When he came to gentle loops in the tubes, he let go and slid. It took him three hours to get down, but when he came into the cold metal coils that could duplicate the atmosphere of fifty planets, he was below the search level, and as good as a free man walking the streets.
"Except for the uniform," he told himself, glancing down ruefully at the white and gold resplendence of his fleet garb.
In ten minutes he was crawling up through a street grille, and heading for the space docks.
He was moving up the Avenue of Emblems, with the gleaming bullet that was the S.I.C. _Eclipse_ towering above the buildings, nosing its point skyward, still half a mile ahead of him, when he heard the announcers. The words were just sounds, at first, like the pennons flapping above his head from the tall poles, each a gift of the United Worlds.
His mind was torn cleanly with a thin, hard grief, for he was remembering his father, and the way of his smiling and his gentle voice, and the fun they had shared together on the Klisskahaenay Rapids in a boat, or in the crisp darkness of space, with the stars beckoning and his father pointing them out to him. And his handclasp when he left for the Academy, his letters, his visits at holidays when the needs of the Empire were relaxed enough to free the Admiral from his cruiser. It was a good companionship, that of his father and himself, born of their mutual need when his mother died on Aldebaran.
And now it was over. No more would he see that smile or listen to that voice or wonder how it was that his father knew so much more than he about so many things. They would never hook a lyskansa-fish or blast a Martian boar with needleguns. They would never find new foods in restaurants that--
"--under penalty of the red dragon! Repeating! Space Commodore McCanahan--Kael McCanahan, Earther--is to die on sight. All guards are hereby warned. McCanahan must not leave Akkalan. He is to be shot on sight, under penalty of the red dragon! Repeating...."
It sank in after a while. He drew back into the shadows, and the harpstring tied to his ankle pained him, as if it whispered with his father's voice. _They're afraid of me and what I can do to them_, his mind told him. _They don't even dare let me get close to a spacommunicator panel!_ But why? Why? The McCanahan shook his head and looked down at himself, neat and trim in the gold and white space uniform.