Disaster

  “That would be a blessing,” said Heller. “But what’s the matter?”

  “My feet. They got infected and have had no care. I’ll probably die on you unless you get me to the Earth base.”

  He sighed. You weren’t supposed to kill prisoners on their way to a trial. You were supposed to deliver them alive.

  For a fleeting moment I thought he would take the tug to Turkey, for he was standing up.

  He lifted the cat off my chest. He began to unwind the ties that held me to the star-pilot seat.

  He stood back. “Strip,” he said.

  For a wild moment I wondered if I should take a chance. There was no gun in his hand. Maybe if I lunged . . .

  Just in time I realized he was laying a trap. He wanted an excuse to shoot me.

  Shaking, I began to get out of my clothes.

  “Phew!” he said. “Blazes, Gris, don’t you ever bathe? The air was starting to clean up after the Antimancos, and now smell it.”

  “It smells all right to me,” I said defensively.

  “It would to a ‘drunk,’” said Heller. “Look at that.”

  The cat was sneezing!

  Heller eyed me with contempt. “Now, pick up those clothes, all of them, and dump them in that disintegrator. No, not your wallet, idiot.”

  Weakly, I surrendered it. He might find that Squeeza credit card, and that would lead him to discover that I had first kidnapped and then killed the Countess Krak. I felt quite ill.

  I threw my ski suit in the disintegrator and followed it with my other clothes. I was naked except for the bandages on my feet.

  He wasn’t even pointing a gun at me. He herded me into the crew’s shower and made me bathe, even wash my hair.

  That done, he made me limp into the small crew first-aid room and lie down on the table. He yanked straps tight across my throat and hips and knees.

  He got out a pair of cutters and I was afraid he was going to torture me. But he was only cutting the bandages off my feet.

  “That’s pretty bad,” he said. “Festered. Whatever were you walking in?”

  “Goat dung,” I said.

  He put on a pair of surgical gloves. It was obvious to me now that torture would begin.

  He was holding up one foot and looking at the sole.

  He said, “Watch him, cat,” and went out. I heard him rummaging in a toolbox. I knew he was getting pincers to pull out my toenails and fingernails one by one and make me talk.

  He came back in. He had a couple of small portable instruments. One had a label on it: Metal Analyzer. It had a light. He clicked it on and passed it over the suppurating sole of my foot. He looked at its dial.

  “That must have been a very funny goat,” he said. “It apparently fed on a diet of copper.”

  “What?” I said.

  “The soles of your feet are full of little tiny slivers of copper. Small as powder, but slivers all the same. Copper is a deadly poison.”

  A shock went through me. “Prahd! He must have dusted it on the gauze bandages the first day!”

  “Prahd Bittlestiffender?” said Heller. “The young cellologist back on Voltar? The one who must have put the bugs in my eye and ear?”

  I must watch what I said. I shut my mouth tightly. And then I began to seethe with rage. Prahd had thought it would drive me back and beg to get treated and, under blackmail of making me pay the kaffarah to the violated wives and other things, he would remove the poison barbs, after I had paid.

  Heller was working with the other device he had brought. “No, it didn’t happen that far back,” he said. “This is very recent.”

  I had a sudden idea. One that might work. “Prahd is at the Earth base. We could fly in and get him to remove those bugs from your head. We could start right now.”

  He wasn’t answering. He was adjusting a dial. It said Paramagnetic, Diamagnetic, Ferromagnetic, on its switches.

  “You’re lucky,” he said. “This copper is alloyed with iron. I think I can get them out.”

  He was passing the device over the soles of my feet and ankles, very slowly. He looked at it from time to time. The plate on it was getting covered with a reddish metallic fuzz. He wiped the plate off with a cloth and kept at it.

  “Prahd must really have it in for you,” he said. “But there’s no mystery in that. But if he’d pull a trick like that, the only way I’d let him touch me again would be if somebody was holding a gun on him.”

  He made several more passes. He got no further splinters. He opened a cabinet and got out a neutralizing solution and, using a paintbrush, painted my feet and ankles. Then he got some hull putty, sterilized it with a light and kneaded cell-growth cream into it. He put it on my feet so that I had a sort of cast on each one.

  Then I suddenly realized his motive in all this: he was making my feet so heavy I would fall faster when he threw me out of the airlock. I recoiled into myself.

  He was picking up the first device. “Now let’s see if you got any on your hands or anyplace else.”

  He turned it on. He moved it toward my upper body. I froze in horror. If that detector had certain wavelengths it would show up the tattoo on my chest. That imprint under the right kind of light would make my breast read ROCKECENTER FAMILY SPI!*

  ________

  * This is the correct spelling. See “Spi” in the Key.—Translator

  According to regulations, when a spy was caught red-handed, he could be executed by any officer. All Heller had to do was see that thing and I wouldn’t go to trial. He would be totally within his rights to just shoot me!

  I watched the light in horror. He was playing it over my fingers. He found a few splinters and, with the other device, removed them.

  My pupils dilated with terror as I watched the onward sweep of that light. He was examining the skin on my stomach.

  I silently mouthed a prayer. I tried several Gods and even Jesus Christ. I was inches from death.

  The light swept higher.

  It played upon my chest.

  I closed my eyes tightly. Probably the last thing I would know would be a bullet crashing through my brain.

  He had found something on my chest!

  I opened one eye. He was reaching for something. I knew it would be his gun.

  I looked down.

  The light was playing squarely on the spot of the tattoo!

  It wasn’t glowing.

  The light he was using was not the right kind!

  I had won my reprieve!

  I wondered which God had granted it.

  He was picking up a splinter with the other device.

  He went to a cabinet and took out a disposable spacer’s fatigue suit and threw it at me.

  Devils, but that had been a close call! My heart just now resumed beating.

  He undid the straps. I wrestled into the suit and stood up. He was motioning for me to go back to the flight area. And I discovered then what he had been up to: each foot, with that putty now hardened, must have weighed thirty pounds! I could scarcely make my way.

  He made me sit in the star-pilot chair. He had a pair of wrist shackles now. He fastened them around and through the arms of the seat and then put them on me.

  A sudden unreasoning anger took hold of me. How dare he treat me this way? I was his superior officer. I could wriggle out of any charge he brought against me. After all, Lombar Hisst now controlled the whole Voltar Confederacy!

  I had to solve the predicament I was in. He didn’t know he was dealing with the next Chief of the Apparatus!

  “You can’t do this to me,” I flared. “I’ve only done my duty.”

  He looked at me and for the first time I saw real scorn. “Duty? You don’t know the meaning of the word, Gris. You think that indulging your own greed and self-aggrandizement comprises duty? Don’t sully the word by saying it. Duty has to do with meeting one’s moral obligations. I don’t see the slightest trace of morality in you. Get one thing straight: You’re only sitting there so the cat and I can keep an e
ye on you. I can put you in suspension with one shot from the medical chest. Would you rather have that?”

  I shook my head. But I still seethed. One way or the other, I would get the better of him yet!

  PART SIXTY-TWO

  Chapter 6

  Heller was fiddling with some connection terminals in the overhead. He had a small wire from the viewer-phone leading up to some clips and he was shifting it from one clip to the next, looking back at the unit whose mate he had given to Izzy.

  “Come on, Izzy,” he said somewhat impatiently. “I don’t think there’s anything wrong with these exterior beam antennas, but I better check.”

  He went to the area where he’d emptied out some items and came back with a portable Earth TV set. He hooked up a wire from it to the overhead clips and turned it on. It was an evening talk show. Senator Twiddle was being interviewed.

  “So you see, the increase in the price of gasoline,” said Senator Twiddle, “is a very good thing for the American economy. It encourages sitting home and watching TV and so will restore American family life.”

  “I understand,” said the interviewer, “that Octopus Oil is raising its price at the pump again. How will this benefit people, Senator?”

  “Make them more industrious,” said Twiddle. “They will have to work overtime to afford enough gas to get them to work. Sloth is the enemy of the American Dre—”

  Heller had turned it off. “Hm. The antenna is all right even if the message isn’t.” He transferred the lead from the viewer-phone to another exterior antenna clip.

  And there was Izzy! “Oh, dear, I hope I haven’t broken this thing.”

  The cat jumped up on the ledge and studied the screen alertly. Izzy’s horn-rimmed glasses had slid down on his beaked nose.

  “Meow,” said the cat.

  “Oh, dear, yes,” said Izzy, “I have broken it. Now I’m connected to the cat. Mr. Hopjoy, are you sure Mr. Jet told you the right buttons to push? First we got an abstract painting done with wires and now we’ve got the cat.”

  He was talking to agent Raht, whose face was visible over his shoulder. “No, he said that button there, Mr. Epstein.”

  Heller sat down in the local-pilot seat. “Hello, Izzy.”

  “Oh, thank heavens. It’s Mr. Jet. I’m afraid I’m having a lot of trouble with this new invention of yours. It seems it can call anybody but you.”

  “It needs more developmental work,” said Heller. “Listen, Izzy, I couldn’t talk to you very openly from the plane. I had to have a better means of communication.”

  “Well, I am awfully glad you called, Mr. Jet. Mr. Hopjoy here delivered about seven million dollars’ worth of gold. It’s very odd gold: it doesn’t have the smelter proofings stamped on it.”

  “Throw it in a vault,” said Heller. “Use it if you need to.”

  “Where are you, Mr. Jet?”

  “I’m just flying around,” said Heller. “Izzy, did our Wonderful Oil for Maysabongo, Incorporated, acquire options to purchase all the oil reserves of the United States?”

  “Oh, yes,” said Izzy. “Every oil company granted them very easily. We even got options signed on all the Army, Navy and Air Force oil reserves from the Secretary of Defense. They all made the final deal very quickly: it gave them extra money and they had no idea anyone would ever exercise such options. They thought the Republic of Maysabongo must have gone crazy. Nobody could afford that much money. Yes, Mr. Jet. We have tied up in options to buy every drop of oil stored in the United States. All we have to do is exercise the options and Maysabongo owns every smear of it.”

  “Very well done,” said Heller. “Now listen, Izzy. Get your ballpoint ready. I want you to acquire options to sell every share of stock of every oil company in the world.”

  “WHAT?”

  “Don’t you think you can get them?”

  Izzy looked dazed. “Oh, we can buy the options to sell all right. Any big brokerage firm can write them and the Securities and Exchange Commission will enforce that they be honored. But you’re talking about an awful lot of oil company shares, Mr. Jet.”

  “Figure it out.”

  Izzy grabbed some reference books and began to look up things and write:

  Octopus current shares: 30.7 billion

  Octopus Oil of Indiana: 19.6 billion

  Octopus of California: 15.4 billion

  Immobil Oil: 14.7 billion

  Atlantic Bitchfield: 13.7 billion

  Octopus Oil of Ohio: 13.7 billion

  Smell Oil: 13.6 billion

  British Crude: 13.5 billion

  Foil Dutch: 11.8 billion

  Hexaco: 10.5 billion

  Gulp: 7.2 billion

  Fillups: 7.0 billion

  Disunion Oil of California: 6.6 billion

  Bumoco: 6.4 billion

  Betty: 5.9 billion

  He continued to write down figures and then looked up. “Adds up to 190.3 billion dollars. That’s a lot of money, Mr. Jet.”

  “How much will options to sell it cost?”

  “Oh, just a tiny fraction of that. But if these shares go up, we’ll just have thrown our money away.”

  “If they all went down ten dollars a share, what then?”

  “If the options got exercised, we’d make about nineteen billion dollars.”

  “Those shares are going to drop more than that,” said Heller. “Can you do the deal?”

  “Oh, yes. I can buy July options to sell. If we don’t exercise them before that time, they just expire. That’s only a few weeks away from now. How do you know all the oil shares of every company in the world will go down, Mr. Jet?”

  “I guarantee it,” said Heller. “Now, listen, you let me know when you’ve got all that in hand. Meanwhile I have a project. Good luck, Izzy.”

  “Good luck, Mr. Jet.”

  Oh, Gods, what was I looking at? What had I just heard? This was a direct attack to ruin poor Mr. Rockecenter! Oh, Gods of Gods, was I in trouble!

  I hadn’t the least idea what Heller was going to do. Bomb the oil nerve center of the world, Rockecenter Plaza?

  PART SIXTY-TWO

  Chapter 7

  Heller disappeared into his quarters for a while. The cat watched me carefully. We didn’t see eye to eye. I couldn’t stand to look into those baleful orbs. Did the cat know I had killed the Countess Krak? It certainly was just waiting its chance to murder me.

  When Heller came back he was dressed in the fatigue uniform of the Voltar Fleet: powder blue and formfitting—his name, Jettero Heller, Combat Engineer, above his left breast pocket. I could see that suppressed grief had put him under strain but he was somehow carrying on. I felt that he was very dangerous to me. He was very far from his usual smiling self. He was all business, an officer going to work.

  He unlocked my wrist cuffs and then chained me round and round to a pipe behind the seats. “I’ve no place to sit down,” I said. “Is this any way to treat a prisoner?”

  “Would you like to go back to New York?” he said, pointing straight down. “Just say the word and I’ll open the airlock for you.”

  I didn’t have any more to say to that.

  He closed the viewports, dropping their metal shields. Then he went through the ship, closing doors by speaking to them, and I could hear the clangs and grates of more metal plates shutting down.

  Fear began to rise in me. Pilots closed ports against radiation belts. Was he going to depart from the planet itself? That would attract the assassin pilots!

  He came back to the star-pilot chair and threw a lever. I knew what that one was: it turned the whole ship silver on the outside to repel ray bombardment.

  He went back aft and returned with the other time-sight. He fitted it into place in the crutch and tube in front of the star-pilot seat. HE WAS GOING TO LEAVE THE PLANET!

  “Whoa!” I said, feeling the sweat break out on my forehead. “The instant the assassin pilots see you turn silver they’ll be on to you like hawks.”

  “Oh, them,” h
e said.

  And then I knew what I was up against. He really didn’t care anymore. He had turned suicidal!

  I felt small screams struggling to rise in my throat. One shot from one of those flying cannons and this tug would smash like a stamped-on tin can!

  He looked at his screens. “I don’t see any sign of them and the warning light is broken. If you’re so worried about ‘drunk’ ships, keep your eye on that viewer there. I have other things to do.”