesque, stumbling slouch. As he pumped his arms and legs,
trying to coax some speed out of them, he saw the men fan out, pulling
weapons from their holsters.
He heard the familiar angry whine of hornet guns. The range was a bit too
far, and the drug-laden darts clattered about his feet. Then he heard the
sound he had been expecting -- the flat cracks of pistol fire, followed by
distant shouts as the teams of searching troopers heard the commotion.
An automatic rifle barked, filling the air with screaming ricochets.
Tallon now saw the small blurred shape of Seymour, frantic with fear,
racing toward him. The dog leaped for Tallon's arms, and the impact
almost knocked Tallon down. He reeled and kept going, now halfway to
the ramp of the Lyle Star.
Still through Helen's eyes, he saw Cherkassky run a few steps toward him,
then stop and take careful aim with a pistol. On the point of firing,
Cherkassky lurched as Helen caught his arm, struggling for the weapon.
Cherkassky's face contorted with fury as he shook her off and aimed again.
Helen went for him once more, fingers tearing at his face.
Tallon saw white coronas glowing round Cherkassky's eyes as he spun toward
her, saw the black round muzzle of the pistol spit flame, saw the darkness
flood over Helen's view of his own still-running figure. Then he was blind
and snarling with mingled shock and hatred. He reselected Seymour's eyes
and saw gray uniforms running toward him -- and Cherkassky standing beside
Helen's body.
The automatic jarred into Tallon's palm as he turned with it, working the
trigger as fast as it would move. Men in gray stumbled and fell under the
hail of multiple bullets, but not Cherkassky, who stood there and finally
got off a shot at Tallon.
Tallon felt something snatch at his sleeve, heard Seymour give an almost
human grunt of pain. Then he was at the foot of the ramp and pounding up
the springy slope. The blond sergeant appeared at the top, jaw open with
surprise as he fumbled with his holster. Tallon fired instinctively, and
the sergeant was lifted right off the ramp as he caught all six bullets.
"Get him, you fools," Cherkassky shouted angrily. "Cut that man down."
Tallon hurtled through the airlock, ducking beneath a hail of lead,
and threw over the manual operation lever. As motors whined into life,
swinging the heavy outer door into place, Tallon saw men sprinting
for the bottom of the ramp. He fired at them, and then the automatic
clicked impotently.
Throwing it down, Tallon ran forward and up the short companionway
to the control deck, along a corridor, and into the control room.
The view screens were blank panels, and the control console was dead.
His right hand scuttled down the line of primary switches, bringing life
to networks of circuits and systems. There would be a wait of perhaps a
minute before the negative gravity units would be ready to drop the ship
into the sky. A green light flicked on to indicate that the airlock
was closed and the vessel now sealed for flight. Momentarily safe,
Tallon slumped into the central seat and activated the view screens,
grateful for the Block's meticulous training in the handling of all the
basic control configurations.
The screens glowed with color, matching the smaller direct-vision panels,
showing him a vista of ships and gantries. He picked out Helen's body near
the personnel carrier, lying in the same position, dark green uniform,
coppery flash of hair, dark red of spreading blood.
"I'm sorry, Helen," he said aloud. "So very, very sorry."
"Tallon?" A voice crackled from the ceiling near his head. "Is that you,
Tallon?"
Tallon could see no grille from which the voice could be coming.
"Yes, this is Sam Tallon," he said warily. "Who are you?"
"This is Fordyce. I wondered if you would get as far as the Lyle Star."
"Fordyce!" Tallon began to understand the enigma of the appearance of
the other Tallon. "You've had a bug in here all along!"
"Of course. How else do you think we were able to get a man to that address
your girl friend gave Cherkassky? It was a pity you had to tell everybody
about the brain capsule, though; it means we can't use that technique
any more. The Block would have reprimanded you rather harshly."
" Would have?"
"Yes . . . had you got away. You won't be able to make it, though. There's
a squadron of laser rafts right over your head, and Heller has thrown in
all the tactical nuclear weapons he had available in the area. You'll never
get past that lot; and even if you do, the Grand Fleet will be on your neck
before you've cleared the atmosphere."
Tallon was still thinking about Helen Juste. "I guess," he said mechanically,
"I've made my share of mistakes this trip."
"I guess." Fordyce's voice was emotionless. "Goodbye, Tallon."
TalIon did not answer. He had just noticed that the E.L.S.P. men outside
were running away from the Lyle Star as fast as they could. Some of them
glanced up at the sky as they ran, which meant the laser rafts were getting
ready to use their bright red lances, and that his death was only a matter
of seconds now. There would not even be time to get his ship off the ground.
Hopelessly, he reached out with his left hand to initiate the takeoff
sequence and noticed that his fingers were streaked with blood, although
he had felt no wound. Then he remembered Seymour's cry of pain as they
were nearing the ramp. With his other hand he turned the little dog's head
to get a close-up of the body. There was a ragged hole in the thorax,
just above the rapidly ballooning and contracting belly. The brownish
hair was matted with blood.
"You too," Tallon mumbled, feeling Seymour weakly lick his hand.
A blaze of red light flashed on the view screens, and the ship's alarm
system shrilled as the laser rafts opened up on the helpless ship. Tallon
sat with bowed head for a moment, trying death on for size. Then he did
something only a man who was either insane or desperate would do:
He reached for the null-space drive panel, knocked off all the safety
gates, and punched the jump button.
The leap into another continuum brought instant silence and a searing flash
of light from his eyeset. Tallon moaned with agony; then it was all over.
The jump was completed.
Outside the ship was the soft, peaceful blackness of a part of the galaxy
far beyond mankind's influence. Unfamiliar constellations glowed in the
blackness. Tallon did not even try to identify the groupings of brilliant
specks; he knew too much about the inimical geometries of null-space.
Because the jump had not been made from one of the established portals,
Tallon had hurled himself to a random point in the galactic wheel. He had
done it in desperation, but he had done it deliberately, knowing that
from those dark immensities there could be no return.
twenty
At first there was only a feeling of emptiness, of relief from intolerable
pressures and tension. The sensation was similar to the one he'd experienced
the night he'd left the Pavilion, but now vastly magnified. He had no
identity, and none of the responsibilities of identity. For a time
he was nobody, nothing, nowhere -- and satisfied with his state of
nonexistence. Then part of his mind began to comprehend the horror.
Fear slowly permeated his entire being, until Tallon had to clench his
teeth to contain it.
There was no way back.
He could make another jump, and another, and another -- until his food
ran out or he died of old age -- the flicker-transits stitching him here
and there across the star fields of infinity. But no matter how many
random jumps he made, his chances of ever emerging within reach of a
habitable planet were still so small as to be virtually nonexistent.
As he grew older, sitting in the same chair, he would see almost every
manifestation of matter and energy -- single stars, binaries, multiples,
formless gas clouds, wheels -- except that he would, of course, be blind
within a few hours.
Tallon snapped out of the descending spiral and turned his attention
to Seymour, who was lying in his lap, trembling slightly, curled around
the dark wound. The breath-seeking pulsations of his belly were coming
more rapidly, but with less vigor. Tallon was pretty sure that Seymour
was dying.
He took off his jacket, folded it into a kind of nest on top of the
control console for the negative gravity propulsion system, and laid
the little dog in it. Seymour was having trouble keeping his eyes open,
and Tallon kept getting momentary blackouts. He got up and began to look
around for a medical kit, feeling the artificial gravity dragging at his
feet. The field was designed to reproduce a man's normal Earth weight,
but as it originated right in the floor plates and was subject to the
inverse square law, the lower part of the body always felt much heavier
than the head and arms.
There were no medical supplies visible anywhere on the control deck
within Seymour's restricted view, and to search the other compartments
would mean taking Seymour along. Tallon hesitated, undecided. He was
going to need food, and it would be better to organize it while he was
able to see what he was doing.
"I'm sorry, Seymour," he said. "This'll be your last job."
Tallon gently took the dog up in his arms and moved aft. The Lyle Star
was basically a conventional freighter, with a half deck in the nose,
most of its drive components in the tail, and a cylindrical center body
for cargo. Its control room, crew quarters, and stores occupied the
half deck, and underneath were astrogation equipment, power plants for
internal services, and miscellaneous stores. At the rear of the half deck
a lateral catwalk looked into the cavernous hold. The rear of the hold
was stacked with bales of dried protein plants, but the forward end was
clear, the cargo lashing rings neatly tucked into their recesses. Tallon
knew the ship was armed, but he could see no evidence of weapon systems
and concluded the Block had begun using some very sophisticated stuff
since he had last been on one of their ships.
He looked around the little galley, noting that the inventory gauges of
the victual supply magazines showed reserves that would last him at least
fifteen years. The thought of spending that length of time in darkness
and then starving to death was utterly depressing. He hurried out of
the galley and began trying other doors, looking briefly into empty rooms.
What an ending, he thought: what a miserable, futile way to finish up.
Ever since men had first learned how to boost payloads into space beyond
the reach of gravity, they had been littering the cosmos with metal shells
containing everything from pans of microbes to nuclear warheads. But an
intelligent alien who chanced upon the Lyle Star would find the most baffling
piece of cosmic garbage yet -- a man with brown plastic buttons for eyes and
a dying dog in his arms, wandering around an empty ship. No alien was going
to come aboard, however, because none of the millions of stellar probes had
ever found evidence of intelligent . . .
Clang-ang-ang-ng-ng! Metal collided with metal somewhere near the airlock.
The echoes faded away in the vast spaces of the hold.
Tallon's knees almost buckled as the shock wave surged along his nerves.
He was in a narrow corridor whose aft end opened on the catwalk skirting
the hold, and he would be able to see what had caused the sound by going
to the end and looking over the handrail. Tallon walked toward the dark
rectangle, then stepped out onto the catwalk. A black shape was moving
on the lower deck, close to the inner door of the lock.
It was Lorin Cherkassky.
He looked up, and Tallon saw that he had a bloody gash on his forehead
and that he was still holding a pistol. They faced each other in silence
for several throbbing seconds. Cherkassky gave a prim, icy smile, his
head making slight rocking movements on the long turkey neck. Tallon
involuntarily took a step back.