In the crew salon in the tug, Captain Stabb gazed on me admiringly. "You sure handled that to perfection, Officer Gris." And his little black button eyes gleamed with good comradeship.
"It wasn't anything," I said. "Now let's get down to business." I pulled out a Voltar Fleet grid of the planet and some U.S. Geological Survey charts and pinpointed for him exactly where we would land.
"And then we kill him?" said Captain Stabb.
"That is not positive," I said.
"We torture him first?"
"Captain Stabb, I really think we understand each other. But we have a problem. He has something I have to get. If we don't get it this time, we will get it later."
"Oh," he grumbled to himself. Then he brightened. "But as soon as you get it, we kill him."
"Right."
"Right!" he said.
"Our strategy is to keep him lulled, give him no warning. Make him think we are cooperating."
"That's wise," said Stabb. "Then he can be gotten in the back."
"Right," I said. "Now, he wants those boxes down in the hold. It might be I don't get what I want this trip and we may have to deliver them. But if we do, I want to sabotage the shipment."
"I thought it was sabotaged," said Stabb.
Ah, Lombar had briefed him. "Well," I said, "not really enough. He is very tricky and dishonest."
"All Royal officers are," said Stabb. "Excepting present company, of course, meaning you."
"Well, actually," I said, "I never made it. They sent me to the Apparatus instead."
"You're not a Royal officer?"
"No," I said, telling the truth. "Just a Secondary Executive of the Apparatus."
He reached across and pumped my hand. "You're a good man, Officer Gris." Warmth flowed through the crew salon.
"The problem is," I said, "how to get Box Number 5 out of that hold."
"The hold and floorplates are locked tight!"
"I was hoping you knew of a way. We're going to remove it completely."
He thought. He called for one of the two engine sub-officers. They left. They came back.
Captain Stabb said, "There's a small engine-room escape hatch. It's mandatory in construction. You can get one man through it. It exits into the lower hold. It bypasses all his deckplate seals. In flight, the deckplates, in theory, would not be locked. One would drop from the engine room down into the hold and out through the deckplates in case of an overheat that fused the main engine-room doors. The Fleet does silly things like that."
A few minutes later I was in the hold. I played a light around. The boxes were all there, neatly lashed. Box Number 5 was just as I remembered it—on top.
I let them do the work. And it was a lot of work. We had to unpack the box piece by piece. It contained a lot of heavy pans, mostly. We passed these up into the engine room and out—or rather they did. Then we sawed the box up and passed the pieces out.
It was at this point I went to work. I got rid of every scrap of debris and packing that had drifted around. I retied every knot that secured the boxes. I even made Captain Stabb inspect. There was no trace of Box Number 5 left in that hold.
We got all the debris out of the ship and disintegrated it. I buried the heavy pans in the bottom of an old detention cell.
"What are you going to tell him?" said Stabb. "In case, that is, we don't get to kill him."
"That it was never loaded. Simplicity is best."
"You're a wonder," said Stabb. "What were those things?"
"I don't know. But I'm sure he does. And it will put an awful crimp in any plans he has."
"You really are a wonder," said Stabb.
I hung around for a bit. The Antimancos seemed to be taking a lot of pleasure in fixing things up so Heller's suspicions would be lulled. They were removing the tiniest bits of dust, eradicating every smudge, inside and out. The actions were quite foreign to their natural bent—they mostly laid around and shot dice or drank.
But now there was a sort of glee around them. They were creating the atmosphere which they were certain would disabuse a Royal officer of suspecting he was about to be stabbed in the back.
They couldn't get into the rear of the ship, of course, but Heller would not expect that. But anything he could see would be shining.
"We want," said Stabb, "a new uniform issue, all of us. We'll look like a perfect crew. And we'll want a new personal weapons issue, of course."
I stamped it gladly.
All was going along well there so I went back to my secret room. I wanted to be very sure that Heller wasn't laying any booby traps for us at his end.
But Heller was simply having breakfast in his suite and having a second chocolate sundae while he read a G-2 manual entitled The Handling of the Trained Spy. The interference was off, for a change, as it often was in the morning. The diplomats didn't seem to want to relive their youth under the carbon arc at that time of the day.
He was on a chapter named "The Case Officer's Dilemma." He was eating his sundae so I got a chance to read some of it without still-framing it on the second viewer. It seemed that spies often had personal intentions of their own. These included their reasons for being spies in the first place. They wanted personal revenge or wealth for their own purposes. And the case officer, which is their term for a handler, had to accommodate these personal ambitions and take advantage of them where possible.
Well, that was all kindergarten stuff. Naturally a spy had personal ambitions. It didn't mention that the case officer might have them also. Take my case: wealth and power covered it.
Then he was onto a subsection. It was entitled "Love, The Case Officer's Worst Enemy." It seemed that love was a very dangerous thing. When you sent a spy to some country, away from a lady love, he would sometimes just give the job a brushoff or turn in any old thing in order to get home.
It also covered the danger of a spy falling in love with an enemy agent and turning into a double agent. But that was of no interest to me.
I got to pondering this dangerous thing called love. In my own case, there was no menace in that direction. Utanc would simply never talk to me again, that was certain. And my heart was heavy about it.
But Heller, now, that was a different matter. He had been in love with the Countess Krak. In fact, he had even delayed his departure because of it. But he wasn't following the pattern laid down in the textbook. He was not skimping his job, (bleep) him. He was plowing right along on it.
The trouble with Heller was that he was inconsistent with the textbooks. Obviously, as I looked at it, he was planning to do his job fully and then go home, whereas, by the text, he should be skimping his job and rushing home. There was just no accounting for the man at all!
I idly speculated on all the ramifications of this. If he would just slow down and poke along and skimp his job, I would have nothing to worry about.
But in any event, I at last had some kind of a solution in progress.
If all went well, he would very shortly be dead. I would forge reports on and on and the whole thing could be strung out for years.
In spite of the leaden feeling I had about Utanc, some small hope was stirring in me.
Chapter 5
In the first pitch-black dark of October second, we ascended through the optical illusion and rose far above the planet.
Ringing in my ears was the last warning from the assassin-pilot leader, "We're tracking your bug with a temporary satellite that went up three hours ago. At the first hint that you're leaving the vicinity of Blito-P3, up we come and down you go, on fire. We can catch you before this tug can get up to speed. And you are not armed. We will be watching you. Be smart. Don't try anything."
So I took no joy in the flight. I wouldn't anyway. Space travel, even a local jump, makes me nervous.
Captain Stabb let the dark band on the surface drift along directly below us. It would be seven hours and I simply should have lain down on a gimbal bed and had a sleep. But I was too jumpy.
Unlike Heller, I am not a religious person. I knew too much about psychology to really believe in anything but crude matter. But in my childhood I had been exposed to it by the more decent people around me, and now and then I would suffer a lapse and feel some need to pray. I did tonight.
The strategy was all worked out. Captain Stabb assured me there would be no hitches. But an awful lot depended upon this. If Heller were actually to get loose and start accomplishing things, he could utterly smash Lombar's connections, wreck the best-laid plans for Voltar and completely block, without knowing he was doing it, Lombar's rise to the rule of all Voltar. There were tremendous stakes here. Even for me. I hardly dared speculate on what I myself would do when I became the head of all the Apparatus. For it would be an Apparatus greatly strengthened beyond even what it was now.
One thing sure. There were a lot of people I would order killed at once!
But there was one flaw in all this planning. And he was sitting down there ahead, waiting with a report to send. If that report gave me the platen...
I must have dozed off. Captain Stabb was shaking me by the shoulder. "I don't think the landing is safe." I left my cabin and went with him to the flight deck. He pointed at the screens. He had everything turned on. Even the steel plates that cut off the eyeball-view ports were closed. Pirates take no chances.
We were about two hundred miles straight up. It was about seven in the evening of a very black autumn night. New York lay about thirty miles to the south of our position, a vast spread of lights. One could see the planes taking off and landing at La Guardia and, further off, John F. Kennedy International Airport. The planes looked like tiny fireflies. The skyscrapers of Manhattan were clearly outlined. There was the Empire State Building! Izzy probably busy! There was the UN, and nearby, one of those high-rises must be the Gracious Palms, probably busy.
To the northeast, scattered like small sheets of light on a black velvet cloth, lay Bridgeport, Danbury, New Haven and, further away, Hartford. It was a crystal clear night.
Directly below us it was black as pitch, a hole of lightlessness.
A call-in receiver was beeping in the panel. Its grid showed the signal was coming from directly below.
I looked at Stabb. I had seen nothing alarming. But he was the accomplished smuggler and pirate.
"Watch," he said. He turned a dial to shift a screen to a different part of the spectrum. He pushed a button and let it enlarge the picture.
There was a police car sitting beside the road. The road was just east of our destination.
"Trap," said Stabb.
I laughed. "That's where they hang out," I said. "They're sheriff's men. Deputy sheriffs. That's a speed trap, not a trap for us."
"You sure?"
"If that Royal officer is down below us, he has probably conned them into seeing nothing. But they won't see anything anyway as we're not going to blueflash. Their names are George and Ralph."
"Devils!" said Stabb. "How'd you know that?"
"It's safe to land. They won't see anything."
"On your orders," said Stabb, giving the usual Fleet half-protest.
Down we went!
The New Haven Submarine Base radar indicated on our hull. They would get no blip back.
A hundred feet up, our pilot laid the tug horizontal. He scanned the ground with a screen. "Not even a sharp rock," he said.
We settled into place.
The second engineer was out through the airlock like a shot. He scanned the area for living things.
A hot spot.
It was Heller!
He came walking up. He stood in the glow from the airlock. He wasn't even disguised. He had on workman's coveralls, dark blue. He wasn't wearing his baseball cap and he wasn't even wearing those deadly spikes!
I saw he had no gun in his hand. He thought he was amongst friends, the fool. So I met him at the port.
He nodded to me and to Stabb. He went down the passageway and knelt. He unlocked the floorplates to the hold.
"If you will give me some crew," he said, "we'll move these inside. There's two dollies over in the edge of the woods."
Stabb looked to me and I nodded. Very soon, with a lot of help from Heller, despite working in the dark, fifteen cases lay on a thick canvas he had put down to protect the dance floor.
A kerosene oil lamp spread a yellow glow across the ancient dance decorations and the Voltar cases. Heller was checking case markings.
"Where's Box Number 5?" he said. Before I could answer, he went trotting back to the ship. He got down in the hold again.
He came out. He opened up other doors to the rear and checked there. He locked everything up once more. "There's a box missing," he said to Stabb. Stabb shrugged. "I never been in that hold," he said. Heller checked the forward cabins and storage spaces. Then he left the ship. He reentered the roadhouse. He once more verified the numbers and the count.
He beckoned to me to follow him. I went into instant alarm. I was carrying a blastick, a Colt Cobra in an ankle holster and a Knife Section knife behind my neck and he was apparently unarmed. But I did not feel comfortable. I turned. Captain Stabb was at the road-house door. He winked at me. I followed Heller.
He had a kitchen fire going. The night was somewhat chilly. He had cleaned up the place. There was a kitchen table and a couple of chairs. Heller sat down at the far end.
I sat down but I didn't take my hand off the 800-kilovolt blastick in my pocket.
Chapter 6
Heller had taken some papers out of his pocket, a notebook and a pen. He began to look at the papers— they appeared to be old invoices. I didn't see any sign of the letter.
I looked around. The kitchen was quite clean now. He had a fire going in the old iron cookstove: a wood fire, from the way it popped occasionally and from some wisps of pungent smoke.
The place was lit with a hanging kerosene lamp. Probably the electricity was not turned on. The light glowed and flickered on some old glass jars on a shelf.
A calendar was on the wall: big picture of an elk and the words Hartford Life Insurance. The year was 1932!
Ordinarily I might have been very interested in this place. But I had to get that letter! If I was lucky, in a few minutes Heller would be dead and we would be sailing away.
He was going over some invoices and writing things on the piece of paper. For some reason, seeing him so calm made me very nervous.
I imagined he was reconstructing the list of things in the box.
He wasn't talking so I sort of felt I had to be talking. Maybe I could steer him around and hurry him up and get that letter. Maybe he was being silent because he suspected I had done something with the box. "I never saw those boxes," I said. "I didn't even know they were in the hold. If you remember, I was not aboard the tug at that time."
He was consulting the invoice sheets again. I said, "I do recall, though, a Fleet lorry driving away one day. It had a box on it. I asked the sentry at that time why they were removing a box. He said he didn't know."
He didn't say anything. He was making some sort of a calculation. I wished he'd just give me that letter.
"I mailed the other letter on the first freighter out. It went just two or three days after you gave it to me," I said.
He was trying to locate some item on an invoice. I wished he would speak.
"I know how important it is," I said, "that I mail your letters to Captain Tars Roke. I know he tells the Emperor and the Grand Council. If they didn't hear from you, I know they'd send an invasion fleet right away. They'd have to, to preserve the planet. I can see it is in very bad shape. So don't think for a moment I'd let you down. I know both of us could be killed if this invasion hit. So it's in my interest, too. I'll sure make certain the letters get mailed."
He was busy with his figures. No sign of the letter. Maybe he was upset about the telephone.
"I am sorry I had to cut you off on the phone. You see, the National Security Agency monitors all longdistance calls.
It was my fault really. I didn't give you a phone number you could call."
I wrote the cover phone number in Afyon on a piece of paper of my own, torn from a notebook, and put it down on the table near him.
He just kept on working.
"I should have given you a mail address, too," I said. I wrote the mail address he could use in Turkey on another piece of my own paper and laid it on the phone number. "Future reports can just be mailed to this. I'll take the one you've got now."
He was riffling through his papers. Sort of absently, he encountered a sheet and laid it on the table halfway between us. He went on working.
I picked it up. It was a request form. It said:
Mission requirement: one professional cellologist experienced in making spores.
"Oh, I can get this for you," I said. "Just give me any note of anything you require. On this, I'll get them to send the most competent cellologist I can find." What a lie that was. "I'll send this request right along with your current report. Yes, indeed. Right along with your current report." (Bleep) you, where IS it!
He was writing more things down on the sheet. He was saying nothing.
I was getting pretty uneasy. "I know you are probably reconstructing the contents of the box. Well, you just reconstruct it and I'll put it on special order on the very next freighter. You'll have it all replaced within three months or so." And that was an even bigger lie than the cellologist one. "I'll send it out right with your current report!"
He was making a list of measurements. All I could see was his hand, arm and the top of his blond head. I didn't know what mood he was in at all. I didn't know what he intended, really. Maybe he had some other means or idea. I couldn't be sure.
"Really," I said, "we shouldn't wait around here too long. Those two sheriff's deputies out there on the highway might have seen something. If you give me the report now, I'll be going."
He was adding up something. The awful thought came to me that he might be stalling me for some reason. I didn't feel it took that long to figure out just one box.
"I know they are very friendly but you can't ever trust sheriff's deputies, no matter how much you've conned them. So if you'll just give me the report, I'll be going."