Asgard's Conquerors. Brian Stableford

all. I’m only asking half. Half of everything. What other options do you have?”

      “I’m not sure,” I said, sourly. “But I bet they’d be cheaper ones.”

      “Sure,” he replied. “They aren’t charging you for the room, are they? “

      I hadn’t heard an offer like it since Jacinthe Siani had volunteered to buy me out of jail on Asgard with Amara Guur’s money. If it came to a contest, I decided that I’d rather deal with John Finn than with Amara Guur—but it wasn’t the kind of choice a sane man would want to be faced with. I was in the frying pan again, and I was only being offered a fire to jump into.

      “I don’t know yet what the Star Force intend to do with me,” I told him.

      He laughed. “If you wait to find out, it will be too late to stop them. They only have a dozen men on Goodfellow, and they’re mostly ones they couldn’t trust to do a good job in the real line of action, but they have a couple of hundred combat soldiers on Leopard Shark. Once you’re in their hands, Superman and the Scarlet Pimpernel couldn’t get you out. This is your last chance, Mike. Take it or leave it.”

      It didn’t seem to be much of a chance, but there didn’t seem to be any others.

      “Okay,” I said, defeated. “You’re on. Spring me, and the ship’s half yours. Half the money, too. I presume that I can leave it to you to get the paperwork ready?”

      “You certainly can,” he assured me. He sounded very pleased with himself. He had every right to be. When I thought what I’d had to go through to earn that money, the idea of cutting him in as a reward for opening a door seemed pretty sick. But if I wasn’t free, I couldn’t spend my money, could I?

      “Get some sleep,” said Finn. “I just have to make a few preparations, and then we’re away. I wouldn’t do this for everyone, you know—but you’re nearly family.”

      I tried to smile. I’d never had a brother, but if I had, I wouldn’t have wanted one like John Finn. It was bad enough to have him for a friend. Sometimes, though, friends are in such short supply that you have to take whatever you can get.

      It can be an unfriendly universe, sometimes.

      CHAPTER FOUR

      I can’t claim to be the galaxy’s foremost expert on jailbreaks—although, as you’ll learn later, I have more than a single instance of experience from which to generalize. Nevertheless, I believe that I can confidently identify four criteria that need to be fulfilled if the break is to stand much chance of success. While not wishing to encourage delinquent behavior, I’m prepared to pass on these pearls of wisdom.

      Firstly, it helps a lot if make your break at a time when those people who are interested in keeping you locked up are not paying attention. This might be because you have arranged with your allies to create some kind of a diversion, but it’s more likely to be because they’re all asleep.

      Secondly, it helps a lot if you can move around inconspicuously once you’re no longer in your place of imprisonment. Darkness helps, but even in darkness it’s a good idea not to be instantly recognizable as a fugitive to anyone you might happen to meet.

      Thirdly, you need to have somewhere safe and cozy to go—either a vehicle in which you can make a clean getaway, or a place of refuge where you can be securely hidden away while a search is conducted.

      Fourthly, never—and I mean never—put your trust in the supposed expertise of an assistant who has always seemed to you in the past to be a confirmed no-hoper.

      Anyone studying these four criteria will immediately realize that John Finn’s grand scheme to liberate me from my secure quarters on Goodfellow was bound to be a bit rickety. The fact that he could open the door was merely a beginning, and counted for less than one might imagine.

      One problem with trying to be inconspicuous on a microworld is that it’s very small and entirely artificial. It has no cycle of day or night, so the internal lights are never switched off. Another is that everybody knows everybody else by sight, and a stranger sticks out like a sore thumb. Your average microworld has very few hidden and forgotten corners, and in any case is crammed full of sensory equipment and alarms because it has to be perpetually on guard against things going wrong. If the staff are engaged in scientific research, they could hardly work a regular eight hours out of twenty-four, even if twenty-four hours did mean anything special, because they have to fit their personal timetables into the timetables of their observations.

      Had I thought about all this very carefully, I would have realized that John Finn’s escape plan was far from certain to succeed. Unfortunately, I didn’t think about it carefully. I just assumed that he could do it. This was not because I am the kind of person who readily puts his trust in his fellow man, but because I was still feeling benumbed and disoriented by the horrible shock of it all.

      I don’t know what time it was when he turned up again. I don’t even know what kind of time-system the microworld was using. But I was roused from sleep to find that the dimmed light had been turned up a fraction, and that Finn was trying to press some kind of weapon into my fist.

      “What is it?” I asked him.

      “Mud gun,” he said. “Benign weaponry issued to police forces in enlightened nations. Fires wet stuff that goes through your clothes. Skin absorbs some organic that acts as a muscle relaxant. Makes you feel like you do in dreams sometimes, when you want to move but can’t. Purely temporary effect. Okay?”

      I took the weapon. Then he gave me an overall made out of silvery plastic. He was wearing one just like it. I put it on.

      “Right,” said Finn. “I reckon we should have a clear run if we time it right. Keep your head down—if anyone does see us, they’ll probably figure you for one of my boys. I daren’t dim the lights—any little thing goes wrong makes people very nervous. We’re going straight for the umbilical. A few hundred meters. Stay close.”

      I nodded.

      He stood for a while, studying his wristwatch. About three minutes passed before he said: “Let’s go.”

      We went.

      He took me along at a brisk walk. My feet kept wanting to break into a trot, but I controlled the impulse and stayed behind him. I wished that he’d brought something to hide me in, but microworlds don’t have that kind of mobile equipment. Laundry baskets are rarely seen outside of old movies.

      We got at least three-quarters of the way before the unexpected happened and someone came through a hatchway ahead of us. It was a tall, white-haired man and he was seemingly engrossed in studying the display on a small hand-held bookplate. I dropped in behind Finn, trying to keep my face out of the direct line of sight. Finn marched bravely on, and greeted the man cheerfully. The guy with the bookplate barely glanced up, and muttered a reply. I thought we were safe for five whole seconds, until we had to pass through the hatchway ourselves and I spared time for a quick backward glance.

      The white-haired man had stopped, and was staring after us, with a look of puzzlement on his face.

      “Move it,” I said to Finn. “We’ve got to get out now.”

      I still thought we could make it, with only a short dash ahead of us to the spur that led out to the docking-spindle. They wouldn’t catch us from behind, and even if the Star Force had posted a guard in the dock, we had the mud guns. Once we were up the umbilical and into the ship, I thought, all we had to do was detach. I couldn’t believe that they’d actually try to shoot us down.

      We got to the hatchway leading to the spur without any obvious alarm having been raised, but climbing the spur seemed to take a long time—subjective time always seems to be distorted when you’re in a gravity-cline. Finn was ahead of me, and he hurled himself through the far end hatch, gun ready to fire. I hung back for a second, thinking to appraise the situation.

      Fantasies were running through my mind in which Finn immobilized the guards and the guards immobilized Finn, so that I could make it to the ship