they got deep-frozen?” I asked, again.
I could tell Finn was enjoying this. “Right here,” he said, with an air of great condescension . “At least, that’s the fashionable idea.”
I couldn’t work it out. I just stared at him, and waited.
“Wasn’t always this cold around here,” he said. “Only since the sun stabilized. A few billion years ago, when the solar system was still forming, the sun was super-hot. Was a balmy three hundred K in these parts. Hot and wet, plenty of carbon and nitrogen. Not exactly fit for people, but okay for bugs.”
“Jesus!” I said, impressed in spite of the fact that it gave Finn such satisfaction to see it. “There was life out here before the Earth cooled down? DNA and everything?”
“Sure,” he said, cockily. “Where’d you think life on Earth came from?”
When I was small, somebody had spun me a yarn about the molecules of life evolving in hot organic soup. They’d implied that the soup was slopping around in the oceans of primeval Earth. Obviously, the story had been updated in the light of more recent news. It didn’t take much imagination to push the story back still further. How had the parent bacteria got into the hot organic soup floating around the early Uranus?
From elsewhere, presumably.
It shouldn’t have been a surprise. As Finn had been reminding me only a few minutes earlier, the fact that all the galactic humanoids have an effectively-identical biochemistry does strongly suggest a common point of origin. I’d already known—without quite being fully conscious of it—that the story had to go back billions of years. Asgard, apparently, had been deep-frozen for a long time. While studying the ecology that had run wild in one of the lower levels I’d hazarded the guess that Asgard must be several millions of years old. Now, that guess didn’t seem so very wild. Perhaps, if I worked hard enough, I could make up a story which would let Asgard be billions of years old. Was it possible, I wondered, that all the DNA in the galactic arm had originally come from Asgard?
I thought about it. After all, I had nothing better to do.
All through the four hours, I expected some nasty little surprise package to pop up from somewhere. I thought that the heroes of the Star Force were bound to spring out from some unexpected hiding-place, flame-pistols blazing. After all, Ayub Khan might care far more about the possibility of losing the produce of years of careful research than about the possibility of two Star Force deserters getting away, but the likes of Trooper Blackledge could hardly be expected to give a twopenny damn about Uranian bugs. And what I knew about the Star Force suggested that they wouldn’t worry too much about the priorities of intellectual microworlders.
But nothing happened.
I should have realized that that was the most suspicious thing of all, but somehow I just couldn’t put it together.
Anybody can be stupid, once in a while. I was having a bad week.
When the four hours were finally up the phone warbled again, and we were told that a ship would be docking momentarily. Finn issued his instructions with all the imperiousness of a man whose right to command is secure. He specified that the men from the cargo-ship should come out of the umbilical one by one, unarmed and unsuited. He told Ayub Khan that he’d have his hands on the precious tanks, ready to let the beasties out at the least sign of anything wrong. We watched the instrument-panels in the docking-bay, following the progress of the ship’s approach and the connection of the umbilical. Everything looked absolutely fine.
Finn and I waited patiently, mud guns at the ready. Finn was so confident by now that he still had his helmet unsealed, so that he could talk. Obviously, he thought he’d have time to zip it up with one hand while he was letting the bugs out of the tank with the other. I had my suit on by now, but I left my helmet unsealed too. I wasn’t feeling terribly happy, but I saw no immediate cause for alarm.
Finn told me to take up a position beside the hatchway, so I’d be behind whoever came through. I didn’t like his giving me orders, but I followed his instructions anyhow. It did seem like the sensible place to be.
We didn’t know exactly who was going to appear at the hatchway, because we didn’t know who’d been given the job of piloting the shuttle with my ship in its cargo-hold. We were half-expecting a Star Force uniform, though, so I wasn’t unduly surprised by the fact that when the lock swung open, the person who stepped through was wearing a trim black suit with fancy braid.
What did surprise me was the fact that it was a woman. She had an amazing halo of silvery-blonde hair, and though her back was to me, so I couldn’t see her face, an awful suspicion began to dawn even before she spoke.
She wasn’t carrying a gun. In fact, she had her hands on her hips: a posture suggesting total carelessness. I could easily imagine the look of utter contempt that must be on her face as she stared at John Finn.
“Put the gun down,” she said, “and stand away from that tank. Open that valve, and I’ll personally see to it that every moment of the rest of your life is utterly miserable. The same goes for you, Rousseau, if you’re stupid enough to hit me from behind.”
It dawned on me that the ship whose docking we’d so calmly followed on the instruments wasn’t the shuttle at all. It was the Leopard Shark. Ayub Khan had simply asked us to wait around until the reinforcements arrived.
And we had.
“Small universe, isn’t it?” I remarked, with a depressingly feeble attempt at wit. “Mr. Finn, I’d like you to meet Star-Captain Susarma Lear.”
“Bastard!” said Finn. I charitably assumed that he was referring to Ayub Khan. I saw him reach out to open the valve, to flood the docking bay with vile Uranian bugs. He didn’t even bother to seal his helmet.
There was only one thing I could do.
I shot him in the face. He must have got a mouthful of the stuff, because he folded up with hardly a moment’s delay. The tank remained inviolate. As he collapsed, the expression of shocked surprise on his face turned gradually to a look of venomous hatred. There was no mistaking the fact that it was aimed at me.
Susarma Lear turned round and relieved me of the gun.
“That’s what I like about you, Rousseau,” she said. “When the chips are down, you always come through.”
CHAPTER SIX
I followed Susarma Lear down the spur to the corridor “below”, where three members of the local garrison, headed by Lieutenant Kramin, were waiting. I was relieved to observe that Blackledge wasn’t with them. Kramin saluted with enthusiasm. He looked obscenely self-satisfied, and he was wearing a very broad smile.
The smile didn’t last long.
Susarma Lear looked me up and down, then gave the lieutenant one of her best gorgon stares.
“Who hit this man?” she demanded.
Kramin looked startled. “One of my men got a little carried away, sir, while we were making the arrest.”
“You were told to apprehend him,” she said, silkily. “You were specifically told that he was not to be harmed.”
That was news to me. I was puzzled, but glad to hear it.
She
