The Planet Killers

Chapter Five

  The Grand Panjandrums of the Records Office had assembled in full force to deal with the perplexing case of John Storm. Storm noted with some pleasure that Miss Vyzinski was not among them. She was strictly lower echelon. This was a matter for Dawes and his bosses to decide.

  Storm summoned his flagging energies. He was bone-tired. He hadn’t had much sleep on the day-bed, and the crushing commuter ride virtually from one end of Greater New York to the other had left him drained. He squared his shoulders and stared them down and said, “Well? What’s your verdict? Do I exist or don’t I?”

  Dawes crinkled his lips testily. “We don’t question your existence, Mr. Storm. Obviously you exist. What troubles us is the absence of your records.”

  “Unprecedented,” someone thin and angular muttered farther down the conference table.

  “Intolerably confusing,” said someone chubby and pink-faced.

  Dawes said, “There is a prescribed procedure for entering in the records someone who has not previously been recorded. As, for example, the people on that Pacific island a few years back, you may remember. But to re-enter someone who is so positive he was once listed—”

  “I have my papers,” Storm said. “Are you going to tell me they’re all forgeries?”

  Pink-faced and chubby said, “We’ve given your documents laboratory tests. They’re genuine, all right. Or else the cleverest fakes that ever were faked.”

  Storm drew a deep breath. “Give me the benefit of the doubt. Admit that they’re real.”

  Thin and angular said, “But in that case, why don’t they have correlatives in the computer files?”

  With great patience Storm said, “Could it possibly be that my records were carefully and intentionally erased from the master file?”

  “Such a thing is unheard of!” Thin and angular protested.

  “It seems to me we may be hearing of it now,” Storm said. “It isn’t impossible, is it? Clerks can be bribed. It isn’t hard to delete something from a computer’s files. Entries aren’t etched with acid. Data can be released. It’s just a matter of punching the erasure keys, and—”

  The bureaucrats exchanged glances. Storm began to realize that these people were frightened. A great yawning hole had appeared in the airtight structure of their system, a hole wide enough to chuck a computer through, and they couldn’t understand what had happened. Storm wasn’t the only one who hadn’t slept soundly last night.

  Somebody was saying, “We’ll have to devise some new procedure for re-entering him.”

  “But the documents—”

  “Real. Unquestionably real.”

  “And the claim?” Storm said. “My mining claim? Suppose someone else has filed a claim on the same asteroid while all this haggling has been going on?”

  “That’ll have to be investigated,” Dawes told him.

  “So you’re willing to believe I was telling the truth?” Storm asked, a little dazzled by the prospect of cutting through the tangle.

  Dawes shrugged. “There’s clearly been something irregular done here. In some cases other people have been shifted into your position, but not consistently. The job wasn’t perfect. For example, the records of your university show a graduating class of 1132, but we could only find 1131 names, and yours was missing.”

  “You see?” Storm cried triumphantly. “That’s what I was telling you! There was bribery involved!”

  “Let’s not say too much, Dawes,” came a warning word from pink-and-chubby. Storm got the impression that pink-and-chubby was a good deal less affable than he looked. “We should be able to work something out for Mr. Storm.”

  Something was worked out for Mr. Storm.

  It took half the day. Storm cooled his heels in an anteroom, making fitful conversation with Liz, staring at newsfax sheets without really reading them, and pacing the corridors. At length an emissary appeared. It was good old Miss Vyzinski; the troublesome matter had obviously worked itself back down to the lower echelons from the administrative levels.

  “We’re issuing you a new identity card,” Miss Vyzinski told him crisply. “You’ll have the same numbers as before, but the asterisks will indicate a reissue. We intend to do everything in our power to discover how such an error could have taken place.”

  “And my mining claim,” Storm said. “What about that?”

  “Well, I’m afraid you’ll have to file it all over again, as soon as we’ve processed your re-entry. It shouldn’t take more than another hour to complete the processing, and then you can enter your claim once again.”

  “But it’s more than a month since I originally filed it,” Storm said. “What if someone else has claimed it since my first filing? Who’s got title?”

  Miss Vyzinski looked disturbed. “That would be a matter for decision on a higher level, if—”

  “All right. All right. I’m sorry I asked.”

  Miss Vyzinski disappeared within. Storm turned to Liz, who smiled at him.

  “How can you be so cheerful?” he asked. “Here I am, fighting for my very identity, and—”

  “They’re giving you your identity back, aren’t they?”

  “They’re doing it grudgingly. They would have been much happier if I had dropped dead over night.”

  “That isn’t so,” Liz said with mock solemnity. “They would have had to bury you, and deduct you from the population records. But how could they deduct someone who wasn’t on the records to begin with? They’d have had a worse headache if—”

  “I suppose,” Storm said. “Meanwhile I’m the one with the headache. Why has all this happened? Why couldn’t I have just come back home and found that my claim had been validated? I didn’t need all this. It’s hard enough to go roaming the asteroids in a rickety tin bucket, without coming home to this kind of nonsense.”

  “The nonsense will all be over soon,” Liz said soothingly. “You’ll have your numbers again, darling, and you’ll have your claim, and everything will be all right.”

  Storm subsided. He was vaguely aware that she was speaking to him as one might to a child, but he decided he deserved it. He was badly overwound, tight as a drum. Fatigue and strain and tension were doing this to him. But she was right: it would all be cleared up soon. And, being realistic about it, the odds were that nobody had stumbled across his asteroid. There was an infinity of asteroids up there, and it would take decades to explore them all.

  On the other hand, though, who had pulled this monkey business with his records? It hadn’t simply been a joke. Someone was dead level interested in obliterating his identity, and that could very well have some connection with his mining claim. It wasn’t a pleasant thought. He sat back, and impatiently riffled through the newsfax, and looked at the stock market quotations with great show of fascination, though he had never owned a share of anything in his life, and waited, and fidgeted, and waited some more, and at last Miss Vyzinski appeared with a sheaf of new-minted documents in her hand and a gleaming professional smile on her face.

  “Congratulations,” he said out loud to himself. “You’re a person again, Johnny.”

  They sped back toward the heart of the city. Storm said little. He had been through the mill, and felt the effects. Every nerve in his body cried out for relief. But there would be no real relief, he knew, until the mining claim was safely nailed down for keeps.

  Was it worth it, he wondered?

  Had it been worth two years of hell, worth mortgaging himself to the hilt, worth this latest confusion? Here he was, shadowboxing with unseen antagonists, and he still wasn’t sure whether or not what he had found was his.

  How much simpler it would have been, he thought, to say yes to Donovan, to take the job and forget about pie in the sky. He and Liz would have been married now, perhaps there’d be a baby on the way, he’d have money in the bank. Instead, he was deep in debt, tired beyond all endurance, and not at all certain of anything.

  But then he thought of his asteroid, and the freedom it promised. His own
laboratory somewhere, and endless leisure, and complete independence from pressures, commercial and otherwise. Nobody would transfer him from continent to continent like a hapless pawn. Nobody would demand obedient responses to foolish assignments. He’d be his own master in everyway.

  If. If. If —

  He and Liz rode upward out of the tube, and emerged on street level. “I’ll go over to Bud’s and pick up my things,” Storm said. “Then I’ll rent a room, now that I’m official again.” He laughed. “You know something? We couldn’t even have been married without those papers! It’s against the law to marry a non-person, I imagine.”

  Liz looked at him slyly. “Oh? Are we getting married?”

  “It seemed like a good idea to me.”

  “It seemed like one to me, too,” Liz said. “Two years ago.”

  “How about now?”

  “I’ve got to think about it,” she said. “I’ve got to evaluate the situation. After all, a person can change a lot in two years. How do I know I still love you?”

  “Pretend you do.”

  “That wouldn’t be right, would it?” She began to giggle. “Oh, you big silly, I’ve been waiting so long! But we can apply for the license today.”

  “No,” Storm said. “I’ve had enough bureaucracy for one day. I’d crack up completely if I had to fill out any more forms. We’ll apply tomorrow. We can— hey! ”

  He whirled suddenly. A car had come rimming around the corner, a black, snubnosed limousine on manual drive. Some fuzzy intuition sent Storm into a frenzy of activity as the car angled toward their side of the street.

  “Johnny, what—”

  He grabbed Liz and hurled her against the door of the nearest building. The air-field broke and she went tumbling inside, sprawling down out of sight. A moment later Storm himself leaped through the doorway, felt the faint tingle of ozone in his nostrils as he broke the field of electrified air that comprised the door, and dropped to the floor. Rolling over, he went skittering down flat.

  The whole operation had taken no more than two and a half seconds. The occupants of the black limousine had been busy during those same two and a half seconds. A frosted window came rolling down, and the ugly snout of a high velocity automatic came thrusting forth.

  Bullets spattered against the wall of the building, skewering the space where Liz and Storm had been standing only a fraction of a minute before. The stream of bullets raked the doorway of the building at midsection-level, and then passed on to the other side of the building.

  Someone screamed. Storm stared at the hot slugs hitting the lobby floor. People were rushing to and fro, voicing their panic. Storm glanced around for Liz, and saw her, dazed but unhurt, sitting up and rubbing her elbow where she had bruised it in her fall.

  Uneasily, Storm got to his feet. There was the cold trickle of sweat running down his sides under his tunic, and he realized that he was starting to tremble. The delayed reaction was hitting him now. On watery legs he walked gingerly toward the door and peered out.

  The death-car was gone. The assassins were completely out of sight by now. Shakily, Storm eyed the row of chips the bullets had dislodged in the building wall. Policemen were appearing, now. A crowd was gathering.

  “What’s been going on?” an officer asked, speaking to no one in particular.

  “Bullets!” someone cried.

  “A car … a gun—”

  “They were shooting at us!”

  Storm ignored the hubbub. He stared grimly off into the distance as though trying to see the retreating cars of his would-be killers.

  He was aware of Liz at his side. She looked pale, wide-eyed with fear.

  “Johnny, they weren’t after you!”

  “Yes.”

  “It was some accident, wasn’t it? Some kind of gangland execution, and they thought you were someone else?”

  “No,” he said, and his voice sounded metallic in his own ears. “They were after me.”

  “Who?”

  “God only knows. But they were trying to get me. They found out that just obliterating me from the records wouldn’t work. So they tried some more permanent way to get me out of their hair.”

  He looked down at her. She was biting her lip, trying to hold back the tears.

  “Why … why would anyone want to kill you, Johnny? What have you done? What have you done?”

  “I found an asteroid,” he said. “It’s worth a lot of money. But not that much. Not so much that anybody needs to go killing me about it. I don’t understand, Liz.”

  The policemen were going through the crowd, interrogating everyone. When it was Storm’s turn, he simply shrugged and said, “A car pulled up and they started to shoot. That’s all. We ducked until it was over.”

  “You didn’t see any faces?”

  “All I saw was a gun coming out of that car window,” Storm said: “I didn’t stick around to watch the details.”

  He didn’t bother to explain to the policemen that the car had probably been after him, that the gun had been aimed specifically at him. He didn’t request police protection. He didn’t do anything that would bring him back into the web of red tape once again.

  He had reached his decision, and it didn’t involve the local authorities.

  “What are you going to do, Johnny?” Liz asked anxiously.

  “Something you won’t like, I’m afraid.”

  “What?”

  “Go back to Mars.”

  “Mars? Why , Johnny?”

  Storm shrugged. “I filed my claim on Mars. I’ve got to nail that claim down beyond doubt, and the place to do it is Mars. I’m going to get into the record office there and find out who sold what to whom, and why. Mars is the only place I can get answers to all my questions.”

  “Don’t go, Johnny!”

  “Stay here and get killed, then? Or simply lose my claim and stay alive?”

  “It isn’t worth it,” Liz said.

  “It is, and I’ve got to go.”

  “Then take me with you!”

  “Don’t talk nonsense,” he snapped at her, and instantly regretted his harsh tone. “Space is a lousy place for a woman. I wouldn’t want the responsibility of your safety up there. It would only multiply our risks by a factor of … oh, maybe fifty or a hundred. No, Liz.”

  “So you’ll just leave me again? Go off for another two years?”

  “Liz, please—” He groped for words to get through to her, couldn’t find any, and bit down savagely on his lip. His nerves were frayed almost to the breaking point, now. Liz wanted him here on Earth, Liz wanted to marry him and settle down in that damned little split-level in Patagonia, and she wasn’t going to smile benignly while he went haring off to space again.

  But he had to go. The answers lay on Mars.

  Her tear-flecked eyes glared at his for a long moment. Then she said, “You’re going, aren’t you?”

  “I don’t have any choice.”

  “Suppose you get killed up there?”

  He pointed to the neat row of holes in the building wall. “It doesn’t look so safe down here on Earth, does it?”

  “Okay,” she said. “Go. Go to Mars and find out whatever it is you have to find out. Only this time I don’t guarantee to be waiting for you when you get back. If you get back.”

  “Liz!”

  But she was gone. He watched her neat, retreating figure for a few moments, and then she vanished round the corner. Storm eyed the bullet-holes again. He shook his head, and walked away, keeping his eyes sharp for another black limousine.

  Chapter Six

  A day later, he was aboard a liner bound for Mars.

  It was the same ship he had come in on, the Martian Empress , making a quick turnabout to take full advantage of favorable orbital conditions. A couple of days for refueling and checkout, and the Empress was ready to go, and so was John Storm.

  About half the crew was the same as on the Mars-Earth voyage. A couple of them recognized Storm.

  “Commuting?”
they asked him.

  He smiled cheerlessly. “I liked the trip so much I thought I’d take it again,” he said.

  He was in anything but a jolly frame of mind. Passage to Mars was a luxury item, and he was already in hock for two or three years of anticipated earnings. He had had to take another loan to buy the tickets, and if something went wrong with his mining claim he’d be in debt for the rest of his life. Of course, if he could only be sure the asteroid was really his, he wouldn’t need to worry about paltry five-figure debts. But he had no certainties of anything.

  He figured he was lucky simply to be alive and on board the ship. Whoever had knocked his records out of the computer file and had sent the bungling hoodlums to gun him down obviously had a far-flung organization, and there was no reason why they couldn’t have made a second attempt to kill him.

  They hadn’t. Of course, he had taken every precaution, such that he could take. Even so, he doubted that he had really avoided them very well. Had they decided to let him live? Did they want him to get to Mars, where they could take care of him with greater ease? Were they just curious about his activities, and letting him live to see what he did next?

  Storm didn’t know. Life had suddenly become unimaginably complicated for him, and he was aware that he had become a pawn in some power grab that he did not comprehend at all. But he was aboard the liner, and on his way to Mars, and unless they planned to blow up the liner en route, he’d get to Mars intact.

  It was too bad, he thought, that Liz hadn’t come to see him off. He hoped she’d calm down later. She was a sensible girl at heart, he knew. It was just that she’d been overwrought, and why not? Being shot at could overwring anybody.

  He peered moodily out the porthole. Mars glittered like a copper coin in the sky. Giant Jupiter was invisible, somewhere on the other side of the solar system just now, but there was Saturn, obligingly tilted axiswise to give him a fine tourist’s view of the spectacular rings.

  Storm didn’t look for Earth. He would have had to cross the ship to get a look, and at the moment he had had enough of Earth. He stared at Mars for a while, imagining that he could actually make out the tiny moons. It was, he knew, impossible to see them except from extremely close range, but his fatigued mind saw two specks whirling round the red planet, and he told himself they were Deimos and Phobos, and smiled at his own foolishness, and realized that it was so long since he had last smiled that his face muscles hardly knew how to go about it.