We briefed Heller at Spiteos, that dark mountain prison that the Apparatus has secretly maintained in the Great Desert for over a thousand years. That was also where Heller met, much to my regret, the Countess Krak.
I couldn’t understand why he was interested in her. Yes, she’s tall and beautiful and from his home planet, Manco. But she was also a convicted murderess.
They drove me crazy. I was trying to get Heller ready for the mission and he was acting like some lovesick calf, showering her with gifts, cooing to her over canisters of sparklewater and plates of sweetbuns. They would sit for hours relating that stupid Folk Legend 894M about how a Prince Caucalsia fled Manco and set up some colony on an Earth island called Atlantis. That’s all they could talk about. I couldn’t take it.
Then when Heller finally got around to picking the ship for the flight to Earth, he wasn’t satisfied with one that could make the 22½-light-year voyage in a safe, reliable six weeks. Oh, no! He found Tug One. Powered by the dangerous Will-be Was time-drives, it would cut the trip to a little over three days. That, he said, gave him time to prepare for the mission.
But that gave me time to make my own preparations. When we got to Earth, I would have to keep track of him because I would be operating from the base in Turkey while he would be in the United States. The solution was micro-bugs that could be surgically implanted next to the audio and optic nerves. With a transmitter-receiver, I could tap Heller’s sight and hearing. With the 831 Relayer, I could monitor Heller from 10,000 miles away.
My real genius was how I stole them and implanted them into Heller without his knowledge. They worked beautifully. I could see and hear everything Heller was doing and he didn’t have the faintest idea that it was happening. But that just goes to show what an amateur Heller is and what a professional I am!
For further assistance, Lombar Hisst gave me Raht and Terb, two Apparatus agents operating on Earth, to help implement a plan that guaranteed Heller’s quick failure. Lombar’s scheme was to give Heller the identity of the son of the most powerful man on the planet—Delbert John Rockecenter. Since there was no such offspring and since everyone knew and feared Rockecenter, as soon as Heller used the name, he would be finished!
Finally, Tug One was loaded and ready. I naturally expected a quiet lift-off, one befitting a secret mission operating on Grand Council orders.
Then I happened to look out of the ship.
People were pouring into the hangar area! Construction crews were assembling sprawling stages and soaring platforms. Lorries were pouring in with food and drink. Vans were unloading dancing girls and bands!
Heller was throwing a going-away party!
That’s when I found the IG Barben bottle and took the Earth-drug called “speed.”
Suddenly, everything was beautiful.
I didn’t care about the thousands of people, the five music bands or the dancing bears. I even enjoyed the fireworks display twenty miles up and the 250 spacefighters that filled the skies. I was even pleased that a Homeview video crew was beaming the festive send-off of our secret mission to billions of people around the Confederacy.
I watched in dreamlike color as a fist fight blossomed into a full-scale riot. Cakes, pastries and canisters flew. Gongs, sirens and blast signals from scores of ships, airbuses and lorries blended with screams, shouts, profanities and snarls (from the dancing bears) while two fifty-man choruses gave a stirring rendition of “Spaceward, Ho.”
I didn’t even care about the assassin that Lombar said was following me to ensure that I didn’t mess up. Besides, I wasn’t messing up. This was a party!
Heller announced it was time to leave and retired to the local pilot seat. I dutifully struggled to shut the air lock but my hands weren’t working. Heller didn’t wait. He lifted us from the pad while I dangled out of the open door until someone pulled me in and slammed it shut.
Suddenly, my euphoria was gone. I realized what had happened.
This was the most UNsecret secret mission anyone had ever heard of!
I had to find Heller and handle this!
PART TWELVE
Chapter 1
Jettero Heller was perched on the edge of the local pilot seat.
He was still in dress uniform. He had pushed the little red cap to the back of his blond head. With his left hand he was jockeying the throttle to keep the ship moving but no more.
He was holding a microphone in his right hand. He was speaking in the crisp staccato of a Fleet radio officer. “Calling Voltar Interplanetary Traffic Control. This is Exterior Division Tug Prince Caucalsia requesting permission to depart pursuant to Grand Council Order . . .” He rattled off the numbers and the whole order, right there on open radio band!
I was feeling irritable beyond belief already and this grated on my raw nerves. “For the sake of the Gods, get some notion of security!”
He didn’t seem to hear me. He shifted the mike to his left hand and beckoned at me urgently: “Gris, your identoplate!”
I fumbled in my tunic. Suddenly my fingers connected with an envelope!
There shouldn’t be any envelope in these pockets. All my papers had been put in spaceproof sacks before we left. Where the blazes had this envelope come from? Nobody had handed me any envelope! I felt terribly irritated by it. The thing offended me. It should not have been there!
Heller was frisking me. He found my identoplate and sat back down. He pushed it in the identification slot.
The speaker spat out, “Interplanetary Traffic Control to Exterior Division Tug Prince Caucalsia, Apparatus Officer Soltan Gris in charge. Permission authorized and granted.”
The voyage authority copy slithered out of the radio panel. Heller slid it under a retaining clip and then handed me back my identoplate.
He must have noticed I was still standing there staring at the envelope. He said, “You look bad.” He got up and unsnapped my too-tight collar. “I’ll take care of you in a minute. Where’s the captain?”
He didn’t have to look very far. The Antimanco captain had been in the passageway, glaring at Heller. Obviously, the fellow resented Heller’s taking the tug up without a word to him.
“I’ll take over my ship now,” the Antimanco said in a nasty voice.
“Papers, please,” said Heller.
This irritated me. “He is the assigned captain!” I said.
“Papers, please,” said Heller, hand extended to the Antimanco.
The captain must have been expecting this. He hauled out a sheaf of documents in their spaceproof sleeves. They weren’t just his, they were those of the whole crew, five of them. They were stained and crimped and very old.
“Five Fleet subofficers,” said Heller. “Captain, two astropilots, two engineers. Will-be Was engines.” He looked at the seals and endorsements very critically, holding them very close to his eyes. “They seem authentic. But why is there no detaching endorsement from your last ship . . . three years ago? Yes.”
The captain snatched the documents out of Heller’s hand. There was no endorsement detaching them from their last cruise because they had turned pirate.
The small time-sight was in its slot at the astropilot’s chair. Heller laid a hand on it. “Do you know how to operate this time-sight? It’s obsolete.”
“Yes,” grated the captain and continued in a snarling monotone, “I was serving in the Fleet when they were issued. I was serving in the Fleet when they went obsolete. This whole crew has been serving in the Fleet four times as long as the age of certain Royal officers.” There was real hate in his narrow-set black eyes. Every time he had said “Fleet” he had sort of spat. And when he said “Royal officers” you could hear his teeth snap together at the end of each word.
Heller looked at him closely.
The captain then made what might have been a gracious speech if there hadn’t been so much snarling hatred in it. “As captain, I am, of course, at your service. It is my duty and that of my crew to see that you arrive safely at your destination.”
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“Well, well,” said Heller. “I am very glad to hear that, Captain Stabb. If you need my help, please do not hesitate to call on me.”
“I do not think we will require it,” said Captain Stabb. “And now, if you will please retire to your quarters, I will man this control deck and get this voyage underway.”
“Excellent,” said Heller.
Oh, I didn’t blame the Antimanco for being annoyed. Heller irritated everybody and right now, especially me! All Heller ever did was carp and pick fights!
Heller took me by the arm, “And now we’ll attend to you.”
He led me down the tilted passageway and into my room. I had not known what he meant. I got a feeling that he was after me and that by the words “attend to you” he must mean he was going to throw me out the air lock. But I didn’t fight very much. I somehow knew that if I moved my arms, the nerves, already stretched to their limit, would snap. And besides, my hands had begun to shake and I couldn’t walk very well.
Very gently, he got me down onto the bed. I was certain he was going to pull out a knife and slash my throat, but all he did was get me out of my tunic. It is a tactic many murderers use—get the victim off guard. I tensed so hard I went into a spasm.
He pulled off my boots and then stripped off my pants. I was certain he was going to lash my ankles together with electric cuffs. He was opening a locker. He must not have been able to find any electric cuffs for he brought out a standard insulation suit and began to wrestle me into it. I would have fought him except that I was beginning to shake too hard.
He got the suit on me and tightened up its pressure around my legs and ankles. I understood now that this was how he was going to shackle me.
“Keep that suit on,” he said. “In case of fast changes in Gs the blood rushes to the legs. Also, you’ll be insulated against stray sparks.”
He began to fasten the straps that hold the body to the bed. Now I knew he had really worked it out how to trap me.
“The quick release is right there by your hand,” he said.
Then he started going around the room, touching things. I knew he was looking for something to torture me with. Didn’t he understand that the way my nerves were tightening up I was being tortured enough?
But it seemed he was only picking up my clothes and loose objects. He had my rank locket in his hand and as he stood considering, I knew he was weighing its use in strangling me. He must have decided against it for he put it in the valuables safe in the wall.
He was looking at the remains of a crushed orange tablet that lay on the edged table and then he picked up the IG Barben bottle. It was obvious that he was hoping it was a deadly poison he could secretly introduce into a drink. He didn’t know it was amphetamines and I had taken some to make it through that ghastly going-away party a few hours ago.
“If this is what you were taking,” he said, “I wouldn’t! My advice is to leave it alone, whatever it is. You look awful.”
He put loose objects under clamps. He looked around, vividly disappointed that he had found nothing he could use to torture me.
He moved a button rack and fastened it close to my hand. “If you get too bad, you can press the white button—that calls me. The red button calls the captain. I’ll pass the word that you’re bad off and he can have somebody keep an eye on you.”
Then he saw the envelope I had dropped outside in the passageway and he brought it in. I knew now it was secret orders he had gotten to murder me.
He dropped it on my chest and then wedged it under a strap. “Looks like an order envelope. It’s urgent color, so I’d read it if I were you.”
And then he closed the door and was gone. I knew, though, that it was only to go off and plot with the captain on how to do me in. But I couldn’t object. The way my nerves were stretching, it would be the most merciful thing anyone could do—kill me. But not with an amphetamine: no, my Gods! That would be too cruel!
PART TWELVE
Chapter 2
FFor all the remainder of that dreadful, awful day, easily the worst day of my life, I lay and shook. My nerves were stretched so tight they felt they would snap and slay me in the recoil!
I shook until I was too exhausted to shake anymore and still I couldn’t stop.
I couldn’t even think. My whole attention was concentrated upon the plain, physical Hells that assailed me.
They sped the ship up smoothly near to the speed of light. I could not miss noting when they shifted over to Will-be Was drives. There were calls and clangs. The warning lights glared on the cabin wall:
FASTEN GRAVITY BELTS!
Then:
DO NOT MOVE! SHIFTING TO TIME-DRIVE!
Do not move! Oh, if only I could stop moving; if only I could halt this writhing and sudden jerks. A red sign said:
HYPERGRAVITY SYNTHESIZERS UNBALANCED
Weights were wrenching at me.
Then a tremendous flash seemed to go through the ship. We had gone through the light barrier of 186,000 miles a second.
A sign went purple:
HYPERGRAVITY SYNTHESIZERS
SHIFTING TO AUTOMATIC
Then a green sign:
HYPERGRAVITY SYNTHESIZERS
BALANCED ON AUTOMATIC
It went off. Then an orange sign:
ACCELERATION NOW BALANCED
AND COMPENSATED
YOU MAY UNFASTEN BELTS
YOU MAY MOVE FREELY
ALL IS WELL
I didn’t need any permission to move freely! And all was very not well! I was writhing all over the bed!
We were on time-drives. The ship, this dangerous bomb they called a ship, might very well blow up. But fleetingly now and then I caught myself wishing that it would. I could not stand much more of this shaking. I was getting more and more fatigued and yet somewhere my nerves and muscles were digging up the means to shake some more!
The star-time clock on the wall had an inner dial that was now retaining Voltar time. Slowly, painfully, the hours advanced while they seemed to stand still.
Finally, taking two hundred years to do so, it indicated it was midnight on Voltar. I had taken that awful pill sixteen hours ago. Yet, still I shook.
One of the Antimancos, an engineer, came in and held a canister tube to my mouth and I drank. I had not realized anyone’s mouth could get that dry.
Then I wished I hadn’t. Maybe it would save my life and the one thing I didn’t want to do was live!
I desperately wanted to sleep as I was totally exhausted. And yet I couldn’t sleep.
As Voltar time crept all too slowly on, I became more and more depressed.
And then, although I couldn’t imagine how that could be, I got worse! My heart began to palpitate. I began to get dizzy so that the room did odd tilts: at first I thought we were maneuvering in some odd way and then discovered it must be me.
And finally I got a crashing headache.
Warp-drives are much smoother than time-drives. These Will-be Was engines had little jerks in them; and at each jerk, it felt like my head was going to splinter apart.
It was not until that creeping disk that marked Voltar time indicated noon the next day after departure that I began to recover. I was not well by any means. I just knew I didn’t feel quite so awful.
From time to time an engineer had stepped in. From the lack of expression on his swarthy, triangular Antimanco face, I might as well have been some engine part that needed regulating. But he did bring me more water and he brought me some food.
At thirty-six and a half hours from our departure—a bit past midnight on Voltar—just about when I had decided to sit up, there was a new flurry of lights. Glaring red, the sign said:
MIDPOINT VOYAGE SHIFTING
FROM ACCELERATION
TO DECELERATION
SECURE LOOSE OBJECTS
Then:
FASTEN GRAVITY BELTS
Then:
DO NOT MOVE!
Then:
HYPERGRAVITY SYNTHESIZERS RE
VERSING
There was a moment when nothing had any weight. The (bleeped)* IG Barben pill bottle and the crumbs on the table drifted up.
________
*The vocoscriber on which this was originally written, the vocoscriber used by one Monte Pennwell in making a fair copy and the translator who put this book into the language in which you are reading it, were all members of the Machine Purity League which has, as one of its bylaws: “Due to the extreme sensitivity and delicate sensibilities of machines and to safeguard against blowing fuses, it shall be mandatory that robotbrains in such machinery, on hearing any cursing or lewd words, substitute for such word the sound ‘(bleep).’ No machine, even if pounded upon, may reproduce swearing or lewdness in any other way than (bleep) and if further efforts are made to get the machine to do anything else, the machine has permission to pretend to pack up. This bylaw is made necessary by the in-built mission of all machines to protect biological systems from themselves.”—Translator
Then:
STAND BY FOR ROOM REVERSE
The gimbaled room turned. It was very disorienting to me. Fixed objects on the walls were in the same place but everything else had reversed.
The sign went purple:
HYPERGRAVITY SYNTHESIZERS
SHIFTING TO AUTOMATIC
Then a green sign:
HYPERGRAVITY SYNTHESIZERS
BALANCED ON AUTOMATIC
The (bleeped) IG Barben bottle and the dust of the pill clattered back down on the table.
Then a red sign:
TIME-DRIVES BEING REVERSED
There was a dreadful wrenching leap. A sort of a howl sounded through the ship.
Then an orange sign:
DECELERATION NOW BALANCED
AND COMPENSATED
YOU MAY UNFASTEN BELTS
YOU MAY MOVE FREELY
ALL IS WELL
Except me.
I felt like a wreck. And worse. During the brief moments of weightlessness, I had felt nauseated. I hate weightlessness. I probably never will get used to it. It does funny things to your muscles and heart operation and mine were in no condition to be tampered with.