VIII
Before they returned to the lower level into which the lateral tunnelentered, Matsui and his gang had the power plant going; the ventilatorfans were humming softly, and whenever they pressed a starting button,the escalators began to move. They got the pumps going, and theoxygen-generators, and the sewage disposal system. Until thecommunication center could be checked and the relay station found,they ran a cable out to the _Lester Dawes_, landed in the canyon, andused her screen-and-radio equipment. Before the Claims Office inStorisende closed, Rodney Maxwell had transmitted in recorded views ofthe interior, and enough of a description for a final claim. They alsoreceived teleprint copies of the Storisende papers. The first story,in an extra edition of the _Herald-Guardian_, was headlined,MERLIN FOUND! That would have been the reporter who boltedoff prematurely when they first saw the personnel record machines.Conn wondered if he still had a job. A later edition corrected this,but was full of extravagant accounts of what had been discovered.Merlin or no Merlin, Force Command Duplicate was the biggestabandoned-property discovery since the Third Force left theTrisystem.
The camp they had set up on top of the mesa was used, that night, onlyby Klem Zareff's guards. Everybody else was inside, eating coldrations when hungry and, when they could keep awake no longer, beddingdown on piles of blankets or going up to the barracks rooms above.
The next day they found the relay station which rebroadcast signalsfrom the buried aerial--or wouldn't one say, sub-terrial--on top ofthe mesa. As Conn had expected, it was on top of a high butte threeand a half miles to the south; it had been so skillfully camouflagedthat none of the outlaw bands who roamed the Badlands had found it.After that, Force Command Duplicate was in communication with the restof Poictesme.
They moved into the staff headquarters at the top; Foxx Travis'soffice, tidied up, became the headquarters for the company officialsand chief supervisors. The workmen quartered themselves in theenlisted barracks, helping themselves liberally to anything theyfound. The crowds of sightseers kept swarming in, giving TomBrangwyn's police plenty to do. Tom himself turned the marshal'soffice in Litchfield over to his chief deputy. Klem Zareff insisted onmore men for his guard force. A dozen gunboats, eighty-foot craftmounting one 90-mm gun, several smaller auto-cannon and onemissile-launcher, had been found; he took them over immediately,naming them for capital ships of the old System States Navy. It tooksome argument to dissuade him from repainting all of them black andgreen. He kept them all in the air, with a swarm of smaller airboatsand combat-cars, circling the underground headquarters at a radius ofa hundred miles. These patrols reported a general exodus from theregion. At least a dozen outlaw bands, all with fast contragravity,had been camped inside the zone. Some fled at once; the rest neededonly a few warning shots to send them away. Other bands, looking likelegitimate prospecting parties, began to filter into the Badlands.Zareff came to Rodney Maxwell--instead of Kurt Fawzi, the titular headof the company, which was significant--to find out what policyregarding them would be.
"Well, we have no right to keep them out, as long as they stay outsideour ten-mile radius," Conn's father said. "And as we're the onlything that even looks like law around here, I'd say we have anobligation to give them protection. Have your boats investigate them;if they're legitimate, tell them they can call on us for help if theyneed it."
Conn protested, privately.
"There's a lot of stuff around here, in small caches," he said."Equipment for guerrilla companies, in event of invasion. When workslacks off here, we could pick that stuff up."
"Conn, there's an old stock-market maxim: 'A bear can make moneysometimes, and a bull can make money sometimes, but in the long run, ahog always loses.' Let the other people find some of this; it'll allhelp the Plan. Fact is, I've been thinking of leaking someinformation, if I can do it without Fawzi and that gang finding out.Do you know a good supply depot or something like that, say over onAcaire, or on the west coast? Big enough to be important, and to starta second prospectors' rush away from us."
"How about one of those hospitals?"
"No; not a hospital. We might use them to talk Wade Lucas into joiningus. A lot of medical stores would be a good bait for him. I'm afraidhe's going to make trouble if we don't do something about him."
"Well, how about engineering and construction equipment? I know wherethere's a lot of that, down to the southwest."
"That's farming country; that stuff'll be useful down there. I'll dothat."
The next morning, Rodney Maxwell scorched the stratosphere toStorisende in his recon-car. The day after he got back, there was abig discovery of engineering equipment to the southwest and, as he hadanticipated, a second rush of prospectors. They had the vertical shaftclear now, and the _Lester Dawes_ was shuttling back and forth betweenForce Command Duplicate and Storisende. Other ships were coming in,now, mostly privately owned freighting ships. They bought almostanything, as fast as it came out.
The stock market had been paralyzed for a couple of days after thediscovery of Force Command; nobody seemed to know what to sell andwhat to hold. Now it was going perfectly insane. Twenty or thirty newcompanies were being formed; unlike Litchfield Exploration & Salvage,they were all offering their stock to the public. A week after theopening of Force Command, the Stock Exchange reported the firsthalf-million-share day since the War. A week after that, there weretwo million-share days in succession.
Some of the L. E. & S. stockholders who had come out on the first daybegan drifting back to Litchfield. Lester Dawes was the first todefect; there was nothing he could do at Force Command, and a greatdeal that needed his personal attention at the bank. Morgan Gatworthand Lorenzo Menardes and one or two others followed. Kurt Fawzi,however, refused to leave. Merlin was somewhere here at Force Command,he was sure of it, and he wasn't leaving till it was found. Neitherwere Franz Veltrin or Dolf Kellton or Judge Ledue. Tom Brangwynresigned as town marshal; Klem Zareff was too busy even to think ofMerlin; he had almost as many men under his command, and twice as muchcontragravity, as he had had when the System States Alliance Army hadsurrendered.
Conn flew to Litchfield, and found that the public works project hadcome to a stop at noon of the day when Force Command was entered, andthat nothing had been done on it since. The cold vitrifier was stillstanding in the middle of the Mall, and topside Litchfield waslittered in a dozen places with forsaken equipment and half-completedpaving. There was no one in Kurt Fawzi's office in the AirlinesBuilding, and the employment office was jammed with migratory workersvainly seeking jobs.
He hunted up Morgan Gatworth, the lawyer.
"Can't some of you get things started again?" he wanted to know. "Thisplace is worse than it was before they started cleaning up."
"Yes, I know." Gatworth walked to an open window and looked down onthe littered Mall. "But everybody just dropped everything as soon asyou opened Force Command. Kurt Fawzi's not been back here since."
"Well, you're here. Lester Dawes and Lorenzo Menardes are here. Whydon't you just take over. Kurt Fawzi couldn't care less what you do;he's forgotten he is mayor of Litchfield. He's forgotten there is aLitchfield."
"Well, I don't like to just move into the mayor's office and takeover...."
From somewhere below, a submachine gun hammered. There were yells,pistol shots, and the submachine gun hammered again, a couple of shortbursts.
"Some of the farm-tramps who can't get jobs, trying to steal somethingto eat, I suppose," Conn commented. Gatworth was frowningthoughtfully. He'd only need one more, very slight, push. "Why don'tyou talk to Wade Lucas. He's got brains, and he's honest--nobody butan honest man would have made himself as unpopular as Lucas has. Ifyou pretend to be disillusioned with this Merlin business it mighthelp convince him."
"He was blaming you and your father for what's been going on here inthe last two weeks. Yes. He'd help get things straightened out."
At home, he found his mother simply dazed. She was happy to see him,and solicitous about his and his father's health. It seemed at ti
mes,though, as if he were somebody she had never met before. Events hadgotten so far beyond her that she wasn't even trying to catch up.
Flora, returning from school, stopped short when she saw him.
"Well! I hope you like what you've done!" she greeted him.
"For a start, yes."
"For a start! You know what you've done?"
"Yes. I don't know what you think I've done, though. Tell me."
"You've turned everything into a madhouse; you've sent this wholeworld Merlin-crazy. Look at the stock market...."
"You look at it. All I can see is a pack of lunatics playing Russianroulette with five chambers loaded out of six. Some of this so-calledstock that's being peddled around isn't worth five millisols ashare--Seekers for Merlin, Ltd., closed today at a hundred andseventy. You notice, there isn't any L. E. & S. being traded. If youdon't believe me, talk to Lester Dawes; he'll tell you what we thinkof this market."
"Well, it's your fault!"
"In part it's my fault that any of these quarter-wits have any moneyto play the market with. They wouldn't have money enough to play afive-centisol slot machine if we hadn't gotten a little businessstarted."
There was just a little truth to that, too. A few woolen socks werecoming out from under mattresses, and a few tin cans were beingexhumed in cellars, since the new flood of Federation equipment andsupplies had gotten on the market. He'd seen a freshly lettered signon Len Yeniguchi's tailor shop: QUARTER PRICE IN FEDERATIONCURRENCY.
That night, however, he had one of the nightmares he used to have as achild--a dream of climbing up onto a huge machine and getting itstarted, and then clinging, helpless and terrified, unable to stop itas it went faster and faster toward destruction.
Klem Zareff's patrols were encountering larger outlaw bands, theresult of gang mergers. They were fighting with prospecting parties,and prospecting parties were fighting one another. Much of this wasmaking the newscasts. One battle, between two regularly charteredprospecting companies, lasted three days, with an impressive casualtylist.
Public demands were growing that the Planetary Government do somethingabout the situation; the Government was wondering what to do, or how.There were indignant questions in Parliament. Finally, the Governmentdragged a couple of armed ships off Mothball Row--a combat freighterlike the _Lester Dawes_, and a big assault transport--and began tryingto get them into commission.
And, of course, the market boom was still on. The newscasts were fullof that, too. He had started worrying about _if_ a bust came; now hewas worrying about what would happen _when_ it did. Another goodreason for wanting to get to Koshchei and getting a hypership built;when the bust came, he and his father would want one, very badly.
In any case, it was time to begin getting an expedition ready forBarathrum Spaceport. Quite a few of the new companies had largecontragravity craft, and the nascent Planetary Air Navy wasapproaching a state of being. He wanted to get out there beforeanybody else did.
Maybe if they got the hypership built soon enough, it would start asecond, sound boom that would cushion the crash of the presentspeculative market when it came, as come it must.
He talked to Klem Zareff about borrowing a couple of the eighty-footgunboats. Zareff's attitude was automatically negative.
"We mustn't weaken our defense-perimeter; we'd be inviting disaster.Why, this whole country in here is simply swarming with outlaws. Theyfired on one of our gunboats, the _Werewolf_, yesterday."
He'd heard about that; somebody had launched a missile from theground, and the _Werewolf_ had detonated it with a counter-missile. Ithad probably been some legitimate prospecting company who'd taken theL. E. & S. craft for a pirate.
"And there was a battle down in the Devil's Pigpen day beforeyesterday."
That had been outlaws; they had been annihilated by something callingitself Seekers for Merlin, Ltd., whose stock was still skyrocketing onthe Exchange. He mentioned that.
"These other prospecting companies are doing a lot of ouroutlaw-fighting for us, and as long as the country's full of smallindependent parties, the outlaws go after them and leave us alone."
"Yes, and I have my doubts about a lot of these prospecting companies,and a lot of the outlaws, too," Zareff said. "I think a lot of bothare Federation agents; they're waiting till we find Merlin, and thenthey'll all jump us."
"Well," Conn adjusted his argument to the old Rebel's obsession, "I'lladmit that, as a possibility. If so, we'll need heavier weapons thanwe have. This spaceport on Barathrum might be just the place to getthem."
"Yes. It might. Defense armament, and stored ships' weapons. Say, ifwe grab that place and move all the heavy guns and missiles here, wecould stand off anybody." The thought of a fight with minions of theTerran Federation seemed to have shaved ten years off his age in atwinkling. "You take the _Lester Dawes_, and, let's say, three ofthese gunboats. Let me see. _Goblin_, Fred Karski. And _Vampire_,Charley Gatworth. And _Dragon_, Stefan Jorisson. They're all good men.Home Guard; trained them myself."
"Aren't you coming, Colonel?"
"Oh, I'd like to, Conn, but I can't. I don't want to be away fromhere; no telling what might happen. But you keep in constantscreen-contact; if you get into any trouble, I'll come with everythingI can put into the air."