He took a tool that cold-bonded metal and sealed the lids down to the coffins. He put the tool on the shelf. He took the name-marking tool out of his pocket and put it where it belonged.
He looked around and stood straighter. So far all was perfect.
And he was all ready, a whole day early for the semiannual firing. He reached for the light.
He did not hear the whisper against stone as the button camera was withdrawn from the hole or the squish of cement as the hole was blocked.
Terl opened the door. It was getting dimly light.
He walked across the open space, the firing platform, and up the hill to his quarters.
Behind him at the morgue, two caped figures slipped away into the ravine.
Four hours later on this Day 91, Jonnie, Robert the Fox, the council and team members concerned went over and over the picto-recorder pictures. They must not miss the tiniest possibility or the largest option. They could not afford to miss. The fate, not just of themselves, but of galaxies depended upon making no mistakes.
Part 12
1
The recreation hall of the compound was ablaze with light and bursting with noise. It was jammed full of Psychlos and they were mostly drunk. It was a grand party on the evening of the semiannual firing. Char and two other executives were going home.
It was something to celebrate: the end of a duty tour on this accursed planet. Attendants rushed about with saucepans of kerbango, held six or eight at a time in their paws. Female Psychlo clerks, released from the cowed decorum that was their normal lot, joked and got their bottoms smacked. A couple of fights had already started and ended without anyone discovering what the fight had been about. Games of chance and marksmanship were a tangle of disorganized confusion.
Jokes of a bawdy and discreditable nature were being buffeted at the departing executives. “Have a saucepan on me at the Claw in Imperial City!” “Don’t buy more wives than you can handle in one night!” “Tell them a thing or two at the home office about what it’s like out here, the mangy slobs!”
The atmosphere was so convivial that even Ker was included, and the midget sat with pompous importance trying to judge a contest of how many bites a minute could be taken from a saucepan with the participant’s paws held behind him.
Five executives were chanting a school yell that went, “Psychlo, Psychlo, Psychlo, kill’m, kill’m, kill’m,” over and over, tunelessly but loud.
Down back of the firing platform, a train of pack horses, hoofs muffled with furred hide, moved silently out of a ravine and through the dark toward the unlit morgue. The greenish compound glow reached toward them unrevealingly. A faint clink of metal as Angus MacTavish unlocked the morgue door with a master key.
Char was very drunk, drunk and reeling. He walked unsteadily over to Terl—who looked drunk, but was cold and tensely sober.
“That’s a goo’ idea,” said Char. He was always a nasty drunk and the more he drank the nastier he got.
“What is?” said Terl through the uproar.
“Tell’m a thing or two at the home office,” hiccuped Char.
Terl went very still. Char did not see his eyes narrow and flame. Then Terl said in a drunken slur, “I got a little presen’ for you, Char. C’m outside for a minute.”
Char lifted his eyebones. “Ain’ gotta mask.”
“Thersh masks beshide the door port,” said Terl.
Unobserved by the rest, Terl steered him to the hall and they got into masks in a tangled fashion. Terl went through the atmosphere lock, dragging Char behind.
Terl led him down near the zoo cages. There was no fire burning. It was too late. There was no bundle in front of the cage.
The spring chill of the exterior revived Char a trifle and he returned to being nasty. “Animals,” he said. “You’re a animal lover, Terl. I never did like you, Terl.”
Terl was not listening to him. What was that down by the morgue? He peered more closely. There were animals down there!
“You’re awful clever, Terl. But you’re not clever enough to fool me!”
Terl took a couple of steps toward the morgue, trying to see in the dark. He took out a pocket torch and flashed it in that direction. Brown hide? Hard to see.
Then he got a better view of it. A small herd of buffalo. They’d been drifting north for days now. Mixed in with some horses. He turned the torch off. The casually walking hoofs were distant, tiny thuds. Louder were the squeaks and crunches of the new spring grass being pulled up as the herd grazed its way along. An owl was hooting off somewhere. Usual nonsense of this accursed planet. He gave his attention back to Char.
Terl put his arm around Char’s shoulder and guided him back to a point where the circles of the compound domes made a recess as they met. It was very dark here, hidden from all views.
“What didn’t fool you, friend Char?” asked Terl.
The owl hooted again.
Terl looked around. There were no vantage points from which they could be seen.
Char was sneering. “The blast cap smoke,” he said, putting his face mask very close to Terl’s. He reeled and Terl held him up.
“What about it?” said Terl.
“Why, that wasn’t no blast gun that went off in old Numph’s office. That was a blasting cap. Y’think an old mine boss like me can’t smell the difference between a blast gun and a blast cap!”
Terl’s paw was reaching for the small of his own back, under the jacket. He’d been trying to work out a way to furnish a reason for launching the gas drone day after tomorrow. He suddenly had it, and without stirring up any psychic powers either.
“Appointin’ Ker, that miserable excuse, just hours before. Oh!” exclaimed the hostile Char. “You are clever enough for some people, but I see through you, Terl. I see through you.”
“Why, what did you think?” said Terl.
“Think! I didn’t have time to think! When I get home I can tell them a thing or two. You ain’t so smart, Terl. Think I don’t know one smoke for another? And people will agree with me when I get home!”
Terl shoved ten inches of stainless steel knife into Char’s heart. It was the knife Jonnie had given Chrissie.
He lowered the sagging body down to the ground. He took a nearby scrap of discarded tarpaulin and covered it.
Terl went back to the cage and looked in. The girls were sleeping.
The buffalo herd was still moving quietly past the morgue.
Terl went back inside. There was more to do tonight but just now the party must not realize he had been absent. He joined the Psychlos who were chanting. They were very drunk.
Down at the morgue, men moved carefully so as not to disturb the buffalo they had drifted in on the place from the plain. The horses were unloaded and gone.
Nobody had observed the murder of Char. It was not possible to get that close to the domes without being seen. Those in the morgue continued their work, unaware that a new factor had been entered into planning, one they did not know about and had not predicted.
The farewell party continued to racket noise out of the compound, unaware that their guest of honor was missing.
2
Jonnie lay in a coffin at the near end of the morgue. The lid was slightly propped open to give him air and an interior view. On the outside roof a button camera brought the exterior scene to a hand viewer resting beside him in the dark confines. He was dressed in Chinko blue, but he wore moccasins, the better to speed him today.
For today in the space of just two exact minutes, he had to cover certain exact grounds and do very drilled and exact things, and do them in an exact time, or the whole project would fail and he would be dead. And Chrissie and Pattie would die as well. And all the Scots and others left on Earth.
He heard the transshipment area control tower warning horn for the incoming phase.
“Motors off. Stand clear!”
The humming came on. The ground vibrated. The coffin lid trembled. The humming built up and up.
Suddenly two hundred new incoming Psychlos appeared on the platform along with their baggage.
The humming dropped. A faint vibration remained.
“Coordinates holding and linked up with second stage.”
The whole area came to life. One hour and thirteen minutes would elapse now until they fired back to Psychlo.
Personnel department members were herding the incoming draft off to the side and getting them in line.
Terl eyed the assemblage. The last time a draft had come in he had had a bad shock, and now he wasn’t taking any chances. He was half-expecting to find a new Planet Head in this lot, somebody to replace Ker, and he might have to think fast. He walked down the line, not looking at baggage for contraband. He was just looking at faces through their domed transport helmets, checking off the names. Two hundred. More of old Numph’s nonsense to get as many on the swindle payroll as he could. Terl went down the whole line. He breathed a sigh of relief. No replacement here for Ker, just the usual gutter sweepings from the slums of Psychlo plus an oddball junior executive and a couple of graduates from the mine school. Routine. Not one in the lot that could qualify as a Planet Head. All a bit lethargic. No agents from I.B.I. either!
Terl raised a paw to personnel and they divided some off for waiting transport planes destined for other minesites and some to berthing here. They loaded them on flatbeds with their baggage and they were gone.
That was a relief to Terl. He approached the morgue. That blasted horse of the animal’s that was always hanging around the compound was grazing in back of the morgue. “Get away from here!” Terl yelled at the horse and made paw motions to shoo him off. The horse looked at Terl indifferently, and when Terl went to open the door it came even closer.
Terl unlocked the morgue door and threw it wide.
There were ten coffins lying there, ready to be scooped up by lift machines. He checked for the small X marks on the covers. Nothing like taking precautions. Every lid had its little X mark.
He patted one of them fondly. He took a deep breath. Maybe eight or ten months from now he would be digging these up some dark Psychlo night in the isolated and dreary cemetery on Psychlo. And it would be riches, power! The fruits of his project were hard won. They wouldn’t be that hard to spend!
The first lift came, thrust its prongs under a coffin. Terl went back outside. He checked off the name on his records. The second coffin, the third, the fourth . . . Terl looked at the fourth one, a bit puzzled. How come he had spelled Jayed’s false name wrong? Not “Snit” but “Stni.” He checked for the X. That was there all right. Well, to crap with it. He’d enter the error on the record. One good false name deserved another. The ex-agent was good and dead. That’s all that mattered.
The lifts were dumping the coffins any which way on the platform. Terl watched, a bit apprehensive at the rough handling. But none landed upside down.
Nine of the coffins were lying out there now. The lift superintendent stopped his machine beside Terl to let him check off number ten, the last one he was carrying.
“These coffins seem awful heavy,” commented the superintendent.
Terl looked up, masking any alarm. They were only about a hundred pounds overweight, not enough to notice and certainly not enough to make much difference to a lift machine. The coffins should weigh about seventeen hundred each, even with those lids.
“Your power cartridge is probably half-discharged,” said Terl.
“Maybe,” said the superintendent. The coffins seemed like three thousand pounds. But he rolled the machine and dumped the tenth one on the platform.
The personnel department flatbed for outgoing personnel came up. Its driver was looking a little harassed. There were five Psychlos and their baggage on the truck, two of them returning executives and the other three ordinary miners going home. The driver gave Terl the list.
“You’ll have to change that list,” said the driver. “Char is supposed to be on it. He was scheduled to go home today and all of us in personnel have been running around looking for him, and we can’t find him. His baggage is here but we can’t find Char.”
“Which is his baggage?” asked Terl. The driver pointed to a separate pile and Terl swept it off the truck with one sweep of his arm.
“We looked everywhere,” said the driver. “Shouldn’t we hold up the firing?”
“You know you can’t do that,” said Terl quickly. “Did you look in the beds of the female admin people?”
The driver let out a guffaw. “I guess we should have done that. That was some party last night.”
“We’ll fire him off in six months,” said Terl and wrote, “Fires later,” on the document after Char’s name and signed it.
The personnel flatbed went off to dump the passengers on the platform. They stood about in a group, making sure their firing helmets were on tight. They were several feet away from the coffins.
Terl glanced at his watch. One hour and eleven minutes. Two more minutes to go.
“Coordinates holding on second stage!” came from the bullhorn over the operations dome. The white light was flashing.
Terl walked back closer to the morgue. That blasted horse was poking around the door. Terl made shooing motions with his paws. The horse moved off a few steps and began to graze again.
It was a relief to see those coffins out there. Terl stood gazing upon them fondly. About one minute to go.
Then his hair seemed to stand on end. From within the morgue, the empty deserted morgue, came a voice!
3
When the last coffin had gone out the open door, Jonnie had silently slid out of his coffin. He had three kill-clubs thrust in his belt and he was holding a fourth, the heaviest one. He laid a picto-recorder player in the middle of the floor with one flashing motion and backed up behind the door. The shadow of Terl outside lay across the floor.
The recorder started to play. It was a recording of Terl’s own voice. It said, “Jayed, you silly crunch, what a crap lousy I.B.I. agent you were.”
It was playing loudly enough to be heard outside.
The shadow of Terl contracted, turning.
The recorder said, “It ain’t smart, Jayed, to come in here worrying your betters. . . .”
Terl lunged through the door, slamming it shut with a frantic hand. He raised his boot to stamp the recorder into oblivion.
Jonnie dove forward. With a motion he had drilled and drilled with a dummy, the kill-club crashed into Terl’s skull.
With his other hand, even as Terl fell forward, Jonnie ripped up the pocket flap and got the remote control box to the cage.
A horn was going outside. “Coordinates holding on first stage. Motors off!”
Jonnie hit Terl again. The body collapsed. Jonnie ripped the breathe-mask off Terl’s face and threw it clear to the far end of the morgue where it landed with a clatter. He bent over Terl. Green blood was running down the side of the monster’s head. The feet were drumming. Then Terl was still. There was no breathing. The eyes seemed glazed. He would have liked to put a shot in Terl. He took the belt gun. But he didn’t dare shoot. Until those wires out there started to hum, they could stop the firing. The instant the wires began to hum he knew the process was irreversible.
The bullhorn bawled, “Stand clear!”
The wires had begun to hum.
Jonnie’s two minutes had begun, and they might well be his last two minutes alive. He had clicked on the stopwatch on his wrist.
He flashed out the door and twisted the lock closed behind him. In these two minutes, nobody would fire a gun since it might hit wires or mess up coordinate settings.
He took in the scene. Windsplitter was only three paces away from where he was supposed to be. Jonnie was on him and with one heel jab they were running.
In a flying blur they raced to the platform!
The humming was intensifying. Anything that stayed on that platform was going to go to Psychlo where you couldn’t even breathe the atmosphere. And a very messy arrival th
is would be if all went well.
Windsplitter’s hoofs hit the metal of the platform and he reared to a stop as Jonnie dove for the first coffin.
His fingers sought a little round ring that imperceptibly stood out, just under the lid at the top end. He pulled it and a strip came away in his hand. One!
Second coffin. Ring found. Pull. Strip in hand. Two!
The third coffin. Ring. Strip. Three!
A hysterical Psychlo voice came on the bullhorn. “Clear the platform! Clear the platform!”
The small group of Psychlos beyond the coffins woke up to something strange going on. They stared. One of the executives, hungover from the party, raised his arm to point.
Fourth, fifth, and sixth rings!
In these coffins were ten “planet buster” nuclear missile bombs, forbidden by treaties because they could crack the planet’s crust and spray the world with fallout.
Packed around them were the “dirtiest” early radioactive atomic bombs, outlawed because of their extreme pollution potential.
The seventh ring was bent. Jonnie fumbled with it.
“Grab him!” screamed the executive on the platform.
The five Psychlos moved to attack.
Jonnie threw his kill-club at the executive. He went down.
Jonnie yanked two more kill-clubs from his belt and hurled them in a blur of speed. Two more Psychlos went down.
He got back to number seven. He untwisted it and got it out.
He grabbed number eight and pulled it.
There was a suicide squad of Scots in the bushes, standing by in case at the last moment Jonnie failed. He had forbidden it but they insisted. He had timed the run. He wanted no dead Scots.
Jonnie had refused to simply let the fuses be set. If the firing had been canceled they would have blown Earth out of existence. They had to be sure the irreversible action of actual firing was in progress before these fuse strips were pulled.
Nine strips in hand!
The two remaining Psychlos had been further away but they were coming now.
“Strike!” shouted Jonnie at Windsplitter.
The horse reared and struck the nearest Psychlo.