The room hadn’t neatly returned to horizontal. I had not stowed the gear for flight. He wasn’t looking at the weapons that had fallen out of the antiexplosion safe. He was picking the dress uniform off the floor.
“A colonel of the Death Battalion! So that’s how you see yourself, Officer Gris. How nice. How appropriate. You’ll look well in it, too. The color matches your soul exactly.”
I ignored him. I noticed from a bill, Ske had bought that uniform at my expense! I went on stamping until my arm was tired. Finally he picked up the validated and okay-to-pay orders.
“Well, I’m leaving now. I heard a rumor that these ships blow up, so have a nice voyage.” And, with the sort of evil chuckle that only Bawtch can manage, he was gone.
I finished off the hot jolt. Now if I could just stretch out and go to sleep, some hours later I would awaken, refreshed to find us hurtling through space and Voltar far behind us. What a lovely thought.
Alas, that wasn’t the way it happened. I was about to experience the most nerve-shredding departure in space history!
PART ELEVEN
Chapter 8
Just as I was about to lie down, I became conscious of a sort of thundering roar outside. The door to my room and air lock were open, but this wave of sound seemed to make the whole ship shake. It was exactly like a motorized army would sound if one were approaching. And then my ears were shattered by a heavy pounding close to hand.
It was too much for my nerves. I leapt up and ran to the air lock. I almost got my face knocked in as a stage section banged into the ship!
A commercial crew was working like fury erecting an eighty-foot-high, portable reviewing platform and wide steps which would reach from the ground up to the air lock!
I stared beyond this. My Gods! The hangar security fence gates to the outside world were wide open! Commercial lorries were pouring through the gap six abreast!
Already dozens of lorries were in the hangar.
Crews were unloading portable stages and bars: they were obviously converting this end of the hangar into the most gigantic entertainment tup hall anybody had ever seen! One bar was over two hundred feet long! One stage alone was thirty feet high and wide enough to take half the dancing girls on Voltar! And there were still more going up and still more lorries coming!
In total panic I rushed to the control deck. Heller was there dropping the meteor armorplates into position to cover the front ports.
I screamed at him, “You can’t have a go-away party! That was just a joke! THIS IS A SECRET MISSION!”
He stopped working and looked at me with surprise. “But you’ve been okaying party orders. You authorized tons of them the other day. Just an hour ago I saw you stamping more!”
“Lombar will kill me!” I shouted.
“I’m sorry,” he said, and he seemed to mean it. “But you see, this ship doesn’t have a name. When she was transferred out of the Fleet she lost her designation. She hasn’t been christened. It’s about the unluckiest thing you can do to cruise around in an unchristened ship. Anybody in the Fleet can tell you that. They might blow up.”
(Bleep) his Fleet customs. But the idea of this tug blowing up was never far from my mind.
He thought it over. “It’s now going on eight! The christening will probably start around ten. We will be able to launch around noon.”
I kept shaking my head.
“I’ll tell you what we’ll do,” Heller said. “We’ll hold it down all we can. We’ll try to keep it just as sort of a family affair. All right?”
I knew I couldn’t call back my orders or stop those lorries now. And there must be hundreds of contractor men, who had worked on the ship, invited with their families. And all the hangar crews. It would be worse to try to stop it than to let it go forward. So I nodded.
“By the way,” he said. “Where’s our crew? They should be aboard by now to get things ready to launch.”
I had no answer to that. Practically sinking through the din, I climbed back down the now vertical passage to my room. It was impossible to sleep, no matter how exhausted I was. I slumped down into a chair.
I instantly got right back up. I had sat on something.
A small bottle.
Where had it come from? It hadn’t been there before, for that was where I had been sitting. I didn’t see how it could have fallen from anything.
Then I remembered with horror that Lombar had said there would be a spy on my tail all the time and I wouldn’t know who it was!
Could this be an example of it?
The bottle said:
IG BARBEN, NEW YORK
AMPHETAMINE, METHEDRINE
5 MG, 100 TABLETS
It seemed to me to be the same bottle Lombar had produced last night.
I knew quite a bit about the stuff. It stimulates the central nervous system by potentiating the effects of norepinephrine, a neurohormone which activates parts of the sympathetic nervous system. It is colloquially called “speed,” along with several other types of the drug. I had always been leery of having anything to do with it. But I was desperate. How was I going to get through the next four hours? I got out the Knife Section knife. I took a little orange, heart-shaped pill. I cut off about a third of it.
I put the bit under my tongue. Bitter. I let it dissolve and absorb through the salivary glands of the mouth.
A tremendous hot “rush” hit me. My heart began to speed up.
Ah, I felt much better. I became confident. I began to feel a little elated. Any worry about where the bottle had come from or the possibility of having a spy in my vicinity with orders to murder me vanished.
What beautiful, lovely stuff this speed was!
I realized I had better get dressed. It wouldn’t do to keep running around in underpants. I gazed at the Death Battalion colonel uniform and it looked very nice. Just the thing.
With movements that were graceful, almost in slow motion but really a bit too fast, I pulled on the skintight pants. Actually, they weren’t skintight. They were three sizes too big, but that did not matter at all. I pulled on the boots. One was too large, the other too small.
But that seemed normal.
With an almost dancing grace, I got into the tunic. It was too small. But the designs were pretty, particularly the red daggers on the back. Fastening the collar almost strangled me but that was of no concern. I was breathing too fast anyway.
The black helmet was too big but I stuffed a towel in it to keep it off my ears. The mirror showed me that the skull seemed huge but was beautiful all the same. Oh, how right everything was with the world.
I put on my rank locket as I danced some floatingly interesting steps I never had known I could do.
Then I found the uniform belts intricate but interesting. The flattened, bleeding entrails presented a problem. Did they cross from right to left or left to right? I untangled them from the rank locket a few times and at length managed to fasten them correctly.
I discovered then the package of accouterments: red metal bands, with spikes, that covered the knuckles of each hand; a red sackful of lead that one hung on the right wrist; the ceremonial silver dagger stained with blood and beautifully enscrolled, Death to Everybody, the battalion motto. I hung it on the belt.
The mirror seemed to be in a euphoric state with the gorgeous image that it shined back. What splendid taste Ske had!
I happened to see my watch and was surprised to discover that it had taken me an hour to dress. So I hastily floated up the passageway, hardly touching the rungs at all.
The review platform was securely in place at the air lock. I stepped out upon it and gazed over the pleasant scene.
All of the platforms and bars had been erected, even a series of dressing rooms for dancing girls. Tup trucks were unloading vast quantities of drinkables.
Banner crews were stringing huge expanses of bunting across doors and anything else.
I counted five bands unloading instruments and setting up on stages. And over there
were two fifty-member choruses, one from the Fleet Marines, another from the Fleet base. There was certainly going to be plenty of music. Well, I always like music.
A lot of contractors who had worked on the ship were beginning to drift in. Hundreds of workers and their families. And maybe relatives. Ah, yes. And hangar crews were also drifting over. And there! Crews of Apparatus ships in the hangar were coming from the barracks. They were all early! But beautiful people. All of them.
Ah, yes. And transports of Fleet officers and spacers, unloading in showers of powder blue. Well, welcome, welcome. Fine branch of the service, Fleet.
And here came our crew! They slipped off an Apparatus police van. They hastily grabbed their spacebags. They held them on their shoulders in such a way nobody could see their faces. They came slinking up the eighty feet of steps. Five ex-pirates, still under a death sentence.
I stepped over by the air lock to welcome them. I knew the racial type. Antimancos: their heads are a bit narrow at the top and then swell out on each side to make the face a sort of triangle bottomed by a wide, savage sort of jaw. Their complexions are very swarthy; they average about three hundred pounds and six foot eight. There is a lot of hate in their very small, narrow-set eyes. The Antimancos feel the universe does not appreciate them. I would show them I did!
Expansively, I said, “I am Officer Gris. I have been waiting for you.”
Maybe it was the way I said it, but the one in the lead, probably the captain, stared at my welcoming hand and then at my clothes and backed up so quickly he almost knocked the rest of them back down the steps. Then he sort of steeled his nerve, uttered a low command and rushed past me through the air lock and vanished into the ship. Inside I could hear what sounded like swear words from them.
I pondered it. I looked at my welcoming hand. There was nothing wrong with it if you disregarded the red, spiked metal knuckles. There was nothing wrong with my uniform either. Quite sharp, really, especially the hangman’s nooses.
Feeling quite benign, I again surveyed the vast scene below.
There was Snelz walking about, lining up a full company of men. Dear Snelz. Always a comfort to have him around.
Wait! Euphoria or no euphoria, what was Snelz doing with a company of men? He only rated a platoon. I looked closer. Even though Snelz was five hundred feet away, the red of the captain’s locket glowed in the morning sun!
With a wave of total certainty, I knew it must have been Snelz who had told Lombar about the Countess Krak! How else would he have gotten promoted? SNELZ WAS THE SPY!
I backed up. Somebody was behind me. I turned and got a foggy view of Heller’s face. “Snelz got promoted!”
Heller laughed. “Yes, I know. I gave him five hundred credits to buy his next rank. He deserved it.”
I felt sort of spinny. If the spy wasn’t Snelz, then who was supposed to kill me?
Heller looked strange to me. He had changed to his Fleet dress uniform. He had a round, flat-topped, brimless cap on his head, slanted a bit to the right and held in place with a gold chin strap. His skintight, waist-length tunic was gleaming with gold citation scrolls against the dark blue. His fifty-mission star was blinding on his chest. A wide red stripe went down the outside of each leg. In his Fleet dress uniform, Heller made a picture that would cause the girls to really faint.
He was looking at me oddly, though. “What are you doing in Death Battalion full dress?”
“It’s Snelz,” I said. “I mean, there seems to be an awful lot of tupples here amongst the danceships.” I realized I was talking too fast.
“Are you all right?” said Heller.
“Of course, Lombar is all right. Whatever Snelz says, goes. Goes up to the bear girls, of course, unless the bands don’t launch.” (Bleep) it, I was talking too fast.
“You better sit down,” said Heller. “On the rail, there. No, no, don’t fall over! Here, I’ll open one of these review chairs. Now you just sit there and take it easy. This will all be over and we’ll be gone soon.”
I didn’t know why he was concerned. The world looked just great to me.
PART ELEVEN
Chapter 9
I was about to see what Heller called “keeping it in the family.”
Ten o’clock arrived. And so had scores and scores of lorries and thousands and thousands of people. The hangar guards seemed to be making no attempt to regulate traffic or numbers—the gates were simply wide open.
Gay bunting and flags were all over the place. Tup hadn’t arrived by the canister: it had arrived in tankers; and everywhere you looked, people were drinking from mugs. Some of the bands had begun to play and the music, in conflict from band to band, rose above the chatter of the multitude. One would have thought the party had started.
Not so. A daylight fireworks crew had arrived a bit earlier and I had been eyeing them benignly, not realizing what they were up to. They signaled the start of the party!
Up from their platform went a “flaming planet”!
It soared half a mile into the air, hung there spinning and displaying lighted “continents” and then burst into a great ball of fire. It would have been visible for miles in all directions! That officially started the party.
The crowd burst into a cheer.
Oh, well, I thought, such displays are common enough: it wouldn’t be thought to be anything special by the countryside. New store opening, a public bullet ball game. No harm. Besides, it had been quite pretty.
Sitting in my chair on the review platform, I was mostly hidden by the bunting on its rails but I could see quite well what was going on. I felt quite powerful, really, capable of controlling everything with ease from where I sat.
My eye lighted upon a crane platform lifted up from a big truck, higher even than I was. Suddenly I saw it was a Homeview crew! A big Homeview crew! With big cameras!
Oh, well, I thought. Probably the tup companies had called them in hopes of getting some free advertising into every home. Maybe the manager of the dancing girls or the mountain dancing bears. Homeview crews went everywhere and they often didn’t use what they shot. Just routine.
Reporters! The vans of about ten newssheets were parked around the Homeview crane truck. There was a swarm of newshawks and their cameramen. Oh, well, they say where you find free drinks, you always find reporters.
They seemed to be heading over this way. Ah, of course! There was Heller standing there and they probably didn’t have many pictures of him in fancy Fleet full dress, blazing with citations. He looked kind of cute. Naturally they would want some shots of him—for their files, of course, in case anything exciting happened in the future. And sure enough, I was right. Here they came storming up the eighty-foot rise of steps, jostling each other. And their cameramen immediately began shouting orders to Heller to smile, to look up, to look down, to turn this way or that and even to shake hands with one of the leading reporters who probably wanted one to show to his kids. No harm in all that. Just routine.
Then I caught sight of the Fleet Intelligence officer, Bis. He seemed to be talking to three reporters and pointing up at the platform and here they came with their cameramen.
Aha! They recognized power when they saw it! They were not heading for Heller! They were coming straight to me! About time.
They asked me to stand up and look this way and that. I’m sure they got some very good portraits: probably sell them for use in history books of the future. Contemplating the feats I felt capable of at that moment, they would probably be writing whole sets of volumes about me.
Then they wanted me to stand just behind Heller so they could shoot Heller in the foreground to the left and me behind him slightly to the right. Bis was there, too, helping them pose me, whispering so as to not disturb Heller.
So, they got some shots of me looking at Heller’s back. They weren’t satisfied. But when they told me I was a natural actor and could glare and grit my teeth and all that I entered into the fun of it. I did all that and even added a few of my own such as
tapping my lead-filled sack against my palm and clenching my metal-guarded fists. Heller was unaware of it and just went on chatting.
I thought they were through with me, but no, I had to sit back down in my chair. A cameraman assistant got a backscreen erected behind me—a sort of pattern of stones like a cave, quite realistic. And I posed and looked powerful for them.
But Bis, who was being very helpful, still wasn’t satisfied. He was pointing down and whispering and I got up to see what he was pointing at. There was a whole display of figure-cakes along one bar: these are made of sweetbun dough, are life-sized and pretty realistic, nymphs and so on, all in natural color. And an assistant went racing down and chopped off a cake nymph’s hand and smeared some red jam on it and came racing back up and handed it to me.