Free Sanctuary in The Sky by John Brunner Page A

Ligmer.”
    “Yes. Well—uh—I’m sorry, but I was delayed. I couldn’t lay my hands on a document I wanted.” Ligmer’s astonishment made him stumble over his words. "No, don’t go,” he added to Ferenc. “Not unless . . .”
    Ferenc swigged the last of his liquor and got to his feet. He wiped off his mouth with the back of his hand. “You have business together, I guess,” he said brusquely. “Don’t let me get in the way.”
    He gave a stiff bow and walked away. Ligmer followed him with his eyes until he rounded a thick clump of bushes and vanished from sight. “Well, I’ll be confounded,” he said in puzzled tones. “I don’t understand it at all.”
    “Understand what?” the Pag inquired, sitting down again and stretching out her long legs. “He seems quite a decent type for a military man—and one of yours, at that.”
    “It isn’t that simple, Usri,” said Ligmer, recollecting himself and likewise sitting down. “I shipped out with that man, and he behaved like a real diehard, with all the orthodox cliches ready to pop up at the press of the right button. To find him actually talking with a Pag, and politely, is un- thinkable ! ”
    Vykor could just catch the words, by straining his ears; he nodded automatically at the last sentence.
    Usri’s face showed puzzlement as deep as Ligmer’s. “Then . . . then he probably has a reason for acting like this,” she said shrewdly. “You probably threw a wrench into the works of some deep-laid scheme or other by breaking up the conversation. Well, never mind—we have our own business to attend to.” She reached under the bench on which she sat and took out a file of documents as thick as Ligmer’s, selected some, spread them out on the table, and looked up expectantly.
    And at that moment Vykor became aware that he was no longer alone on his bench. Sitting at the other end, looking perfectly self-possessed and relaxed, and stroking the black fur of his pet, was Lang.
    “Good day to you," Lang said, with a humorous twitch of his mouth, as soon as he saw that Vykor had recognized him. “I think you’re the steward who looked after us during the trip from Cathrodyne, aren’t you?”
    So the mask wasn’t working on him, at any rate. It was foolish to deny the truth; Vykor nodded and sat dumb.
    “Allow me to buy you some refreshment, then,” Lang proposed. “You gave us very good service; your Cathrodyne shipping lines are among the best I have encountered.”
    He signaled a waiter by pressing a bell on the arm of the bench before Vykor had a chance either to accept or refuse, and went on, “You were watching that peculiar little episode on the other side of the clearing, were you not?”
    Vykor glanced over at Ligmer and Usri; the scholarly face and the face with the filed tooth marring its smile were bent together over a photograph, studying it with a magnifying glass. He nodded again.
    “Strange, wouldn’t you have said?” Lang pursued. “I was under the impression that Officer Ferenc would have died rather than be seen talking in friendship with a Pag—particularly with a Pag who was an evil influence on this young ar- cheologist whose views he objected to.”
    Vykor found his tongue at last. “Distinguished sir, it was not only you or I who found it peculiar. Ligmer also seemed .shaken.”
    “And with reason, I think.” Lang saw that the waiter he had summoned was waiting for orders, and gestured inquiringly at Vykor.
    “Distinguished sir, you owe me nothing,” Vykor protested. “I was doing my job and no more—”
    “But no less, either. Many people do less.” Lang snapped his fingers. “Two fine wines, waiter.”
    The waiter nodded and vanished, and at that moment Ligmer looked up from his study of the photograph. He recognized Lang and came hurrying across the clearing.
    “Join us, won’t you?” he said. “I have been hoping to see you again, to answer those questions you said you might have—or to trv to, at