Chapter 51
THE COUNTESS ENTERED Grimes’ day cabin without knocking. The big, evil cat stalked behind her.
He looked up from the papers on his desk.
“Yes?” he demanded sharply. Then he saw that she was holding a pistol, a stungun, and that it was pointing at him. She pressed the trigger. Grimes was paralyzed but not unconscious. Perhaps she had used the weapon on lower power only or, possibly, the metal desk had acted as a partial shield.
He heard, from somewhere on a lower deck, the sound of an explosion.
She smiled viciously and remarked, “I let Katy have the heavy artillery. It sounds as though she’s used it.”
He said nothing. He could not. But he thought, Billy will have heard the shot. He’ll investigate.
She said, “Don’t expect the mate to come to hold your hand. I’ve already dealt with him. I hope that Katy soon finishes what she’s doing. There should be somebody more or less conscious in the control room . . .”
She strolled around the day cabin, the cat at her heels.
“Not bad, not bad . . . This accommodation will do for me as soon as I’ve had you . . . removed. I might even keep your . . . ornaments. Old girl friends, are they? As you may have guessed, my tastes run more to the female form divine than to the hairy-arsed male version . . . That one on the bicycle . . . she’s rather butch, isn’t she?”
With an effort Grimes was able to turn his head. (The paralysis was wearing off.) He saw the Countess lift the tiny golden woman on her little gleaming steed down from the shelf, set the models down on the deck.
“How do you make this thing work?” she asked. “I’d like to see it in action.”
As though in obedience to her words the slim, golden legs, with feet on the pedals, began to move. The bicycle and rider made one circuit of the cabin and then, as though demonstrating her skill as a cyclist, the miniature Una released her grip of the handlebars—which turned so that the handles were pointing forward. From each of them projected a blade. Grimes remembered having seen this sort of thing once before. That time he had been the subject of attack by a murderous bicycle.
The Countess aimed her pistol and fired, again and again. Against the tiny robot it was quite useless. The cat pounced, but it was too slow. One of the blades caught the girl on her vulnerable right heel. It came away red. She screamed and fell to the deck. The bicycle dashed in for the kill. The blades drove into her right temple, piercing the skull, penetrating the brain.
And now, thought Grimes dully, for the Big Bang. Its mistress dead, the cat would self-destruct. How powerful was the bomb hidden in its body? Powerful enough to devastate the day cabin and all its occupants, living and dead. Powerful enough, probably, to blow the nose off the ship.
But the Countess was still living—after a fashion. Her long legs were twitching. The fingers of her outstretched hands were opening and closing, scrabbling at the deck. She was moaning softly and wordlessly.
The cat was chasing the deadly, glittering toy which, twisting and turning, was trying to get itself into a position to deliver an attack. A heavy paw went out, batted the tiny rider off her saddle, knocking the bicycle off balance. It fell to its side and lay there briefly, its wheels still spinning. The front one turned at right angles to the frame as it tried to right itself. But the animal was too fast for it. Jaws opened wide and closed, metal on metal, and . . . crunched. There was a brief sputter of blue sparks, the acridity of ozone.
The rider, the tiny golden woman, was running now. The cat dropped the twisted remains of the bicycle, started after her. The beast was fast, agile, but its prey was even—although barely—more so. How long could the chase go on? How long would the Countess go on living? How long would it be before the watch beast realized that its mistress was dead and detonated the explosive device built into it?
“Captain!” somebody was saying. “Captain!”
Grimes withdrew his horrified attention from the macabre chase, saw that Mayhew had come into the cabin. There was blood on the telepath’s hands and clothing (not his own, Grimes was to learn later).
“We must get it out of the ship,” Mayhew said urgently. “We must get it out before it detonates!”
Grimes found that he could speak.
“We . . . can’t. Not while the drive is running. We must not . . . discharge mass.”
“You were firing off guns.”
“That was . . . different. All the mass stayed within the combined fields.”
“Then shut down the drive. Come up to control. I can handle both Una and the cat.”
Handle Una? wondered Grimes. Surely that figurine did not run to a brain, either electronic or organic.
He felt strength seeping into him. From Mayhew? He managed to get up from the chair in which he had been slumped. The cat, still chasing the little golden woman, brushed against his leg but ignored him. The Countess was beyond noticing anything. Mayhew went to him, supported him, led him to the door. As soon as they were through, the figurine scampered out into the alleyway, followed by the animal.
He ignored them. Painfully, he pulled himself up the ladder and through the hatch into Control. Williams was there, slumped in his seat, unconscious. He staggered to the command chair, sank into it. His fingers went to the controls set in the armrests.
“The overall monitor,” urged Mayhew.
He activated the rarely used Big Brother Is Watching system. In the stern vision screen he could see, at will, into every compartment of the ship. He was able to follow the sternward progress of the little golden girl, the vicious black-and-white predator, the flight and pursuit down the spiral staircase surrounding the axial shaft.
“Mr. Malleson is in the Mannschenn Drive room,” said Mayhew.
Don’t nag me, he thought.
He said, “Tell Epsilon Draconis that I’m shutting off the synchronizer and shutting down the drive . . .”
He heard, from the NST transceiver, “What am I supposed to do? Make a break for it, or what?”
Tell him to get stuffed, he thought.
He said, “Ask him to stand by, please. We have problems.”
He looked out through the port. Epsilon Draconis was there, hard and distinct against the background of vaguely swirling darkness, the nebulosities that were the stars. As the whine of Sister Sue’s drive deepened to a rumble and then died she faded, vanished, and abruptly the stars became hard points of light.
And . . .
And, I murdered William Moore as I sailed, as I sailed . . .
But William Moore Williams was there, sprawled in his seat and snoring.
Grimes returned his attention to the screen.
Deck after deck after deck, the tiny golden woman, the big black-and-white cat, hunted and hunter, while in the commodore’s day cabin the ham-strung Countess breathed her last. Deck after deck after deck . . .
He took a sideways look. Epsilon Draconis was still with him. She, too, had shut down her Mannschenn Drive, was standing by to render assistance should it be required.
Deck after deck after deck . . .
“Open inner airlock door,” he said to Mayhew.
“Door opening, Captain.”
The miniature Una was in the chamber, the cat hard upon her heels.
“Close inner door. Open outer.”
He switched to an exterior view of the hull. He saw the door open, saw the sudden flurry of ice crystals. The cat now had the golden figurine in its mouth, was tumbling over and over as it fell into the nothingness.
There was an eye-searing flash and then the screen was dead.
“What are you doing?” came Captain Mulligan’s petulant voice from the NST transceiver.
“Tell him,” said Grimes to Mayhew, “just dumping garbage.”
He regretted the words as soon as he had uttered them. The Countess’s cat had been no more than garbage, dangerous garbage at that, but the figurine of Una had been not only a gift, a thoughtful gift evocative of old memories, but it had saved his life and the lives of all those aboard Sister Sue, all of those, that is, who still had lives to save.