Betrayer of Worlds Read Online Free PDF

him.
    Another bout of seizures and hopelessness passed. Nessus had yet to stir.
    The Puppeteer did not respond to Louis’s shouts. Not to “Help!” (disinterested in helping another?) or “Fire!” (what harm was there in trying again?) or the more general “Danger!”
    Danger,
if anything, curled up the Puppeteer even tighter. Too vague, Louis decided. By this stage in his terror, Nessus must be beyond anything but hiding from an undefined danger.
    There was a germ of an idea here. Louis chewed his lower lip, trying tocoax out the thought. Suppose some peril loomed against which Nessus
could
take action? The hull was indestructible, but
Nessus
wasn’t. What about a big explosion alongside the hull?
    An emergency restraint field had saved Louis during
Clementine
’s crash, but only because he had been in the pilot couch. Would even Puppeteers equip cargo bays with emergency restraints?
    “Submarine approaching!” Louis shouted. “Nessus! Torpedoes in the water! Nuclear warheads.”
    Shuddering seismically, Nessus unfolded. His necks writhed like serpents. His heads swiveled, searching everywhere for danger. “Torpedoes?” he bleated, leaping to his hooves.
    “My mistake. Just some fish,” Louis said.
    Seeming not to hear, Nessus galloped for the hatch. The cargo hold echoed with the clops of his hooves.
    “No torpedoes!” Louis screamed.
    Nessus skidded to a halt partway out the hatch. One head plucked at his mane. “No submarine?”
    “No,” Louis answered, as firmly as his shakes allowed. “Now get me the tanj
out
of this cell!”

5

    An alert lamp pulsed. A timer began counting down the final hour. The moment Nessus had anticipated—and dreaded—was at hand. Louis Wu would emerge soon from the autodoc.
    And then Nessus must judge whether the man was up to the challenge.
    Beowulf Shaeffer was the one Nessus sought. Needed. Shaeffer was special. A neutron star, the galactic core explosion, a black hole, an entire solar system of antimatter: he had survived encounters with them all—only to be undone by some mundane accident.
    Unless, of course, Louis lied.
    As often as Nessus had found it expedient to lie, he did not doubt that someone else might. Especially when a simple lie might extract Louis from a dire predicament.
    And yet: maybe the luck of Beowulf Shaeffer
had
finally run out.
    Nessus had thought a great deal in recent years about luck and unintended consequences. He continued to fret, worrying and plucking at his mane, as the autodoc countdown reached ten minutes. Five. Two.
    Nessus sidled onto a stepping disc he had set onto the deck. This autodoc was monstrously large, too bulky for anywhere but
Aegis
’ main cargo hold. Big as befit the autodoc’s unique capabilities.
    Shaeffer had hidden himself well. Too well. Nessus had surreptitiously hired private investigators and criminals across the worlds of Human Space. None of his minions had found any trace of Shaeffer, either under his own name or any alias Shaeffer was ever known to have used. Not for decades.
    Dead? Concealed beyond hope of discovery? Nessus could live with either. Better those than the final possibility: that Nessus was too late. That another had already found Shaeffer.
    For Nessus was not the only Puppeteer familiar with Shaeffer’s extraordinary talents. . . .
    .   .   .

    Brimming with energy, bursting with life, Louis woke.
    Scores of readouts, all in the green, shimmered in the clear dome that hung scant centimeters over his face. A ’doc, of course. He had been too weak to get in unaided. Nessus had had to help.
    “Ship’s gravity is higher than Wunderland’s,” Nessus had offered while guiding and pushing from behind.
    A fact, perhaps, but not the essential truth. Exhaustion and the shakes had defeated Louis’s solo attempts to climb into the intensive care cavity. That, alas, he remembered clearly. Of the dreams that followed, he recalled only bits and fragments. Only enough to be certain that