D-99: a science-fiction novel by H. B. Fyfe (cool books to read TXT) 📗

earlier, but these had either blown over or faded into the deepening gray of the sky.

"Listen at the door!" ordered Taranto, impatient at having to remind the other.

He rose, wiped perspiration from his face with the palms of both hands, and rubbed them in turn on the thighs of his gray pants. He was inches shorter than Meyers, and twenty pounds or more lighter, but his bare shoulders bulged powerfully. A little fat softened the lines of his belly without concealing the existence of an underlying layer of solid muscle. He moved with a heavy, padding gait, like a large carnivore whose natural grace is revealed only at top speed.

Meyers watched him resentfully.

Why couldn't I have made it to one of the other emergency rockets? he asked himself. Imagine a bunch of crazy savages that say even landing here is a crime!

He supposed that Taranto would have pointed to the sizable city where they were held if he had heard the Syssokans called savages. Meyers thought the trouble with Taranto was that he was too physical, too much of a dumb flunky who spoiled Meyers' efforts to talk them out of trouble.

I had a better break coming, he thought.

He wished he had been in a rocket with one of the ship's officers who might have known about Syssoka. They would have gone into an orbit about the planet's star and put out a call for help to the nearest Terran base or ship. As it was, they might be given up for lost even if the other rockets were picked up. The course they had been on before the explosion had been designed to pass this system by a good margin.

Taranto, he recalled, had thought them lucky to have picked up the planet on the little escape ship's instruments. Taranto, decided Meyers, thought he was a hot pilot because he had been a few years in space. He had not looked so good bending the rocket across that ridge of rock out in the desert. They should have taken a chance on coming down in the city here.

They had just about straightened themselves out after that landing when they had seen the party of Syssokans on the way. It had not taken them long to reach the wreck. They could even speak Terran, and no pidgin-Terran either. Then it turned out that they did not like spacers of any race landing without permission. There had been a war with the next star system; and the laws now said there should be only one alien of any race permitted to reside on Syssoka except for brief visits by licensed spaceships.

"What's the matter with our government?" muttered Meyers.

"What?" asked Taranto, turning from one of the windows.

"I said what's the matter with the Terran Government? Why don't they pitch a couple of bombs down here, an' show these skinny nuts who's running the galaxy? Who are they to call us aliens?"

Taranto turned again to the eighteen inch square window, set like the other three in the center of its wall at the level of his shoulders.

"They're posting their sentries on the city wall for the night," he told Meyers. "The thing should be flying in here any time now."

"If it comes," said Meyers grumpily. "Something will go wrong with that too."

The other spat out the window that faced the main part of the Syssokan city, then padded to the one opposite. Strange patterns of stars gleamed already in the sky over the desert. The air that blew against his damp face was a trifle cooler.

Should I tell the slob about that? he wondered. Naw—he'd try to breathe it all! Let him sweat, as long as he listens for the Syssokans!

Meyers had left his bench to crouch over the trap door. There was no reason to expect their jailers, but the Syssokans had a habit of popping up at odd times. The evening meal was usually brought well after dark, however.

"Do you think it will really get here again?" asked Meyers. "What if they spot it?"

Taranto grunted. He was watching something he thought was one of the flying insects that thickened the Syssokan twilight. Seconds later, he ducked away from the window as a pencil-sized thing with two pairs of flailing wings darted through the opening.

It whirled about the dim cell. Meyers flapped his hands about his head. The third time around, the insect passed within Taranto's reach; and he batted it out of the air with a feline sweep of his left hand. It fell against the base of the wall and twitched for a few minutes.

Meyers squinted at him, examining the slightly flattened nose and the meaty cheeks that gave Taranto a deceptively plump look.

"You're quick, all right," he admitted. "They used to say in the ship that you were a boxer. What made you a spacer?"

"Too short," said Taranto laconically. "Five-eight, an' I grew into a light-heavy."

"What did that have to do with it?"

"I did all right for a while. When I could get in on them, they'd go down an' stay down. Then they learned to stick an' run on me. It was either grow a longer arm or quit."

"Maybe you should have quit sooner," said Meyers, for no good reason except that he resented Taranto and blamed him for their predicament.

"Why should I?" asked Taranto, with a cold stare. "It was good money. Even after having my eyebrows fixed, I got a nice nest-egg back on Terra. Nothing really shows on me except the habit of a short haircut."

Meyers ran his fingers through his own unkempt hair.

"What was that for?" he asked.

"Oh ... it don't wave in the air so much when you stop a jab. Looks better, to the judges."

Meyers grunted. He'd like to believe it doesn't show on him! he thought.

Suddenly, he bent down to place an ear against the trap door. A petulant grimace twisted his features.

"They're on the ladder," he whispered. "Wouldn't you know?"

He straightened up and walked softly back to his bench. Taranto remained at the window. It was a perfectly natural place for him to be, he decided.

A few moments later, the trap door creaked up, letting yellow light burst into the cell. It came from a clumsy electric lantern in the grip of the first Syssokan who climbed into the chamber. Two others followed, suggestively fingering pistols that would have been considered crude on Terra two centuries earlier.

The individual with the light was typical of his race, a tall, cadaverous humanoid with pale, greenish-gray skin made up of tiny scales. His nose was flatter than that of a Terran ape, and his chin consisted mostly of a hanging fold of scaly skin. His ears were set very low on a narrow, pointed skull. Occasionally, they made small motions as if to fold in upon themselves.

The Syssokans were clad in garments not unlike loose, sleeveless pajamas, over which they wore leather harness for their weapons. The leader's suit was red, but the other two wore a dull brown.

"Iss all ssatissfactory?" asked the one in charge, staring about the cell with large, black eyes.

"All right," said Taranto stonily.

He thought that a Syssokan would never have answered that way. They were vain of their extraordinary linguistic ability, and commonly spoke three or four alien tongues. Only an unfortunate inability to control excessive sibilance marred their Terran. Taranto felt like wiping his face, but realized that it was only sweat.

The Syssokan prowled around the room, examining each of the simple furnishings with a flickering glance. He took note of the food left in the copper pot. He checked the level of water in the big jar. He found the dead insect, which he sniffed and slipped into a pouch at his belt. When he passed Taranto, the latter eyed him in measuring fashion.

The Syssokan halted out of reach.

"You have been warned to obey all orderss here," he said, staring between the two Terrans.

"What's the trouble now?" demanded Meyers when it became apparent that the poker-faced Taranto intended to say nothing.

"There wass a quesstion by the Terran we allow on the world. How can he know of your complaints? He was told only or your ssentence."

"We told you there would be protests from our government," said Meyers. "All we did was land on your planet in an emergency: We're only too willing to leave. You have no right to keep us locked up in these conditions."

"It iss a violation of our law," said the Syssokan imperturbably. "You go automatically to jail. We permit only one of every sky people to live here. Who could tell yours that you complain of thiss place?"

"Listen, you better be careful of us Terrans!" blustered Meyers. "We have ways—"

"Shut up!" said Taranto without raising his voice.

He had inched forward, but stopped now as the two guards at the trap door gave him their attention.

The Syssokan with the lantern also turned to him. Taranto looked over the latter's shoulder. The window was black; the twilight of Syssoka was brief.

Meyers had flushed and was scowling at him with out-thrust lower lip, but Taranto's icy order had spilled the wind from his sails.

"Perhapss you have had too much water," suggested the Syssokan, regarding Taranto with interest. "If you have done ssomething, it iss besst to tell me."

Taranto returned the stare. He wondered why all the Syssokans he had seen, though rather fragile in build, were relatively thick-waisted. They looked to him as if a couple of solid hooks to the body would find a soft target.

It was unlikely that the Syssokan could read the facial expression of an alien Terran. It was probably some tenseness in Taranto's stance that caused the native to step back.

The Terran strained his ears to pick up any unusual noise outside the window during the pause. He heard nothing except the whir of night insects.

Their jailer paced once more around the cell, and Taranto cursed himself for arousing suspicion. Perhaps, he hoped, it was only annoyance.

But what could I do? he asked himself. Let Meyers spill it?

In the end, with Taranto answering in monosyllables and Meyers intimidated into an unnatural reserve, the Syssokans retired. The darkness closed in upon the Terrans as they listened to the creaking of the ladder below the trap door.

"Give them time," advised Taranto, hearing Meyers move toward the exit.

They waited in the silent dark until Meyers could stand it no longer.

"They won't come back," he whispered.

"Well, make sure," said Taranto shortly. "Get your ear to the wood!"

He felt his way to the window that faced away from the city. After the heat of the day, the air blowing in was almost cold; and he considered putting on his shirt. The realization that he would have to scrabble around the pile of straw for it gave him pause. His next thought was that he might come up with the wrong shirt, and that discouraged him completely.

His eyes had adjusted enough to the night to pick out the low hills of the desert where they broke the line of the horizon. Starlight glinted softly where there were stretches of sand. He settled down to wait, his arms folded upon the ledge of the window.

It was nearly half an hour later, when he suspected Meyers of dozing on the trap door, that Taranto heard something more than an insect zip past the window. He backed away and hissed to attract Meyers' attention.

"Did it come?" whispered the other.

"I think so," answered Taranto.

A tiny hum drifted through the window. Into the opening, timidly, edged a small, hovering shape.

"Okay," said Taranto in a low voice, even though he knew the room was being scanned by an infra-red detector.

The shape blossomed out with a midget light. Enough of the glow was reflected from the adobe walls to reveal that a miniature flying mechanism the size of a man's hand had landed on the window ledge. After a moment, its rotors ceased their whirring. Taranto jabbed backward with an elbow as he heard Meyers creep up behind him.

"Listen at the door, dammit!" he snarled. "All we need is to get caught at this, an' we'll be here till they turn out the sun!"

"Taranto!" piped a tiny voice from the machine. "Are you ready, Taranto?"

"Go ahead!"

"Two pills coming out of the hold." The voice was clear enough in the stillness of the Syssokan night.

A hatch in the belly of the little flyer slid back. Two capsules spilled out on the window ledge. Taranto scooped them up.

"You each take one, with water," instructed the voice. "Better wait till just before dawn. You told me they bring your food an hour later."

"That's right," whispered Taranto.

"That will give the stuff time to act. For all they can tell, you will both be deader than a burned-out meteorite."

"Then what?"

"So they will follow their normal custom with the dead—take you out to