The Planet Killers

  She giggled hysterically. “They’re made on Skorg, Earthman. I … took you a little out of your way, didn’t I? Too bad.”

  She was dead. The airlock of the waiting ship slammed shut. The warning gong that was the clear-the-field signal sounded. He ran from the field. The ship was blasting off.

  Unconcerned Vyorni were standing idly by in the spaceport’s administration building. Catton gestured with drawn blaster to a Skorg. “Do you speak Vyorni?”

  “Yes.”

  “Take me to the control center.”

  At blaster-point, the Skorg did not stop to argue. He led Catton down a corridor to a gravlift, then up to the top of the building. They burst into a central monitoring tower. Three Vyorni peered quizzically at Catton as he entered.

  He glanced at the viewscreen that monitored the field. The ship outside had retracted its atmosphere fins, and landing jacks. In a moment it would be blasting off. Catton snapped to the Skorg, “Tell them that they mustn’t let that gray ship blast off. That they must withdraw clearance and immobilize its controls.”

  A simple radiolock was all that would be needed to freeze the ship. The Skorg obediently translated Catton’s order and drew a blunt, brief reply from the Vyorni. “They refuse to do it,” the Skorg said. “They won’t get involved in other beings’ private quarrels.”

  “But this isn’t private! Do you know what’s aboard that ship? If—” Catton scowled. He waved the blaster fiercely at the emotionless Vyorni. “Tell him I’ll kill them if they don’t freeze that ship,” he said to the Skorg.

  “They won’t listen to you,” the Skorg said.

  The Skorg seemed to be right. The Vyorni did not fear his blaster. And now it was too late to do anything. On the field, the ship was rising, incinerating the bodies of Nuuri and Doveril in its rocket-blast. An instant later the ship lurched upward and out of sight—bearing its deadly cargo of matter duplicators intended for Earth.

  Chapter Sixteen

  By the time, two hours later, that Catton had finished ransacking Doveril’s quarters at the residence compound, night had fallen. Catton did not trust himself to make the two hundred mile journey safely during the night. He slept over in the dead man’s bed, and left early the following morning.

  There was no inquiry, no question raised by the Vyorni. Oxygen-breathers could evidently kill each other with impunity on Vyorn without arousing curiosity.

  Catton was not happy over the way his pursuit of Doveril had ended. Nuuri, who might have been useful again, was dead; and Doveril, whom Catton had hoped to capture alive, was dead as well. Hardly a molecule of their bodies had survived the holocaust of the rockets. Nuuri had tricked him; she had not wanted to help him capture her faithless Doveril, merely to get herself to wherever Doveril was and exact her vengeance. Catton wondered about her last statement—that the hypnojewels were made on Skorg. Another of her lies? A deathbed fantasy? Or was it the truth, and had she deliberately led him away from Skorg to hunt down Doveril?

  Worst of all, the cargo ship had escaped. Documents he found in Doveril’s room told him that the ship contained a cargo of one thousand matter duplicators, built on Vyorn. No doubt it was simple to build the duplicators; all you needed were two pilot models, and the rest could be made by self-duplication. They were being shipped to Morilar, and from there to Earth. The trip to Morilar would take the freighter almost a month, which meant that Catton would arrive there about the same time as the cargo ship. And then—

  And then would come the moment of crisis. Catton knew he had to intercept that ship before it left for Earth. Once it became lost in the infinite expanse of nullspace, there would be small chance of tracking it. The matter duplicators would get safely through to Earth. And one day, between one dawn and the next, a thousand crates would drift down through Earth’s atmosphere, a thousand matter duplicators would land.

  Perhaps half would be destroyed on landing—would fall into oceans, or crash on inaccessible mountain peaks. But if only a hundred—fifty—twenty, got into the hands of men shrewd enough to realize the value of the device and greedy enough not to care about its dangers, Beryaal’s plot would have succeeded.

  Catton knew he was entirely on his own now. There would be no help from the Interworld Commission of Crime, where Beryaal ruled supreme. Relaying a warning to Earth was risky; it might be intercepted, since subradio beams were easily detected, and in any event he did not want word of the plot indiscriminately spread about the galaxy.

  He rode back alone through the windswept wastelands. The Skorg he had rented the jetsled from made an oblique remark about his lady companion not returning with him; Catton merely glared as he received back his deposit. The Vyorn-Hennim shuttle departed early the following morning, with Catton aboard. Six hours later, he was on Hennim; later the same night he blasted off for Dirlak on an ancient transport ship.

  The trip back to Skorg seemed to take forever. From Dirlak to Tharrimar, from Tharrimar, finally, to Skorg. Catton touched down on Skorg on the eighteenth day after leaving Vyorn; the return trip had been shorter than the voyage out. The vessel bearing the matter duplicators was still more than a week away from Morilar, according to the flight plans in Doveril’s papers.

  Catton went immediately to Estil Seeman’s hotel. The Earthgirl seemed surprised to see him. She kept the door half closed, as if concealing someone within.

  “Oh—you’re back.”

  “Yes. Can I come in?”

  “I’d—rather you didn’t. I—have company—”

  Catton ignored her and pushed the door open. There was a slim Morilaru in the far corner, just beginning to draw a knife. Catton pressed forward, slapped the knife out of the Morilaru’s hand, and knocked the man tumbling to the floor. Then his eyes widened in recognition.

  “You—you’re Gonnimor Cleeren, Doveril’s friend!”

  The Morilaru nodded. Catton said, “You were tortured to death by Beryaal. He said so!”

  The Morilaru shrugged. Catton grabbed him by one pipe-stem arm and yanked him up. To Estil he said, “What’s this doing here?”

  “He—he saw me at the restaurant,” the girl said in confusion. “He was Doveril’s friend, and he wanted to talk to me.” The Morilaru quivered with fright. Catton said, “Beryaal secretly released you, didn’t he?”

  Gonnimor Cleeren made no answer. Catton was too tired for toying with the alien. He slapped him, hard, twice in quick succession. “Yes,” Cleeren mumbled. “He let me go after the arrest.”

  “And why are you on Skorg now? What do you want here?”

  The alien was silent once again. “Lock the door,” Catton said to Estil. “And turn your back.”

  “What are you going to do to him?”

  “Never mind,” he snapped. The girl obeyed him. Catton seized the terrified Morilaru by the throat and said quietly, “I’m going to give you sixty seconds to start telling me all you know about Beryaal and hypnojewels. Then I’m going to put out your eyes with my thumbs.”

  “ Barbarian! ”

  “That’s right,” Catton said easily. “Too much is at stake to waste time now. Talk whenever you’re ready.” He eyed his watch. The alien remained silent for thirty seconds, forty, fifty. Catton put his fingers to the Morilaru’s eyes and gently exerted pressure.

  “No! No!” Cleeren screamed.

  “All right. Talk, then.”

  “What do you want to know?”

  “Where are the hypnojewels made?”

  “Here on Skorg,” Cleeren whimpered. “There’s a factory outside Skorgaar. On the outside it seems to be making toys. The police leave it alone.”

  “How are the jewels made?”

  “They’re assembled by machinery. It’s a complicated process—tremendous heat, great pressure. I don’t understand it.”

  “And who heads the outfit?”

  Cleeren was silent again. Catton raised his thumbs and the alien said, “No! Don’t! It’s—Beryaal and eMerikh. They run the whole hypnojewel show. And they supp
ress any evidence that might unmask them, since they’re on the Crime Commission too.”

  “Very neat,” Catton commented. It tied in with what he had been told by Nuuri. “Beryaal has it all dovetailed nicely. I suppose he used the profits from the hypnojewels to pay the Vyorni for the matter-duplicators.”

  “No,” Cleeren offered. “He paid the Vyorni with hypnojewels themselves.”

  “What?”

  “Hypnojewels can’t be duplicated on a matter duplicator; there’s something about the submolecular structure that makes it impossible. They’re unique that way. And the Vyorni covet hypnojewels—they use them for entertainment and decoration, since the jewels don’t affect them very seriously.”

  Catton nodded. He knew all he needed to know, now. It tied up into a neat whole. Beryaal and eMerikh running both the hypnojewel racket and the investigating committee; hypnojewels going to Vyorn to pay for the duplicators; a cargo on its way with menace for Earth.

  He felt drenched with sweat. For one ghastly moment it had seemed that Cleeren intended to call his bluff. It wouldn’t have been fun, gouging out the alien’s eyes.

  He said to Estil, “All right. You can turn around now. I’m not going to hurt him.”

  The girl was pale. “D-did you find Doveril on Vyorn?”

  Catton nodded. “He’s dead. There was a gunfight and I killed him.”

  “Dead?” she repeated distantly.

  “You don’t feel sorry about it, do you?”

  “I—I loved him once,” she said. She looked troubled. Catton shook his head.

  “Never mind Doveril now. Start packing. I’m going to drop our friend here off at the local jail, and then you and I are going to go to Skorgaar spaceport. We’re leaving for Morilar on the first ship out tonight.”

  Chapter Seventeen

  The trip took eight days. According to Catton’s figuring, the cargo ship from Vyorn would reach Morilar a day after he would. Delicate timing would be necessary.

  The girl was terrified of the reception she would get at home. Catton reassured her. “Your father can be manipulated—you know that yourself. We’ll tell him you were abducted and that the note you left was dictated by Doveril. He’ll believe you.”

  On the eighth day the ship entered landing orbit around Morilar. At the spaceport Catton phoned the Embassy and arranged for a car to pick them up, not telling anyone that the girl was with him. Reaching the Embassy, he led her quickly to the Ambassador’s office, and made her wait in the hall, away from the beam of the scanning field.

  The Ambassador looked like his own ghost. His huge frame had shed perhaps thirty pounds. His face was pale, his skin sagging loosely into pouches where the fat had dissolved away, his eyes weary and sad. He had taken Estil’s disappearance badly.

  “I thought we were never going to see you again,” Seeman said. “After that terrible spaceship disaster—for weeks we thought you’d been killed. And then word came that you had escaped after all—”

  “Does Earth know I’m alive?”

  “Of course. We sent a message when your ship was reported missing, and another when you turned up safe.”

  “Have I missed anything important in the last three months?”

  The Ambassador shrugged. “Not much. Things have remained about the same since you left.”

  Catton smiled. “Not entirely. I’ve got a surprise for you, Ambassador Seeman. Will you excuse me for a moment?” He ducked out of the office. Estil was waiting in the hall with a pinched, nervous look on her face. “Go inside,” Catton told her. “He isn’t expecting you, so be prepared to shock him.”

  “You didn’t tell him anything?”

  “Just that I had a surprise for him. Nothing more. Remember: Doveril kidnapped you. He made you write that note. Got it?”

  “Aren’t you coming in with me?”

  Catton shook his head. “I don’t belong in there. And I don’t want to be around when the weeping and wailing starts. I don’t like to watch a man the size of your father cry.”

  The girl smiled shyly at him. She stood hesitating at the edge of the green scanner-field that registered on the screen inside the Ambassador’s office. Catton gave her a blunt shove into the field. Then, quickly, he turned and strode away, up the stairs to his own room on the fifth floor.

  It was late in the afternoon. Tomorrow, probably around noon, the cargo ship would be docking at the spaceport outside Dyelleran. The ship wouldn’t remain in port long—no longer than necessary for Beryaal or one of his agents to verify the nature of the cargo and send it on its way to Earth.

  Catton saw he was in an ambiguous position. As a member of the Interworld Commission on Crime, he had a legal right to inspect the cargo of any ship entering or leaving Morilar. But Beryaal, as chairman of the Commission, could overrule him. Most likely Beryaal would take precautions to keep any spaceport officials from snooping into that ship’s cargo.

  Catton reached for the phone, punched out the number of Dyelleran Spaceport, and asked to speak to the supervisor of customs inspection. Ten minutes and three sub-supervisors later, the lean face of an elderly Morilaru appeared on the screen.

  “Yes?”

  “Lloyd Catton speaking—of the Interworld Commission on Crime. Can you give me a list of the cargo ships due to arrive at Dyelleran tomorrow?”

  “All of them?”

  “I’m interested in a particular one that’s probably coming in with an unregistered planet of departure. Or else it’s registered as coming from Vyorn.”

  “Vyorn? Not very likely. Hold it—I’ll check.”

  The screen blanked for a moment. Then the customs official reappeared. “No, no ships coming in from Vyorn tomorrow, sir. There isn’t much traffic between Vyorn and Morilar, you see.”

  “I know,” Catton said impatiently. “Are any ships landing with unregistered planets of departure?”

  The official ran his eye down a list outside the field of the visual pickup. “Ah—yes. One ship, due in at eight minutes past noon. Doesn’t give planet of departure, simply says it’s from the Rullimon Cluster. Might be your ship from Vyorn, sir—Vyorn’s in that Cluster.”

  Catton nodded. By law, an incoming ship did not have to register its planet of departure prior to customs inspection; it merely had to indicate the galaxy from which it came. He would have to chance it. This ship was probably the one.

  “I’ll be at the spaceport tomorrow to conduct a personal inspection of that ship’s cargo,” Catton said. “I don’t want any of your men going aboard till I’ve looked the ship over.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “And if I’m late, impound the ship and hold its crew for questioning. I suspect it’s running contraband. I’ll have further instructions for you tomorrow.”

  Catton left the Embassy early the next morning and had himself driven to the spaceport in an official car. The morning papers were splashed with the story of Estil Seeman’s return. Her overjoyed father had released the kidnap story, but with few accompanying details. Details, thought Catton, might expose the holes in the story.

  Shortly before noon Catton reached the spaceport. The ship from Vyorn would arrive in a few minutes. He went immediately to the office of Erwal Kriuin, Supervisor of Customs Inspection at the big spaceport. Kriuin looked a little surprised to see him. “Oh—Commissioner Catton. I didn’t think you’d be coming out here.”

  “Why not? I told you yesterday I’d be here at noon to inspect that incoming cargo.”

  “Yes, of course, but I thought the later instructions from Commissioner Beryaal cancelled that arrangement, and—”

  “ What later instructions from Beryaal?”

  The Morilaru looked bewildered. “Right after you called, he phoned me to find out about the same ship. I told him you had already made plans to inspect it, and when I said that he said never mind, that he was going to take care of the job himself. And since he’s chairman of the Commission, I thought that you wouldn’t be coming out here today, and—”

>   Catton nodded, cutting off the voluble flow. “There’s been a mixup, I see. Is Beryaal here yet?”

  “Yes, sir. He’s on the field waiting for the ship to land.”

  “Which will be when?”

  Kriuin glanced at a wall clock. “Six minutes, Commissioner Catton.”

  “Is Beryaal alone?”

  “He has a group of men with him, sir. But he ordered me to keep my inspectors away from the ship until he was finished looking at it.”

  Catton’s face darkened. No doubt the group with Beryaal was the special crew that would take the cargo of matter duplicators on to Earth. Beryaal’s plan seemed simple enough: he would check the cargo to make sure all was well, supervise the changing of crews, and send the ship off again with his blessing. No mere customs inspector would dare to protest once Pouin Beryaal himself had okayed a cargo for transit.

  A showdown with Beryaal was inevitable. The wily Morilaru had so thoroughly embedded himself in positions of trust that defeating him might be close to impossible. But Catton had to try. For Earth’s sake.

  “Get me a hand camera,” Catton ordered suddenly.

  Kriuin burrowed into a closet and produced one of the pistol-sized closed-circuit video cameras used in customs work. When a customs inspector went aboard a ship, he carried one of the little cameras, which he trained on any item of interest in the cargo hold. It not only broadcast the image to a special screen in the customs office, where other officials could take note of it, but also piped the image into a video taper which made a permanent record of the inspection for use in later inquiry.

  Casually Catton opened the camera and detached the micro-miniaturized phosphor-coated “eye” that was the core of the instrument. He slipped the “eye” into his jacket pocket.

  Kriuin said tactfully, “You understand, sir, that the instrument will not function unless the perceptor tube place—”

  “Of course I realize that,” Catton said irritably. He did not want the camera to function. He wanted to avoid creating any permanent record of the scene that would take place inside the cargo ship—but he intended that Beryaal and his men would think that such a record was being made.