It seemed to Chane before he awoke that Dilullo's voice was speaking to him from a great distance. He knew that this could not be. He perfectly remembered how, numbed by the stun-gun's effect, he had fallen down when his captors released him.
He remembered lying flat on the floor and hearing a Kharali voice say, "This man does not go with you. He must remain here to be punished."
And Dilullo's voice calmly answering, "Keep him and punish him, then," and his captors picking him up and dragging him through many levels to a place of cells, into one of which they had thrown him.
Chane opened his eyes. Yes, he was in the rock cell, which had a barred door opening into a red-lit corridor, and in the wall opposite the door a nine-inch square loophole window looking out at the glowing night sky of Kharal.
He lay on the damp rock floor. He had sore places in his ribs, and now he remembered that they had kicked him for a while after they dragged him into this cell.
Chane felt that some of the numbness had left him, and he hauled himself to sit with his back against the wall. His head cleared. He stared around the cell, and felt a wild feeling of revulsion.
He had never been caged before. No Starwolf was ever imprisoned . . . if one was caught on a raid he was ruthlessly killed at once. Of course these people didn't know he was a Starwolf in everything but appearance. That did not change his fierce claustrophobic resentment.
He was about to get up and try his strength on the thick metal door-bars when it happened again. He heard the tiny voice of Dilullo speaking to him as from a great distance.
"Chane . . .?"
Chane shook his head. A stun-gun could have odd aftereffects on the nervous system.
"Chane?"
Chane stiffened. The tiny whisper was not directionless. It seemed to come from just below his own left shoulder.
He looked down at himself. There was nothing there but the button that secured the flap of the left pocket of his jacket.
He turned his head a little, and brought the pocket and its flap-button up to his ear.
"Chane!"
He heard it quite clearly now; it came out of the button.
Chane brought the button around to the front of his face and whispered into it.
"When you gave me this fine new jacket, why didn't you tell me this button was a little transceiver?"
Dilullo's voice answered dryly. "We Mercs have our little tricks, Chane. But we don't like everyone to know them. I would have told you later, when I was sure you wouldn't desert us."
"Thanks," said Chane. "And thanks for walking off and letting the Kharalis keep me."
"Don't thank me," said the dry voice. "You deserved it."
Chane grinned. "I guess I did, at that."
"It's too bad," said the tiny voice of Dilullo, "that tomorrow morning they'll take you and break both your arms, as retribution. I don't know what you'll do when they turn you out then to die slowly."
Chane brought the button back around to his lips and whispered, "Did you go to the trouble of calling me and letting me know about the transceiver just to express your sorrow?"
"No," answered the voice of Dilullo. "There's more to it than that."
"I thought there was. What?"
"Listen carefully, Chane. The Kharalis hold a Vhollan officer prisoner, presumably in the same prison area you're in. I want that man. We're going to Vhol, and we won't be under suspicion there if we take them one of their own whom we've got free."
Chane understood. "But why didn't you ask the Kharalis for him?"
"They got suspicious when I even asked to talk to the man! If I'd asked them to let me take him away, they'd be convinced I was going to throw in with the Vhollans."
"Won't they be just as suspicious if I break this Vhollan out?" asked Chane.
Dilullo answered sharply. "With luck, we'll be away from Kharal and their suspicions won't matter. Now don't argue, but listen. I don't want this man to know why you're helping him escape, so tell him you need him to guide you out, that you were brought in unconscious, and so on."
"Neat," said Chane. "But you forget one thing, and that's getting out of this cell."
"The button of your right-hand jacket pocket is a miniaturized ato-flash. Intensity six, duration forty seconds. The stud is on the back," Dilullo said.
Chane looked down at the button. "And how many more of these little tricks have you got?"
"We have quite a few, Chane. But you don't. I didn't trust you with more than two and didn't even tell you about those."
"Suppose this Vhollan isn't imprisoned here, but somewhere else?" asked Chane.
Dilullo's whisper was untroubled. "Then you'd better find him. If you come out without him, don't bother coming to the ship. We'll take off and leave you."
"You know," said Chane admiringly, "there are times when I think you'd make a Starwolf."
"One more thing, Chane. We have to come back to Kharal, if we succeed, to get our pay. So no killing. Repeat, no killing. Out."
Chane got to his feet and silently flexed his arms and legs for minutes until he was sure the last numbness had left them. Then he tiptoed to the barred door, pressing his face against it.
He could see a row of similar doors opposite, and at the far end of the corridor he could just see the feet of a guard who sat sprawled in a chair there. He stepped back, and thought.
After a time he carefully unhooked both of the buttons from his jacket. The transceiver button he put into a shirt pocket. Then he took off the jacket, and got down on the floor by the barred door.
He unobtrusively wrapped the jacket around the base of one of the door-bars, leaving the bar exposed at one point. He carefully brought the tiny aperture of the button ato-flash against the bar, using his free hand to throw a fold of the jacket over the other hand and the button. Then he pressed the stud on the back of the button.
The tiny flash was veiled by the jacket, and its hiss was drowned by the cough Chane let go. He kept the flash on for twenty seconds, and then released the stud.
Little tendrils of smoke came up from scorched parts of the jacket. Chane used his hands as fans to draw the smoke into the cell, so it would go out the loophole window instead of drifting down the corridor.
He unwrapped the scorched jacket. The bar had been burned through.
Chane considered. He could burn through the bar another place and move a section, but he did not want to do that unless he had to; he might need the ato-flash again.
He put the tiny instrument in his pocket, and laid hold of the severed bar and tested it. He felt pretty sure from the feel of it that his Varnan strength was enough to bend it now. But he was also pretty sure that it would make noise.
If you stopped to think too much, you could die before you made up your mind. Chane gripped the severed bar, and let all his revulsion at being caged will his muscles into a wild surge of power.
The bar bent inward, with a metallic sound.
There was just space enough for him to squeeze out, and he went out fast for it had to be quick or not at all.
The Kharali guard jumped up from his chair to see the Earthman bounding at him like a dark panther, with incredible speed.
Chane's hand chopped and the guard fell senseless with his hand reaching vainly toward a button on the wall. Chane eased him to the floor and then searched him, but there was no weapon on the man, and no keys. He turned, his gaze searching along the corridor. He saw nothing that looked like a spy-eye. Apparently the Kharalis, who didn't care much for gadgets, had figured the alarm-button was enough.
Apparently, also, they didn't put many people in jail, for most of the cells were empty. Chane was not surprised. From what he had seen of them, the Kharalis were the type who would get more pleasure out of executing or punishing a man in public than in jailing him.
In one cell, a humanoid lay sprawling and snoring, his hairy arms moving in his sleep. He had some swollen bruises, and from him came an overpowering stench of the acid intoxicant.
Two more cells were empty but in the next a man was sleeping. He was about Chane's size and age and he was a white man. Not swarthy white, not Earthman white, but an albino white with fine white hair. When Chane hissed and awakened him, he saw the man's eyes were not albino but a clear blue.
He jumped to his feet. He wore a short tunic quite unlike the Kharali robes, and a sort of officer's harness over it.
"Do you know the way out of this city?" Chane asked, speaking galacto.
The Vhollan's eyes widened. "The Earthman they dragged in a while ago. How—"
"Listen," Chane interrupted. "I got out of the cell. I want to get out of the whole damned city. But I was unconscious when they brought me in, and don't know where I am. If I get you out of there, can you guide me? Do you know the ways?"
The Vhollan began to babble excitedly. "Yes, yes, I know; they have taken me in and out many times, for questioning. I won't answer them, so they drug me for some reason and bring me back, but I've seen, I know . . . ."
"Stand back, then." Chane bent down and used the remaining power of the ato-flash to cut through the base of a door bar. There was not quite enough power to cut through it completely.
The bar was nine-tenths severed. Chane sat down, braced his feet against the other bars, and then grabbed the nearly-severed one just above the cut. He let it go fast with a muttered curse. It was still hot.
He waited a minute, tried again, and found it had cooled enough. He braced his feet and put his back into it and pulled. The long muscles that Varna had given him slid and swelled and the nearly-severed bar broke free with a pung. He didn't relax, he kept pulling, and the bar bent slowly outward. The Vhollan squeezed out fast.
"You've got strength!" he exclaimed, staring.
"It only looked like it," Chane lied. "I'd cut through the top of the bar before I woke you."
The Vhollan pointed toward the door at the end of the corridor opposite to the one where the guard had sat.
"The only way out," he whispered. "And it's always locked from the other side."
"What's beyond it?" Chane demanded.
"Two more Kharali guards. They are armed. When the one in here wanted out, he simply called through the door to them."
The man, Chane noted, was trying to speak quickly and to the point, but he was shaking with excitement.
Chane pondered. He could only see one way to get that door open, and so they would have to try it and see what happened.
He took the Vhollan by the arm and ran with him, silently, down the corridor to where the guard lay slumped. He had the Vhollan stand with his back against the wall, just beside the alarm button. Then Chane took the unconscious guard and leaned him up face foremost against the Vhollan.
"Hold him up," Chane said.
It did not look too convincing, he thought. The unconscious guard was taller, and his robed figure leaned forward in a drunken, improbable way. But he did hide the Vhollan standing against the wall, and if the deception was only good for a few seconds, that should be enough.
"When I hiss, press the button and stand still," Chane ordered, and then sped back to stand beside the door.
He hissed. A bell rang sharply on the other side of the door. The door swung open a moment later, opening into the corridor with Chane behind it.
There was a moment's pause and then two pairs of feet pounded through the door. The two Kharalis both held stun-guns and they were hurrying but not too much. They had glanced in and seen the inner guard standing with his back to them, and no prisoners out of their cells.
Chane leaped with all his speed behind them and his flat hands struck and flashed and struck again, and the two slumped down. He took the stun-gun from one of them and gave each of them a blast from it to keep them quiet for a while.
He went down the hallway and chuckled as he saw the Vhollan, trying now to get out from under the senseless body, giving the impression of wrestling with his tall Kharali burden. Chane gave that one a blast of the stun-gun, too.
He said sharply to the Vhollan, "Out now. Take the other weapon."
As he passed the cell where the humanoid had been sleeping, he saw that the creature had aroused and was looking out through the bars with red-rimmed, bloodshot eyes, obviously too foggy from drink to make any sense of what was going on, even if he had had the intelligence.
"Sleep, my hairy brother," Chane said to him. "We are neither of us fit for cities."
They went into the room from which the two guards had come. There was no one in it and it had only one other door. That opened out onto one of the broad galleries, and no one was there, either.
The city seemed quieter, almost sleeping. Chane could hear echoes of faint fluting from somewhere beneath, and the bawl of a distant, angry voice.
"This way," urged the Vhollan. "The main motowalk is this way."
"We'd never make it," said Chane. "There are still too many about, and they could spot us as far as they could see us by our shorter stature."
He went across the gallery and leaned out over its low protective wall, looking out into the night.
The nebula had slid quite a way across the sky as Kharal turned toward the coming day. The silver radiance now came down slantingly, and the grotesque stone gargoyles that jutted out from the steeply-sloping face of the city-mountain threw long, distorted black shadows.
There was a gargoyle at each level, and he estimated that they were about ten levels above the ground. He decided at once.
"We'll go down the outside wall," he said. "It's rough and weathered, and there's the gargoyles to help us."
The Vhollan man looked out and down. He could not get any paler than he was but he could look a little sick, and he did.
"Come along or stay, as you like," said Chane. "It makes no difference to me."
And he thought, Only the difference between life and death, that's all, if I go back without this man.
The Vhollan gulped and nodded. They went over the low wall and started down.
It was not as easy as Chane had thought it would be. The rock was not as weathered as the slanting shadows had made it look. He clung on, his fingernails cracking, and lowered himself to the first gargoyle below him.
The Vhollan man followed, flattened with his face against the stone. He was breathing in quick gasps when he reached Chane.
They went down that way, from gargoyle to gargoyle, and each one of the stone monstrosities seemed more blasphemously obscene than the last. At the fifth one, they paused for rest. Chane, observing this one in the silvery nebula-glow, thought how ridiculous he must look, stuck up on the side of the city-mountain, sitting on the stone back of a blobby creature whose face and backside were all together.
He chuckled a little, and the Vhollan turned his white face and looked at him as if in fear.
It became much trickier near the ground, for one of the great gates was not too far away and there were a few robed figures bunched there. The two hugged the shadow like a friend, and went away, avoiding the road that led to the spaceport but going in that direction. Nobody stopped them, and the ship took them in and went away from there.