It was not intended for me. Heller casually lifted his hand in the usual reply and flashed a faint but friendly smile. The beast grinned back!
I had never seen a Spiteos guard salute or smile before. I felt eerie, like one would feel if he saw a wraith actually appear in a woods temple: something you see that you know can’t happen—supernatural. I hurriedly zipped my name across the log plate and got out of there with the prisoner.
In the upper levels of Spiteos there are some rooms set aside for Apparatus officers such as I. Very plain and windowless, they nevertheless have a few comforts including baths. I used mine very seldom but it had the necessary personal things.
Technically speaking, I would be removing him from the prison by taking him to my room but I thought Lombar’s last orders would provide for it.
Just to make sure both the contradictory orders were covered, I parked the prisoner in a niche beside the lift tubes and, out of his hearing, made a call to Camp Endurance. The troops there were actual Apparatus troops. I got hold of an officer and arranged for a platoon and around-the-clock surveillance of my room and surrounding passages. I gave explicit orders they were to appear to be guarding against intrusion upon the prisoner while actually preventing his escape. I used Lombar’s name to drive it home and by delaying our progress upward, they had time to post the area.
We entered the barren room. I opened a drawer and offered Heller a chank-pop—anything to take the stench of the prison away. It even leaked into these rooms. But Heller shook his head.
“What I need is a bath,” he said.
I waved my hand at the wall tub, opened a closet and got out a flimsy sleeping robe. He shed his shoes and pants and I dumped them, with the sweater, into the disposal unit—they were beyond salvage.
As he started the spray going, I had a sudden thought. “You know,” I said, popping a chank-pop under my own nose, “you could have made a run for it when you picked up that blastick. You were armed, I was defenseless. You could have used me as a hostage. . . .”
He laughed. He had a very pleasant, easy laugh. After a bit, scrubbing away, he said, “And fight through electric gates, armed guards, mined shafts and blastgun perimeters? And then fight through Camp Endurance and stumble across two hundred miles of the Great Desert? Utter folly. Foolhardy beyond belief. I’m certain the Apparatus would never permit anyone to leave Spiteos alive!”
I was shocked. He could not possibly know where he was. We had passed no windows, no signs. He had been unconscious when he arrived. He might have even been on another planet. And no one, but no one outside the Apparatus knew Spiteos, that ancient landmark, was in use!
“My Gods, how could you possibly know?”
He laughed again, scrubbing away. “My watch. It runs on twenty-six different time bands as well as Universal Absolute Time.”
That didn’t tell me anything. “And . . . ?” I prompted.
“It gives the time lag between here and Palace City and it gives the direction. There’s only one geophysical feature at that distance from Palace City and that’s Spiteos.” I didn’t laugh. I was getting sad. “Any other way?” I asked.
That really amused him. “This rock. Every wall of the place is ‘in-place’ country rock. Black basalt with a 16° dip and a strike of 214°, Type 13 granularity. Look at it. It’s the remains of a volcanic extrusion that built the mountains beyond the Great Desert. Elementary geology for the planet Voltar. Any schoolboy knows that. I knew where I was when I came to. The watch just confirmed it.”
Well, I was one schoolboy that didn’t know it. “Strike” was the compass direction. He must have intuitive compass sense. “Dip” is easy: that’s the angle into the ground. But to be able to classify rock by its visual granular structure—and without a complex analyzer—meant he had eyes like a microscope and in the comparative dark of that cell! And he must have a memory like a library!
But that wasn’t what was making me sad. Here he was, for all he knew, in the hands of enemies just using him, and he was letting me know that he knew where he was. And he was exposing vital abilities which, had they stayed hidden, might have lulled me into a false sense of security. Now I could take precautions against these things. For a spy, all that is not just dumb, it is stupid beyond belief. Using what he had just incautiously revealed, I could lock him up forever and he’d never know where he was!
He’d never make a special agent. Not in a million, million years. I was not going to have trouble making him fail. I was going to have trouble keeping him afloat long enough not to drag me down. Spying takes an instinct. Oh my, he didn’t have it! This wasn’t going to be a failed mission. This was going to be a total catastrophe!
“Make yourself at home,” I said. “I’m going to Government City to get your orders.”
PART TWO
Chapter 5
I am sure you have noticed that the first impression a visitor gets of the Fleet Administration Complex in Government City is that he has just encountered an actual fleet in outer space. When somebody said “buildings,” their architects must have thought “ships.” It is most annoying: there they are, spotted around ten square miles of otherwise barren land, like ten thousand huge silver ships. They’re even in formation! They say the officers and clerks even wear spaceboots! And not a shrub or tree to be seen anywhere!
When I have to fly there, I always feel like I’m an invader having to be repelled. Marines, Marines, Marines, gates, gates, gates, all built like atmosphere ports. Passes, passes, passes. It just occurred to me that maybe I don’t like the place because they always look at my identification plates, see I’m from the Apparatus and sneer. But after two hours I finally got where I was trying to go.
The Fleet Personnel Officer was sitting in a cubicle for all the world like a storeroom on a battleship. The walls were solid, deck to overhead, with machines and screens, dazzling with their flashing, multicolored lights. You’d think he was fighting a battle—and maybe he was, with four million Fleet officers to shift around.
He was probably a nice enough fellow: a bit old, a bit fat. He looked up as though to greet me cheerfully but he didn’t. He frowned a trifle instead. There was just a trace of wondering disapproval in his voice. “You’re from the drunks?”
Now, nobody had announced me as anything but “An officer from Exterior Division,” and I was wearing the noncommittal gray uniform of General Services, not even a pocket patch. I involuntarily looked down at myself. How could he tell? I saw no grease spots, no food stains, no old blood. But I also saw no style, no flair. No pride! Shabby!
I had had it all rehearsed but his remark disconcerted me. “I want transfer orders for Combat Engineer Jettero Heller,” I blurted out. No gradual briefing, no persuasion.
The Fleet Personnel Officer frowned heavily. “Jettero Heller?” Then he repeated the name to himself. He had buttons and flashing lights all over the place but here he was depending on memory. “Oh, Jet!” He had it now. “The Royal Academy driving champion a few years ago. And wasn’t he later a runner-up for interplanetary bullet ball? Yes. Ah, yes, Jettero Heller. Great athlete.”
All this was very promising for he seemed to have mellowed. I was just opening my mouth to push my request again when he suddenly frowned.
“You’ll have to get clearance from the Admiralty of Combat Engineers. That’s Course Ninety-nine. Just outside that door, you turn . . .”
“Please,” I said. I had already been to that admiralty and they had sent me here. Desperately, I dived into my paper case and snapped out the Grand Council order. “This supersedes all clearances. Please transfer him to the Exterior Division.”
He looked the order all over though I’m sure he had seen hundreds of them before. He peered at me very suspiciously. Then he slapped his palm down on an array of switches, one after the other; he dithered around with his button console, transferring the Grand Council order number into his information network. Then he sat looking at a screen I couldn’t see. He frowned heavily. I hal
f expected some Marines to suddenly rush in and arrest me.
With total finality he slapped his board shut. “No, can’t possibly do it.”
Lombar’s shadow loomed closer. “What’s the matter?” I quavered. “Has the Grand Council order been canceled?”
“No, no, no,” he said impatiently. “The order is in the data bank, all authentic—though I must say, you never can tell when you’re dealing with the drunks.” He dismissed all that and sat there frowning. Finally he tossed the Grand Council order back at me. “It’s just impossible, that’s all.”
Bureaucracy! Actually, I sighed with relief. When one is a member of the Apparatus, real trouble is always a close companion. But bureaucracy is trouble everybody has. It’s a system evolved so that nobody in it is ever responsible for anything. “Why can’t it be done?”
Like explaining shoes to a child, he said, “In the first place, a combat engineer is in the Fleet. The Exterior Division—and I still think you’re from the drunks—is an entirely different Division of the government. When you say you want him transferred, you’re saying that he would have to resign from the Fleet, make application for commission in the Exterior Division, come up through their ranks . . . it would take years! I’m sure you don’t have years. And you have not brought his resignation from the Fleet. So it can’t be done.”
For a moment I wondered if Heller had known all this—that he had known it was this complicated and was using a cunning out. Maybe he was cleverer than I had given him credit for. (Looking back on it now, I wish he had been!)
But the best authorities on bureaucracy are the bureaucrats. So I myself got clever. “If you had this problem I’ve got,” I said, “how would you handle it?” That was a lot better than going back to the Apparatus and finding some blackmail on this fellow—there always is some and if it doesn’t exist, one makes it up and “documents” it. But an order illegally obtained by coercion might, itself, be illegal. It was much more clever to do it straight. Novel, but it might work.
He thought for a while, really being helpful. He brightened. “Ah! I could just give you a standard set of orders for a combat engineer.”
And (bleep) him, he simply pushed some buttons and a couple seconds later a form came out of a slot. He handed it to me. It said:
FLEET ORDER
M-93872654-MM-93872655-CE
REFERENCE: GRAND COUNCIL ORDER
938362537-451BP3
KNOW ALL:
JETTERO HELLER GRADE TEN COMBAT ENGINEER
SERIAL E555MXP IS HEREBY AND HEREWITH AS OF THIS DATE ORDERED TO INDEPENDENT DUTY ON HIS OWN COGNIZANCE TERMINATING ON HIS OWN COGNIZANCE.
ENDORSEMENT: SEE REFERENCE.
ISSUED, AUTHENTICATED AND VERIFIED BY THE FLEET PERSONNEL OFFICER______________________________________________
Brightly, he said, “That all right?”
“Kind of sweeping,” I said.
“Oh,” he said, “combat engineers are always ordered out that way: mostly blasting away behind enemy lines, you know; who can tell how long it will take them. That’s why they have to be such reliable people. They almost always, unless they’re killed, carry through whatever you set them at. Their corps motto, you know, is ‘Whatever the odds, to Hells with them, get the job done.’ Remarkable people. Will those orders do? They’re a standard combat engineer form, you know.”
I was shaken, both by the idiot simplicity of the orders and by what he had just said. Had Lombar known any of this? I doubted it. What were we biting off? Could we chew it?
Jettero Heller had known what the orders would say. He must have received dozens of them. He must have known that this would really put him outside the control of the Exterior Division and the Apparatus. By the evil Gods, I was going to have to work like mad to keep him on a leash! I began to doubt I could execute my orders and make the mission fail.
I got a grip on myself. It’s one thing to go blasting in with the burners wide open and blow up an enemy town. But it was quite another to operate in the dark and secret world of espionage. I thought of the ease with which we’d kidnapped him, I remembered his total stupidity that morning, I thought of his fatal notions of sportsmanship.
“Yes,” I said. “They’re fine. By all means sign it.” I handed over my own identoplate so he could authenticate it and feed his hungry machines. “I’d like some extra copies.”
He punched and scribbled away. “I think Jet’s Academy track record still stands. Great athlete. Nice fellow, too, they say.” And finally, “Here’s his orders. Wish him good luck.”
I got out of there. It felt odd to have done a straight, legal piece of work, no twists. The honest world is a strange place for a member of the Apparatus. It leaves one feeling confused. Unfamiliar territory!
And then, clear of the oppressive environment of the Fleet, I felt a belated surge of triumph. By the wording of these orders, Jettero Heller could be wiped forever from Fleet rolls. He could be made to disappear without a trace and no questions asked. No, Jettero Heller was not smart in the dirty world of espionage and covert technology. In fact, (bleeping) dumb. Lombar would be proud of me. I had just wiped out the kidnapping. We could wipe out Heller. And I freely confess that at that moment I fully intended to drain off all the personal credit from it I could.
I headed for the Fleet Officers’ Club to pick up his kit.
PART TWO
Chapter 6
My elation was very short-lived.
The officers’ club lay quietly in the warm daylight of a beautiful afternoon. The mountains around it gazed down benignly. Shrubs and flowers perfumed the gentle air.
It was a trap!
My driver parked the airbus before the main entrance. I trotted up the wide ramp with its inset views of beautiful females.
The huge lobby was deserted except for one uniformed cleaner casually mopping up some spilled drinks. I went directly to the office counter and rapped my stick upon it. I am not a member, of course, and the gray-headed clerk, probably a retired enlisted man, went on pottering with his entry books.
My gray General Services uniform was not likely to get much attention in this place. So I slapped my stick even harder against the counter. “Here, here, snap to attention,” I said. He just went on working, I thought he must be deaf. And it was there I made my near-fatal error. I can’t stand insolent underlings.
“If you cannot give me some service,” I yelled at him, “I shall have no choice but to report you!” No attention. So I shouted even louder, “I am here to pick up the baggage of Jettero Heller!”
That got attention. He got right up, came right over. I thought for a moment that that was more like it. But he had his head down and was lifting his eyes at me in a peculiar way. In a voice fully as loud as I had used—and believe me these old spacemen can be heard a mile—he bawled, “Did you say you were here for the baggage of Jettero Heller?” And without the slightest pause, went right on. “You look like you are from the drunks!”
There was a slight noise in the lobby. I looked around. The equipment of the uniformed cleaner was still on the floor but the cleaner himself was gone.
In a perfectly normal quiet voice, the clerk said, “Please fill out this form.” He fiddled around under the counter and came up with some forms. He read some titles of them to himself. Bent down to look for some more. Brought those up and looked over their titles. My success so far this day must have curdled my wits. Despite all my training and experience in the Apparatus I did not recognize the routine ploy of just plain stalling.
It was the breathing that alerted me. It was behind me.
I whirled.
Three young officers were standing there! One was in a bathrobe, another in swimming trunks, a third in a sport driver’s helmet. And even as I faced them, five more officers came speeding in through various doors. That (bleeped) cleaner was rounding them up!
I have seen glaring faces in my time but these topped it. Another young officer rushed down some stairs, carrying a sports cl
ub!
The biggest of them, three feet from me, barked a command, “Get him!”
They train you well in the Apparatus. In an instant, I wasn’t there to get! I sprang up and back to the top of the counter. I threw the register straight in the first face!
I was over the counter, behind it, driven by the hurricane of roaring fury from those young officers. Arms clawed for me. I threw a chair!
They came over the counter like a tidal wave.
A door on the right. I rushed through it. I was back into the main lobby. I measured my chances to get out the main entrance. But more officers were pouring in from the sports field!
I will say this. I fought a valiant strategic withdrawal. I pitched plates and tables at them. I raced around chairs and spilled them in their way. I even threw vases, flowers and all! I only lasted as long as I did because there were so many trying to catch me! They collided with one another. They were boxing me in. I tried to leap up on the bandstand but with one final, flying tackle a husky athlete brought me down with a crash.