Astounding British Edition, May 1953 — page 27: what you’re looking at

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

called the Baker, who hides them by leading them through a dummy oven to hidden rooms. This Baker, as it turns out, is a Trantorian agent. The Townman suspects this and since he is a Florinian patriot as a result of experiences on Sark at the time of his education, he fears Trantorian domination as much_as he fears Sarkite domination. He therefore escapes, assuring Valona that he will return. At the outskirts of the city, in the early dawn hours, the Townman enters a local precinct station, kills the lone Patroller in charge and puts on the Patroller’s uniform. Meanwhile, the Baker, having fitted Rik and Valona with new non-Florinian clothes, and an other-planet passport, is prepared to send them away from Florina to the safety of Trantorian territory. As they leave the bakery, however, the Townman, in his Patroller dis- guise, approaches and shoots down the Baker. Rik and Valona do not recognize the Town- man, however. In the belief that he is a Patroller, they run for it and in the confusion, escape. Rik, his memory continuing to return, is eager to get on board ship. He persuades Valona therefore to make for the spaceport, as had been the Baker’s original plan, and there to stow away on any available ship. They do so. What they do not realize, however, is that the ship they choose is the same ship which is about to carry the Lady Samia of Fife back to Sark, that lady being the daughter of the most powerful landowner on Sark, the Squire of Fife. The Townman, in his Patroller disguise, pursues Rik and Valona to the spaceport but is too late to prevent their stowing away. He learns of the fact that the ship carries the Lady Samia and he makes up his mind to get to Sark at any cost. For one thing his life is forfeit on Florina, for another, he knows that Rik with his dimly remembered spatio- analytic past and his babblings of danger to Florina may be a vital weapon against the Sarkite dominance over Florina, and he must, therefore, get him back. The Townman makes his way back to Upper City, still as a Patroller. He knows he cannot keep this diguise since, by now, the true Patrollers must know of the impostor- ship. He therefore manages to kill a Squire and exchange clothing. Now, as a Squire, he makes his way to one of the space-yacht ports that ring Upper City where the Squire killed by the Townman owns a yacht. The Townman would gladly use this yacht to escape from Florina but he hasn’t the slightest notion of how to pilot one. He is trapped. THE CURRENTS OF SPACE SF - ee, eee ee ee ee fe, ae Ody he ig aan eet te ae - eh . — ae ek aS a 4 Set ~ = —— — — On board the Lady Samia’s ship, meanwhile, _ Rik and Valona are quickly detected, since — their body-heat registers on the ship’s instru- ments. The Lady Samia, who feels kindly, in a condescending way, toward Florinians, cross- examines them at length, despite the conviction of the captain of the ship that Rik and Valona are dangerous criminals. The captain’s point of view is borne out by a message from the Department of Security—Depsec—of Sark to the effect that it is known he has stowaways on board and that the stowaways are to be delivered. to Depsec upon arrival at Sark. Meanwhile, great doings are taking place on Sark. While the routine administration of Sark is in the hands of a celibate Florinian civil service, the big wheels are the ““Great Squires,” each of whom is absolute lord of a separate Sarkite continent. The most powerful of the Great Squires is the Squire of Fife, the Lady Samia’s father, who one year before had called one of the rare meetings of all five Great Squires. At the time, blackmailing letters had been received by all Squires and Fife had con- nected this with the recent disappearance of a spatioanalyst. He believed that this marked — the beginning of a campaign by Trantor to undermine Sarkite sovereignty on Florina and to take over control of the kyrt trade. However, a year had passed in which nothing had happened to strengthen Fife’s theory, until the disturbances, centering about Rik, began on Flerina. A second meeting of Squires resulted. Fife outlined a theory tending to prove that Rik was the missing spatioanalyst, that someone had kidnapped and _ psycho- probed him, and had then hidden him on Florina to await a proper time for using him further. Fife then proceeded to claim that no one on Sark had the power to so manipulate the spatioanalyst except one of the Great Squires and therefore accused some one of his listeners—exactly which one he could not say —as a traitor to Sark, He announces that he is taking over complete control of all the continents on Sark and will thenceforward be sole manipulator of the kyrt trade. The other Great Squires protest vehemently, claiming the entire story to be a fraud. Fife stuns them into silence by announcing that the spatioanalyst is on board a Sarkite ship and is now in his hands. He also announces that the Townman, whose activities have included the slaying of a Trantorian agent, two Patrollers and a Sarkite is also captured and on the way to Sark. Now we must go back a few hours to the yacht-port at which the Townman, still un- captured, is desperately haunting the yacht, <s) oO EOmMmichdoo roe = RIN . oe ) ea Q : Mud 4 ps rns A 7 ’ SA - LY