"YourPresident-General spoke with me privately after the World DelegatesCouncil met to question me, and he held out extremely little hope.However, the issue is to be debated. I think perhaps more out ofdiplomatic courtesy than actual consideration. I am to be informed ofthe official decision tomorrow...."
"There were scientists present, of course?"
"Yes; you have brilliant men on Earth, Lieutenant. They are goodthinkers. I am certain they were interested in me for more than thesole fact that I am an alien of a race so precisely a replica of yourown. But it is again the old factor, cultural difference. Your entireworld simply regards women differently than we. I imagine my request,to persons less learned than those with whom I spoke, would be quiteshocking anywhere on the planet."
"Perhaps," Judith murmured. "Yet somehow I wonder. Somehow I wonderhow much two hundred years has really changed us. Our history in suchthings is not pleasant, Kriijorl. Many of our women once gave theirbodies for money. Shock us? I'm not sure you really could. For yourbreeders simply give their bodies to produce the flesh for war. Andthere was a time when we did that, too."
There was silence between them for a while, and then Lance begandirecting the Ihelian's attention to points of interest as the airphase of the diplomatic tour got under way.
The blue-green beauty of the Pacific stretched lazily below them fromthe colorful California shore line to the west. Surrounding airtraffic was light, and the tour proceeded smoothly eastward; over theGreat Divide, and then swung north. Kriijorl seemed impressed andgrateful for the momentary respite.
* * * * *
It was near the end of the tour's air phase that Mason rememberedJudith's request, and Kriijorl obliged with an amused smile, producinga personal mentacom for Judith to examine.
"And the receiver simply fits about the head like earphones?"
"Like this," Kriijorl said. They were nearing Denver, and air trafficat their level had picked up, and the helio was proceeding more slowlyso that Kriijorl's demonstration caused him to miss little of thetour.
He fitted the compact headpiece to his ears and flicked a smallswitch. It was suddenly bathed in a warm orange glow. "This way, thedevice functions as a limited range mentacom," he began. And then heflicked the switch again. "And now, as a teleprobe, you see, I couldtell you, Lady Judith, just what--"
She flushed furiously, but Kriijorl had suddenly stopped speaking. Hisface had blanched, and a look of bewildered fury was suddenly in hiseyes.
"Lieutenant! That air bus! There!" He pointed to a thick egg shapedvehicle speeding to the north. "Tell your chauffeur to pursue it atonce! It carries a full passenger-load of Earthwomen!"
For a moment Mason thought the Ihelian was attempting some strangejoke. But a look at the man's face told him that here was no joke;that here was something he was failing to understand.
"Earthwomen? Sure--"
"Plus two other beings, Lieutenant. Two others using Thrayxite probescreens!"
On Mason's order the government chauffeur swiftly heeled the helioabout. "Those buses can make nearly a full Mach when they're wide openlike that one," he told Kriijorl. "We can't overtake them, but maybewe can keep up. I'll have the chauffeur try for radio contact--"
"No, no! They'll be alert for any signs of awareness of theirpresence! Wait--" The Ihelian made a third adjustment on the mentacom,and it emitted a slight humming sound, and the orange glow vanished."This will screen us for a short period, at least," he said. "And ifwe've not been already detected, perhaps we'll be able to follow. Ifyou'll continue to help me, Lieutenant--"
"Looks as though they've got some of ours, doesn't it?" Mason saidevenly. There was a strange heat in his veins now, and with theIhelian, his nervousness was somehow evaporated. "But how the devil--"
"They are clever, Lieutenant. We were somehow followed here even as weat first followed you in your Scout ship. We may have been probedbefore you were taken aboard our screened destroyer."
"But you said nothing about destroying _their_ breeders," Judith saidabove the throbbing roar of the helio's fast accelerating jets. "Whywould they want--" and she let the sentence die as comprehensionsnapped in her gray eyes. Her dark, slender eyebrows arched nearlytogether as she pushed the thought further.
The borderlands of Canada sped beneath them, and then there was pineforest, but the helio kept the fleeing bus in sight even as theshadows of a dying day crept inexorably from the east to engulf them.And then, abruptly, the bus had started down.
"They're hanging a neat frame on you, sir," Mason said. "Makingcertain you don't get the women you ask. By kidnaping some, they plansure as hell to make it look as though Ihelian desperation isresponsible. And bingo, your side's in the dog house in nothing flat.No deal!"
"They're damnably cunning," Kriijorl said. "It will not be the firsttime they have come near making utter fools of us. I can't understandthat."
"But how would they have gotten those women?" Judith asked. The heliowas slanting downward, and was now less than five miles distant fromthe fast vanishing bus. It began to skim the tree tops of a greattract of spruce, its chauffeur awaiting Mason's signal to drop quicklyout of their quarry's line of sight.
"Video ads, of course," Mason answered quickly, straining his tensedeyes to estimate distance in the fast gathering darkness. "Some bigdeal. Spaceliner hostess at twice the going rate of payment. Anythinglike that...."
The bus finally vanished less than a half-mile ahead of Mason's helio,and there was a dark vertical shadow jutting just above the tree tops.He knew it was one of their shuttle boats, and from its apparent sizewould easily hold all the bus would be able to carry--perhaps a fullthree hundred. He gave orders quickly to the chauffeur, and then thehelio was hovering inches above the tree tops, and he tossed aplastiweave ladder over the side.
"Don't use the radio," he snapped to Judith. "Just get back to New-UNheadquarters. Inform them any way possible of what's going on, andthen flash the air patrol and tell 'em to come gunning!"
He didn't give her a chance to argue. He simply swung over the helio'sside, Kriijorl after him, and within moments they were on the ground,and running with what silence they could through the darkness towardthe towering Thrayxite ship a quarter-mile distant.
"Their action is incomprehensible to me," the Ihelian grunted betweengulps of air. "It violates the most basic tenets of the ancient Bookof the Saints, sacred to us both--"
"Better save your breath for running," Mason told him, and theysprinted across the soft pine needle forest floor, shielding theireyes from treacherous, low hanging boughs, dodging the treesthemselves as best they could in the moonlit darkness.
And they burst upon the clearing in which the Thrayxite ship hadlanded almost before realizing it.
Mason caught a glimpse of Earthwomen, being led as though drugged intothe yawning flank of the silent vessel.
There was a sudden movement in the darkness to his left, and he heardthe start of an outcry on the Ihelian's lips. But it was all he heardor saw. There was a quick knifing pain in his skull, and he crumpledto the ground.
III
"You may wait in here, sergeant," the New-UN orderly said. She wasushered into a small, comfortably appointed chamber adjoining the mainconference hall, and the perfectly controlled coolness of her bearingwas at its peak. To the casual glance of the orderly, perhaps, itflawlessly masked the vital convictions which had long seethed withinher and made her the little known woman she was. The studied maskitself had made her the efficient Space officer she was. And at themoment she was glad for it, because it also concealed the anxiousuncertainty that twisted coldly inside her.
She was to wait, the Council had informed her. Wait, while theinformation she had given them was analyzed, digested. As though,perhaps, what she had said was part of some insidious plot; as thoughit were too fantastic to be the truth.
They had not even immediately authorized the dispatch of a patrolcruiser to the spot where she'd left Lance and Kriijorl over two hoursago, and by
now--?
She tried not to think or what the Earthman and the Ihelian might befacing, alone and in the darkness. Nor of the conclusions to which theCouncil, called into emergency session by the President Generalhimself when her information had been rapidly relayed through thecorrect channels to him, might arrive.
She could only wait.
And her waiting was terminated with an abrupt suddenness that made thetwisting cold thing inside her a churning confusion. It had been onlyminutes, hardly minutes.
Only one of them came into the small room where she sat. She rosequickly to attention. It was an aide to the President General himself;a brevet-Colonel