Disaster

  “I think he knows,” said Raht, “that you had a hand in killing his mistress. I’d watch out if I were you. That’s a hit cat to end them all! It scares me to death!”

  I looked down into its close-up, baleful eyes.

  It was sort of snarling down deep.

  I did not dare move.

  PART SIXTY-TWO

  Chapter 4

  Heller said, “Let’s get this battlefield cleaned up, Agent Raht. Those shots might attract visitors.”

  He picked up the corpse of Stabb and dragged it out through the airlock. They worked outside and I could see them making a pile of bodies. I shuddered. I was certain they were going to kill me, too.

  Heller came back in. He went into the crew quarters, as I could see in the reflecting port glass. He came out lugging a trash-disintegrator unit. He carried it over to the pile and small blue lights began to glow around the bodies as buttons and bits of metal momentarily resisted disintegration.

  An intermittent flash of light appeared on the track to the roadhouse. It grew stronger. A car! The deputy sheriffs were coming in!

  Oh, thank Gods, I would be saved! They would see the spaceship and come over, and I would yell at them that I was a Federal agent and order them to arrest Heller and Raht. I even had my Inkswitch ID with me. I wasn’t going to be exterminated here after all! I’d even have Heller on a Code break.

  The car lights bored straight at the spaceship. Then they veered off and pointed toward the front of the roadhouse.

  The cops jumped out on either side of their car. Heller walked up to them.

  Ralph said, “Having trouble here, whitey engineer?”

  They weren’t even looking at the spaceship. And then I realized with a sickening comprehension that it was that (bleeped) absorbo-coat—it hadn’t even reflected their car lights back to them. To all intents and purposes, the tug was invisible!

  Heller was closer to them now. George said, “We heard some shots and screams.”

  “Wildcat,” said Heller.

  “No (bleep)?” said Ralph.

  “Must’ve come down from Canada,” said George.

  “We missed him clean,” said Heller. “He ran down the creek bed, thataway.” He was pointing.

  The two deputies rushed off down the creek, drawing their guns. They went right off, leaving their car lights on! I groaned. Well, maybe when they came back they’d see something unusual and rescue me.

  Heller was stuffing diamonds in the gunny sack on the porch. He tied the neck and threw it in the jeep.

  He and Raht went into the house and shortly began to dolly out boxes from the deep mine shaft. They piled them outside the airlock.

  Heller came in and spoke to the floorplates in the passageway. It was sort of eerie how the locks were tuned to his voice. “Hold hatch, open up,” he said, and the floorplates flopped back with a clang.

  He lowered himself down into the limited hold of the tug. In the reflecting glass, I saw him pop back almost instantly. “What’s this?” he said. He was holding a sack he’d found. He opened it and peered at the contents. “Junk stones?” It was the flawed glitter I had bought in Switzerland to fool Captain Stabb. Heller took it to the airlock and tossed it to Raht.

  He went back into the hold. He came up in a moment. “What the blazes?” He was carrying something heavy. He went to the airlock. “Of all things,” he said to Raht. “There’s about 750 pounds of gold ingots down there.”

  I felt like my skull had exploded. Stabb! He was the one who had stolen my first gold shipment. He’d hidden it in the tug hold, meaning probably, when he got a chance, to do away with me and steal the tug.

  “Isn’t that an awful lot of gold for this planet?” said Raht.

  “It sure is,” said Heller. “Worth about seven million dollars at current prices. We’ll take it out of its boxes and you stack it on the floor of the jeep. Transfer it to my Porsche at the old lady’s. She won’t be able to see what it is.”

  I groaned again. Raht hadn’t even killed the old lady. What a rotten Apparatus agent. He ought to be fired!

  “That makes me nervous,” said Raht. “That’s an awful lot of money.”

  “Hand it over to my financial advisor, Izzy Epstein. He’ll know what to do with it,” said Heller. “Give me a hand and we’ll load it.”

  They passed it out of the hold. Raht drove the jeep over, turned it around so the lights pointed at the house and they put the gold down on the back floorboards.

  The deputies were coming back. I prayed they’d notice the black bulk of the tug and come over.

  Heller went to meet them, very visible in the combined lights of the sheriff’s car and the jeep.

  “Didn’t find him,” said Ralph.

  “Found his tracks, though,” said George. “He’s a big’un. Mind if we come over hunting him tomorrow?”

  “Come ahead,” said Heller. “As Maysabongo Marines, you can hunt around here all you please. Just remember to wear your stars.”

  The deputy sheriffs went to their car. They got in. When they turned it around their headlights in the viewscreen almost blinded me!

  They drove off and the bouncing haze of lights vanished from view. There was one chance gone. I still, however, had hopes. Suddenly I remembered the controls of the tug didn’t work. It would be here all night and tomorrow in daylight it would be visible. A crowd would gather and I could yell to them I was a kidnapped Fed.

  Heller and Raht were locking up the roadhouse.

  They came back and began to pass boxes down into the hold. Heller took the last one and turned it over and opened the wrong side.

  A false bottom! So that was where he had gotten the blastgun to shoot the Antimancos with! That original cargo had had false-bottomed boxes! We had missed it on Voltar. He was taking some items out. He laid them in the airlock. Then he manhandled the rest of the box down into the hold. He was in there a while and I could hear him pulling things around, probably lashing things tight.

  He came back and took up a unit he had taken from the box and handed it to Raht. “You give this to Izzy. It’s a viewer-phone on a wavelength they’ve never heard of on this planet. I already pried the nameplates off, so tell him it’s something I invented and it won’t be any Code break. I’d appreciate it if you got this to him tonight. He can call me by pressing this button here. I couldn’t say much over the phone from the plane as NSA monitors all those calls. I want to hear from him just as soon as possible. Got it?”

  “Yes, sir,” said Raht. “Won’t he see you’re in a spaceship?”

  “I’ll hold the camera low at my end. He’ll only see my face and some pipes over my head. He’s sort of used to me being in odd places anyway. He’s already got a Voltarian time-sight in a locked box, so he’s taken the security oath. Tell him that applies to this as well. We’ve still got an awful lot to do and he’ll be pretty upset if he doesn’t hear.”

  “Got it, sir,” said Raht. I was nauseated. The traitor hadn’t ever said “sir” to me.

  Heller came over. He picked up the cat and set it on the instrument ledge. He said to me, “Agent Raht tells me that amongst other things you’ve had him on reduced pay and no allowances. Is that right?”

  “Serves him right,” I snarled. “He’s a bungling idiot! And now that he’s turned his coat, he’ll sell you out, too!”

  Raht, in the airlock, said, “Don’t you talk about being a traitor. You’ve broken every law in the book! All I’ve done is bring you to justice!”

  Heller was ignoring this. He was going through my pockets even though I tried to squirm away. He found wads of paper and my wallet. I went absolutely cold. The Squeeza credit card I had recovered from Krak was in it. It had Heller’s Empire State Building address written on the back. If he found that, he’d know I was directly connected to his girl’s death. He would murder me!

  He was looking through the papers. He found a requisition blank. He filled it in, a restoration of Raht’s pay and allowance with back pay. He took
my identoplate and stamped it. He handed it to Raht to turn in to the New York office of the base.

  Heller said to Raht, “I understand he promised you ten thousand dollars for the hit.”

  Raht shook his head. “No, sir, I don’t want that.”

  “Well, here it is anyway,” said Heller. He opened up the wallet and I prayed that he would miss that card. He removed ten one-thousand-dollar bills from my cash and handed them to Raht. “Buy a wreath for Terb’s grave and get yourself some new clothes.”

  It infuriated me. I said, “I’ve got the laugh on you. You’re not going to get out of here. This tug’s controls won’t operate. You’re stuck!”

  “Oh, thanks for reminding me,” said Heller. He went out and dug around in the dirt and came back with a cylinder. It was emitting a faint buzz. He switched it off and threw it in a cabinet. “The only reason I called you in here,” he said, “was I needed the tug. You landed on an engine-control cancellation coil that operated the moment you opened your airlock. You stupidly had it open already when you landed. Only the air cushion kept you from crashing. Stupid Antimancos.”

  “I got their ID plates,” said Raht. “You want them?”

  “Throw them in that drawer,” said Heller. “They’re probably false anyway. Unless I miss my guess they were ex-subofficers from the Fleet, probably under condemnation to death and grabbed by the Apparatus.”

  “Can you really run this tug all by yourself?” said Raht.

  Heller reached down to a floorplate and pulled it up. An array of buttons and controls I had never seen before were disclosed. He was closing switches and activating it. “That captain was a know-it-all,” said Heller. “Typical subofficer gone bad. I tried to tell him the day we left Voltar that in her refit I had had her totally robotized. But he didn’t seem to want to listen. I thought it might come to this. She doesn’t need a crew. I’ll be all right.”

  Raht was pointing at me tied up in the star-pilot chair. “What you going to do with him?” I could see it in his eyes that he thought it would be a good idea to take me out and shoot me.

  “Regulations state,” said Heller, “that if at all feasible an officer found involved in crimes should be taken to the nearest base for an officer’s conference trial. I’ll deliver him to the base in Turkey with your evidence affidavits and mine and they can handle him.”

  My blood turned into slush. The Afyon base commander, Faht Bey, was just waiting for such a chance! They’d find me guilty in a second and execute me in the most painful possible way.

  My wits were racing. Oh, there must be some way to get out of this!

  I was facing death for sure!

  Heller! Gods, how he had tricked me. And he was riding high. I did not know what he had in mind now to finish his mission, but I knew it would be a catastrophe for Rockecenter and therefore Lombar. Well, to hells with them! I had to think of ME!

  Wait, wait. Suddenly I had a surge of hope.

  At the Afyon base they thought Heller was under orders to kill them: they would shoot him if they saw him. I had taken care of that.

  And Voltar? Why, Lombar hated Heller and Lombar was now in control of the entire Voltar Confederacy!

  Heller was not home safe at all!

  He was the one at risk.

  All I had to do was con him in some way and stay alive and I would win completely in the end.

  I would pretend to be cooperative. I would pretend to be his friend. I would lead him in some brilliant way straight to his doom.

  My confidence began to return. I would think of something. All was very far from lost.

  I almost laughed aloud. Heller and his Royal officer ways—he’d be the dead one in the end.

  Heller was bidding Raht goodbye.

  Raht gave him a formal crossed-arm salute, admiration beaming from his face.

  Heller closed the airlock.

  He put the cat back on my chest.

  Heller picked up a cordless microphone from the new controls that he had bared. “Take off and hold at altitude three hundred miles above New York,” he told the tug.

  It promptly and smoothly took off.

  Heller went to the crew’s galley and fixed himself a canister of hot jolt, which must have been his first taste of it in many months.

  He came back to the other pilot chair, sat on its arm and watched the planet fall away.

  PART SIXTY-TWO

  Chapter 5

  We were hovering at three hundred miles altitude, the lights of cities far below.

  The cat sat upon my chest and glared at me, just aching to rake my face with its savage claws.

  Heller had set a mate to Izzy’s viewer-phone on the instrument ledge, the ball of the camera lens in it pointing past his face and up. He was waiting for Izzy’s call. He was sitting in the local-pilot maneuvering seat. He kept looking at the tug’s instruments and then working a back scan of the space around.

  “That’s very odd,” he said. “This panel is reading that there’s a spaceship within a mile of us and I can’t find it anywhere but in this warning light.”

  The breaker switch in my head! It was activating the emergency-collision light. Bolz had mentioned it. Heller must not suspect it was installed in me. He might have a hypnohelmet handy.

  “Do you know if those assassin pilots took off?” asked Heller.

  I was saved from discovery. And then a new inspiration hit me. Maybe in some way I could get him shot and escape. Yes, I could some way hide in the ship; he would go down the ladder and they’d see him and shoot him! “You better return to the Earth base,” I answered. “The assassin pilots both took off after us. If you try to go further out than this, they’ll kill you sure.”

  “I’ve got a job to do,” said Heller. “I don’t see their ships. This panel must be faulty.” And he turned the warning light off.

  “You’ll get me killed,” I said. “Those flying cannons can make nothing out of this unarmed tug.”

  “Get you killed?” said Heller. “That’s a very attractive idea. The only reason you’re alive right now is that you were too much of a coward to come out and fight when the others did. I told Raht you wouldn’t.”

  “You’re insulting me!” I said.

  The cat raked me and I yelped.

  “Don’t push it, Gris,” said Heller. “It was a very sad route that took you from an Academy man downhill to the ‘drunks.’ I never knew anyone could sink so low. I don’t know what else you did to sabotage this mission or why you did it. And I’m not likely to forgive your luring the Countess Krak to her death. It’s only regulations that I should return you to trial that keep me from tossing you out that airlock.”

  I went giddy with the idea of falling three hundred miles and burning in the reentry to atmosphere—if I lived that long.

  “It’s no news to me that you are a fool,” said Heller. “I knew that, that day in Spiteos. You requisitioned a blastick, obviously to kill poor Snelz. And you stood right there and let me swap an unloaded one for it with a simple sleight of hand, and you went right down and tried to fire it at Snelz.

  “You tried to break me with some obvious thudder dice and didn’t even know all you had to do was heat them up with shaking and they wouldn’t work.

  “We conned you left and right and I thought you were just a sort of demented idiot. I underrated you. You’ve got a vicious streak a light-year wide and a twist that ought to put you in an asylum.

  “You must realize that from the first I have never been under your orders. If you recall, a combat engineer of the Fleet operates on his own cognizance. Under the authority of the Grand Council, I have been in charge of this mission from the first.”

  I saw an out. “What if the Grand Council revokes your orders?”

  “They’re in force until I am informed officially they have been revoked.”

  “You and your influence with the Grand Council,” I sneered. “You and your (bleeped) code to Captain Roke!”

  He looked at me. “Ah, so you wer
e the one that ordered my suite raided at the Gracious Palms! You were looking for the platen! Raht didn’t mention it. Well, there is no platen, Gris. The code contains only personal anecdotes that only he and I would know.”

  I kept very quiet. He did not know Captain Tars Roke had been sent to exile on Calabar. Let him dream. If he ever returned to Voltar, he was dead.

  Somehow I must stay alive. My feet were hurting me. “If you want to deliver a prisoner that isn’t dead, you better get me to a doctor. I’m probably coming down with gangrene or lockjaw.”