Disaster

  I nodded, careful not to look eager. This was going exactly per my plan.

  She had a Marine electric dagger in her hand. She put the satchel of my records over my head. That was what I wanted, too.

  “When we’ve got those proclamations,” she said, “we are delivering you to the Royal prison. Remember that I did not give my word that you would arrive there alive. The price is your cooperation in delivering those documents.”

  “You’d kill me?” I said.

  “After your trying to murder Jettero? I saw it, remember. You don’t deserve a trial. So do you go along quietly and help? Or do I find out right here how effective this electric dagger is?”

  She had it on. I could hear it whirr. But I tried to hide a smile. She was playing the game exactly as I wished.

  She prodded me down the ladder. I went the sixty feet to the ground and two Fleet Marines took hold of me and marched me roughly to the civilian car.

  The driver was a Marine and beside him sat another, holding a needle handgun pointed straight at me.

  I got in the back. Heller sat on one side of me, Krak on the other.

  Heller waved to Crup and we vaulted into the sky.

  All Voltar spread out below in the waning sun. We passed around the main Fleet base and began to mingle with the sky traffic. The driver was identifying us with his own identoplate, just another bunch of Marines going on liberty.

  As we approached Government City we bucked the outgoing evening traffic. The River Weil wound a golden track around the cliffs where the offices of Section 451 perched in decay.

  Then qualms began to hit me.

  I was as tense as a string about to break. Could I pull this thing off? My life depended upon it and so did Heller’s death.

  If it didn’t work, they would deliver me to the Royal prison. That was the province of the Justiciary of Voltar and not even Lombar could tamper with the decisions of those grim judges. In the Domestic Police prisons, the Apparatus could spirit away criminals after they had been sentenced, but not the Royal prison. Stern tradition guided the justiciary there, for it housed only the most notorious criminals, those with crimes against the state. If they locked me in there under charges, not even Lombar could get me out.

  This was a very risky thing.

  Lombar had better appreciate all the dangers I was suffering on his behalf.

  We came in slowly, making sure that the office was now closed. Old Bawtch, the chief clerk there, I had ordered killed along with the two forgers. So there was no risk that they would be around to expose the invalidity of what we had come to pick up.

  It was dusk. “Looks like they’ve all gone home,” the Marine driver said.

  “Go ahead and land,” said Heller.

  The driver chose a place between two parked airbuses and killed the engine.

  Heller got out and looked around. There was nobody in sight. The building was locked. He was carrying a shoulder bag and he got out an instrument. He went up and down the wall with it. He exposed what I knew to be the central communications conduit of the place.

  With two suction cups he fixed a field coil over the area. It would give the circuits the appearance of still being alive. No alarm would trigger.

  Then, with a pair of snips, he cut the conduit apart. No alarm would go off and nobody could make a call out of that building now.

  I was praying soundlessly to every God I knew that my trick would work.

  Heller beckoned to the two Marines. They already had guns pointed at me. “This is the prisoner’s office. We are going in here to collect some papers. But he also might get the idea of laying his hand on a weapon. This is also Apparatus territory and he might get the idea his friends will rescue him before we can get him to the Royal prison. So at his first suspicious move, shoot to stun.”

  Heller motioned to me and I pushed my identoplate against the lock.

  Inside, the place was its old, musty, dark, cluttery self, redolent with what sarcastic people are prone to call “drunk stink.” I had no time to look around: under the prod of guns, I went through to my old office in the back.

  Heller set a lamp down on a side table. Nothing had changed: dust was thick; there was even an empty hot-jolt can just where I had left it so long ago.

  Oh, office of bitter memory and pain, office of nightmares and overwork, office of travail—I had not missed it even a little bit.

  My private toilet door was closed.

  “Well, where are they?” said the Countess Krak.

  Of course, there were no duplicates of those Royal forgeries. I said, “Oh, don’t think I am unwilling to cooperate. I am just trying to remember exactly which floorboard I have to lift.” It really didn’t matter which one I addressed first: there was ample blackmail material under each and every separate one of them, for I had been collecting career data for all my years in the Apparatus. It’s the only way one could get along and get his way.

  I managed to look a little distracted. I gripped my lower abdomen and made a face. Then I started to bend over to lift a board. I got it partially up. One could see there were papers under it. I dropped it. “No, that’s not the one. I don’t want to tear the whole place up . . .” I grimaced harder. “If I only didn’t have my mind on having to go to the toilet . . .”

  “What?” said Heller.

  “I’ve got diarrhea,” I said. “It’s the increase of gravity. A spacer like you wouldn’t notice it, but weighing one-fifth more now has got my system upset. If you let me go to the toilet, maybe I could concentrate.” Holding my lower abdomen with one hand, I pointed at the toilet door with the other.

  Heller gestured to a Marine. “Check it out.”

  The Marine opened the toilet door, played a light around the place, grimacing at the cluttered stink. He shined the light at the window and went over close to it to look down at the River Weil flowing darkly five hundred vertical feet below. The window was the kind that seals and never opens. He came out.

  Rather hurried, to keep up the pretense, I went in. I looked back at the Countess Krak and closed the door.

  Silently, I slid the bolt shut.

  Carefully I found the secret catch that opened the side wall. It worked smoothly and quietly. The ladder was there to the hatchway above.

  I reverently thanked Bugs Bunny for the inspiration he had been in my life.

  The glass in the square window was silent-break. I hefted my bag of records. I swung it at the window.

  There was not even a tinkle.

  The jagged edges that remained were very convincing.

  I stepped back through the secret side wall and closed it behind me.

  On silent feet I went up the ladder.

  With hushed fingers I opened the upper hatch.

  I stepped out into the starlight.

  I closed the hatch behind me.

  Without a sound, I crept over to an irregularity in the roof and crawled under the eave to be hidden from overfly view.

  A ventilation pipe was close to hand that opened into the lower office, so I took my head well away from it.

  I SHOUTED A DWINDLING SCREAM!

  A silent second from below.

  PANDEMONIUM!

  The sound of someone trying to open the toilet door!

  The crash of a gun butt against the lock!

  The rip of a shattered bolt!

  “HE’S GONE!”

  The sound of a chair as it overturned. A rush of feet.

  Then a voice, which was coming through the shattered window as somebody looked down: “That’s hundreds of feet straight down!”

  “Do you see a body?”

  “Shall I call the river patrol?”

  “Nothing can live in those rip currents.”

  “Do you see any sign of a ledge or a rope?” asked Heller.

  “Just straight down, sir. Here’s my light.”

  From up the ventilation pipe, the voice of the Countess Krak: “Oh, the poor dumb fool. He committed suicide rather than face a t
rial.”

  “Well, can’t say as I blame him,” came Heller’s voice. “His execution was inevitable.”

  Krak: “Well, let’s find the proclamations. That’s what we came for.”

  Sound of boards being lifted. Rattle of papers. More boards.

  Marine: “Still no sign of anything down there in that river, sir.”

  Heller: “Give us a hand with this search.”

  Krak: “Maybe they’re behind the walls.”

  More boards. Sound of filing drawers opening and closing.

  Marine: “Blazing (bleepards), look at this stuff, sir. He must have had blackmail on half the people in the Apparatus.”

  Other Marine: “That’s how the ‘drunks’ operate.”

  Marine: “What do we do with this stuff, sir? The disintegrator isn’t working.”

  Heller: “They were apparently the prisoner’s personal files. He’s probably dead but the investigation isn’t over, so grab some cartons and we’ll hand them to Bis of Fleet Intelligence. No reason to leave them lying around to wreck people, even ‘drunks.’”

  Krak: “I’m going to look in the outer-office files.”

  A lot more paper rustling. Then the sounds of boards being put back and jammed in place with boot heels.

  Krak: “There’re no proclamations in the outer-office files. Just trash. Oh, blast, where could those things be?”

  Heller: “He could have been lying.”

  Krak: “Not the way I got the information. Have we looked under every board?”

  Heller: “Every one.”

  Krak: “Oh, blast!”

  Heller: “What did you do with all the affidavits and confessions?”

  Krak: “They’re in my case in the airbus. What’s that got to do with it?”

  Heller: “They might contain some clue to this.”

  Krak: “No. The proclamations were not even mentioned. They’re of no use to us now. The prisoner is dead. Oh, blast! Well, there’s only one thing to do: get the originals at Spiteos.”

  Heller: “Oh, no!”

  Krak: “Oh, yes! I know they exist and I know exactly where they are. You can slip in there with the tug and we can have them in two minutes!”

  Heller: “Dear . . .”

  Krak: “No, Jettero. There is too much at stake in this. We should go right back and get the tug—”

  Heller: “Dear! That means you could be putting yourself straight into the hands of Lombar Hisst!”

  Krak: “Nonsense. You just let down a ladder. I’ll go down and pick them up in a flash and we’ll be gone. I know you can do it. And our whole lives depend upon it! We don’t have to stop at the Royal prison now, so we can return directly to the field. You’re always doing far more dangerous things for much less reason. So let’s go.”

  Heller groaned. Then he said, “All right.”

  I heard them putting the office back together. Then I heard them loading cartons.

  The front door clicked shut.

  Their airbus took off while I made myself small under the eaves.

  I was hugging myself with ecstasy. It was even better than I had ever hoped for!

  Krak and Heller were delivering themselves straight into the open jaws of death!

  PART SIXTY-SIX

  Chapter 2

  When I knew that I was absolutely safe, I lifted the roof hatch, crept down the stairs, went through the secret door and back into my office.

  I tried a switch. The lights were off because of the cut conduit. I found a hand light in a drawer and turned it on. They had done a pretty good job of putting it all back together.

  I thrilled with exhilaration. I was out of their vicious hands.

  But now I must make my call.

  A few short words with Lombar Hisst and the whole situation would be saved!

  Guns trained on the spot where the tug would arrive, one fusillade and they’d plunge a mile straight down into the chasm at the fortress edge. An unarmed, unarmored tug—nothing to it!

  I grabbed a communications unit.

  It was dead.

  I rushed into the outer office and stabbed my identoplate at the huge computer console that should connect with everybody.

  Nothing happened!

  Heller had severed all the conduits and not put them back!

  Well, all right. I would rush out to a street message center and place the call through civilian circuits.

  Swiftly I sped into the night.

  The dull light of a message center loomed. I eagerly dived in.

  I reached in my pocket for coins.

  I came up with a Turkish five-kuru coin.

  It didn’t work.

  I fished out a US quarter.

  It didn’t work.

  I found a US Lincoln penny and tried to force it in the slot.

  I banged on it and made it jam.

  Frantically I looked through my wallet and clothes.

  NOT A SINGLE BIT OF VOLTAR MONEY!

  I looked around on the floor in case somebody had dropped a fraction-of-a-credit coin. Very bare.

  Let’s see. Ske. Yes. Ske, my old driver, might be living near. . . .

  No. He wouldn’t be living at all. I had given him counterfeits and they would have executed him by now.

  Meeley! My old landlady. Only a few blocks from here!

  No. She would be dead, too, for I had paid her with money that would get her exterminated and no questions asked.

  The area was all dark. There were no people around. I had no friends anyway.

  What to do? What to do? What to do? I had to get word to Lombar and fast!

  A police station!

  No, Heller might have told the “bluebottles” about it and they might just pick me up for him.

  My airbus!

  But I didn’t know where it would be stored or even if it was still allocated to me.

  I looked wildly around. And then I had it. An airbus sat beside a building. I would steal it!

  I crept up to it. Nobody was around.

  LUCK!

  The door was unlocked!

  I slid in.

  LUCK!

  It had no drive-control locks.

  LUCK!

  It started instantly.

  I took off straight up with a roar, leaping into the night. I looked down. Not even a head had come out of a window that I could see.

  Now, where was I?

  Over to my right was the place where Lombar had his town office. I dived in that direction.

  Not even a light there.

  I veered off to the left toward a place where Lombar stayed while he was in town, a sort of ramshackle palace.

  Completely dark, not even any guards.

  Well, to me that could only signify one thing: LOMBAR HIMSELF WAS AT SPITEOS!

  Luck again!

  Oh, indeed, this was my lucky night!

  I vaulted up into the traffic lanes. Below me Government City spread out. I went higher. Slum City in one direction, Pausch Hills in another. My eye fell on the dark masses of the mountains. Beyond them lay the Great Desert. Beyond that lay Camp Kill and Spiteos!

  I did a hasty calculation. The distance Heller had to travel to get back to Emergency Fleet Reserve was not as great as the distance to Spiteos but he would cover the distance to his target with the tug. And he drove and flew awfully fast.

  This was going to be a near thing.

  But I was on my way!

  PART SIXTY-SIX

  Chapter 3

  Some small fires were burning at the camp. Beyond it Spiteos, the black castle, lay like a blot upon the ground. The mile-deep chasm against the white desert sand looked like a knife scar in the planet surface.

  In the distance I saw no signs of gunfire yet. I really doubted if he could get in there unobserved, absorbo-coat or no. Nobody knew of the existence of Spiteos except a few in the Apparatus: they guarded it thoroughly and carefully, and to blandly fly in there and land on it I considered impossible. No such ships ever came near it. The
challenge would be instant; gunfire would be inevitable.