Astounding British Edition, Volume 8, No. 11 — page 57: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

BLOOD BANK 55 “Shut it off, you fool! You'll destroy the ship.” He said nothing, but waited in tense silence, watching the other end of the cor- ridor. Suddenly the ventilator fans died. Then the bulkhead door opened a crack, and paused. “Throw out your weapon first’” he barked. A gun fell through the crack and to the floor, A Solarian slipped through, sneezed,. and rubbed his eyes. “Turn around and back down the corridor.” The crewman obeyed slowly. Roki stood a few feet behind him, using him for a shield while the others emerged. The fight was gone out of them. It was strange, he thought; they were willing to risk the danger of the Idiot's C-drive, but they couldn’t stand being locked up with a runaway re- actor. They could see death coming then. He throttled back the reactors, and prodded the men toward the storage rooms. There was only one door that suggested a lockup. He halted the prisoners in the hallway and tried the bolt. “Not in there, manthing!” growled one of the Solarians. “Why not?” “There are—” _ A muffled wail from within the compart- ment interrupted the explanation. It was the cry of a child. His hand trembled on the bolt. “They are wild, and we are weaponless,” pleaded the Soiarian. ““How many are in there?” “Four adults, three children.” Roki paused. put you. One of you—you there—go inside, and we'll see what happens.” The man shook his head stubbornly in refusal. Roki repeated the order. Again the man refused, The predator, unarmed, was afraid of its prey. The Cophian aimed low and calmly shot him through the leg. “Throw him inside,” he ordered tone- lessly. With ill-concealed fright for their own safety, the other two lifted their screaming ‘comrade. Roki swung open the* door and caught a brief glimpse of several human shadows in the gloom. Then the Solarian was thrown through the doorway and the bolt snapped closed. At first there was silence, then a bull-roar from some angry throat. Stamping feet— then the Solarian’s shrick—and a body was “There’s nowhere else to being dashed against the inside walls while several savage voices roared approval. The two remaining crewmen stood in stunned silence. “Doesn’t work so, well, does it?” Roki murmured with ruthless unconcern. After a brief search, he found a closet to lock them in, and went to relieve Daleth at the key. When the last signal came, at the end of the four hours, she was asleep from exhaustion. And curled up on the floor, she looked less like a tough little frontier urchin than.a frightened bedraggled kitten. He grinned at her for a moment, then went back to inspect the damage to the briefly overloaded reactors. It was not as bad as it might have been. He worked for two hours, replacing fused focusing sections. The jets would carry them home. The Idiot was left drifting in space to await the coming of a repair ship. And Daleth was not anxious to fly it back alone. Roki set the Solarian vessel on a course with a variable C-level, so that no Sol ship could track them without warp lockers. As far as Roki was concerned the job was done. He had a shipful of evidence and two live Solarians who could be forced to confirm it. “What will they do about it?” Daleth asked as the captured ship jetted them back toward the Sixty-Star Cluster. “Crush the Solarian race immediately.” “I thought we were supposed to keep hands-off nonhuman races?” “We are, unless they try to exploit human beings. That is automatically an act of war. But I imagine an ultimatum will bring a surrender. They can’t fight without warp lockers.” “What will happen on Earth when they do surrender?” Roki turned to grin. “Go ask the human Rarthers. Climb in their cage.” She shuddered, and murmured, “Some day—they’ll be a civilized race again, won’t they?” He sobered, and stared thoughtfully at the star-lanced cosmos. “Theirs is the past, Daleth. Theirs is the glory of having founded the race of man. They sent us into space. They gave the galaxy to man— in the beginning. We would do well to let them alone.” He watched her for a moment. She had lost cockiness, temporarily. “Stop grinning at me like that!” she snapped. Roki went to feed the Solarian captives: canned cabbage. EoOmichbooks: co