CHAPTER VIII
She dropped in her seat without a sound. Price clawed for the weapon she had at her waist. But the abrupt cessation of her voice had alarmed the pilot. He turned around and then shouted something imperative in Vurna, his hand going swiftly to his own belt.
Price beat him by a fractional second. His hand pressed the trigger and the unfamiliar weapon crackled in his hand, and the pilot fell over, letting his own shocker go skittering to the deck. The aerodyne had not swerved from its steady westward flight. He had been sure, from what he'd seen of its automatic stability, that it wouldn't.
Price straightened up, breathing heavily with excitement. So far, so good.
He tied Linna's hands and feet securely with her own belt and his handkerchief, and then attended to the pilot. Linna was already beginning to stir, and he propped her up as comfortably as possible, smoothing her hair back from her forehead. He smiled suddenly and said, "I'm sorry. I really am. If there had been any other way, I wouldn't have done it."
He kissed her on the mouth, rather swiftly because he did not have much time, but with a full measure of feeling even so. She sighed, and he thought her lips answered his, but he doubted if that would be so when she came to.
He slipped into the pilot's chair and studied the controls, erasing every other thought from his mind as he remembered what he had learned from watching. The aerodyne was humming straight and steadily on. He had plenty of altitude.
He began to experiment, gingerly, and by the time he was across the river he was satisfied that he could control the craft well enough to get by. It was considerably simpler than learning to drive a car in the old days, and he had a lifetime of flying behind him to give him air-sense. The craft itself was a thing of beauty, topping anything he had ever flown. He angled southward and westward, away from the river, traveling like a bullet.
Linna spoke from behind him. Her voice was very cold and very hard, the voice of a stranger.
"Arrin told me I should have you bound. I left you free on my own responsibility."
Price felt bad about that, and he said so. "Try to look at it from my side, Linna. I have to do what I can for my own people. If you were in my shoes—"
"Go ahead," said Linna. "Talk is obviously useless. I shan't waste any more of it, except to tell you—"
She told him, vividly, what kind of a fool he was, and what she hoped would happen to him before he led all of his fellow-fools to destruction. Then she shut up and would not speak again, no matter how he tried to soften her rage.
The dark green forest, rough-textured like a wool rug, rolled back and away around him, and the sun was swallowed up in clouds. He strained his eyes for the clearing that would mark the Capitol of the Missouris. He was flying by dead reckoning. He had no compass bearing to begin with, and the Vurna instruments were useless to him. The pilot was beginning to come round, but Price knew better than to ask him for instructions.
It was a red light of fires burning on the edge of night that guided him down at last toward the timber-built Capitol. And now at last Linna spoke, because the pilot, looking out, began to yell frantically in Vurna. She translated.
"He says do not cut the down-blast so sharply, or you will crash. That lever—there, under your left hand—ease it back."
Price eased it. He settled down to a rough and ragged landing, just about where the Vurna craft had settled before, when he had been Sawyer's prisoner. Men came out of the houses and along the streets, to stand as they had stood then, to greet their hated over-lords with silence and contempt.
Price jumped out of the craft and approached the fires.
There was a startled cry, and then his name echoed back and forth, and the men closed around him. They were inclined to be hostile, demanding to know where Sawyer was, and what had happened, and how he came to be piloting a Vurna flier. Price shouted for quiet.
"Sawyer's alive. He's a prisoner in the Citadel. So are Burr and Twist. You want to rescue them?"
That startled them. "Listen," Price started, and then he saw Oakes pushing toward him with a small determined-looking group of men.
"Stand back," Oakes demanded. "Stand back, there. This man is a traitor. He betrayed the council, he betrayed Sawyer. If you listen to him, he'll betray you." He turned to Price. "You get back to your Vurna masters. Tell them we're not going to—"
"Oh, shut up," said Price impatiently. "You're not chief here, and you never will be, no matter if you do leave Sawyer to rot in the Citadel." He took the shocker from his belt where he had thrust it. "I stole that flier from the Vurna, and I stole this, too. I'll use it on you if I have to."
Oakes looked ugly, but he hesitated, and Price said, "Some of you, if you want proof of what I say, go look in the flier. Go on."
Several men detached themselves from the crowd and went off at a trot toward the flier. Presently they began to whoop and halloo. They came back carrying the pilot and Linna, who looked at Price with the utmost hatred.
"It looks like a trick to me," said Oakes. "They could have been bound on purpose."
Price said, "Does it look like a trick that every starship of the Citadel fleet took off last night? You must have heard or seen them, even at this distance."
"Yes," said a lean farmer, "streaks of fire in the sky before dawn. I was milking."
Others had seen them, too. And now a note of excitement crept into their voices.
"What's it mean? What's happened there? What are you after?"
"The Citadel is stripped," he said. "And I know where the fire-control is that commands the Belt. With this flier I can land right on the Citadel without being challenged. I can take some of you with me, and we can knock out those weapons. You can walk right in, with no more opposition than brave men ought to be able to handle. You—"
"Price," said Linna, in a voice of absolute horror, "you don't know what you're doing. The fleet has gone out to fight the Ei. Arrin forced some information out of the captives—the Ei fleet is somewhere outside this solar system, and our fleet's out to intercept it."
The terror in her voice increased. "But if the Ei forces evade our fleet and strike directly at our base here—don't you see, only our great missile-batteries around the Citadel can defend Earth! If you storm the Citadel, there'll be no defenses at all."
He said, "Linna, I know you believe in the Ei. Probably most of your people do. But you've never seen one, in a century no one on Earth has seen one. They're a myth, a political stratagem, that's all."
She shook her head, groping desperately for words. "Don't follow him!" she cried out to the men. "Don't listen to him. We're fighting for your lives and safety too. Don't be so mad as to stab us in the back now!"
They looked at her in the firelight, the flint-faced men who were weary of Star Lords. Then, without paying Oakes any attention at all, they looked at Price.
"He's right," drawled one of them. "The star-spawn have given us the lie about the Ei too long. Ain't a kid on Earth believes it."
Linna's head bent hopelessly forward, and she turned away. She still believes it, every word, thought Price. Poor Linna. He would have given anything to comfort her.
But there was no time for comfort, no time for anything but planning. He said,
"You've heard, you know this chance may never come again—are you with me?" And they answered, Yes!
"All right," said Price. "All right, we've got to have a council, to make plans, and then we'll have to move fast to strike before the fleet comes back. Who are your leaders after Sawyer?"
Five or six men came forward, district sub-chiefs. One of them nodded his head toward the two Vurna.
"What'll we do with them?"
"Treat them well," said Price sternly. "They're your assurance of Sawyer's life." He didn't know whether they were or not, but he didn't want Linna to suffer even discomfort because of him. He added, "Make sure they don't talk to anyone, though. And remember, there was a traitor at the big council. You'd better all keep a look-out, for signals and communication-devices. And now let's talk."
The council lasted far into the night. Price's biggest problem was to persuade the tribesmen not to bring their guns.
"The metal-detector units on the flying-eyes would spot you before you'd gone ten miles into the Belt, and I can't take the control-room that far ahead. It couldn't possibly be held that long, and no matter how we might smash the weapon-controls they'd have time to patch them up and use them on you. You'll have to infiltrate the Belt on all sides, keeping under cover, and get within striking distance before I land on the Citadel. Besides, against the Vurna shockers, your guns aren't much more use than your hunting bolos. We'll try and give you better weapons, once we're inside."
"Of course," said one leathery-faced sub-chief, "when you've got us and the Ohios and Kentucky's and the rest all in the Belt, it would be a mighty easy thing for you to give them word at the Citadel, and have us all wiped out at once, like that."
Price said harshly, "It's up to you, whether you want to take the gamble or not. If I'm on the level, you can take the Citadel and get the Star Lords off your back. If I'm not, you're dead. But you won't get a chance like this again. Make up your minds."
They made them up.
"How shall word be sent in time to the other tribes? It'd take days for a man on horseback to get around to the east and north."
"I'll take the word," said Price. "In the flier. By sundown tomorrow, there'll be men from every tribe ready to move into the Belt. And pick me half a dozen seasoned men to go along, under a sub-chief. Half a dozen men you can trust for the fate of the whole attack."
The leathery old chief, whose name was Sweetbriar, said quietly, "I'll pick you six, and I'll go along."
His gaze locked with Price's, and Price smiled.
"I'll give you the shocker," he said. "You can use it any time you see fit. And that should convince the other tribes they can count on me."
"Should," said Sweetbriar, nodding. "Now we'd better reckon up our distance. As I see it, this'll work out something like a big beat, and if we don't all get there together, we might better have stayed home."
They settled all the details, the forced marches by night, the meager weight of food each man was to carry. Price managed to get an hour's sleep before he took off in the pre-dawn gloom to rouse the other tribes. When he slept he dreamed of an iron mountain, impregnable, crowned with destruction, watching incessantly with a thousand eyes. In the dream, he knew that no mere men could ever take it.