Disaster

  “Blast!” he said. “The wall charges won’t explode!”

  Abruptly I understood what he was talking about. When he was here before, he had gone all over the inside of the hangar, saying he was testing for erosion. He had been planting charges in the walls! And when I had shot at Crobe with a needle stun gun, no wonder it had brought tons of rock crashing down into the hangar—I had accidentally exploded Heller’s charges! No wonder there had been so much reaction!

  Gouts of fire were probing deeper into the tunnel. Heller inched backwards. He pulled me with him by the heel.

  Then he did something very odd. He reached into his shoulder bag and got out two masks. He pushed one over my face. He put the other one on himself. Gas masks? Why?

  He picked up his firing board again. It had three more switches on it. He closed them.

  Muffled explosions sounded above the blastgun din.

  The roof didn’t come down. The firing did not slacken. What had he done?

  After a moment, I saw a swirl of white smoke in a portion of the hangar I could see.

  Then I heard some coughing. Faht Bey’s cough joined it through the loudspeakers.

  Somebody screamed, “Opium!” Another took it up!

  The firing stopped.

  There was the beginning rush of men trying to leave.

  A white fog came swirling into the tunnel mouth.

  The opium storage caverns! Heller had installed flame bombs in them last fall. Countless tons of opium were burning.

  The electronic illusion which made up the hangar roof would not pass air. I had seen Heller test it!

  That whole hangar was now full of a powerful narcotic—OPIUM SMOKE!

  There was a sound of men falling who had been trying to run.

  Then there was only the burning sizzle of flame as it ate into the opium stores.

  Heller shoved me ahead.

  Through the soporific mist I could see the crew. They were sprawled all about, draped over sandbags and guns, out cold.

  Heller said, “Take me to that detention cell.”

  I still had my chance. I felt for the knife and planned how I could get him ahead of me.

  PART SIXTY-FOUR

  Chapter 6

  My brilliant idea to lure him with the corpse of the Countess Krak was about to pay off.

  We made our way through the swirling white mists of the hangar and to the prison corridors. I indicated the way but Heller was pushing me in front of him.

  We went up the longest passage and came to the end. The port of the door was covered and I was not giving him any chance to lift it. I knew exactly what I would do. Surreptitiously, I felt for the hidden knife in the jacket. Sick as I felt, I could still draw it and plunge it into his back if I could get behind him. And I knew he was approaching a new moment of shock.

  I spun the combination. I got the door open a slit, enough to get my hand through and unlock the barred grate within.

  The light in the cell was dim; most of the glowplates seemed to be broken and lay about in shattered fragments.

  I swung the inner door open and then stepped back, swinging the outer door wide.

  It put me behind him!

  He stepped straight through into the large cell.

  A shaft of light seemed to be coming from the roof.

  There was something lying under it, something dark.

  Heller was four paces into the cell. He stopped, staring down and ahead of him.

  His back was totally exposed!

  With a stealthy hand I drew the knife. I stepped forward on silent feet.

  I raised the blade to plunge it into his spine.

  WHONK!

  Something hit me over the head!

  I spun around as I fell.

  A heavy book hit me again!

  I was staring up into the face of a very angry Countess Krak!

  Once more the book came down and I went out!

  Minutes later I came to. There was no knife in my hand or even near me. My wrists were pinioned behind me, tied excruciatingly tight with what must have been wire.

  Heller was sitting on the bed. He was crying!

  The Countess was kneeling in front of him, smoothing his hair and gripping his hand.

  “I knew you’d come,” she said. “When I heard the firing I knew it must be my Jettero.”

  He tried to talk and couldn’t.

  I didn’t have any gas mask on. I looked at the door and thankfully saw that it was closed. This cell had an independent air supply.

  Finally he said, “I thought you were dead. These have been the awfulest days I have ever spent in my whole life. And when he told me you were still alive, I didn’t dare believe him.”

  They were both crying again and holding on to each other.

  At length Heller looked around. “What happened to the lights? What is that on the floor?”

  “That’s a pile of ration cartons and clothes,” she said. “I was trying to stand on them and dig my way out. Several days ago a funny thing happened. There was an explosion up the air shaft. The concussion was bad and it must have knocked me out for a while. It made the hole bigger and broke most of the glowplates.”

  She was pointing and I looked at the air shaft where dusty air was coming in. Then I remembered that in the plan I had put hooks in the air shaft to prevent anyone climbing up it. But I had also planted explosive charges there that would kill anyone who sought to go up through it. When Ahmed had dropped the gas grenade, it had simply set off the charges and the explosion had just blown the poison vapor back out as the whole series had gone off. It had damaged the solar lights. It had also opened up the shaft. Once she had gotten the hooks loose, the Countess Krak could have climbed right up to freedom!

  “I’ve got to get you out of here,” said Heller. “Fortunately, last fall, I thought I might have to take this base. But unfortunately, part of what I set up has the place swimming in opium smoke.” He took a gas mask out of his bag and gave it to her to use.

  He moved over and began putting my gas mask back on.

  “What are you going to do with him?” said the Countess. She picked up the knife from where it had evidently been kicked. She was looking at me. I knew exactly what was in her mind. She wanted to cut my throat.

  “I gave my word I was taking him back to Voltar for trial,” said Heller.

  “You mean we are going home?” said the Countess.

  “Just as soon as I have taken care of a couple things and repaired the tug, yes—we are going home. The mission is practically complete.”

  “Oh, how wonderful!” cried the Countess Krak. “And when we get home, I have the most marvelous surprise for you anyone ever heard of!”

  I gasped with relief. The moment he landed on Voltar, he would be arrested on some pretext. Lombar would finish him!

  And as to what she was so happy about, those Royal proclamations were forgeries and if she ever tried to present them it would mean immediate execution.

  INSPIRATION!

  How could I arrange that they would present those forgeries so that Lombar could have a pretext to execute them out of hand?

  Oh, I was not finished. Not by a long ways!

  I would get even with them yet for all the hideous things they had done to me!

  PART SIXTY-FOUR

  Chapter 7

  It was hours later and the hangar presented a very strange sight.

  Heller had somehow scaled the wall and gotten the electronic-illusion mountaintop switched off and let the clouds of smoke sail into the night. For some time now the place had been full of clean air, maybe for the first time in eighty or more years.

  Prahd had responded to a phone call and he had temporarily patched up my wounds.

  Utanc/Gaylov was lying trussed up on a bench.

  The Countess Krak was standing with a blastrifle to command the entrances in case any late callers showed up.

  Heller had placed a big table in the middle of the hangar floor. Sitting in chairs
around it was every officer on the base, tied hand and foot!

  The rest of the crew were likewise secured, piled in rows upon the floor.

  Prahd was going around to the last of the officers now, applying an oxygen respirator to their faces. Then he signaled he was through.

  Heller pounded at the table top with the butt of a blast handgun, using it for a gavel. “Now, are we all awake?” he said.

  Faht Bey and the other officers were staring at him. They were very aware of their hands tied behind them and tied as well to the chairs.

  “Good,” said Heller. “I declare the meeting opened. Now, first on the agenda is the status of this base.”

  “First on the agenda,” said Faht Bey, “is a trial of Soltan Gris!” He jabbed his head at me.

  I was propped in a chair to the side, the place they usually position a man on trial.

  “No, we’re going to come to that,” said Heller. “You have been told, I believe, that I am here to kill you. I wish to disabuse your minds.” And he took from his pocket a copy of the Grand Council orders and a copy of his own and read them, numbers and all, in a very official voice. Then he held them up so they could see their seals and signatures. “Satisfied?”

  Faht Bey and the others nodded.

  “Now,” said Heller, “this base doesn’t happen to be listed. So it doesn’t exist. What goes on here is known only to the Apparatus, but it happens to include illegal dealing in contraband. I have evidence that you are shipping opium, heroin and amphetamines to Voltar. I am ending that traffic.”

  “You can’t!” said Faht Bey.

  “Oh, yes, I can,” said Heller. “Under my own cognizance and as a Royal officer of the Fleet enforcing His Majesty’s regulations, I am commandeering this whole base in the name of the Voltar Fleet.”

  “The Chief of the Apparatus would kill us!” said Faht Bey.

  Heller reversed the hand blastgun and pointed it at their faces. “I think there will be some changes on Voltar when I return,” said Heller. “But if there are not, you can always say you were forced to do it at gunpoint.”

  The officers looked nervously at that gun.

  “All Voltar personnel on Earth,” said Heller, “are transferred as of this moment to the Fleet with similar ranks and ratings. And you will get Fleet pay.”

  That stirred them. The Apparatus personnel were paid hardly anything, and Fleet pay was much more.

  “Then I get paid too?” said Prahd, standing with his respirator.

  “You get paid too,” said Heller.

  Oh, Gods, what a mess he was making! Prahd was officially dead! And many of the rest of them had nonperson status—condemned criminals, the lot!

  “Do you know,” said Faht Bey, “that many of us have no civil status at all?”

  “I suspected that. But under the regulations of the Fleet, a Royal officer operating independently in unconquered areas can recruit and induct crews of any kind and grant them a full amnesty. Your civil rights would be restored.”

  They looked at him with their mouths open and then looked at one another.

  Suddenly Faht Bey jerked his head at me. “That doesn’t include him?”

  “No, it certainly does not,” said Heller.

  “What’s going to happen to him?” said Faht Bey. “He mortgaged this base. He’s guilty of crime after crime. He doesn’t go free, does he?”

  “I am taking him to Voltar for trial,” said Heller. He pointed at Utanc/Gaylov. “I will take that creature’s testimony, and with everything else he has done, I think the courts will make short work of Soltan Gris.”

  They suddenly began to cheer, and even the cordwooded crew began to yell with delight. The hangar practically exploded with their joyous shouts.

  At length Faht Bey looked around and shouted, “Do we accept his deal?”

  The din was deafening!

  “Then untie us so we can get to work!” cried Faht Bey. “We got to get this place so it looks like the Fleet!”

  I glowered. Turncoats. Riffraff. After all I had done for them!

  But I would have the last laugh. None of these poor fools knew that Lombar controlled Voltar now.

  I must go along with this. I must pretend that I was done in. I’d even look like I was cooperating.

  Heller’s actions would not be condoned. They thought I was their prisoner. Actually, they were mine.

  I would manage it so that I would be taking this Royal officer they were so stupidly applauding back to his death. And their own demise would soon follow! They were double-crossing Lombar Hisst, who now controlled Voltar.

  PART SIXTY-FOUR

  Chapter 8

  Just before the crack of dawn, Heller went over to the field and flew the tug in.

  He brought it down through the illusion, which was back on again. Despite the extremely narrow limits of the hangar, he actually turned it horizontal and landed it on its belly over to the side.

  The cat heard the voice of the Countess Krak and came out of the airlock like a launched torpedo, yowling something dreadful. The Countess Krak had been guarding me. The cat hit her in the chest and she told it hello and petted it, distracting her attention. But it didn’t do me much good. I was still tied to the chair.

  The whole scene was very sickening. The base personnel had been standing around, waiting for the tug to come in. I had never realized before that they were, all of them, exiles, convicted of crimes large and small and banished to this place for life. I overheard remarks like “Oh, think of seeing Modon again,” and “Imagine once more being able to walk the streets of Flisten cities and not having to hide,” and in general, “Oh, think of being able to go home!”

  Some of them found some paint and put the symbol of the Fleet, a circle around a diagonal bar, in gold against pale blue, over the Apparatus “bottle” of their shoulder patches.

  Heller was undermining this whole base!

  A perfectly good lot of criminals were going completely bad!

  Well, a lot of good it would do them. The REAL action was ahead of him when he collided with Lombar’s coup.

  Once the tug had landed, there was a lot of talk when they saw its stern. They had hated the assassin pilots even worse than they had hated the Antimancos, and they were highly condemnatory of what had happened to the tug.

  Two guards came over to relieve Krak in watching me. She went to the stern of the tug to look. She gasped and covered her mouth with her hand.

  “Oh, Jettero,” she said, “they could have killed you.”

  He was standing with the ship-repair chief. “It’s just a few dented housings, dear. The cable electrode ends are just fused to the sleeves. Link here says he can repair it in just a couple of days.”

  “Oh, but Jettero—if it had hit the hull!” said the Countess Krak. “My, but I’m glad I have the means to get you into a safer sort of life.”

  “What do you mean?” said Jettero.

  I knew she meant the forgeries. She thought he would be appointed to the Royal Staff at Palace City, “freed from the absences and perils of the Fleet,” if he successfully completed this mission. She also thought that she would get a Royal pardon and have her family estates restored. But she was in for a terrible surprise. When she resurrected those fakes from wherever she had hidden them and tried to get the Emperor to sign them, she and Heller would be seized and executed for forgery of a Royal signature.

  “I can’t tell you,” said the Countess Krak. “It’s a secret. But I can assure you, I simply do not intend to live my life with people shooting at my husband left and right! What would the children think?”

  “Are there children?” said Heller.

  “No, not yet, but there certainly will be. And they’re entitled to a real, live father. I think we should go home as soon as possible.”

  The repair chief said he had the tools and could make the parts. Heller and Krak went into the ship and were gone for some time. When they came out they had changed their clothes and although what she was w
earing was not too unearthly, it was obvious to me that she must have left the bulk of her wardrobe in the posh quarters in the aft part of the tug.

  Faht Bey waddled up to Heller. “What do we do with the prisoners, sir?” He had never called me “sir,” the rotten turncoat.