He sent the strip through again. This time there was a medium hearing range roar.
“That’s better,” said Heller. He neated up the area, put his tools away. Then he reinserted the language strip. He looked at the speaker, very composed, hit the starter button and in thirty seconds the hour-recorded strip had roared through the machine.
“Ah,” said Heller.
I was just plain incredulous. “Ah” indeed! It took an hour to listen to a strip! I said, “Oh, come off of it. If you are really hearing the words on that strip, you’ll be able to tell me the next lines. My name is George. . . .”
Heller smiled. “I have a dog. The dog’s name is Rover. Do you like dogs? . . .” But he was not very interested in playing any game with me. He picked the second strip out of the box and sent it through with a roar. (Bleep)! He could make it out at that speed!
The Countess Krak breathed, “Instant auricular assimilation and retention. At hyperspeed.”
I looked at her. “Is that rare?”
“No,” she said. She seemed in a daze. “Well . . . yes, at speeds like that, that is.” She wasn’t talking to me really. “His hearing is trained to differentiate minute time intervals.” Her voice sounded so strange. “I’ve never seen it done that fast.” She seemed to become aware of me for a moment. With bright-eyed awe she said, “Isn’t he beautiful?”
For a moment I thought she meant the talent was beautiful. But no, she was really looking at his chest and arms. It was true that Jettero Heller was one of the best-looking guys around but there was more to this than that. This was all out of my depth. It could be very dangerous.
I had a bright idea. “Well,” I said, “if he can speed-learn as fast as that, we’ll just take the player and strips to my room and he can study there.”
“No!” She shouted it. Then she said, very quietly, “There’s a regulation that equipment can’t leave here.”
That was a lame one. I took stuff in and out of here all the time.
He had done four strips. I stood up and tapped him on the shoulder. “That’s all for today,” I said. “We’ve got other appointments. Come on!”
And I dragged him out of there. I don’t like things I don’t understand.
PART THREE
Chapter 5
We took a tube to the topmost tower of Spiteos. It was after sunset and also because there is a partial roof there we couldn’t be seen in case of overflights. The star-pierced desert sky stretched like a jeweled dome from horizon to horizon. The lights of Camp Endurance winked below us. Oh, it is good to get a breath of clean air after a day spent down in the stench of Spiteos!
“Heller,” I said, after we had settled ourselves in an embrasure, “I’ve got to talk to you.” I could see the desert wind rumpling his hair, but I could not make out his eyes in the starlight. I seemed to have his attention.
“Mission Earth,” I continued, “is of vital importance. I must not take any chances in failing to carry out my orders.” Needless to say, I did not tell him those orders involved making him fail. But strangely enough, I had a sort of brotherly feeling for him and what I had to tell him is the sort of thing one junior officer has to tell another whether it is appreciated or not.
“You are new to this espionage special agent game. I am your handler. You know what that means. I am the one that guides your actions.”
He seemed to be giving me his attention. So I dropped the bombload on him. “That female you met this afternoon is trouble. Trouble with a capital crash!”
Heller didn’t say anything. “Brother officers,” I said, “have to tell their brother officers these things every now and then. I know you may not like it but it has to be done.
“It is true she was a Countess once. But that is the only thing true about her. Do you remember the name ‘Lissus Moam’? The one that was in the news so much about three years ago?”
He didn’t speak, so I went on. “She was arrested and tried and sentenced to death. Forty-three children were also sentenced and executed. It all happened on the Planet Manco. She is a genius at training. And she used her position in the Division of Education to recruit and train youngsters as bank robbers. She taught them to open any vault, to bypass any alarm system. They raked in millions.
“Now, there is some question about the next part as it is said that the Assistant Lord of Education for Manco did it—at least she said so at her trial. But those children were taught to murder and at every job they murdered every guard, some of them pretty horribly.
“The Domestic Police turned her over secretly to the Apparatus: that’s how these things work. And she has been here at Spiteos for nearly three years.” It was all right to give him details. If I got him to Blito-P3, by the time he returned here everything would be changed anyway. “In those three years, she has murdered three guards. The first simply reached for her hair, probably to stroke it. She had a whip in her hand: she took the butt of it and jammed it straight through his heart.
“A few months later, one of the toughest beasts in Spiteos whispered something in her ear—nobody knows what. She seized him around the back, put her head under his chin and pulled. His back snapped in three places and it took him about four days to die.
“Just two months ago, right down there in the training area, she was teaching one of our toughest special agents a new twist on hand-to-hand combat. Probably in a teasing movement, but not even that, most likely, he made an improper gesture. You know, she wears those thigh boots and jacket but nothing else—factually I don’t think she has anything else except some work coveralls she wears to handle big lizards that have scrapy skins. Witnesses say he didn’t even touch her and others say he did reach her crotch. Heller, just using the edge of her hand, she broke his arm! Then he called her a stinking whore. They say that, without the faintest trace of emotion, she said, ‘I am a virgin and you will apologize’ and without waiting for any answer, she broke his jaw. And that isn’t the worst of it. She stamped him! She just stamped him on and on. Heller, there wasn’t an unbroken bone left in that fellow’s body! I didn’t see the others, but I did see this fellow afterwards and he looked like red paste!
“The only one that can hit her and get away with it is Lombar Hisst.”
Heller showed his first interest. “You mean the Chief Executive of the Apparatus has hit her?”
“We’re all terrified of him and with very ample reason. After all, he’s . . .” I checked myself. I had almost said “The most powerful official in the Voltarian Confederacy” but that wasn’t quite true yet and would give things away. So I said, “. . . too dangerous.”
Heller seemed to be very thoughtful now. So I really drove it home. “Jettero—and I can call you Jettero, can’t I? I am a brother officer and have a personal feeling, too. I have got to get you off this planet alive. I have got to do my duty with regard to Mission Earth. And listen, Jettero, you go fooling around with the Countess Krak, making remarks like you did today, getting funny ideas about her and, well, I don’t care how good you are with hand-to-hand, you will be one very dead Jettero Heller.
“You steer clear of the Countess Krak! There may be others that don’t want this mission to succeed, but this afternoon they took the rear seat. The primary danger you’re courting right this moment consists of making passes at that female. Now, I know it is lonely in space and that you’re just back from a long trip and all that. But the Countess Krak is death incarnate! Stay away!” I laughed a bit to take the sting out of the order. “After all, it will be hard enough to get you off this planet without that! Now we won’t say any more about it.”
Heller sat there for a while. I could see he was thinking about something very hard. I respected his silence. It was obvious he had a problem now for I could see him gnawing at it.
“There’s one thing I can’t remember,” said Jettero.
I was all attention, inviting his confidence.
He looked at me searchingly. I could see he was deeply troubled, even perplexed. “W
ould you say her eyes were gray? Or are they pale blue?”
I gave it up in disgust. I got him back to the room. I had other important things to do anyway.
PART THREE
Chapter 6
Lombar always said that when you let an underling get away with something and did not punish him severely, you yourself would shortly be in trouble. I considered this very wise.
I could sense that I myself was walking on a very thin crust and, without any doubt whatever, I was headed for trouble. Therefore, it was obvious that I had not properly handled underlings. Before things got further out of hand, I knew I had to punish that platoon commander. His conduct while “guarding” Heller was unforgivable!
So as soon as I had stuffed down some moldy bread—what passes for food at Spiteos—I headed for Camp Endurance. And when I got through, it would have another reason to be nicknamed “Camp Kill.”
The fortress is connected to the camp by an underground tunnel about a mile and a half long. Traffic with the outside world, for Spiteos, had Camp Endurance as its terminal: any overflight of the area or any inspection, for that matter, found only the sprawling camp; its traffic being justified by the “training activities” it conducted.
We tried to keep traffic to a minimum but there was plenty of it just the same. The tunnel traffic was very heavy tonight. The outgoing zipbus I caught was halted for a good twenty minutes in the middle of the dark tunnel, parked on a turnout, letting incoming transports through to Spiteos.
The view I had from the zipbus was restricted, limited to a small diamond window beside the seat; the lights were bad but they flashed upon the sides of the incoming vehicles in a green blur.
Plenty of traffic! I wondered what was up. I caught the flick of high-rank flags. I was battered by the roar of heavy-armored trucks. The air disturbance of escort tanks was like a blastcannon and hurt my ears.
Something was certainly up! I yelled up to the half-naked zipbus driver, “Is there a general alert?” But my voice was drowned in tunnel roars and I had to repeat it louder.
He heard me and yelled back, “Ain’t none I know about. That first lot was incoming freight with guard tanks. This stuff now is just staff cars—a bunch of (bleeping) bigwigs. You can’t never tell what them (bleepards) is up to.”
The driver hadn’t turned around until he said the last. He did now and abruptly realized he was talking to an officer. He went white with shock and whipped back, looking rigidly straight.
Riffraff, I thought. Lombar is right. Trash like this driver ought to be exterminated. But I didn’t take it up. I was too impatient to get at that platoon commander.
We finally got to the Camp Endurance outlet and went through the heavy security barricade. There had never been an escape from Spiteos but this would be the logical route—all other Spiteos exits were sealed solid with stone.
The black-uniformed barricade guards double-checked my identoplate, holding blasters pointed at me the while. A gray service uniform is suspect always but I was (bleeped) if I would ever don the shabby black of the Apparatus troops.
The platoon commander who had been assigned with his men to guard Heller was named Snelz. He and his platoon were barracked in Camp Endurance but sent their guard details into the fortress for duty watches. As I did not want Snelz alerted, I said I was just going to the camp club. I knew where Snelz had his quarters.
The officers lived in small bunkers, like animal caves, along the north side of the camp, dug into the hill. It was pretty dark along there. Scraps of music and echoes from a brawl seeped up from the camp along with a fetid stink.
I saw the cave number ahead. There was a light leak underneath the closed door so Snelz would be there. A couple of big boulders stood beside the entrance. And I am afraid my attention was so thoroughly on the light leak that I didn’t see the sentry.
Apparatus troops may parade and all that but they are not like the Army. Criminals, the worst riffraff of the planets, they tend to hide even on casual duty. It is either a trait they get from the Apparatus or the Apparatus gets from them. They never do anything straightforward.
They also have entirely different regulations. They can be killed by their officers without censure. This places any guard in a quandary. He either tries to do his duty of protecting his superior—and maybe die in that—or he fails to protect his officer and the officer kills him.
This one made a mistake: he played it for his officer. When I was eight feet from that door, expecting nothing, the sentry leaped up and lunged in full attack!
I am pretty fast. Otherwise I would have died in my tracks!
The blastgun barrel was into my stomach with violence!
I hardly even saw the man behind it.
With a roll to the side I made the barrel shoot by. I brought my right hand down on the back of the sentry’s neck!
He staggered and it gave me my chance.
As he fell, I snatched the gun barrel and got the weapon out of his hands.
His boots drove at my shins and I reeled with the impact.
A green beam of light from the camp flashed as a distant vehicle turned. I saw clearly for the first time that it was a sentry and not an assassin.
But you can’t let someone get away with that! Not an attack on an officer.
I reversed the gun and drove the butt against his skull! There was a dull, crushing sound. I hit again just to make sure. He lay there bleeding. He didn’t move.
So far, good. And now for Snelz.
The thick door would have masked the sounds of the fight. I stepped over the sentry’s body and approached. The thing to do in such a situation, where one is trying to enforce authority and gain respect, is play it very bold.
I simply opened the door and walked in. Such a casual act would make him think it was a friend.
He must have. He was sitting at the table in his shirt-sleeves, playing twelve-sided dice with himself. Over in a bunk, sleeping peacefully, was one of the camp prostitutes; her clothes lay all over the floor and she looked exhausted. The place stank of spent passion.
When one is really trained, one can reconstruct a situation in a fraction of a second. Snelz had had money. The first thing he had done was call in a prostitute. He was practicing with six twelve-sided dice, so the next thing he planned to do was call in at what they laughingly called a “club” and try to clean out his fellow guard officers to make up what the prostitute had cost him.
Snelz looked up casually, thinking probably that it was some friend intent on getting a loan. He suddenly registered who it was and went white!
Now, duels between officers are not unknown. But Apparatus officers are such swine, they don’t duel. They simply murder. And where a General Services officer is concerned, when it comes to a fight with Apparatus troop commanders, they don’t even bother to count the bodies.
My face told him why I was there. He raised his left hand in a defensive position as if it could ward off a shot. He almost screamed: “I can explain. . . .”
“Platoon Commander Snelz,” I said, for I might as well make this execution official, “you are guilty of fraternizing with a prisoner you were ordered to guard. Apparatus Regulation 564-B-61 Section D. The penalty, as you well know, is death.”
Unlike civilian life or the Fleet or Army, there are no trials in the Apparatus. Ordinarily he would have simply accepted it. But something had gotten into him.
He stabbed a hand toward his belt! I was certain he was going to draw and shoot.
Well, I am not slow. I wouldn’t have lived as I have if I could be outdrawn.
My own hand leaped, with no thought from me, to my breast pocket and the blastick was out and leveled at him before he had hardly touched his belt.
The field of fire took in the prostitute on the bunk behind him and 800 kilovolts would kill her, too. But it wasn’t any time for niceties.
I pressed the switch-trigger!
The blastick pin made only a faint pop!
No explosion!
/> I was holding a dud-loaded blastick! It was a very bad moment. I had no other weapon. I could not reach him to strike or kick. I was defenseless!
He was still scrabbling at his belt and my heart almost stopped as he lifted his fingers. I was quite certain I was dead!
But he was holding two ten-credit notes! He had not been drawing out a weapon. He had been trying to get at money!
Had he heard the switch-trigger fall on a dud load?
No, he had not!
He was holding out the two ten-credit notes and he moved sideways from the chair and fell on his knees. “Please, Officer Gris. Please! Don’t kill me!”
There was a big stun gun lying on a bench not three feet from his reach. I am well schooled. I let no sign of my emotions show. I toughed it out.