Crashlander

I set the autopilot to take us back to the base and let the car fly itself until we were below the horizon. We were a mile up by then and a goodly distance away. Whereupon I canceled the course, dipped the car nearly to ground level, and swung back toward the forest. I flew almost at treetop level, staying well below the speed of sound.

«Tell me again,» I said, «about Beowulf the hero.»

«What kind of game are you playing now?»

«You thought the size of the Drunkard'a Walk cleared Bellamy, didn't you?»

«It does. It's much too small to be Captain Tellefsen's Pirate.»

«So it is. But we already know there was a pirate on board the Argos.»

«Right.»

«Let's assume it's Margo.»

«The captain?»

«Why not?»

I'll say this for him, he got it all in one gulp. Margo to release the gas. Margo to tell Bellamy where to meet the Argos and to hold the ship, in one place long enough to be met. Margo to lie about the size of Bellamy's ship.

And me to keep Emil in the dark until now, so he wouldn't blow his lines when he met Bellamy.

He gulped, and then he said, «It fits. But I'd swear Bellamy's innocent.»

«Except for one thing. He didn't invite me to go hunting with him.»

A yellow patch of forest streamed away beneath us. The purple polka dots we'd seen from high up turned out to be huge blossoms several feet across, serviced by birds the size of storks. Then we were over scarlet puffballs that shook in the wind of our passage. I kept us low and slow. A car motor is silent, but a sonic boom would make us more than conspicuous.

«That's your evidence against him? He didn't want you hunting with him?»

«And he gave lousy reasons.»

«You said he hated ETs. He's a flatlander. To some flatlanders we'd both look like ETs.»

«Maybe. But the Drunkard's Walk is still the only ship that could have landed Lloobee, and Margo's still our best bet as the kidnapper on the Argos. Maybe the pirates could have found the Argos by guess and hope, but they'd have a damn sight better chance with Margo working with them.»

Emil glared out through the windshield. «Were you thinking this all the time we were in the camp?»

«Not until he turned down the chance to take me hunting. Then I was pretty sure.»

«You make a first-class liar.~

I didn't know how to deny it, so I said nothing. Nonetheless, Emil was wrong. If I'd spilled my personal problems in Bellamy's lap, if I'd accepted his hospitality, professed friendship, drunk his liquor, laughed at his jokes and made him laugh at mine, it was not an act. Bellamy made you like him, and he made you want him to like you. And Emil would never understand that in my eyes Bellamy had done nothing seriously wrong.

Six years earlier I'd tried to steal a full-sized spacecraft, fitted more or less for war, from a group of Pierson's puppeteers. I'd been stopped before the plan had gotten started, but so what? The puppeteers had been blackmailing me, but again, so what? Who says the aliens of known space have to think we're perfect? We know we're not. Ask us!

«I'm sorry,» said Emil. «Excuse my mouth. I got you into this practically over your dead body, and now, when you do your best to help out, I jump on you. I'm an ungrateful …» And what he said then about his anatomic makeup probably wasn't true. He was married, after all. He concluded, «You're the boss. Now what?»

«Depends. We don't have any evidence yet.»

«You really think Bellamy's the one?»

«I really do.»

«He could be holding Lloobee anywhere. Hundreds of miles away.»

«We'll never find him thinking that way. He wasn't in the camp tent. Even Bellamy wouldn't have that much nerve. If he'd been in the ship, we'd have seen the air lock open —»

«Closed.»

«Open. Lloobee couldn't sense anything through a ship's hull. In a closed ship that size he'd go nuts.»

«Okay.»

«We know one thing that might be helpful. Bellamy's got a disintegrator.»

«He does?»

«The holes in the Argos. You didn't see them, did you.»

«No. You think he might have dug himself a hideout?»

«Yeah. Bellamy isn't the type to let a tool like that go to waste. If he's got a slaver disintegrator, he'll use it. It's a fine digging tool. A big roomy cave would take you an hour, and even the dust would be blown hundreds of miles. Disintegrator dust is nearly monatomic.»

«How are you planning to find this cave?»

«Let's see if the car has a deep-radar attachment.»

It didn't. Rent-a-cars usually do on worlds where there are swampy areas. So now we knew Gummidgy wasn't swampy. Everything on the dash had its uses, and not one of them was sonar.

«We'll have to make a sight search,» said Emil. «How close are we to Bellamy's camp?»

«About thirty miles.»

«Well, there's a chance they won't see us.» Emil sat forward in his chair, hands gripping his knees. His smile was thin and tight. Obviously he had something. «Take us up to ten miles. Don't cross sonic speed until we've got lots of room.»

«What can we see from ten miles up?»

«Assume I'm a genius.»

That served me right. I took the car up without quibbling.