Fobo chuckled, and he said, in American, 'He won't keep that up long. What does he think we Siddo are? A bunch of mouses?'
What he had been waiting for happened. A burly wog suddenly stood up as Pornsen reached for his mask and instead lifted the gapt's. Surprised at seeing the non-Ozagenian features, the wog stared for a second. Then, he gave a screech, yelled something, and punched the Earthman in the nose.
At once, there was bedlam. Pornsen staggered back into a table, knocking it and its steins over, and fell to the floor. Two wogs jumped him. Another hit a fourth. The fourth struck back. Duroku, carrying a short club, ran up and began thumping his fighting customers on the backs and legs. Somebody threw beetlejuice in his face.
And, at that moment, Fobo threw the switch that plunged the tavern into darkness.
Hal stood bewildered. A hand seized his. 'Follow me!' The hand tugged. Hal turned and allowed himself to be led, stumbling, toward what he thought was the back door.
Any number of others must have had the same idea. Hal was knocked down and trampled upon. Fobo's hand was torn from his. Yarrow cried out for the wog, but any possible answer was drowned out in a chorus of Beat it! Get off my back; you dumb son-of-a-bug! Great Larva, we're piled up in the doorway!
Sharp reports added to the noise. A foul stench choked Hal as the wogs, under nervous stress, released the gas in their madbags. Gasping, Hal fought his way through the door. A few seconds later, his mad scrambling over twisting bodies earned him his freedom. He lurched down an alleyway. Once on the street, he ran as fast as he could. He didn't know where he was going. His one thought was to put as much distance as possible between himself and Pornsen.
Arc lights on top of tall, slender iron poles flashed by. He ran with his shoulder almost scraping the buildings. He wanted to stay in the shadows thrown by the many balconies jutting out from above. After a minute, he slowed down at a narrow passageway. A glance showed him it wasn't a blind alley. He darted down it until he came to a large square can, one that by its odor must have been used for garbage. Squatting behind it, he tried to lessen his gaspings. Presently, his lungs regained their balance; he no longer had to sob for air. He could listen without having his heart thudding in his ears.
He heard no pursuer. After a while, he decided it was safe to rise. He felt the bottle in his cloak pocket. Miraculously, it had not been broken. Jeanette would get her liquor. What a story he would have to tell her! After all he had gone through for her, he would surely get just a reward...
He shivered with goose pimples at the thought and began to walk briskly down the alley. He had no idea where he was, but he carried a map of the city in his pocket. It had been printed in the ship and bore street names in Ozagen with American and Icelandic translations beneath. All he had to do was read the street signs under one of the many lamps, orient himself with the map, and return home. As for Pornsen, the fellow had no real evidence against him and would not be able to accuse him until he got some. Hal's golden lamedh made him above suspicion. Pornsen...
Pornsen! No sooner had he muttered the name than the flesh appeared. There was a click of hard boot heels behind him. He turned. A short, cloaked figure was coming down the alley. A lamp's glow outlined the droop of a shoulder and shone on black leather boots. His mask was off.
'Yarrow!' shrilled the gapt, truimphantly. 'No use running! I saw you in that tavern. You won't be able to save yourself now!'
He click-clacked up to his ward's tall rigid form. 'Drinking! I know you were drinking!'
'Yeah?' Hal croaked. 'What else?'
'Isn't that enough?' screamed the gapt. 'Or are you hiding something in your apartment? Maybe you are! Maybe you've got the place filled with bottles. Come on! Let's get back to your apartment. We'll go over it and see what we see. I wouldn't be surprised to find all sorts of evidence of your unreal thinking.'
Hal hunched his shoulders and clenched his fists, but he said nothing. When he was told by the gapt to precede him back to Fobo's building, he walked without a sign of resistance. Like conqueror and conquered, they marched from the alley into the street. Yarrow, however, spoiled the picture by reeling a little and having to put his hand to the wall to steady himself.
Pornsen sneered. 'You drunken joat! You make me sick to my stomach!'
Hal pointed ahead. 'I'm not the only one who's sick. Look at that fellow.'
He was not really interested, but he had a wild hope that anything he said or did, however trivial, might put off the final and fatal moment when they would return to his apartment. He was pointing at a large and evidently intoxicated wogglebug hanging onto a lamppost to keep from falling on his needle-shaped nose. He might have been a nineteenth- or twentieth-century drunk, complete to top hat, cloak, and lamppost. Now and then, the creature groaned as if he were deeply disturbed.
'Perhaps we'd better stop to see if he's hurt,' said Hal.
He had to say something, anything to delay Pornsen. Before his captor could protest, he went up to the wog. He put his hand on the free arm – the other was wrapped around the post – and spoke in Siddo.
'Can we help you?'
The big wog looked as if he, too, had been in a brawl. His cloak, besides being ripped down the back, was spotted with dried green blood. He kept his face away from Hal, so that the Earthman had a hard time understanding his muttering.
Pornsen jerked at his arm. 'Come on, Yarrow. He'll get by all right. What's one sick bug more or less?'
'Shib,' agreed Hal tonelessly. He let his hand drop and started to walk on. Pornsen, behind, took one step and then bumped into Hal as Hal stopped.
'What are you stopping for, Yarrow?' The gapt's voice was suddenly apprehensive.
And then the voice was screaming in agony.
Hal whirled – to see in grim actuality what had flashed across his mind and caused him to stop in his tracks. When he had put his hand on the wog's arm, he had felt, not warm skin, but hard and cool chitin. For a few seconds, the meaning of that had not cleared the brain's switchboard. Then it had come through, and he had remembered the talk he and Fobo had had on the way to the tavern, and why Fobo wore a sword. Too late, he had wheeled to warn Pornsen.
Now the gapt was holding both hands to his eyes and shrieking. The big thing that had been leaning against the lamppost was advancing toward Hal. Its body seemed to grow huger with every step. A sac across its chest swelled until it looked like a palpitating gray balloon and a wheezing sound accompanied its deflation. The hideous insectal face, with two vestigial arms waving on each side of its mouth and the funnel-shaped proboscis below the mouth, was pointed at him. It was that proboscis which Hal had mistakenly thought was a wog's nose. In reality, the thing must have breathed through tracheae and two slits below the enormous eyes. Normally, its breath must saw loudly through the slits, but it must have suppressed the sound in order not to warn its victims.
Hal yelled with fright. At the same time he grabbed his cloak and threw it up before his face. His mask might have saved him, but he did not care to take the chance.
Something burned the back of his hand. He yelped with pain but leaped forward. Before the thing could breathe in air to bloat the sac again and expel the acid through the funnel, Hal rammed his head against its paunch.
The thing said, 'Oof!' and fell backward where it lay on its back and thrashed its legs and arms like a giant poisonous bug – which it was. Then, as it recovered from the shock and rolled over and tried to get back on its feet, Hal kicked hard. His leather toe drove with a crunching sound through the thin chitin.
The toe withdrew; blood, dark in the lamplight, oozed out; Hal kicked again in the open place. The thing screamed and tried to crawl away on all fours. The Terran leaped upon it with both feet and drove it sprawling to the cement. He pressed his heel against its thin neck and shoved with all the strength of his leg. The neck cracked, and the thing lay still. Its lower jaw dropped open and exposed two rows of tiny needle teeth. The mouth's rudimentary arms wigwagged feebly for a while and then drooped.
Hal's chest heaved in agony. He couldn't get enough air. His guts quivered and threatened to force their way through his throat. Then they did, and Hal bent over, retching.
All at once, he was sober. By that time Pornsen had quit screaming. He was lying huddled on his side in the gutter. Hal turned him over and shuddered at what he saw. The eyes were partly burned out, and the lips were gray with large blisters. The tongue, sticking from the mouth, was swollen and lumpy. Evidently, Pornsen had swallowed some of the venom.
Hal straightened up and walked away. A wog patrol would find the gapt's body and turn it over to the Earthmen. Let the hierarchy figure out what had happened. Pornsen was dead, and now that he was, Yarrow admitted to himself what he had never allowed himself to admit before this time. He had hated Pornsen. And he was glad that he was dead. If Pornsen had suffered horribly, so what? His pains were brief, but the pain and grief he had caused Hal had lasted for almost thirty years.
A sound behind him made him whirl around.
'Fobo?'
There was a moan, followed by pain-garbled words.
'Pornsen? You can't be... you're... dead.'
But Pornsen was alive. He was standing up, swaying.
He held his hands out before him to feel his way and took a few weak, exploratory steps.
For a moment, Hal was so panicked he thought of running away. But he forced himself to remain rooted and to think rationally.
If the wogs did find Pornsen, they'd turn him over to the doctors of the Gabriel. And the doctors would give Pornsen new eyes from the meat bank and would inject regeneratives into him. In two weeks, Pornsen's tongue would grow out again. And he'd talk. Forerunner, how he'd talk!
Two weeks? Now! There was nothing to prevent Pornsen from writing.
Pornsen groaned with physical pain; Hal, with mental.
There was only one thing to do.
He went up to Pornsen and seized his hand. The gapt flinched and said something unintelligible.
'It's Hal,' said Yarrow.