The Five Gold Bands by Jack Vance Read Free Book Online

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    Paddy looked at the girl. “Now yours.”
    Without a word she tossed him a vial. The doctor’s eyes hungrily followed the arc of the flight, riveted on Paddy’s arm as he pocketed the drugs.
    “Now move,” said Paddy blithely. “You’re both under death sentences, like me in the brick jail at Akhabats. Except I was an honest thief. You two are traitors to your old Mother Earth.”
    The doctor led them along the sour-smelling hall, slowly, hoping for interruption. Paddy said pleasantly, “And if there’s trouble, Doc, I’ll smash these bottles down on the floor.” The doctor’s gait lengthened. He opened a narrow door, led them down a flight of damp stones heavy with a musty reek of some nameless Spade-Ace mold.
    Two flights down and the stairs opened into the basement below the clothing store, a long low room dug into the ground, lit by antique glow-tubes. Old cases, dusty furniture cast tall black shadows—junk brought across the mindless miles of space to rot and moulder in a basement.
    Quietly, sedately, they moved through the basement, forming strange silhouettes against the higgledy-piggledy background. Paddy grinned. They didn’t dare attack, they didn’t dare run. He had them in a double grip with the gun and the poison.
    The doctor glanced at his watch. “Fifteen minutes,” he said thickly. “Then the antidote does us no more good.” He looked at Paddy with hot eyes, waiting for Paddy to answer.
    Paddy motioned silently. The doctor turned, stepped up on a bench, heaved at a slanting door. It swung up and out, letting a slender shaft of white light into the basement. The doctor looked right, left, motioned with a plump arm.
    “Come on up, all’s clear.”
    He stepped on up, the woman followed nimbly and then came Paddy, cautiously. They stood at the bottom of a light well, between two buildings, with a slit two feet wide running out to the street.
    Paddy said to the girl, “Where is the space-boat?”
    “North of town on the dust-flat.”
    “Let’s go.”
    They sidled from between the buildings out into a dark street. The doctor turned to the right, led them among the dismal mud huts of the Asmasian quarter. At a square of light he paused, looked at his watch.
    “Ten minutes.” He turned to Paddy. “Did you hear me? Ten minutes!”
    Paddy waved him on. The doctor turned and they continued out into the open country in back of the town—a region of open sewers, fields packed with unwanted refuse from a thousand stolen ships. Here and there stood the shack of some creature with habits too disgusting to be tolerated even by the tolerant men of Eleanor.
    They came out on a plain of white volcanic dust, dark-gray in the planet-spangled night of Spade-Ace, and the town of Eleanor was at their backs—a low unsightly blotch spotted with white and yellow lights.
    Paddy searched across the field for the dark shape of the boat. He turned a stormy glance at the woman. The doctor peered at his watch. “About a minute…”
    The woman’s voice glistened with triumph. “I have a spaceboat. It’s not here. It’s at the main field. You’re bluffing, Paddy Blackthorn. You want my space-boat more than I want my life. Now I’m making the terms. You’ve got to go along with me or else kill me.”
    “And kill you I will,” growled Paddy, pulling out his gun.
    “And kill yourself at the same time. Langtry agents are pouring into Eleanor by the boatload. They know you’re here. They’ll get you inside of four hours. You can’t hide and you can’t get away. I’m your only chance. Cooperate with me, and we both win—and Earth wins. Refuse and we both die—and Earth loses because before they kill you they’ll get what they want from you.”
    Paddy stood limp, angry. “Ah, you scheming, hag-woman, you’ve got me like Cuchulin’s goat. You still have the audacity to claim you serve Earth?”
    She smiled in the darkness. “You don’t believe me? You’ve never heard of the Earth