Exile | Page 4

Klaft uneasily. "You, too, have citizens who do not always obey, your laws, who sometimes ... that is--"
"Who are born to die under the axe, as we say," interrupted Klaft, as if to ease the concern plain on Kinton's face. "In other words, criminals. You suspect this Albirken is such a one, George?"
"It is not impossible," admitted Kinton unhappily. "He will tell me little about himself. It may be that he was caught in Tepokt's gravity while fleeing from justice."
To himself, he wished he had not told Birken about the spaceship. He didn't think the man exactly believed his explanation of why there was no use taking off in it.
* * * * *
Yet he continued to spend as much time as he could visiting the other man. Then, as his helicopter landed at the city airport one gray dawn, the news reached him.
"The other Terran has gone," Klaft reported, turning from the breathless messenger as Kinton followed him from the machine.
"Gone? Where did they take him?"
Klaft looked uneasy, embarrassed. Kinton repeated his question, wondering about the group of armed police on hand.
"In the night," Klaft hissed and clucked, "when none would think to watch him, they tell me ... and quite rightly, I think--"
"Get on with it, Klaft! Please!"
"In the night, then, Albirken left the chamber in which he lay. He can walk some now, you know, because of Dr. Chuxolkhee's metal pin. He--he stole a ground car and is gone."
"He did?" Kinton had an empty feeling in the pit of his stomach. "Is it known where he went? I mean ... he has been curious to see some of Tepokt. Perhaps--"
He stopped, his own words braying in his ears. Klaft was clicking two claws together, a sign of emphatic disagreement.
"Albirken," he said, "was soon followed by three police constables in another vehicle. They found him heading in the direction of our town."
"Why did he say he was traveling that way?" asked Kinton, thinking to himself of the spaceship! Was the man crazy?
"He did not say," answered Klaft expressionlessly. "Taking them by surprise, he killed two of the constables and injured the third before fleeing with one of their spears."
"What?"
Kinton felt his eyes bulging with dismay.
"Yes, for they carried only the short spears of their authority, not expecting to need fire weapons."
* * * * *
Kinton looked from him to the messenger, noticing for the first time that the latter was an under-officer of police. He shook his head distractedly. It appeared that his suspicions concerning Birken had been only too accurate.
Why was it one like him who got through? he asked himself in silent anguish. After ten years. The Tepoktans had been thinking well of Terrans, but now--
He did not worry about his own position. That was well enough established, whether or not he could again hold up his head before the purple-scaled people who had been so generous to him.
Even if they had been aroused to a rage by the killing, Kinton told himself, he would not have been concerned about himself. He had reached a fairly ripe age for a spaceman. In fact, he had already enjoyed a decade of borrowed time.
But they were more civilized than that wanton murderer, he realized.
He straightened up, forcing back his early-morning weariness.
"We must get into the air immediately," he told Klaft. "Perhaps we may see him before he reaches--"
He broke off at the word "spaceship" but he noticed a reserved expression on Klaft's pointed face. His aide had probably reached a conclusion similar to his own.
They climbed back into the cabin and Klaft gave brisk orders to the lean young pilot. A moment later, Kinton saw the ground outside drop away.
Only upon turning around did he realize that two armed Tepoktans had materialized in time to follow Klaft inside.
One was a constable but the other he recognized for an officer of some rank. Both wore slung across their chests weapons resembling long-barreled pistols with large, oddly indented butts to fit Tepoktan claws. The constable, in addition, carried a contraption with a quadruple tube for launching tiny rockets no thicker than Kinton's thumb. These, he knew, were loaded with an explosive worthy of respect on any planet he had heard of.
To protect him, he wondered. Or to get Birken?
The pilot headed the craft back toward Kinton's town in the brightening sky of early day. Long before the buildings of Kinton's institute came into view, they received a radio message about Birken.
"He has been seen on the road passing the dam," Klaft reported soberly after having been called to the pilot's compartment. "He stopped to demand fuel from some maintenance workers, but they had been warned and fled."
"Couldn't they have seized him?" demanded Kinton, his tone sharp with the worry he endeavored to control. "He has that spear, I suppose; but