Read Online Planet in Peril by John Christopher - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: John Christopher
Ads: Link
the emptiness gave way to Ellecott’s face again. Ellecott was still smiling.
"Good news for you, Official Grayner . We’ve got Dinkuhl . We can arrange for you to be quartered with him for the period of your—for the period while we are fixing things up. We’re putting you into rather more comfortable quarters, too. I imagine you will be finding your present place on the cramped side.”
C harles said warily: “ That’s very good of you.”
‘Two of our men are coming along to collect you now. I know you will co-operate.”
It was when, at the bidding of the two men, he climbed through the door into a peculiar tunnel-shaped passage that he realized what his surroundings were. The original cell, of course, should have put him on the track —the functional bareness, the door equidistant between floor and ceiling, the chair with straps and the hammock. Now the convoluting corridor, the evidence of bulkhead construction, and, above all, the handrails for maneuvering in non-gravity conditions, made things quite unmistakable. He was in a spaceship. A spaceship at rest, it was true, since gravity was the normal gravity, not the artificial variety, and there was nothing of the inevitable background vibration. But a spaceship nevertheless. He glanced at his two badgeless guardians with private satisfaction. So it was Interplanetary who had him.
He recognized the room into which he was shown as one of the messrooms , converted hastily for his own and Dinkuh l’ s accommodation. The fine seams in the walls were indicators of the presence of pop-out tables, and there was the hatch in one comer, through which food would normally arrive. The TV screens on facing walls were messroom style, too.
A certain amount of odd furniture had been brought in, including, he was surprised and pleased to see, a bookcase. Dinkuhl was standing behind this with a book in his hand. He looked up when Charles came in, and waved.
“Glad to see you, Charlie. They’ve already written me of as a big-mouthed recalcitrant so I will begin with a word or two of warning. Those TV screens may be blank, but don’t think they aren’t registering. And I know enough about modem microphones to be able to assure you that if you or I whisper loud enough for the other to hear, we are whispering loud enough for our friends to listen, too. That being so, I think they should be warned that we are taking the reasonable precaution of not discussing anything that in our view is likely to help them in any way.”
Charles said: “Fair enough. How did they get you, by the way?”
“ Astarate —but a milder dose than you, I gather. At any rate I have been awake for a few hours, and I took it you were newly risen. They told me you had insisted on our being reunited before you answered any questions.”
Charles watched Dinkuhl , trying to probe whatever might underlie the familiar sardonic friendliness. “I thought it a good idea.”
Dinkuhl nodded. “Very sound. I can’t say what they planned to do with me—I was presumably picked up in the first place because I could hardly be left behind in the circumstances. But I take it I am dispensable. And that is something else that I think we must have out in the open, where we can see it as well as the eyes that watch, the ears that harken. To what extent are you to trust me? The fact that you asked to see me doesn’t signify, except insofar as it makes things easier for them —supposing I am on their side.”
Charles grinned. “The company is welcome, anyway. You restore my morale, Hiram.”
“And that, too, can work both ways. But this seems a good time to tackle a point that I imagine may have begun to worry you—the question of your own importance. You will have realized that quite a number of people are more interested than a little in the work that was being done at the UC laboratory where you had so short and eventful a stay. Humayun and the Koupals may not have been captured by the same managerial.
"Good news for you, Official Grayner . We’ve got Dinkuhl . We can arrange for you to be quartered with him for the period of your—for the period while we are fixing things up. We’re putting you into rather more comfortable quarters, too. I imagine you will be finding your present place on the cramped side.”
C harles said warily: “ That’s very good of you.”
‘Two of our men are coming along to collect you now. I know you will co-operate.”
It was when, at the bidding of the two men, he climbed through the door into a peculiar tunnel-shaped passage that he realized what his surroundings were. The original cell, of course, should have put him on the track —the functional bareness, the door equidistant between floor and ceiling, the chair with straps and the hammock. Now the convoluting corridor, the evidence of bulkhead construction, and, above all, the handrails for maneuvering in non-gravity conditions, made things quite unmistakable. He was in a spaceship. A spaceship at rest, it was true, since gravity was the normal gravity, not the artificial variety, and there was nothing of the inevitable background vibration. But a spaceship nevertheless. He glanced at his two badgeless guardians with private satisfaction. So it was Interplanetary who had him.
He recognized the room into which he was shown as one of the messrooms , converted hastily for his own and Dinkuh l’ s accommodation. The fine seams in the walls were indicators of the presence of pop-out tables, and there was the hatch in one comer, through which food would normally arrive. The TV screens on facing walls were messroom style, too.
A certain amount of odd furniture had been brought in, including, he was surprised and pleased to see, a bookcase. Dinkuhl was standing behind this with a book in his hand. He looked up when Charles came in, and waved.
“Glad to see you, Charlie. They’ve already written me of as a big-mouthed recalcitrant so I will begin with a word or two of warning. Those TV screens may be blank, but don’t think they aren’t registering. And I know enough about modem microphones to be able to assure you that if you or I whisper loud enough for the other to hear, we are whispering loud enough for our friends to listen, too. That being so, I think they should be warned that we are taking the reasonable precaution of not discussing anything that in our view is likely to help them in any way.”
Charles said: “Fair enough. How did they get you, by the way?”
“ Astarate —but a milder dose than you, I gather. At any rate I have been awake for a few hours, and I took it you were newly risen. They told me you had insisted on our being reunited before you answered any questions.”
Charles watched Dinkuhl , trying to probe whatever might underlie the familiar sardonic friendliness. “I thought it a good idea.”
Dinkuhl nodded. “Very sound. I can’t say what they planned to do with me—I was presumably picked up in the first place because I could hardly be left behind in the circumstances. But I take it I am dispensable. And that is something else that I think we must have out in the open, where we can see it as well as the eyes that watch, the ears that harken. To what extent are you to trust me? The fact that you asked to see me doesn’t signify, except insofar as it makes things easier for them —supposing I am on their side.”
Charles grinned. “The company is welcome, anyway. You restore my morale, Hiram.”
“And that, too, can work both ways. But this seems a good time to tackle a point that I imagine may have begun to worry you—the question of your own importance. You will have realized that quite a number of people are more interested than a little in the work that was being done at the UC laboratory where you had so short and eventful a stay. Humayun and the Koupals may not have been captured by the same managerial.
Similar Books
