Mission Earth Volume 1: The Invaders Plan

  Three big Apparatus guards, apparently sent from Spiteos for the purpose, were pushing and hauling at a debarking passenger—captive is the better word.

  There was nothing unusual in this and I was stepping aside to let them brawl their way down the ladder when my alert ear caught what the captive was saying.

  “Take your god (bleeped) hands off my god (bleeped) neck and get these god (bleeped) cuffs off my god (bleeped) wrists!” It was in English! Not Turkish or Arabic. But English!

  The individual was a bit of a mess, very disheveled and much the worse for wear from his voyage. He was squat, very muscular. He had black hair and black eyes and a swarthy complexion. He had on the remains of a tailored suit and a blue shirt with black stripes. But that wasn’t the oddity. He was in metal, not electric cuffs and he had no ankle shackles. Further, he was not comatose, but awake and talking and tough! All very irregular.

  As they reached the bottom I said to the leading guard that had him, “I am Officer Gris. This is all very irregular. Where are your orders?” I sounded very official. You have to be with these Camp Endurance riffraff.

  The leading guard was thumbing through his papers. There was apparently more than one captive. He found it. “It says he is to be brought in straight up and taken directly to top interrogation.” The use of “straight up” means minimal duress and awake. Dangerous practice.

  “Who signed those orders?” I demanded.

  The leading guard looked at the sheet and then at me. “Why you did, Officer Gris.”

  Oh well, just one of thousands of orders one has to stamp. I looked at the directive. It was from one of Lombar’s personal clerks, the one that handles interrogation personnel. I went a little bit chilled. I hope they had the right man here. Lombar hated slip-ups. I read the name.

  I turned to the captive. “Is your name Gunsalmo Silva?” I said in English.

  “American?” he said. “God (bleep) it, do you talk American? Where is this (bleeping) place? What the god (bleeped) Hell is this? What the Jesus H. Christ am I doing in a barn full of flying saucers?”

  “Please,” I said patiently. “Is your name Gunsalmo Silva?”

  “Look, I demand you call the god (bleeped) United States Consul! Right now, do you hear? I know my god (bleeped) rights! You get the United States Consul down here, buster, before I decide to really put your (bleeps) in the fire!”

  He obviously wouldn’t answer. I gestured to the guard to take him to the waiting covered van. He hadn’t denied he was Gunsalmo Silva.

  As they pushed him into the van, he was shouting back at me, “I’m gonna write my congressman about this!”

  Well, good luck, I thought. Trying to buy United States postage stamps in the interrogation rooms of Spiteos would be a bit difficult.

  There didn’t seem to be any more captives coming out so I bounced up the internal ladders to the captain’s salon. And there I found Bolz. He was a big man, a grizzled old spacer, the hardness of a hundred years of bouncing off stars. He was uncoiling after his landing. He had his tunic off. Hairy, hairy chest. Probably from Binton Planet, from the way his shoulders hunched and his mouth drooped.

  He saw me and waved to a gimbal chair. “Sit down, Officer Gris.” I had met Bolz before a time or two. I was glad it was him. “I’m just going to have myself a spot before I waddle over groundside. Care to join me?”

  He was fishing a bottle out of the table rack near him. I knew what it would be. It was “Johnny Walker Black Label.” Earth whiskey! I don’t know why the captains on this run do it. Blows your head off! I took about three drops of it in a canister, not to drink it, but to be friendly.

  Bolz chattered on a bit about his run. The usual stuff. Almost hit a cloud of space debris; bigger electric storm than usual passing this star or that; blew a converter on a main drive; two of the crew in the brig for stealing stores—you know, banal.

  And then, my, was my luck holding! I saw the reason for all his friendliness. He made sure no one was at the door and leaned over, whiskey fumes rising, to whisper, “Gris, I got twenty cases of Scotch in my locker. I need a pass to get them through the guards and over to a friend in Joy City. Do you suppose . . . ?”

  I laughed with delight. I made a beckoning motion with my fingers and he handed me the blank. I put my identoplate on it. I had thought all this was going to cost me money!

  He beamed. He could get fifty credits a bottle. Then he looked at me speculatively. “It just so happens I bought a black girl this trip. There’s high demand in the brothels. You don’t mind if I add her to this pass?”

  Better and better. “Go ahead,” I said.

  He made a money motion with his fingers. “And how much?”

  I really laughed. “Bolz, we’re old friends. The price is nothing. I don’t even have anything illegal to go back to Blito-P3.”

  “I owe you a favor, then,” he said.

  “As you will,” I said. “But do you mind if I get on with the ship business?”

  Between the whiskey and his coming profit, Bolz was really relaxed. “At your orders, Officer Gris.”

  “When do you head back?”

  “Maybe a ten-day turnaround. I got to replace a converter. Make it maybe ten days. After all, they’re your orders, Officer Gris.”

  “Well, ten days will be just fine. But there are certain items you must have aboard before your shoot-away. The first is a young man named Twolah.”

  Bolz was scribbling with a huge hand. “Probably get spacesick.”

  “He’s a courier carrying confidential material. He’ll be on the run quite often. Now Twolah is sort of . . . well, man crazy. You are not to let him talk to anyone or the crew or another passenger. And don’t let him get sexually involved with the crew.”

  “Got it. Locked cabin. Locked butt.”

  “The other is a scientist. He holds some scientific secrets. He is on a secret mission. Do not put him down on your manifest. He is not to talk with anyone.”

  “Got it. Locked cabin, empty. Locked mouth.”

  “Now there are three freight consignments.”

  “Hey, now,” said Bolz. “That’s good. You know we never carry nothing back to Blito-P3 but some food and a few spare parts. So! Real freight! That’s good. Makes the ship run better. You know, Officer Gris, we carry too little cargo.”

  “I’m glad you approve. Now, there’s a big lot coming from Zanco Cellological Equipment and Supplies. Physical health sort of thing to set up a base hospital.”

  “Hey, things are looking up. Maybe somebody can treat that venereal disease that’s poking around down there. I got two crew limping with it right now! The dumb (bleepards).”

  “Then a bit later, there’ll be a second, smaller lot coming in from the same firm but it’s being held for inspection. It will have some very sensitive stuff in it so don’t let it get knocked around.”

  “Knocked around,” said Bolz, writing busily.

  “Now, do you have a lead-sealed storeroom, that can take radioactive material in boxes?”

  “Yeah, we got one. They won’t blow up, will they?”

  “Not unless they’re opened,” I said. “But they’re so sensitive that I brought them down myself. Could you have an officer stow them in it right now? And lock it?”

  Well, he could do that if he hurried before they all hit groundside for a spree. He pushed buzzers and, with Ske’s help, soon had nine “radioactive” boxes in the vault. I turned the key in the lock and put it in my pocket.

  Bolz accompanied me back to the exit air lock. “Hey, how we going to unload it if you got the key?”

  I grinned at him. I was really floating. “I’ll be there to meet you when you land on Earth, Captain. I’m going to run this show from Blito-P3!”

  He swatted me on the back and almost knocked my breath out. “Great news! Then you can stamp passes for here right when I load there! So I’ll see you on the target!”

  “With a bottle of Scotch in my hand just for you,” I said.
r />   “Wait,” he paused, puzzled. “How you going to get there before I do? Old Blixo is no sprinter but there ain’t anything else leaving before I do.”

  We could see Tug One through the gaps in other craft. She only stood out because contractor crews were boiling over her.

  He peered. “I don’t recognize her. What is she? Looks like a Fleet . . . oh, my Gods, is that one of the Will-be Was engined tugs? Hey, Officer Gris, do you know one of them things blew up? I thought they’d retired all light-craft Will-be Was stuff from service. Oh, now, Officer Gris, I don’t know if you’ll be there to meet me or not.” And he made an explosion motion with his two hands.

  It was not too happy a thought to part on. But with promises to be careful and good wishes for his own next voyage, I went down the ladder.

  I had an awful lot to do. In fact, on today’s schedule there remained the dangerous part of my planning. The real make or break. My mind was full of the problem of how to get the secret bugs for Heller.

  As I flew away, Bolz was still standing there, shaking his head.

  PART TEN

  Chapter 3

  We flew up to ten thousand feet. My driver was pretending he had strained his back and scratched his hands. I had headed him for Joy City. I was trying to put makeup on and he kept taking his hands off the wheelstick and trying to suck the blood out of the cuts the sharp-edged boxes had made. I got some powder in my eye and cursed him.

  “Hover!” I demanded. And added a couple violent adjectives.

  So he hovered. I was able to complete my face. With a bit of yellow liquid, dulled by pale yellow powder, I was able to duplicate the skin tone of a Flisten race’s upper class. With a skin stricture on each temple, I down-slanted my eye corners. With black-looking color shifters, the eyes became quite sinister. I was very pleased. I snapped a close-cut, black wig on and blackened the hair on either side of my face. Wonderful!

  I scrambled and grunted myself out of my General Services uniform and into the custard of Army Intelligence. I dropped the high-rank chain over my head, put on the spike-heeled yellow boots and the flat cap. I put my own wallet and the identoplate of Timp Snahp in my pocket.

  I admired myself in the mirror. What a snappy, handsome aristocrat! Timp Snahp, Grade Thirteen, Demon ace of Flisten’s Army Intelligence! How the girls must go for him! How the Army criminal element must tremble, the enemy shake under that sinister gaze!

  “You going someplace to get shot?” said my driver hopefully.

  “Joy City,” I said. “The very best bars. North end.”

  “The Army officers hang out at the Dirt Club this time of day,” said my driver. “That’s in the south end.”

  I ignored him. He was too willful to be associated with. I was busy packing the civilian suit in a little kit bag and arming myself. Besides, he was right.

  We landed a block away from the Dirt Club. “You,” I said, “can now go someplace and spend your wealth; I won’t need you until dawn tomorrow.”

  “Wealth!” he sneered. “I really owe that ten credits to Officer Heller!”

  It didn’t work. I sternly ordered him to buzz away. It was a relief to be free of his company.

  I checked my weapons. I had a bladegun in my holster. Although it looks like a military issue, it isn’t. It shoots flat metal triangles that practically carve a body to bits. It was a souvenir of my early days in the Apparatus, recovered from a corpse. I had two 800-kilovolt blasticks but I didn’t want to use those: they sound like a war going off. I had my Knife Section knife back of my collar. Silence was the watchword today!

  Cheerfully, I wended my way through the clutter of yesteryear’s parties and down the block. In the distance loomed the Dirt Club. Actually that is not its name. It is the Ground Forces Play Club. It isn’t run by the Army at all because the Army Division high ranks could never condone what goes on there: they themselves do it, but they could never officially admit it.

  It is about fifteen stories high and covers about twenty acres, all under one roof. Across the front of it two blastcannons perpetually fire flame at each other and a naked girl in a general’s hat lies on the top of the flame parabola, quite relaxed. The Army is silly.

  I went in, hoping I looked furtive enough for the part of an Army Intelligence officer. I never knew why they put this branch of service in custard; the rest of the Army wears chocolate.

  The outer lobby is respectable enough. The first two rooms are just dining bars. It’s when you get to the third bar that you know you should never bring your sister here. Halfway to the ceiling there are glass runways and girls parade on them. They don’t dance. They even wear a trifle here and there. But they are females who have no appointment in the beds upstairs for the moment and they just stroll along waiting for some customer to pick up a beam-marker light and pot one of them. Then they go upstairs with the marksman and he does some more marksmanship.

  The fifth room is like the girl’s parade except it is animals doing the parading. They get potted and taken upstairs the same way. The Army, being so much in the field and away from home, can develop peculiar tastes.

  Wandering along, looking carefully careless, I had my eye open for a certain badge and, hopefully, a rank that was the same as I was wearing or less. So far I wasn’t having any luck. It was early afternoon and the place was by no means crowded. The scattering of badges and ranks were mostly chatting and casually drinking.

  I got through the gambling section and into the hypergambling section. It was too early in the day for the girls to be on the wheels. They put them vertically and spread-eagled on these turning discs and around they go while a gambler throws simulated hand grenades at them—made of fabric. If one gets a grenade to contact with one of her breasts, it “explodes,” the girl lights up at all points and center and a shower of tokens seems to fly out of her (bleep). At least, that’s what they say will happen. The girl can always control the wheel and move her breasts and I’ve played one for hours without ever a single payoff.

  I was beginning to get worried. I had gone through sixteen rooms without spotting the branch of service badge I was looking for. Maybe Supply officers were too smart to come in places like this!

  I got clear back to the Bunker Room. It is where they dump crocked officers really. It is decorated to simulate a steel-field bunker. It even has a field communication dummy layout that really serves tup. The tables in the booths all around are made to look like field desks. It is dim as Hells. I was almost ready to walk through to the Field Hospital Room—where they serve blood cocktails and the waitresses are dressed like half-naked field nurses—and had even put my foot through the arch when a sixth sense told me to look in the far corner of the Bunker Room.

  I did! And there was the badge! The grasping fist of Supply!

  He was sort of slopped over the “desk” and a drink was spilled and he seemed to be asleep.

  I did a stealthy approach so as not to wake him up. The chocolate tunic was twisted about and I couldn’t see the rank locket. I had to touch him to get a look. Aha, a Grade Twelve! The equivalent of a commander of ten thousand. But, of course, Supply commands no troops.

  I needn’t have been so stealthy! He was snoring drunk! I was about to go through his pockets when one of the waitresses—in the Bunker Room they dress like male dispatch riders without the pants—came over to find out what I wanted. I ordered plain sparklewater for myself. “And bring an oversize canister of double-strength jolt for my friend here,” I said.

  “It’s time a friend showed up,” said the girl. “He’s been there since early this morning. You people don’t look after your friends very well.”

  She went off, a little huffish.

  I completed my frisking. His identoplate said that he was Colonel Rajabah Stinkins of the Voltar Raiders, Section of Supply. Excellent. He would know nothing of Flisten. His complexion was white as mountain snow.

  He was a very beefy man, much given to lard. He seemed to just snore on and on. So I really frisked
him. I found some just issued divorce papers and the photos of five children. So that’s what the binge was all about. One can figure these things out, particularly with my skill at Earth psychology. He was drowning his sorrows.

  The girl brought the order and I stamped the check with his identoplate. She frowned slightly until I tossed one of his five-credit notes on her tray. “It’s his binge,” I said, “so he can pay for the sober-up. We were in school together. He always was a drunk.”

  “Who wash alwash a drunk?” he said. He had awakened. “Thash libelous! I wash ne’er drunk in my life!”

  The girl thought it was a good joke. And she swished pantslessly away.

  I got the hot jolt down him. “Colonel, you’ve got to sober up. It is not manly to fall and sway before the misfortunes of life! They happen. One cannot . . .”

  “Who’s had misfortunsh?” he said.

  “Well, you have. Drowning your sorrows . . .”

  “Whoosh drowning their sorrows? I shelebrating! I jush got rid of the (bleeping) old hag and her five awful brats. I been shelebrating for two days, wheeeee!”

  Oh, well, one is not always correct in one’s diagnosis. Whatever the cause, I had to get this colonel of Supply in operating condition. It didn’t have to be very good operating condition. He would be dead before the night was out.

  And so I set to work with Earth psychology, hot jolt and sobering pills to make my prey ready for the slaughter. My luck was still holding.

  PART TEN

  Chapter 4

  Only the end objective would ever have persuaded me to work as hard as I had to work to sober up this drunken colonel. But Heller had to be bugged and bugged in such a way that neither he nor anyone else would ever suspect it, and bugged on a line that no one else could enter. But sweating over that colonel the way I had to was beginning to make me wonder if it was worth it. Four hours had gone by!

  The colonel eventually had the same idea. I was pressing a cold cloth to his forehead while holding him on the seat and trying to get another sober pill into him. “Why are you doing this?” he wanted to know.