Chapter Three
Face down, thrashing on the sidewalk like a boated fish, Donovan struggled to reach the spare ammo clip in his jacket
pocket. His legs were a dead, unresponsive burden.
He moved in a dream. All sense of reality had fled; he was a performer and this a stage set for some fantasy‑melodrama.
Things like Larry troopers raining down out of the evening sky simply don’t happen in real life.
But it was happening. With startling clarity he perceived each little detail of its happening even as he flopped about.
Troopers were running forward, jump boots pounding hollowly against the wind whispering through darkened streets.
Others were bending over three supine, silent forms on the pavement. Above, thick clusters of blue haloes were still
descending and ‑ very high up ‑ red stars moved across the sky as the paratroop ships made another run, inundating the city
with propulsor noise. He felt a need for deeper darkness; here he was exposed. He relaxed the muscular tension holding his legs in place, and
scrabbled forward on his belly, letting them drag out of his pants legs. When they were gone, the empty legs flapped in the
gusting wind like the protesting arms of a ghost.
Hoarse shouts sounded back and forth among the Llralans. They stopped their headlong advance and half of them brought
up weapons. Donovan’s guts tightened against the expected impact of searing fire. A blocky specimen near the Terran used his own gun to knock up that of another, uttered a sharp command. His action
was almost too late; the soldier’s gun discharged upward with a static fzack! and a second rifle burned a black rut along the
sidewalk that ended just short of Donovan’s empty pants.
There was a choked cry from overhead. The troopers involuntarily craned their necks, seeking the source of that piteous sound.
Seeing his chance, Donovan hustled for an alley mouth on knuckles and thigh stumps. Crashed against a wall behind a garbage can. Dug in his pocket and found the clip, discarded the empty and rammed the new one home. Fed the chamber and turned back toward the street.
A blue circle of light was descending not twenty yards away, right over the gawping troopers. It came down very slowly,
and one of the Llralans played a hand torch over it.
The gray‑clad body suspended from the harness was dangling with a laxity only death can bring. The head lolled on the chest; the arms moved loosely with the pendulum-like motion of the body. In slow motion, the Llralan’s jump boots touched the ground. He could now see the ornate, rainbow‑colored boards on his shoulders ‑ indication of high rank. Charred remnants of uniform tunic flapped in the wind and the odor of burned flesh came strongly. The officer’s upper trunk was a blackened ruin.
While the soldiers stood momentarily awed in the presence of brass‑hatted death, Donovan began a careful sneak down
the alley. He had made about thirty feet when something hard and conical rammed deep into his spine. A high‑pitched voice said,
“Sig vash, frambule!”
He stiffened, half‑raised his gun.
“Vash, frambule!” The gun in back jabbed harder. “Vlisor gur stugor.”
He hesitated, calculating his chances. The voice became edged with something akin to hysteria, and the gun jittered nervously on his spine. “Vlisor gur stugor, frambule! “
Obediently, Donovan dropped his gun. He felt bitter as he did it. Whatever was going on, whatever situation on the rest of
Terra, he would rather have met it as a man on the loose ‑ even legless ‑ than as a prisoner of war. Especially one that had just
made a dent in the opposition. But dead he couldn’t accomplish anything, and this Larry behind him seemed just nervous
enough to kill him by frying if he resisted too much.
Loud cries sounded in the street and heavy footsteps came on the run. They had noticed his absence and in typical fashion
become overwrought. Shouting and running about seemed to be their way of meeting every situation. His captor called out and guided them. Greenish‑beamed torches came alive, converged on him. Behind the glare, boots shifted uneasily and throats were cleared. He could imagine their feelings; the thought of a legless cripple chopping down
several of their number and playing hard to get ‑ even for such a brief interim ‑ was disquieting. By simple arithmetic, if a cripple could do so much, then a whole man…
He grunted irritably. There was where the logic fell down: no one considered him as an individual. He was classified as cripple. Half a man. What half a man can do, a whole man can double or better.
Bull!
The alley was crowded now. An authoritative voice spoke from behind the glare of lights. “You speak Llralan, Rekk?” The query was in English.
He shrugged. Why try to deny it? “Yio, “ he gave the Llralan affirmative.
“Good,” applauded the other, slipping back into Llralan. “Then let me inform you that you are a prisoner of Empire, upon what is rapidly becoming an Empire‑held planet. I tell you this to show the futility of trying to escape. Any such attempt will be dealt with harshly.”
“What could I do?” Donovan indicated his legs.
“Plenty!” rasped another voice. “You killed my partner, you stinking…”
“Corporal!” reproved the bossy one.
“I am sorry, my captain. I spoke out of turn.”
“It is forgotten,” returned the officer condescendingly. “When one loses a partner, he is entitled to his grief, his anger.” Then, “You, Rekk ‑ what is your name?”
“Donovan.”
“And your occupation?”
“Larry‑killer.”
“H’mm.” The captain sounded troubled. “You do not feel the least bit sleepy or unsteady, Donovan?”
“Are you kidding?”
“No, I am not kidding.”
“Then you should be. Anyone who’d ask a question like that ought to be kidding.”
The captain sighed heavily. “So it’s going to be like that, is it?”
“It’s going to be like that,” Donovan confirmed.
“Ah, well ‑ there are those better qualified than I to ask questions and dig out the answers. Sergeant!”
“Yes, my captain?”
“Take the prisoner in charge, detail a squad and escort him to the nearest checkpoint. Have the flivver pilot there make
contact with the mother ship. The commander should be advised of this at once.”
“Yes, my captain. My captain…?”
“What is it?”
“The nearest checkpoint is LO‑80. That is a good twenty siveb from here ‑ and the prisoner, as you can see…”
“Yes. Yes, you have a point. What would you suggest, sergeant?”
“Back along the street, my captain ‑ in a merchant’s window ‑ I observed several wheeled tables. The prisoner could be placed upon one of those and pushed. Or Dispensary could be contacted and a wheelchair requisitioned.”
“No time,” the captain dismissed the second idea. “The wheeled tables sound like a good idea. Carry on, sergeant.”
“Yes, my captain.”
A gun muzzle found his already tender spine. “Vaga, Rekk! “
Donovan marched. He made his way back to the street surrounded by towering troopers who managed to look exceedingly self‑conscious as they paced alongside their stubby captive. Then one of the troopers stepped on a trailing pants leg and sent him sprawling and Donovan cursed him roundly and fluently in Llralan. After that, they watched his dragging clothing and didn’t seem quite as embarrassed.
The sergeant sent a pair of troopers off on the run to get the table. They were back in ten minutes, pushing a utility cart of the type used in kitchens and on patios ‑ big rubber tires, a power outlet; large, flat table surface and shelves underneath. Rough hands got him under the arms, boosted him aboard. “You hang on,” said the sergeant grimly, “or off you fall. We’ll put you back on, but we won’t keep you from falling.”
“Oh, no, sergeant, you’ll have to do much better than that,” Donovan said. “Much better. According to the captain, I’m a rare specimen. Get me banged up and there’ll be a reckoning.”
“Reckoning, is it?” inquired the sergeant nastily. He took a menacing step forward, reminding Donovan somewhat of the cop in the bomb shelter. But for the physical difference ‑ four fingers as opposed to five, pointed head as opposed to domed, and orange skin as opposed to pink ‑ they were cut from the same cloth.Toughs ‑ their answer to everything being a fist orclub or gun.
Donovan was too numbed from the suddenness of it all, too angry at himself because he had not reacted swiftly enough to
avoid capture, to be dismayed by the sergeant’s scowl. “Yes, reckoning,” he said flatly. “What if I told your commander that I personally saw you shoot that colonel while his attention was on me. Grudge against authority, that sort of thing. Then
there’d be a reckoning!”
The sergeant glanced around hastily, lowered his voice to a growl. “It’s a long way to LO‑80, Rekk ‑ and you just bought
yourself a side trip down some dark alley. A one‑way trip.”
“Then I’ll just say my piece here,” countered Donovan. He raised his voice. “Captain! Hey, captain!”
“Shh‑h‑h!” The sergeant made shooing motions. “Shut up, you fool!”
“Why? What do I care if you get the ax? You’re the enemy; I’ve got a weapon. Therefore you’re dead. But as to that proposed side trip, you don’t dare pull such a stunt.”
“Why not?”
“Because no tale you could dream up would save you if I get killed and cannot be questioned. I’m important to the big brass. Incompetent frambules that can’t keep a prisoner important to the big brass alive and healthy get shot ‑ you know that. So you’re over a barrel, friend ‑ and you might as well admit it.”
The sergeant fumed; the troopers fidgeted. But Donovan was right and they knew it. It was a very, very smooth ride to Checkpoint LO‑80, Donovan sitting at ease on the table and managing to convey the
impression of a prince surrounded by his vassals.
The flivver pilot at Checkpoint LO‑80 got an immediate and vehement response to his message. The commander thought,
it ran, that there was supposed to be no opposition to the landings. Therefore what did Checkpoint LO‑80 mean by coming
up with a Rekk that had killed six men (they were giving him credit for the colonel) and critically wounded another? That just
wasn’t proper procedure. Not at all. The commander would message the Supreme Commander of the occupational forces at
once. Meanwhile, the pilot would hustle the prisoner aboard his craft, abandon LO‑80 and head for the grounding site of the
mother ship.
The pilot helped the sergeant load Donovan into a too‑narrow bucket seat, called his gunner away from a rapt contemplation of fall wearing apparel in a shop window, and saw to it that the sergeant was comfortably ensconced beside the captive with drawn gun. Then he took the flivver up fast, circled out over the Thames. After that, a combination of speed, darkness and violent maneuvering made the Terran lose his bearings. Once the vagrant beams of a new moon sparkled on bigwater ‑ either the Channel or the Atlantic.
Finally they went down like a falling elevator and Donovan got a confused picture of patchwork fields and hedgerows and
neat little cottages before a massive, space‑scarred globe loomed up at them, portholes ablaze with light. They dropped into a cleared space where an honor guard with a motorized warehouse truck awaited. Donovan was lugged out, loaded aboard the truck. The sergeant followed, got on and the driver started up, moving toward the spaceship slowly to allow the guard to keep pace. The flivver from LO‑80 dove back into the sky.
There was frenetic and noisy activity around the base and halfway up the flanks of the interstellar leviathan. Burdened warehouse trucks scooted out of the gaping holds and empty ones scooted in; winches rose and fell. Ground armor clanked into the maws of big freight copters and the loaded copters lifted swiftly to make room for others. Higher up, pale lemon tractor beams reached out to enfold the long, slim paratroop ships as they returned from their drops, and warp them home. A
steady stream of matériel was being unloaded quickly, but without undue haste. Perspiring Llralans stripped to their under-tunics took time from their work to goggle as Donovan’s truck moved past, then turned to their tasks shaking their
heads.
From the looks of things, Larry was settling in for a long stay.
The truck climbed a wide ramp and went into a resounding hangar that was rapidly being emptied. It threaded through the confusion, arrived at a wide bank of intra-ship cars resembling nothing so much as old‑fashioned Terran elevators. Donovan was carried unceremoniously into one of the cars and shoved into one corner by the press of guards. The doors closed, the car lurched and began to climb steadily to the accompaniment of a nerve‑shattering whine. When it stopped and the doors rattled open, two brawny specimens lifted him bodily and carried him along a metal corridor that stretched into the distance.
At an alcove some three hundred feet from the elevator they set him down before a plastic‑topped steel counter while a pair of
Llralans with blue armbands on their sleeves stared curiously.
“Prisoner for you,” said the corporal of the guard.
“What is it?” asked the shorter of the two, leaning over the barrier and peering down.
“A vis come straight out of that walsos bottle you’ve got in your hip pocket,” retorted Donovan sharply. “Come to
haunt your dreams for all the miserable tricks you’ve pulled, you misbegotten frambule.”
The turnkey recoiled, put a guilty hand to the bulge on his hip. “He speaks our language?”
“And how!” endorsed the sergeant from London, giving Donovan a dirty look.
“Where’d you dig him up?” the other blueband wanted to know.
“In that big burg over on the island,” contributed the corporal. “London, they call it.”
“Yio? Have any trouble?”
“A little.”
“I blasted five of your bully boys,” informed Donovan, blowing his own horn. “And I got another one burned, and left still another very sick with lead poisoning.”
“Real fresh frambule, ain’t you?” inquired the corporal.
“That’s right.” Donovan sighed. “And since you’re about to put me on ice, it looks like I’ll stay that way. Real fresh.”
His sense of triumph at having maintained a vestige of independence by tongue‑lashing his captors was very short‑lived. They carried him down the corridor, opened one of many doors and dumped him on a cot within. The door clanged shut behind their departing backs with a sound of utter finality. Donovan lay on his back and stared at his new home ‑ a small cell about ten by fifteen feet, featureless except for the one blank door, the bunk and a tiny table.
“Damn,” he said. Then he repeated it twelve times, with feeling.
It didn’t help at all. He was still in the bowels of an enemy ship sitting somewhere in the countryside of France; he was still legless; he was
still under lock and key. He might as well have been nine thousand light‑years from London as a short hop across the Channel. His world ‑ and London’s ‑ had ended when the raid alarms sounded and the Llralan ships came booming over. As to what came next he had no idea. But it was certain to be unpleasant, probably painful and possibly fatal.
He sighed heavily. If it were fatal, he would at least have the consolation of knowing he had not come cheaply ‑ that he had swapped his life for six and possibly seven out of their ranks. That was something, anyway. He thought of Jane suddenly, and realized that he was not nine thousand light‑years away ‑ that London and their flat were only a couple of minutes away by air.
And what had that Larry captain said? Something about being a prisoner of Empire on what “is rapidly becoming an Empire‑held planet.” The Llralans had invaded the ancestral home of humanity, yet the fact of his being awake and kicking had disconcerted them ‑ they were expecting no opposition. Remembering the occupants of the bomb shelter ‑ how they had slumped one by one into unconsciousness ‑ he didn’t wonder.
So this, he thought wryly, is the way the world ends. Not with a bang but with a snore.
The way the world ends ‑ this is the way the world ends…
Not with a bang. No one had time to whimper.
Not with a bang… not with a whimper…
With a snore.
