Mission Earth Volume 1: The Invaders Plan

  Bawtch came stooping out of his office and saw me. “Oh, it’s you!” he said. “Why do you have to keep coming in here and upsetting everything?”

  I tried to point out that I had been missing for three weeks. And he just kept raving on about me always being underfoot!

  Defensively I went back into my office. I looked on the desk, half expecting to see a warrant-for-my-arrest notice. Nothing. Same dust.

  The contractors had finished their work. I went in and checked and sure enough, when you pressed the wall just so, it revolved and there was a ladder to a hatch in the roof. The silent-break glass was innocently in place. The river roiled along five hundred feet below.

  When I came out, Bawtch, a very inconsistent type, had piled some forms on my desk. “As long as you’re here, you can stamp these forms. You never stamped the first contractor and now there are two to stamp. I have a new payroll and the expenses allocation that Twolah and Odur will require. And another shipment came in from Blito-P3 that must be stamped as received in good order. Office expenses have also gone up.” He was shoving me at my desk now. “I can’t understand why it is if you’re always bursting in here why you can’t at least do your work!”

  I began to stamp. I got even with him. I didn’t even read the stuff. Maintain a lofty attitude is always the best way! Puts the riffraff in their place!

  I found out suddenly I was stamping blank forms! That would never do. They have to be written on first! I got brave. “Bawtch, you’re getting soft in the head. You forgot to make these forms out before you brought them in! Old age, Bawtch. Dotage!”

  He snatched the pile away in considerable anger. He stalked out. I could see I had reached him. You have to be very firm with such riffraff. Lombar was right when he had said that there were very few Academy officers about: those of us there were had to really slave to make the Apparatus run as well as it did!

  I got up and walked into the main office. It promptly cleared again of clerks. I was aware suddenly that some people were behind me and to my left. It was Too-Too and Oh Dear. My position had them trapped: they couldn’t leave without running close to me. They were standing there in frozen horror.

  Behind them was a third; it was a training operator from the Apparatus Training Command. And, what do you know, he was sitting at a brand-new master data console!

  How out of place it looked, all bright, shining, new plates and keyboards and glittering screens amongst the dirt and decayed furniture of the outer office.

  And then I grasped the situation. Bawtch had come up. I spoke very severely, “What is this master console doing here?”

  Bawtch, who is silly about some things like keeping security from other parts of the Apparatus, ordered the training operator out and, when he had gone, turned to me. “You stamped the order for it three weeks ago. You are entitled to it with your increase in rank, though why they promoted you, I don’t dare imagine!”

  I knew that wasn’t the reason. That was just his eighty-year-old failure to become an officer talking. “You got this in here so that these two boys could use it!”

  Bawtch blew up. “You brute! You didn’t expect them to get their data from a dirty old Lord, did you?”

  “I certainly did! The kind of data you can get on these machines does not include what Endow knows. They better make up time getting into Endow’s bed or I’ll include any sisters!”

  The two boys had already fallen into each other’s arms. At this last, they went out in a dead faint.

  Bawtch left, spinning chairs out of the way and slamming them to the floor. He banged his door shut. He seemed upset.

  I stepped over the boys and sat down at the console. Well, well. A master console of my own! I threw it out of training mode and into activation. I took out Bawtch’s chief clerk identoplate and was about to insert my own when I changed my mind and left his in. In his agitation he had forgotten it.

  I punched in my own name and designation: actually this takes a moment or two as there are twenty-two thousand, six hundred and eighty-one Soltan Grises in the tens of millions of Voltarian officers of all branches and I didn’t want the wrong one.

  WARRANTS?

  I punched.

  NOT YET

  said the machine.

  PAY STATUS?

  I punched in. The machine promptly pulsated red flashes.

  ALERT, ALERT, ALERT! THROUGH CLERICAL ERROR,THIS OFFICER WAS ADVANCED ONE CREDIT IN EXCESS OF A YEAR’ ADVANCE PAY. ALL FURTHER PAY UNCOLLECTIBLE UNTIL REFUND OCCURS.

  I had thought I would now have three weeks pay I could draw on. But not so! But what luck! I did have one credit and I could send it in. But as I was reaching for it, the machine went on talking.

  WARNING, WARNING,WARNING. IF SAID OFFICER LOSES ANY ONE OF HIS FOUR PAYCHECKS FOR ANY REASON OR SUFFERS DEMOTION OR FINE, COMMUNICATE AT ONCE TO THE FINANCE DEPARTMENT COURTS-MARTIAL UNIT.

  I went cold. What if I did lose Mission Earth?

  The mountains had their game wardens, Government City had its Finance Department. There was no place to hide!

  It was not unknown to me, but the threat of becoming a gutter bum in some slum city, living on garbage, if that, so unnerved me that the five-second warning flash had begun before I realized I had not remedied being broke right now.

  I hastily tapped,

  ITEM EN ROUTE

  and scribbled my name and designations on a scrap of paper and wadded it and the one-credit note into a capsule. I slammed it hastily into the slot and punched,

  FINANCE ADJUSTMENTS

  and off it went with a whoosh.

  Shortly, the screen flashed,

  ADJUSTMENT RECEIVED.

  I hastily punched,

  PAY STATUS?

  and the machine said,

  I AM SORRY BUT IT TAKES TWO MONTHS TO ADJUST PAY ERRORS.

  And before I could even protest, the machine again said,

  WARNING, WARNING, WARNING. IF SAID OFFICER LOSES ANY ONE OF HIS FOUR PAYCHECKS . . .

  I slammed the keys and shut it off. (Bleep) them! I should have paid it with a counterfeit note! That would show them.

  I was so angry and so upset that I forgot I had two fainted bodies behind me and I stumbled on them as I left.

  Outside I took a deep breath to steady myself. The sour smell of the Apparatus sector and the stink of the River Wiel did not compare with the Blike Mountains.

  “Officer Gris,” said Ske, startling me in the shadows of the building.

  “Don’t you think we better go down to the Apparatus hangars while we got some day left?”

  While I had some paychecks left, I thought. I climbed hastily into the airbus. I had to get this mission going even if it killed me, which it probably would.

  PART SEVEN

  Chapter 7

  We hovered in the sky above the Apparatus hangars, waiting for the landing circle to clear. Such was my urgency and determination that I became impatient. It was all very well to hang there in the soft afternoon sunlight, sitting on the gaudy seat of the new airbus, but that didn’t keep me out of gutter hollow! Way, way over to the west I could see Ardaucus, the fancy name they give Slum City. It even looked smudgy and dirty at this distance. Lombar was right: it ought to be annihilated! But not with me in it!

  “What is holding us?” I at length demanded.

  Ske shrugged. “It’s that Fleet freight skyhauler.”

  Alarm shot through me. I had been careful about keeping Heller away from Fleet anything! And sure enough, down there on the landing circle below, a Fleet skyhauler was hovering, bobbing up and down, giving the final adjustments to something huge and brass-colored—a sort of cylinder. It was getting it finally onto a trundle dolly.

  Even as I looked, the Fleet pilot tripped his let-go and the cables began to reel up. Without waiting for this to be completed, the blue freight carrier zipped up into the sky.

  The trundle dolly was moving into the hangar now and my driver plummeted the airbus down to the target area.

&nb
sp; I was actually quite alarmed to see Fleet touching even the fringes of the mission. The thought of the Fleet patrol crew, probably long dead now in Spiteos, and the words of Soams were almost enough to make me withdraw from the area.

  But the computer threat was fresh in my mind. I jumped out and ran up alongside the trundle dolly. It was inside the hangar now. The crane hook was coming down to engage the rings on the cylinder.

  And there was Heller, riding the crane hook over. I drew back a bit.

  Tug One had had some upper hullplates removed. Right in the middle of her back.

  Heller was giving hand motions to the crane master way above. He dropped off onto the top of the brass-colored cylinder and then guided the hook to engage a huge ring. Heller locked the hook blades in place with a gloved hand and, with him signaling, was hauled high in the air, riding the cylinder as it rose.

  I caught a sign on the cylinder. It said:

  HIGHLY DANGEROUS

  HIGHLY EXPLOSIVE

  DO NOT OPEN

  My Gods, I mourned to myself. She isn’t enough of a bomb already?

  The trundle dolly operator was clambering down. His job finished, he was lighting a puffstick.

  “Have any other Fleet units been around here lately?” I asked him.

  “What’s the matter? Haven’t you seen them?” He hadn’t noticed I’d been missing for three weeks.

  “Well, have they?” I insisted.

  “Naw, this is the first in a couple days. There ain’t been anything else, yesterday or today.”

  “What’s been coming?” I persisted.

  “That’s a funny (bleeped) thing,” he said, looking up at the swaying cylinder. “They can’t change a time-converter in flight. Taking an extra one means they must be going to some well-equipped repair base. I was a drive operator once, you know. Before space started giving me the creeps.”

  Heller had guided the huge brass cylinder down through the place that had been opened in the top of the hull.

  “He wouldn’t let anybody else guide it in,” said the trundle dolly operator. “Or maybe they refused to. Those (bleeping) Will-be Was engines! They’re dangerous even in a battleship. That’s what they were designed for, you know, not for no (bleeped) tug. But I wonder what he’s doing with a spare time-converter.”

  Heller was directing the final lowering. He looked like a speck from where I was standing. The huge cylinder was spinning back and forth with him standing on it.

  “I’ll give you some advice,” said the trundle dolly operator. “Don’t never open one of them time-converters up. Believe what it says on the labels. You could lose your hand! I could even give you some better advice. Don’t never go no place in that (bleeped) tug!”

  He was uncomfortable to be around. I walked deeper into the hangar. The day half platoon was lounging about. They didn’t even glance at me. I approached the subofficer.

  “Have a bunch of things been coming in from Fleet?” I asked him.

  He glanced around. “Most of the contractor crews seem to have gone home.”

  That certainly answered no question. “What do the things look like?” I insisted.

  “How does any long box look?” he said irritably.

  “Where are they putting them?” I demanded.

  “In the lower hold, of course. Say,” and he focused on me very sharply, “can’t you see, or something?” It was obvious he had not noticed I had been missing.

  The hook was now rising out of the open gap in the hull, the cylinder seemingly having been gotten into its storage space.

  Heller was riding the hook. It came down like a bomb. He jumped off and it hit the pavement with a crash.

  “Oh, say, Soltan,” he said, for all the world like he was rebeginning a conversation interrupted a half-hour earlier, “like I was telling you, all the cultural notes and observations are missing from all those earlier Blito-P3 surveys. See if you can get hold of them, will you?” And he yelled back up to the high cab, “Very well done and thank you, crane master!” and with a friendly hand wave to him, he trotted over to the tug and went in through the air lock.

  The day’s work was over. People were drifting off. The sun was gone.

  And then here it came, “Hup, yo, hup, yo, hup, yo!” The cadence counting of the Fleet Marines, totally foreign to Apparatus areas. The slamming bootbeats of the marching squad. In they came and gave the day subofficer a salute. Then, “Pohstings! Guardsman Ip, yuoah post is in the ship!”

  And the Countess Krak, in perfect evolution, boot-slammed in through the air lock.

  The rest of the squad gave a jump and cheer and then dispersed. All just as before!

  Snelz wandered over to the old gravity chair and sat down. I approached him.

  He was lighting a puffstick. “Bit of wind on the desert today. Have a puffstick?” he added as an afterthought.

  “I think you owe me more than that,” I said threateningly.

  “Oh?” He felt in his tunic side pocket and pulled out a five-credit note.

  “I thought I gave it to you a couple days ago. Well, here it is.”

  He probably owed me more than that. But realizing he didn’t even know I’d been gone sort of took the heart out of me. I put the five-credit note in my pocket and walked slowly away.

  I had five credits. It made me brave enough to go “home.”

  I mounted the side steps, avoiding the broken boards. I heard somebody walking in the hall. It was dark. As quietly as I could I slid along the wall to my room. I knew my way. I had done it very often. I am a master at silent approach.

  There were no bars on my door. I slid it open. A low glowplate was burning in there and by its light I saw, standing not three feet from me, Meeley.

  She looked like she was going to go through my pockets. I hastily flipped out the five-credit note and handed it over.

  She did not even say thank you. She did not even say I still owed her money for last year. She said, “I wish you would sweep that floor up occasionally! The stench is awful!” And she walked away.

  Later I lay in the broken bed, staring into the dark. I had been gone three weeks. I could have been dead for all they knew. And not once this whole day had anybody said, “Where have you been?”

  PART SEVEN

  Chapter 8

  But if I thought I would continue to be unnoticed and that things would just go on forever in this way, I was very mistaken. I did not have any forecast at all that, today, Heller’s crazy, irresponsible actions would pull the pin and accidentally begin the landslide of events which were to lead us all into catastrophe.

  I awoke, well before dawn, ravenously hungry. I became panic-stricken at the thought of starving and thirsting myself to a point where I would have another Manco Devil’s dream: my poverty had prevented me from eating the entire previous day. I didn’t want to be interviewed again for a job as handler of the King of the underworld.

  Accordingly, I piled out and dressed and, down in the side courtyard, booted my driver awake and bade him fly at once, like mad, dark though it still might be, to my office.

  My hope was to get there before Bawtch and raid the clerks’ supply of hot jolt! It was a cunning plan: I had it all sketched out, complete with the excuse that I had to use the master console. I even embellished the plan with a fancy tale that I had worked like a slave all night, but I didn’t think Bawtch would buy that so I deleted it.

  In the office, I turned on a low light and worked with a ring of magnetic frequency plates, picking the lock of their jolt cupboard. I am very well trained as a lock picker, the tradecraft name for it, and in hardly any time at all I not only had a canister of hot jolt but also a thin, dry, bun crust somebody had abandoned.

  I drank it very quickly, scalding my mouth, and rushed over to the master console, trying not to break my teeth on the bun crust. So far, so good: I had beaten everybody else to the office, I had not been observed. My superb training was standing me in good stead.

  I sat down at the conso
le. In my planning, I had neglected to decide what I was going to ask it. Bawtch had removed his identoplate so I had to use my own. I put it in and the console lit up and then it almost went off again while I tried to think of something to punch into it. It was terribly early to do any thinking, hot jolt or no hot jolt!

  Then I remembered Heller’s remark of yesterday and I quickly punched in,

  BLITO-P3, ALL CULTURAL, ETHNOLOGICAL SURVEY APPENDAGES, ALL SURVEYS PRIOR TO ONE HUNDRED YEARS AGO.

  The screens seemed undecided. Then they blinked and the master said,

  SORREE. THE MATERIAL REQUESTED HAS BEEN DELETED FROM THE DATA BANKS.

  What’s this? I thought. I could understand a delete of recent material but not prior to a hundred years. Heller had specifically requested such material. I had to give him something that would show I was working these days. I punched in,

  CORRECTION: ALL SUCH MATERIAL UP TO TWENTY YEARS AGO.

  The computer said,

  SORREE DELETED.

  It provoked me. One can get pretty cross with computers, especially early in the morning. I got incautious. I punched in,

  CORRECTION: ALL SUCH MATERIAL FROM PRESENT TIME ALL THE WAY BACK.

  The computer said,

  SORREE. COMPARING QUESTION TO THE IDENTOPLATE OF THE INTERROGATOR, YOU KNOW VERY WELL IT ISN’T AVAILABLE. VERY DELETED.

  (Bleep)! That really put me up against it. There was nothing I could show Heller that demonstrated my helpfulness. Aha! I punched in,

  PLEASE GIVE ME COPIES OF THE DELETIONS.

  This sort of caused the screen to fog up. Then it said,

  HOW CAN YOU GIVE A NOTHING TO SHOW A NOTHING IS?

  (Bleep) computers. They are so illogical. Can’t think. I furrowed my own brow. Then I had it.

  PLEASE GIVE ME THE NUMBER AND IDENTITY OF THE PERSON WHO ORDERED THOSE DELETIONS.