Gefty said, staring, "Kerim, it's going to ..."
The janandra didn't. The motion checked suddenly, was reversed. The
locks drew tight again. The janandra swung back from the door, lifting
half its length upwards, big head weaving about as it inspected the tool
racks overhead. An arm reached suddenly, snatched something from one of
the racks. Then the thing turned again; and in the next instant its head
filled the viewscreen. Kerim made a choked sound of fright, jerking back
against Gefty. The bulging, metal-green eyes seemed to stare directly at
him. And the screen went black.
Kerim whispered, "Wha ... what happened, Gefty?"
Gefty swallowed, said, "It smashed the view pickup. Must have guessed we
were watching and didn't like it...." He added, "I was beginning to
think Maulbow must be some kind of superman. But it wasn't any
remote-control magic of his that let the janandra out of the vault, and
opened the intership locks when it came up to the main deck and followed
us down again. It was doing all that for itself. It's Maulbow's partner,
not his pet. And it's probably got at least as good a brain as anyone
else on board behind that ugly face."
Kerim moistened her lips. "Can it ... could it get out again?"
"Into the ship?" Gefty shook his head decidedly. "Uh-uh. It could dump
itself out on the other side--and it almost did before it realized where
it was and what it was about to do. But the inner lock doors won't open
until someone opens them right on this panel. No, the thing's safely
trapped. On the other hand ..."
On the other hand, Gefty realized that he wouldn't now be able to bring
himself to eject the janandra out of the cargo lock and into the Great
Current. Its intentions obviously hadn't been friendly, but its level of
intelligence was as good as his own, and perhaps somewhat better; and at
present it was helpless. To dispose of it as he'd had in mind would
therefore be the cold-blooded murder of an equal. But so long as that
ugly and formidable shipmate of Maulbow's stayed in the cargo lock, the
lock couldn't be used to get rid of the control unit in the vault.
A new solution presented itself while Gefty was making a rapid and
rather desperate mental review of various heavy-duty tools which might
be employed as weapons to force the janandra into submission and haul it
off for confinement elsewhere in the ship. Not impossible, but a highly
precarious and time-consuming operation at best. Then another thought
occurred: the storage vault lay directly against the hull of the
_Queen_--
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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