PRISONER OF WAR

                          By Randall Garrett

               It was the first time a Flesso had met an
            Earthman face to face. And the Flesso appeared
            puzzled as to why the Earthman showed no fear!

           [Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
              Imagination Stories of Science and Fantasy
                               June 1958
         Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
         the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]


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."