Free Android at Arms by Andre Norton

healer.”
    San-sleep meant nothing to Andas, but a man with a weak heart could certainly not survive a takeoff. He said as much. Elys shook her head.
    â€œIn san-sleep he can. And here what chance has he? I do not believe you will find a healer out there.” She pointed with her chin. In that she was right.
    â€œBut how do we get him in this san-sleep?” Andas wanted to know.
    â€œI shall sing him,” she answered. And having nothing better to offer, Andas agreed.
    Elys shifted her position to the head of the bunk. Then using both of her hands to cup Tsiwon’s head, the fingers spread to the widest extent, Elys began a low and monotonous humming note. Three times she gave that. Then looked to them.
    â€œGo hence now. You might be caught also—if to a lesser degree.”
    They urged Grasty, in spite of his protests and groans, up to the control cabin, leaving Elys with her patient. As Andas went, he could hear a continuous wailing note, which made him uncomfortable.
    â€œDo you think she can do it?” he asked as he joined the others.
    Yolyos answered. “Who knows? Without a medic we shall do the best we can. It is a pity that survival techniques were not included in the past training we received. In fact, it becomes very plain that much education can be considered uesless when one is faced with a situation such as this.”
    He had laid his untidy harvest down on the astrogator’s seat and gone to the tape file, flicking it open. There were three inside, and he hooked them out with a claw. Andas saw again the symbols, save that the one for Inyanga was missing.
    â€œDo we choose Naul now?” the Salariki wanted to know.
    â€œNo!” Grasty heaved himself up and tried to grab at the tape case. “Not Naul!”
    â€œNow I wonder why? What do you know about Naul?” Yolyos’s cat eyes were dangerously narrowed. “You made a deal with Turpyn—what do you know about Naul that you do not want to go there?”
    The man picked at the waistline bulge of his coverall. His natural reddish flush was overlaid with a gray look.
    â€œNaul—Naul is overrun by the Jauavum Empire.”
    â€œThe what?” Andas stared. “But Tsiwon—he wouldn’t want to head into that—”
    â€œHe—he was the one who started it all!” Grasty replied. Then in a burst of words as if he must tell it, he said, “Iylas Tsiwon gave the orders that brought the Jauavum fleet first to Naul. Everyone in the Eighth Sector knows it. He need only to say his traitor name on any world there and he’d be torn to pieces!”
    â€œAnd when did this treason of his happen?” asked Yolyos.
    â€œIn 2250.”
    â€œBut Tsiwon said he could not remember past 2246.”
    â€œHe said!” Grasty gave a nasty laugh. “Any man who has made his name stink over half the galaxy would say anything.”
    â€œNo!” Andas cut in again. “Don’t you see, if Turpyn is right and we have all been put in storage so doubles could take our places, that was what must have happened. Tsiwon’s double—the android—was the traitor. You,” he demanded now of Grasty, “if you knew what happened in 2250, what was the last date you remember?”
    â€œThe year 2273. But you mean we could have been in that place for years?” His voice shrilled higher and higher. “But Thrisk—what has happened on Thrisk?”
    â€œYou might well ask,” Yolyos said dryly, “seeing what apparently happened on Naul after Tsiwon was substituted. If that is what did happen. So we have 2273 now—”
    Andas was busy with subtraction. Forty-three years galactic time! But how could a man—it must have been stass-sleep. Yes, in the earlier days before hyper space travel, men had managed to sleep for centuries in stass while the early First Ships made their blind galactic voyages. Forty-three years—and how many more?