The Star Venturers by Kenneth Bulmer

Author:Kenneth Bulmer [Bulmer, Kenneth]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Science Fiction; American
Publisher: Ace
Published: 1969-07-14T23:00:00+00:00

VII

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Bill Jarrett had never owned one of these flying fortresses—as an adventurer of the galaxy he had never owned a stick or stone and had had no truck with mortgages—but he had flown them before.

The massive anti-gravity engines turned sweetly in immediate response although they had not been used since the day they had lowered the top floor onto the building beneath. The study room and the foyer rose into the air.

Brick and masonry, fiberglass and concrete, broke and split. The whole sheathing of roof cracked open like an ice field when a submarine-fired missile blasts off.

Masonry, brickbats and tiles cascaded down as the roof collapsed and poured in smoking rubble into the garden and street. They heard no yells from below over the din. The flier, now revealed as a stumpy and only partially streamlined shape, rose briskly from the building like an insect breaking free of its chrysalis and soared into the air.

A few shots were fired after them. They bounced from the flier's hull.

The flier soared through the night sky and Jarrett at the controls felt again the mystery and the mastery of flight.

"Where away?" he said to Fleming.

"Due south." The terraforming engineer spoke huffily, as though hating them he hated himself for his own weakness most of all. His piggy eyes had sunk deeply.

"Pretty hot down there," Todd squeaked. "I was down there on a surveying trip, six, seven years ago. Had to refrigerate the engines on the trucks."

"If Styron Sinclair is down there planning deviltry, then that's where we're going." Jarrett took for granted the fact that Todd was accompanying him. Sue, too, was now with them, and with as good as a reason as Jarrett's, really. A hundred miles south, still in darkness, they descended to a forested area a mile or so from a huddle of lights denoting a frontier township. Jarrett kicked the two blocky bodyguards out.

As they went through the foyer, Fleming yelled after them, "You're finished, you two!"

Jarrett just said, "You can walk to that town. It's not far."

The two guards slouched off into the alien night.

Fleming grunted and moved awkwardly. Jarrett loosened the wires but he kept the man securely tied. Fleming swallowed.

"I've met your kind before," he said. "You're not the first to come trying to find Styron Sinclair."

"No?"

Jarrett was aware of Sue trembling with strung-up intentness, shaking, her hands gripped into fists.

"No. There was a man called Jungren Jones. He came asking questions."

"What happened?"

Fleming snickered. "He wore a frug, too. We took it off."

Jarrett felt sick.

Then, remembering, he said, "That explains why you set Purdy on me; but what happened to the frug?"

Fleming pouted. Evidently the memory rankled.

"It was Purdy's fault, really. He told me some stupid story about two girls wearing bikinis and boots in a ship full of armored eepees. An odd story but I chose to believe him. Purdy's useful. But the frug was gone."

Jarrett felt the anger in him.

Fleming finished; "I expect he sold it on his own account. Cost a lot of money.

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