The quiet was only what Birrel had expected. Not a soul in this place could have remained unaware of the coming of the ship, but, with cold hostility, they were ignoring it. Nobody came out to meet him, no one moved against the scattered lights ahead. Birrel tramped on, wondering how many eyes watched him come.
Three men met him at the edge of the town. They wore pale cloaks and carried long staffs or wands of office that were tipped with horn. They were all of seven feet tall. They wore their hair high on their heads to accentuate this height, and they were slender and graceful as reeds, moving with a light, dancing step as though the wind blew them. But their faces in the star-glow were smooth and secret, their eyes as expressionless as bits of shiny glass.
"What does the man from outside desire?" asked one of them, speaking in Basic.
Birrel said, "He desires to speak with your lord about the others who have come here from outside."
But they were not going to make it that easy for him. Their faces remained impassive, and the one who had spoken said coolly,
"Others?"
Birrel retained his patience. The Sector held a great many worlds, and their different peoples varied widely in psychology, and anyone who got impatient would not get far with them. That was all the more true here in the no-man's-land of the cluster.
"Yes. The others," he said, and then just stood stolidly, waiting.
Finally the tall man shrugged delicately and said, "Our lord has wisdom in all matters. Perhaps he will understand your words."
They fell in around Birrel and moved with him into the wide, sandy space that went between the wandering houses. The nerves tightened up in his belly, and his back felt cold. He looked at his wrist chrono, carefully. Garstang would be watching with the 'scope, but once he was in among the houses he could no longer be seen.
That was almost at once. The tall men walked on with their light, swaying stride, so that he had to move at an undignified trot to keep up with them. The stone houses with their high roofs closed in behind him, and there were only shadowy walls and sandy ways and a few dusty, leafless shrubs. Birrel had heard of the strange, underground cultivation these people maintained in great caverns, but had never seen that.
He thought that this dark, poor, arid town ill accorded with old tales of cluster-kings. Yet many of the human peoples at far-separated stars had such legends—the persistence of the legend, indeed, was one reason for the theory that all these various human stocks in the galaxy, so completely human that they could and did interbreed, had been seeded through the star-worlds by a space-conquering people in the remote and forgotten past.
Tall figures back in the shadows watched Birrel pass. They said nothing, but their silence was in itself hostile. Soon, when they were close to the center of the town, his guide stopped beside a round, stone structure from whose open door came light.
"Will the man from outside enter the dwelling of our lord?"
Birrel breathed a little more easily as he went through the door. Apparently he had guessed wrong, and—
He stopped.
He had not guessed wrong at all.
The odd, square, crystal lamps in the big, bare stone room did not really light it as much as did the soft star-glow pouring in through the high windows. There was quite enough light to show him the four men here. They were not the tall natives of this world. They were men dressed much like himself and all but one of them had sonic shockers at their belts and wore upon their shoulders the insigne of Orion Sector.
The one exception, who wore only a plain coverall, stood directly in front of Birrel, a lean, dark iron-faced man with very alert eyes, and the easy, dangerous manner of one who enjoys his work because he is so admirably well fitted for it, as a cat enjoys hunting.
He smiled at Birrel and said, "My name is Tauncer."
Birrel had never seen the man before, but the name was enough to tell him the full depth of this disaster. On more than one world he had heard this name and had seen the work of this man, the most famous of Solleremos' agents.
He said, "I should feel flattered, shouldn't I?"
Tauncer shrugged. "We all do what we can, Commander. Each in his own way. Please sit down."
Birrel sat down in one of the carven stone chairs. His feet barely touched the floor, making him feel ridiculously like a child in an adult's chair. He looked toward the door, but none of the tall natives had come in after leading him neatly right into this.
He wanted to glance at his chrono, but he did not dare. Tauncer was watching him, and he did not think that those insolent, amused, black eyes missed much. The other men lounged, not watching him, not doing anything, but Birrel was sure their weapons would come out in a hurry if he grabbed for his porto. He would have to stall as long as he could.
"Just as a matter of curiosity," he said, "how did you set it up with these people? They're famously hostile to strangers."
Tauncer nodded. "That's right. Only I'm not exactly a stranger. We all, in these days, have mixed ancestry from many worlds—you have it, I have it, everyone. Well, I happen to have a trace of this people's blood. Not much, but enough."
He added casually, "By the way, Commander, you might as well look at your chrono, if you want to. I can see that you want to very much."
His white teeth showed, and Birrel felt a rising anger. Tauncer was enjoying himself. He was good at this, very good, and he was going to have fun with the honest clod he had trapped. Well, perhaps that fun could be spoiled.
He did look at his chrono, saying, "Of course, you know that I wouldn't walk in here with my eyes shut. My men have their instructions."
Tauncer's tone was almost soothing. "I'm sure they have. And don't feel too badly about this, Commander. This was all set up on a minute study of your psychology and past record. It would have been almost impossible for you to act other than you have. All we had to do was wait."
It confirmed, for Birrel, what he had already guessed. The rumor about Orion ships basing in this cluster had been purposely leaked so that he would walk right into Tauncer's hands. He cursed himself for his bad judgment. Garstang had been right, he should have brought the squadron in.
"I suppose," he said, "that all of this is for some good reason."
"Naturally," said Tauncer. "I just want the answer to one simple question."
He walked closer and stood in front of Birrel and looked at him keenly. He asked his question.
"What is Ferdias planning to do about Earth?"
There was a long moment of complete silence, during which Birrel simply stared at Tauncer, and Tauncer probed him with a gaze like a scalpel.
On Birrel's part, it was a silence of sheer astonishment. No question could have taken him so unexpectedly. He had been prepared to be grilled about squadron dispositions, forces in being, bases, all the things that the men of Orion would like to know about Lyra. But this—
It didn't make sense. Earth was not part of the present-day star struggle. That old planet, so far back in the galaxy that Birrel had never been within parsecs of it—it was history, nothing more. It had had its day, its sons long ago had spread out to the stars and their blood ran in the veins of men on many worlds, in Birrel himself. But its great day had long been done, and the Sector governors, who played the cosmic chess-game for suns, paid it no heed at all. No, Birrel decided swiftly, the question was merely a fake, a cover-up for something else, some other line of attack.
"I'll repeat," said Tauncer. "What's Ferdias planning to do about Earth?"
"I haven't," said Birrel, "the faintest idea what you're talking about."
"Possibly," said Tauncer. "But I've been given the job of making the inquiry, and I'll need more than your word and an expression of innocence. Where's Karsh?"
He shot out the last question so suddenly that it almost caught Birrel off guard, but he maintained his blank look.
"Karsh?"
Tauncer sighed. "Well, these formalities are just delaying us. Dow!"
One of the other men came forward. Tauncer spoke to him in a low voice and he nodded and went into another room. Birrel's pulse began to pound heavily. No more than fifteen minutes had elapsed since he entered the town. There was plenty of time left for mischief. Yet he said flatly to Tauncer,
"You must know that you don't have much time."
"All the time in the world, Commander. Your men aren't coming in after you."
"You're pretty sure."
"Yes, I'm sure. Can't you hurry that up, Dow?"
"All ready." Dow came back carrying a light tripod with a projector mounted on top of it. And now Birrel had a leaden feeling. He had seen that particular type of projector before. It was called a vera-probe and it beamed electric wave-impulses in a carefully controlled range that absolutely stunned and demoralized a man's brain, blocking off his will and making him temporarily incapable of lying or of resisting questioning.
Birrel had no information about Earth to give away and he knew nothing of the whereabouts of Karsh, who was Ferdias' right-hand man in the secret struggle of Sectors. But there were plenty of other things in his mind, things of importance to Lyra that Solleremos would be only too glad to learn.
How long now? Ten minutes more? Too long. Even five minutes would be too long, once that projector started pounding his skull. He had to do something to gain time and there was only one thing he could think of to do.
He suddenly jumped forward out of the tall, stone chair. He was quite sure that they did not want to kill him, or even to stun him yet, and he was right, for no weapon was drawn. Birrel sprang toward the projector, only five or six feet away.
Dow and the other men were on top of him almost at once, but not quite in time. He fetched the tripod a thrashing kick as they bore him down. It fell over. He could not hope that it was broken, but it would take them time to set it up again.
He tried to keep them busy as long as he could, but Tauncer understood perfectly well what he was up to. He had his men haul Birrel back to the chair and hold him, he set Dow to adjusting the projector again, and then he spoke to Birrel with cool patience.
"You may as well spare yourself, Commander. I told you that your men are not coming in after you. They'll stir up a hornet's nest with these people if they try, and they won't even have very long to try."
"Why not?"
Tauncer smiled. "I have my mission and the military have theirs. We've had three cruisers standing off and on, well away from here and masked from radar—they got word the moment you landed and they're already on their way. Your men will soon be busy with their own affairs."
It was what Birrel had feared. He tried to keep his face composed, but something of what he felt must have showed in it for Tauncer's smile deepened.
"All this is the price you pay for fame, Commander. We picked you to question because the Fifth is Ferdias' elite squadron, and nobody gets command of it unless he's in Ferdias' special confidence and favor."
"Friendship is one thing," said Birrel hotly, "and favor is another. I don't like your choice of words."
He was just talking, words, sounds with no meaning. Inside he was thinking of Garstang and the Starsong, all of them unaware of destruction riding down upon them along the radar-blind cone on the other side of the planet. It was he who had led them here.
He looked at Tauncer, and he began now to hate that smiling face, that easy confidence of superiority. Perhaps it was because Tauncer really was his superior in this sort of thing that he hated him. But, Birrel thought, superior or not, Tauncer had guessed wrong on the instructions that he had left his men, and that was about the only chance he had left. Keep talking, stall as long as possible.
"Ferdias will tear your heart out for this," he said.
"Perhaps," said Tauncer. "But he may have other things to occupy his mind."
"Earth? It doesn't mean anything to him. It's only a name, and a half-forgotten one at that. Why should Earth occupy his mind? Why, Tauncer?"
How long is thirty minutes? How long does it take three cruisers to come from Point X to Target Zero? How long does it take for a man to realize he's through at last?
Tauncer seemed to know his thought. "Time almost run out, Commander? I'm afraid that's not going to help you. Ready, Dow?"
Dow said again, "All ready."
Tauncer nodded. Dow touched a stud on the projector.
As though that touch had done it, a dull and mighty roaring echoed from out in the desert—the full-throated cry of a heavy cruiser taking off.
The men looked, startled, toward the open doorway. Desperately, Birrel tugged free of their hold, out of the unseen force that was already battering at the edges of his mind.
"You out there!" he shouted at the doorway. "The men from outside will destroy you unless I go free! Call your lord—"
Then Tauncer's men caught up to him and one of them hit him hard on the side of the jaw. Birrel shut up, hanging with blind determination to his consciousness. Forethought had provided this one chance. He would not get another.
The cruiser came low over the town. Dust sifted out of the cracks of the stone walls. The men fell to their knees, covering their heads with their hands. The floor rocked under them, beaten by the rolling hammers of concussion, as the shock-wave hit them.