PRISONER OF WAR

Marten wasn't prepared for it when the alien tractor-beam grabbed his little ship. He had been in the Fourth Quadrant of Fless territory, threading an uneasy course through the extraterrestrials' home grounds, but he hadn't expected to be caught so suddenly or so hard.

The ship stopped in mid-flight abruptly—so abruptly that Marten's head was slammed back against the rear of the seat, and for a moment he was paralyzed by the shock of what had happened.

But only for a moment. His toe reached out, snapped the pedal on the subspace radio, and an instant later the voice of Earth Central's operator said, "What is it, Marten?"

"Tell them I've been caught," Marten said crisply. "Tell 'em the Flesso patrols got me. And—"

The radio went dead as the Flesso dampers got to it. Marten pulled himself forward and ran his eyes over the instrument panel. Against the dark velvet of space, a dull-gray Flesso warship was swelling in the viewplate, preparing to scoop up its prey. Marten had been caught like a fly in molasses.

The odds had been against his stunt anyway. Theoretically, such a small ship as the little scout he was piloting should have been able to get through the Flesso patrols easily—but in practice, the network of spybeams stretching through the entire Quadrant were efficient and near-infallible defenses, as Marten was discovering now.

But I had lousy luck too, he thought. I wandered right up to the biggest warship in the whole damned fleet. Must have come within a light week or less.

There wasn't much point in trying to break away, now. Marten was trapped—thoroughly and unarguably. The little scout ship didn't carry a tenth the power he would need to break from the grasp of the big battle cruiser. And as for the scout ship's armament, it wasn't enough even to tickle the screens of a battleship like this one. Scout ships depended on speed and indetectability, and neither attribute was of much value now.

Within minutes, the heavy tractor beams pulled the smaller ship into the yawning airlock of the huge Flesso cruiser.

Okay, Marten thought. He folded his arms, leaned back in his chair, and waited. There was nothing else he could do—until a Fless tried to enter the ship.

Time passed. The little scout ship was drawn further and further into the monster Flesso ship. It was now entirely enclosed by darkness, imprisoned within the metal hull of the huge battleship of space.

Sitting inside, Marten waited patiently. The Flesso had been wanting to capture an Earthman for a long time. Well, now they'd succeeded. They'd captured their first Earth ship.

Suddenly, Marten's damped communicator screen came back to life. A scaly, toad-like face appeared, and Marten stared blandly at the three red-rimmed, fiery eyes that confronted him.

"I see you are still alive, Earthman!"

"No thanks to you, ugly-face!" Marten returned. "I'm hungry, though. Am I going to stay for dinner, or can I leave now?"

Earth and Fless had long been in communication with each other; the war had lasted for nearly five years, ever since the first treacherous Flesso sneak attack on a Terran outpost. The beings from the planet Fless were the coldest, most dangerous aliens Earth had yet encountered in its expansion to the stars.

During the war, neither side had succeeded in capturing one of the other's men alive. The ravening energies of a billion-cycle space gun tore a ship completely apart, leaving no survivors. But now Marten had been captured—and he was determined to make the most of it.

"Keep your tongue!" the toad-faced Fless snarled. "Do you know who I am?"

"Santa Claus? Uncle Sam? The Wicked Witch of the North?"

The alien's face radiated hatred. "I am Ghuvekenkh-Nathor!"

Marten whistled. Ghuvek, eh? He had really stumbled into a good one, then. Ghuvek was the leader of the Flesso legions!

"Hello, Ghuvek. The pleasure is all mine. Do I have to keep looking at your face?"

"You will surrender or die," Ghuvek said, ignoring the barb.

Marten chuckled. "Okay. Come and get me, ugly!" He reached out and snapped off the communicator decisively.

Without waiting to see what would happen next, he sprang from the control seat. The Flesso were going to expect to find him inside the little scout ship. Very well, Marten thought. That's the one place I won't be.

Smiling grimly, he strapped on a pair of bulky Spaulding cutter-pistols, and headed for the escape hatch. The aliens, he knew, would be watching the main airlock—they wouldn't be expecting a second exit, and, if they were, they wouldn't know exactly where it would be.

Silently, Marten dropped through the hatch at the rear of the ship. Come and get me, he thought. I'm ready.

He found himself in a large metal room that measured well over a hundred feet in width and twice that in length. The ceiling, dimly-seen, was far overhead, beyond any quick estimation.

Crouching in the shadow of his ship, Marten watched a platoon of the loathsome Flesso bring a heavy, semi-portable burner up to the airlock. The reptilian aliens were having quite a time with the weapon; there was much hissing and flicking of tails as they got it in position.

Finally, they managed to train the muzzle on the door, and then pressed the firing studs. A dazzling blue-white glare leaped toward the airlock door.

Lovely, Marten thought, as the bright light cast fierce illumination in the giant room. An instant after the burner went into action, so did Marten. He drew his Spauldings and fired.

One—two—three—four—

Four quick, silent spurts of flame, and four of the aliens lay dead, charred through by the noiseless, almost invisible energy of the Spauldings. The unfortunate aliens had had no way of knowing where it had come from, that death that had hit four of their number in as many seconds. The burst of light from the semi-portable burner had blanketed every trace of the faint radiation from Marten's pistols.

Huddling low, Marten ran for a nearby girder, taking advantage of the fact that the aliens' attentions were still directed toward the airlock of his ship. Naturally, they wouldn't notice a figure running from the rear.

He took a position behind the girder and, aiming carefully, picked off four more of the aliens. He tried to put his shot just back of the oversized, toad-like heads of the Flesso, though it didn't matter much where the beam landed. The result was the same.

The survivors were conferring hissingly and evincing great confusion. Apparently they still thought the fire was coming from somewhere within the ship, but they were unable to figure out where.

There were eight of them left. Marten picked off one of them with his ninth charge, then held fire. He had one charge left, and then there would be a thirty-second delay while the Spaulding's recharged themselves. He didn't want to leave himself defenseless even for thirty seconds.

He counted off. Ten, fifteen, twenty—one gun was charged. He raised it, readied to fire, when he heard a sudden tell-tale hiss from behind him.

He whirled, but it was too late. A searing beam of energy cracked into him, hurling him backward. He clung to consciousness an instant, then blacked out as the beam shorted his neural circuits.

When he awoke, Marten opened his eyes, blinked, closed them again.

"Ugh," he said.

He felt a savage poke in the stomach. "Open your eyes!"

"Do I have to?"

"Open them!"

With visible reluctance, he opened his lids and stared into the bulging, lidless eyes of none other than Ghuvekenkh-Nathor himself.

The Flesso leader was even uglier than usual. "Very clever, Earthman," he said coldly. "For that little trick, you'll die—slowly. After we have extracted all the information we need from you, that is."

"Trick?" asked Marten blankly.

"Yes. Getting out of the ship and shooting down my men."

"Dear me," Marten said innocently. "I thought that was the smart thing to do, in view of your hostile attitude. I didn't realize you'd be so stuffy about it, but I'm sorry that you're so stupid you—"

"Silence!"

A heavy, clawed hand smashed across his face, slamming his head to one side. The enraged alien leader turned to a henchman at his side. "Get the brainprobe, Captain Yknor."

"At once, Commander."

The captain waddled over to an elaborate-looking machine near the wall, and removed its translucent hood. Marten looked at it, and almost gasped. The thing was so much like the Terran model of a brainprobe that only a practiced eye could tell them apart.

Obviously, this machine worked on the same principle as the Earth-type brainprobe did. And that, Marten reflected, was not a pleasant thought.

"You use that for picking your teeth, Ghuvek?"

"You'll find out its use soon enough, Earthman." The Flesso scowled and signalled to the captain to wheel the brainprobe over.

No organic brain, Marten knew, could stand up against the mental energies of a brainprobe. Within seconds, it could render any person a slave to the will of whoever operated the machine. Marten clenched his jaws grimly, ready to resist anything the Flesso could throw against him. There was always a chance that—

"Your mouth will be less full of insults when we have finished with you, Earthman."

"You're scaring me, Ghuvek."

"We'll see. Clamp down the helmet."

The cold metal descended and the Captain anchored it tightly around Marten's skull.

"What shall I ask first, Most Noble Sire?" Captain Yknor asked.

Ghuvekenkh-Nathor smiled harshly. "I am interested in knowing how it was that he deflected the death-dealing beam that shot him down. It should have killed him—but it merely knocked him out. Ask the prisoner what protection he has."

Yknor threw a switch, and a low buzzing hum throbbed in the room as the brainprobe's generators went to work. Marten felt a faint tingling in his skull. Then Yknor turned a dial, and the probe sank into his brain.

He held his breath as the energy projectors of the brainprobe wandered around in his skull, seeking to gain hold. They failed. The Flesso model wasn't attuned to Earth minds, apparently.

"Why didn't the energy beam kill you?" Captain Yknor asked.

"Because it missed me," said Marten calmly.

A grin spread across Ghuvek's evil, toadish face.

"Good!" he said exultantly. "It missed him—but now we know that the Earthmen have no defense against our weapons." He rubbed his dry, scaly hands together.

"The next question, Sire?"

"Make him tell us about the defenses of Earth," Ghuvek said.

"I'll be damned if I will, you bloated monstrosity."

Ghuvek's globular eyes blinked slowly in surprise. "But—you're supposed to be under the power of the machine!" He turned his flat, batrachian head to glare at Captain Yknor. "Turn up the power!"

"Yes, Sire."

Yknor's thick claws wrenched up the dial and a surge of power thundered through Marten's brain without leaving an impression.

"Feels nice," he said. "Like an extra-special shampoo. But you wouldn't know what a shampoo is, would you?"

"Up higher!" Ghuvek snapped.

"That's as high as it goes, Sire."

Marten still sat there, sneering openly at the alien's attempts to read his brain. Ghuvek paced angrily around the seated Earthman without speaking.

"All right," he said finally. "Shut the machine off. Obviously, the Earthman's brain just does not respond." There was anger and more than a touch of surprise in his voice. "Take the brainprobe away."

"Yes, Sire."

Ghuvek's eyes grew hard. "There are, however, older and cruder ways. What do you say to torture, eh, Earthman?"

"I'm not much in favor of it," said Marten. "I can't say I care for the idea at all."

"Good," Ghuvek said. "Yknor, prepare the torture!"

No human being likes physical torture. The idea of having hot needles slid under one's fingernails, of having one's toenails removed by pincers, of being scourged with nerve-whips—none of these were pleasant thoughts.

Not pleasant, perhaps, but not unbearable, so far as Marten was concerned. It hurt; of course it hurt. But not once during the terrible ordeal did Marten either pass out or give any sign that the torture was more than he could bear.

"What's the matter, Ghuvek? Slowing down?"

At each taunt, the alien overlord grew uglier and angrier. And as the horror went on, Ghuvek seemed to come more and more frantic. None of the most delicate subtle torture devised—and the Flesso were experts at devising torture—seemed to have any effect on the Earthman. He simply sat there, grimly, stoically.

"You're boring me, Ghuvek," Marten remarked as an acid-tipped auger nibbled flesh from his chest. "But I'm willing to be cooperative. You'll notice I'm just sitting here patiently while you play with me."

"Very well!" Ghuvek stormed. "If that's your attitude, we'll see what can be done! Perhaps you Earthmen have no pain nerves—but at the sight of your very bodies being destroyed—"

"I think I've had about enough of this," Marten said. Flexing his muscles, he yanked one hand free of the torture-chair and ripped the auger from his chest.

He hurled the acid-tipped drill far across the room, where it smashed against the wall. Then he pulled his other arm free and, with one final straining effort, rose from the chair and stood unbound.

"What?" Ghuvek's half-whispered question was almost impossible to hear. "You're free?" Captain Yknor opened his bulging eyes even wider and flattened himself against the wall, while Ghuvek gasped in terror.

"I'm free," Marten said. "I got tired of having you play with me."

He smiled cheerfully—and then sprang into life as one of the projectors that lined the wall, manned by guards outside, moved just a fraction of an inch. A burst of energy from one of those projectors could kill him—but it would kill anyone or anything else.

He leaped on Ghuvek. He sensed the acrid, nauseating odor of the alien, and wrapped his legs around the Flesso's body, pitching them both to the ground. The two of them rolled over against the far wall.

A quick glance told Marten that the projectors in the walls were following, but they couldn't shoot for fear of hitting Ghuvek.

The Flesso leader squirmed in Marten's grip as he tried to get his ray pistol out of its holster.

"No you don't!" Marten said, and grabbed the alien's arm. Ghuvek grunted as Marten bent the arm upward and twisted until the ligaments creaked.

"No!" Ghuvek moaned.

"Drop the gun, then."

The alien squirmed again. Marten twisted upward and there was a sharp crack—followed by another, the sound of the gun hitting the floor. Then something slammed against Marten's head from behind.

Jerking his head aside, he crashed his fist against Ghuvek's temple to knock him out and reduce the opposition. Again something struck his head. This time, Marten turned and grabbed a slimy wrist.

It was Captain Yknor, who had been trying to knock Marten out with the butt of his pistol. Marten twisted viciously at the captain's wrist, and the ray pistol clattered to the floor. Yknor screamed in agony as a burning pain raced up his arm, and swung wildly at Marten with his good arm.

The savage claws raked the air just above the Earthman's head, and he drove in with a solid punch that made Yknor gasp. Marten followed his advantage with a smash to the face, sent the alien reeling away in pain, and in the same motion reached down and grasped one of the fallen ray-pistols.

He stepped over to Ghuvek's limp body and jabbed the pistol into the alien leader's scaly side.

"All right," he said coldly. "Anything more, and I'll let Ghuvekenkh-Nathor have a fast burn through his guts!"

There was a stunned silence for a moment, then the pain-wracked voice of Captain Yknor said, "Don't shoot at the Earthman. Get away from those projectors!"

The projector crew held fire. Marten waited tensely as Ghuvek moaned and stirred. Ten feet away, standing amidst the torture implements, the captain clutched his broken arm and watched the Earthman with terror in his eyes and pain evident on his face.

Ghuvek blinked his eyes opened. He looked dazed for a moment, then focussed his eyes on Marten. His right arm, the Earthman noticed, was twisted horribly.

"Yknor?"

"He's over there," Marten said. "His arm didn't bend either. And if you move, I'll find out how resistant your innards are to a quick burn."

Ghuvek shook his head bewilderedly. "You've got us, Earthman. But—how did it happen? How could one man take over a great battleship?"

"It was easy," Marten said.

Ghuvek moaned and looked at his mangled arm regretfully. "I don't understand," the defeated alien commander said.

"Why did you let us torture you if you could get away so easily?"

Marten smiled. "I wanted to teach you a lesson," he said. "Earth's been patient with your marauding for a long time, and we put up with your sneak attack on Regulus. But the time has come to tell you to stop—or we'll wipe your whole race out of the Galaxy. We're tired of your tactics, Ghuvek. And if one man can do this to you, what can a whole army of us do?"

There was a long silence before Ghuvek spoke. And when he spoke, it was the voice of a being whose pride had been completely crushed. "If we had known," he said weakly, swallowing. "Who knew the Earthmen were supermen? You're the first we could capture—and it was all a trick! You let us capture you, to show us what you could do."

"Very smart, Ghuvek. You learn quickly."

The alien passed one hand over his face. "We'll ... we'll call off our offensive at once."

"Good. Now I'll use your radio to call Earth and tell them you're on your way to arrange peace terms!"

At Earth Military Headquarters, General James Bedford snapped off the subspace radio and grinned at the man who faced him across the table, Colonel Parnell.

"You hear that, Parnell? The trick worked! He got them so scared of Earthmen that they're ready to come to terms."

Colonel Parnell smiled. "Fine deal all around. It cost us ten billion dollars to build Military Advance Robot Number Ten, not counting what we spent on the first nine failures—but it was worth it. We've saved untold numbers of lives."

The general nodded. "Well worth it. MAR-10 did the job perfectly."