Better and better. “Go ahead,” I said.
He made a money motion with his fingers. “And how much?”
I really laughed. “Bolz, we’re old friends. The price is nothing. I don’t even have anything illegal to go back to Blito-P3.”
“I owe you a favor, then,” he said.
“As you will,” I said. “But do you mind if I get on with the ship business?”
Between the whiskey and his coming profit, Bolz was really relaxed. “At your orders, Officer Gris.”
“When do you head back?”
“Maybe a ten-day turnaround. I got to replace a converter. Make it maybe ten days. After all, they’re your orders, Officer Gris.”
“Well, ten days will be just fine. But there are certain items you must have aboard before your shoot-away. The first is a young man named Twolah.”
Bolz was scribbling with a huge hand. “Probably get spacesick.”
“He’s a courier carrying confidential material. He’ll be on the run quite often. Now Twolah is sort of . . . well, man crazy. You are not to let him talk to anyone or the crew or another passenger. And don’t let him get sexually involved with the crew.”
“Got it. Locked cabin. Locked butt.”
“The other is a scientist. He holds some scientific secrets. He is on a secret mission. Do not put him down on your manifest. He is not to talk with anyone.”
“Got it. Locked cabin, empty. Locked mouth.”
“Now there are three freight consignments.”
“Hey, now,” said Bolz. “That’s good. You know we never carry nothing back to Blito-P3 but some food and a few spare parts. So! Real freight! That’s good. Makes the ship run better. You know, Officer Gris, we carry too little cargo.”
“I’m glad you approve. Now, there’s a big lot coming from Zanco Cellological Equipment and Supplies. Physical health sort of thing to set up a base hospital.”
“Hey, things are looking up. Maybe somebody can treat that venereal disease that’s poking around down there. I got two crew limping with it right now! The dumb (bleepards).”
“Then a bit later, there’ll be a second, smaller lot coming in from the same firm but it’s being held for inspection. It will have some very sensitive stuff in it so don’t let it get knocked around.”
“Knocked around,” said Bolz, writing busily.
“Now, do you have a lead-sealed storeroom, that can take radioactive material in boxes?”
“Yeah, we got one. They won’t blow up, will they?”
“Not unless they’re opened,” I said. “But they’re so sensitive that I brought them down myself. Could you have an officer stow them in it right now? And lock it?”
Well, he could do that if he hurried before they all hit groundside for a spree. He pushed buzzers and, with Ske’s help, soon had nine “radioactive” boxes in the vault. I turned the key in the lock and put it in my pocket.
Bolz accompanied me back to the exit air lock. “Hey, how we going to unload it if you got the key?”
I grinned at him. I was really floating. “I’ll be there to meet you when you land on Earth, Captain. I’m going to run this show from Blito-P3!”
He swatted me on the back and almost knocked my breath out. “Great news! Then you can stamp passes for here right when I load there! So I’ll see you on the target!”
“With a bottle of Scotch in my hand just for you,” I said.
“Wait,” he paused, puzzled. “How you going to get there before I do? Old Blixo is no sprinter but there ain’t anything else leaving before I do.”
We could see Tug One through the gaps in other craft. She only stood out because contractor crews were boiling over her.
He peered. “I don’t recognize her. What is she? Looks like a Fleet . . . oh, my Gods, is that one of the Will-be Was engined tugs? Hey, Officer Gris, do you know one of them things blew up? I thought they’d retired all light-craft Will-be Was stuff from service. Oh, now, Officer Gris, I don’t know if you’ll be there to meet me or not.” And he made an explosion motion with his two hands.
It was not too happy a thought to part on. But with promises to be careful and good wishes for his own next voyage, I went down the ladder.
I had an awful lot to do. In fact, on today’s schedule there remained the dangerous part of my planning. The real make or break. My mind was full of the problem of how to get the secret bugs for Heller.
As I flew away, Bolz was still standing there, shaking his head.
PART TEN
Chapter 3
We flew up to ten thousand feet. My driver was pretending he had strained his back and scratched his hands. I had headed him for Joy City. I was trying to put makeup on and he kept taking his hands off the wheelstick and trying to suck the blood out of the cuts the sharp-edged boxes had made. I got some powder in my eye and cursed him.
“Hover!” I demanded. And added a couple violent adjectives.
So he hovered. I was able to complete my face. With a bit of yellow liquid, dulled by pale yellow powder, I was able to duplicate the skin tone of a Flisten race’s upper class. With a skin stricture on each temple, I down-slanted my eye corners. With black-looking color shifters, the eyes became quite sinister. I was very pleased. I snapped a close-cut, black wig on and blackened the hair on either side of my face. Wonderful!
I scrambled and grunted myself out of my General Services uniform and into the custard of Army Intelligence. I dropped the high-rank chain over my head, put on the spike-heeled yellow boots and the flat cap. I put my own wallet and the identoplate of Timp Snahp in my pocket.
I admired myself in the mirror. What a snappy, handsome aristocrat! Timp Snahp, Grade Thirteen, Demon ace of Flisten’s Army Intelligence! How the girls must go for him! How the Army criminal element must tremble, the enemy shake under that sinister gaze!
“You going someplace to get shot?” said my driver hopefully.
“Joy City,” I said. “The very best bars. North end.”
“The Army officers hang out at the Dirt Club this time of day,” said my driver. “That’s in the south end.”
I ignored him. He was too willful to be associated with. I was busy packing the civilian suit in a little kit bag and arming myself. Besides, he was right.
We landed a block away from the Dirt Club. “You,” I said, “can now go someplace and spend your wealth; I won’t need you until dawn tomorrow.”
“Wealth!” he sneered. “I really owe that ten credits to Officer Heller!”
It didn’t work. I sternly ordered him to buzz away. It was a relief to be free of his company.
I checked my weapons. I had a bladegun in my holster. Although it looks like a military issue, it isn’t. It shoots flat metal triangles that practically carve a body to bits. It was a souvenir of my early days in the Apparatus, recovered from a corpse. I had two 800-kilovolt blasticks but I didn’t want to use those: they sound like a war going off. I had my Knife Section knife back of my collar. Silence was the watchword today!
Cheerfully, I wended my way through the clutter of yesteryear’s parties and down the block. In the distance loomed the Dirt Club. Actually that is not its name. It is the Ground Forces Play Club. It isn’t run by the Army at all because the Army Division high ranks could never condone what goes on there: they themselves do it, but they could never officially admit it.
It is about fifteen stories high and covers about twenty acres, all under one roof. Across the front of it two blastcannons perpetually fire flame at each other and a naked girl in a general’s hat lies on the top of the flame parabola, quite relaxed. The Army is silly.
I went in, hoping I looked furtive enough for the part of an Army Intelligence officer. I never knew why they put this branch of service in custard; the rest of the Army wears chocolate.
The outer lobby is respectable enough. The first two rooms are just dining bars. It’s when you get to the third bar that you know you should never bring your sister here. Halfway to the ceiling there are gl
ass runways and girls parade on them. They don’t dance. They even wear a trifle here and there. But they are females who have no appointment in the beds upstairs for the moment and they just stroll along waiting for some customer to pick up a beam-marker light and pot one of them. Then they go upstairs with the marksman and he does some more marksmanship.
The fifth room is like the girl’s parade except it is animals doing the parading. They get potted and taken upstairs the same way. The Army, being so much in the field and away from home, can develop peculiar tastes.
Wandering along, looking carefully careless, I had my eye open for a certain badge and, hopefully, a rank that was the same as I was wearing or less. So far I wasn’t having any luck. It was early afternoon and the place was by no means crowded. The scattering of badges and ranks were mostly chatting and casually drinking.
I got through the gambling section and into the hypergambling section. It was too early in the day for the girls to be on the wheels. They put them vertically and spread-eagled on these turning discs and around they go while a gambler throws simulated hand grenades at them—made of fabric. If one gets a grenade to contact with one of her breasts, it “explodes,” the girl lights up at all points and center and a shower of tokens seems to fly out of her (bleep). At least, that’s what they say will happen. The girl can always control the wheel and move her breasts and I’ve played one for hours without ever a single payoff.
I was beginning to get worried. I had gone through sixteen rooms without spotting the branch of service badge I was looking for. Maybe Supply officers were too smart to come in places like this!
I got clear back to the Bunker Room. It is where they dump crocked officers really. It is decorated to simulate a steel-field bunker. It even has a field communication dummy layout that really serves tup. The tables in the booths all around are made to look like field desks. It is dim as Hells. I was almost ready to walk through to the Field Hospital Room—where they serve blood cocktails and the waitresses are dressed like half-naked field nurses—and had even put my foot through the arch when a sixth sense told me to look in the far corner of the Bunker Room.
I did! And there was the badge! The grasping fist of Supply!
He was sort of slopped over the “desk” and a drink was spilled and he seemed to be asleep.
I did a stealthy approach so as not to wake him up. The chocolate tunic was twisted about and I couldn’t see the rank locket. I had to touch him to get a look. Aha, a Grade Twelve! The equivalent of a commander of ten thousand. But, of course, Supply commands no troops.
I needn’t have been so stealthy! He was snoring drunk! I was about to go through his pockets when one of the waitresses—in the Bunker Room they dress like male dispatch riders without the pants—came over to find out what I wanted. I ordered plain sparklewater for myself. “And bring an oversize canister of double-strength jolt for my friend here,” I said.
“It’s time a friend showed up,” said the girl. “He’s been there since early this morning. You people don’t look after your friends very well.”
She went off, a little huffish.
I completed my frisking. His identoplate said that he was Colonel Rajabah Stinkins of the Voltar Raiders, Section of Supply. Excellent. He would know nothing of Flisten. His complexion was white as mountain snow.
He was a very beefy man, much given to lard. He seemed to just snore on and on. So I really frisked him. I found some just issued divorce papers and the photos of five children. So that’s what the binge was all about. One can figure these things out, particularly with my skill at Earth psychology. He was drowning his sorrows.
The girl brought the order and I stamped the check with his identoplate. She frowned slightly until I tossed one of his five-credit notes on her tray. “It’s his binge,” I said, “so he can pay for the sober-up. We were in school together. He always was a drunk.”
“Who wash alwash a drunk?” he said. He had awakened. “Thash libelous! I wash ne’er drunk in my life!”
The girl thought it was a good joke. And she swished pantslessly away.
I got the hot jolt down him. “Colonel, you’ve got to sober up. It is not manly to fall and sway before the misfortunes of life! They happen. One cannot . . .”
“Who’s had misfortunsh?” he said.
“Well, you have. Drowning your sorrows . . .”
“Whoosh drowning their sorrows? I shelebrating! I jush got rid of the (bleeping) old hag and her five awful brats. I been shelebrating for two days, wheeeee!”
Oh, well, one is not always correct in one’s diagnosis. Whatever the cause, I had to get this colonel of Supply in operating condition. It didn’t have to be very good operating condition. He would be dead before the night was out.
And so I set to work with Earth psychology, hot jolt and sobering pills to make my prey ready for the slaughter. My luck was still holding.
PART TEN
Chapter 4
Only the end objective would ever have persuaded me to work as hard as I had to work to sober up this drunken colonel. But Heller had to be bugged and bugged in such a way that neither he nor anyone else would ever suspect it, and bugged on a line that no one else could enter. But sweating over that colonel the way I had to was beginning to make me wonder if it was worth it. Four hours had gone by!
The colonel eventually had the same idea. I was pressing a cold cloth to his forehead while holding him on the seat and trying to get another sober pill into him. “Why are you doing this?” he wanted to know.
Ah, he actually was sobering up! “The good of the service,” I said.
“I wasn’t making a spectacle of myself,” he protested.
“No, no,” I said. I decided to take the plunge. “Army Intelligence on Flisten is in the midst of a most difficult case. We have been told that you are the most discreet and the most reliable Supply officer in the service.”
He sat there looking at me. “Nobody ever said that before.”
“Well, it’s time the truth came out,” I said, praying that catastrophe would never occur.
He marveled for a while. “No (bleep)? Somebody said that?”
“The computers say so and they are never wrong,” I said.
He perked up. “That’s true,” he decided.
“On Flisten,” I said, “there have been thefts of the most secret and sensitive bugging devices known. A real crime. Affects the security of the State. Even the Emperor.” I looked around covertly to make sure we were unobserved.
My delivery was slightly marred by my noticing that we were being observed. A shadowy figure just inside the door of the Field Hospital Room, when I looked, faded from view.
Oh, well, just some lush, I guessed. Place was full of lushes. I got back to the project. I pushed my closed hand up toward his face. I opened it.
His eyes fixed on the Timp Snahp, Army Intelligence identoplate.
“Oh, I know you’re in Intelligence,” he said. “I can tell by your uniform.”
“I just wanted you to be sure. For what I am about to impart to you must not be related to a soul. Do you give me your word on that?”
“There’s no need to question my word,” he said a trifle huffily.
“Good. Then we understand one another. I certainly appreciate your promise of help.”
“You’re welcome,” he said. I wondered if he really was sober. He looked it, though. Still, you can never tell about Army officers.
“So!” I said in a businesslike way. “To business.” I leaned forward and spoke very softly. “These bugging devices were stolen. The very latest developments. And,” I leaned even closer, spacing each word, “we have reason to believe that the thief was hired by the bug manufacturer!” I saw this startled him. “Only they would know of the devices. We think,” and I tapped him on the lapel, “that the manufacturer stole them back on Flisten and is trying to sell them on Voltar!”
“No!”
“Yes! A very cunning way of making a double profit.”
br /> “Well, (bleep) them!”
“Now, as you know, hypersecret bugging devices can only be sold to the authorized supply and purchasing officers of the services. And these devices were exclusively Army and could be sold only to the Army.”
“Oh, I know that.”
“So here is what we are going to do. You are going to pretend to be interested in buying . . .”
“Oh, I can’t do that. I don’t have my purchase form books.”
“You gave me your word.”
He slumped a bit. “So I did.”