"Chapter 15" - читать интересную книгу автора (Gordon Dickson - Forever Man)

Chapter
15


HE WAS LYING ON A FLAT SURFACE.
He was under gravity. He was landed.
Two great, flat hoops, edge-down, of metal, or at least of something that shone like polished steel, were anchored in the hard surface on which AndFriend lay and curved over her, at a third of her length in from each end of her. The hoops were five meters wide and narrow, but with their edges that faced down toward AndFriend narrowing to a few microns of thickness, so that they were like enclosing, curved knives ready to slice her open if she should try to lift.
In one wild reflex he flung his orders at the phase-drive engines, ordering them to phase-shift immediately, shift a full five light-years away, at once.
Nothing happened. The control studs that should have depressed themselves on the corn section in front of his empty control chair did not stir. AndFriend did not stir.
He threw all his will, all his longing to escape into a command for the ship to phase-shift; and, when she continued to stay where she was, kept pushing against nothingness, driving, willing AndFriend to shift to safety.
And still nothing happened.
"No!" his mind cried
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It was a long, drawn-out cry, like the howl of a trapped animal. Dimly he was aware of Mary trying to speak to him.
"I can't move her!" he shouted voicelessly at Mary. "What's wrong? Where are we? How'd the Laagi do this? How'd they get us here? What happened? What's happened to me?"
` . . . Jim, don't," Mary was saying to him.. "Jim, don't fight like that. Please. It won't help and you'll only hurt yourself more. There's nothing you can do. You can't move AndFriend now. The Laagi think they have us like they had Raoul-only they didn't try to anchor him down; and we've just got to stay put, for a while at least."
Like a trapped animal crouching in the cage that held him prisoner, he snarled at her.
"What happened? What did they do to me?"
"The Laagi didn't do anything, Jim. Only bring us in and try to lock us down here with those arcs they've set up over AndFriend. I'm so sorry, Jim, but I had to. It wasn't them who stopped you from getting away from them, and it's not them that's keeping you from shifting clear now. It was me."
"You?" He raged at her. "You? Have you gone crazy, letting them make prisoners of us?"
"No, Jim. Please. Listen. This was something I had to do. It was planned this way from the start, if it looked like the Laagi might capture us the way they captured Raoul. It was something more important than anything else, if we could find out more about them and then try to bring the information back..."
"You just gave them AndFriend? You gave them me? Without warning? Without asking? How did you knock me out? What's happened to me that I can't move her?"
It was the third time he had been handled like someone untrustworthy, and it was the limit.
"Oh, Jim!" It was as impossible as the situation they were in now that he could feel from Mary Gallegher an emotion that was the equivalent of tears. But it was so. "It wasn't even Louis who decided to do this; it was the people who give him orders. The only way they agreed to this expedition was if our primary mission was to bring back information about the Laagi."
"What did you do to me?" He hated her now and knew she

164 I Gordon R. Dickson
was feeling that hate. "How could you come between me and AndFriend like this?"
"Jim, try to understand, please . . . . " she said. "I haven't come between you and AndFriend. It was just that, during one of the sessions when we had you under hypnosis near the end, you were implanted with a command that could make you unable to use your ability to do anything with her. It was just as if we'd told you about a command that could make one of your arms paralyzed and useless. We couldn't risk you doing what we knew you'd do if we saw something like those Laagi ships coming at us."
"I was going to save us, that's all!" he said fiercely.
"Yes, and that's what we didn't want happening. We needed to let ourselves be captured so that we'd finally have a chance to see the Laagi and understand their civilization, and how they work and why they fight us so=
"Nevermind that. I don't remember a thing after I said I was going to shift out of danger. Was that command of yours supposed to knock me out, too?"
"Yes," she said. "Oh, yes. Jim, it had to. It was the only safe way. Then I had another command, the one I used just now, once we were safely captured, to bring you back awake again, but still not able to move AndFriend."
"Safely captured!" he said savagely. "That's a little bit of a contradiction, isn't it?"
"But we can get away when we want-when we've learned what we came here to learn," she said. "Once you're able to move AndFriend again, you can shift right out from under those knives. The Laagi did just what we expected. When they didn't find anybody aboard us, they thought we were a derelict. Just as they thought La Chasse Gallerie was a derelict, except that later on she took off under Raoul's power and escaped from them. But they're only expecting that this ship has something automatic about it that doesn't require it to have a pilot to use ordinary drive, and that's what the arcs over us are there to stop happening. They don't realize that we're here and a part of the ship, and that you can phase-shift right out from under this kind of restraint once you're able to move."
"Once I'm able to move," he echoed grimly, mockingly. "Once you take my handcuffs off . . . which'll be when

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you've seen enough of the Laagi, which'll be when you're satisfied. I've got no say in the matter, have I-for all your saying you're so sorry about doing this? You want to prove you're really song? Turn me loose now and let me have a choice about whether we stay or go!"
"I can't!" she said. "I can't, Jim!"
"You won't-that's what you mean. You don't trust me not to take off the minute you let me go," he said. "You and the general didn't trust me enough to tell me I'd be going into space as a ship rather than a man, you didn't trust me enough to tell me you bought this trip from the higher-ups by promising to let the Laagi capture us if the chance came up. Now you won't trust me with control of the phase-shift equipment aboard my own ship. Let me tell you something, lady. You're either going to have to trust your partner, or you're never going to get back to Earth with anything you learn about the Laagi. And furthermore, I'm going to take back control of myself, the ship, you, and everything else, as soon as I can."