As he made no response, I summoned up the brightest voice I could in that horrible place and said, “We had to have the best in Voltar and we have chosen you!”
If this quickened any ambition in him, it was not detectable.
“I think,” he said, “that you had better get me my watch.”
I had no idea why a watch had anything to do with it. I had to get a guard anyway to get the electric cuffs off. So I went to a wall installation and hit the buzzer.
After a while, a wrinkled cripple showed up and looked at me uncertainly. “Remove the electric cuffs from this prisoner,” I ordered. “And bring some food and water. Also, bring back his possessions.”
Muttering that he had to get the circuit combinations, the sorry excuse for a guard limped off.
We waited and after a while the wreck came back with a metal card, a water jug and some filthy-looking meal in a rusty can. I stood back, alert, while the cripple fumbled around with the card and finally removed the wrist and ankle cuffs. He put the food and water down on the filthy floor and limped off.
“Wait,” I said. “Where are the prisoner’s possessions?”
The guard just drew further off, saying in an annoyed whine, “I’m off duty now. You’ll have to buzz for the next guard.”
Heller was sitting up. He was cautiously sipping at the water jug, not taking too much, letting the swelling of his tongue go down. I buzzed again, cross that the first guard wouldn’t even tell the next one the message.
After a lapse of half an hour or more and several buzzes sent, a huge, overbearing Calabarian came into the room. “What’s all the row here?” he demanded angrily. “Buzz, buzz, buzz! Nobody can rest!”
I had backed up, blastick ready. This fellow weighed at least three hundred pounds and his naked torso was a mass of knife scars. He had a face from a nightmare.
“Get this prisoner’s possessions. A sweater, a pair of shoes and a watch.” I turned to Heller and he nodded that that was all.
“And what service are you?” demanded the huge guard. “How do I know who you are? You ain’t wearing no Apparatus uniform!”
“I’ll make it worth your while,” I said, acutely aware of being a mile deep and at the mercy of these thugs.
The monster seemed to nod as though that was what he had been waiting to hear. He disappeared.
Heller diffidently ate a little bit of the food. He washed it down with another swallow of water.
I twitched the Grand Council order in my hand. “This is a great opportunity,” I said coaxingly.
Heller shook his head. “Wait.”
After a long time the big guard came back. He had a new, shallow cut under one eye. He threw the shoes on the floor in front of Heller and slapped the sweater, now very filthy, at Heller’s face. “He wasn’t wearing no watch when he came in,” he said.
I looked at Heller. “You wouldn’t be wearing a watch in a game of bullet ball,” I said.
“A friend was holding it,” said Jettero. “He gave it back when I left the floor. These apes took it.”
“Get his watch,” I told the guard. “No watch, no pay.”
He snarled to himself and went off again.
The water and food were helping. Jettero stood up and I was very alert, gripping the blastick. But he just exercised his limbs a bit. Then he sat down and used a sleeve of the sweater and some of the water to sponge out the shoes: somebody else had been wearing them, they were filthy.
After a long time the huge guard came back. He had a new bruise on the side of his mouth and his knuckles were skinned. But he was holding the watch.
I had never seen a space engineer’s watch before. I took it to make sure it contained no trick weapons: life in the Apparatus makes one suspicious. But it was just a big, round dial with a small hole in its face and a heavy metal band. I handed it over to Jettero. He nodded that this was it and began to put it on.
“The pay,” said the guard.
I took a ten-credit note from my pocket, a pretty big sum for a guard in Spiteos.
The guard looked at it like it had kicked him. “Ten!” he snarled. “I had to pay sixty credits to redeem that watch!”
He made a lunge at Jettero to grab it back.
I snatched at the monster’s shoulder to spin him off course. It flung him backwards and he reared up and tripped on his own feet. He hit the side of the wire cage and went down on his knees.
He was absolutely frothing!
“I’ll murder you!” he screamed, starting to lunge.
I raised the blastick to kill him.
Abruptly, my blastick went spinning!
There was a blur. Heller’s right wrist caught the guard across the throat with a strike that lifted him clean off the floor!
The monster hit the wall with a thud!
He crumpled down like a disjointed doll. He was bleeding from the mouth, out cold.
Jettero picked up the blastick, put its safety catch on and handed it to me. “Never kill a fellow when you don’t have to,” he said quietly.
He inspected the guard. “He’s still alive. Give me seventy credits.” And he held out his hand to me.
Numbly, I fished out sixty more credits and added the ten from the floor. Jettero took them from me. Kneeling by the guard, he tapped the cheeks until the fellow started to come around.
Jettero held the seventy credits in front of the monster. “Here’s your money. Thank you for the watch.” And then it was the cold, not-to-be-disputed voice of a Fleet officer, unmistakable. “Now return to your post and that’s the end of it.”
The guard heard it. He took the money and walked off as quietly as though he had just looked in for a casual call. Indeed, that was the end of it.
“Now let’s look at that alleged document,” said Heller.
PART TWO
Chapter 4
Jettero Heller took the Grand Council order over to the green glowplate. His back was slightly to me and I couldn’t quite see what he was doing. It must have something to do with his watch.
“It seems authentic enough,” he said.
I kept a mild smile on my face but I shuddered inside. It did happen to be authentic but only by comparing it to the listings on the planetary file circuit could one really know. The Apparatus could forge documents like that in minutes. He was absolutely hopeless as a spy.
“But it was issued 4.7 days after I was kidnapped,” he said.
I peered at the document again, over his shoulder. Yes, it was hour dated. No great trick. “We had to know we could get the right special agent before we dared undertake the task,” I lied smoothly.
“Look,” said Heller. “This place is pretty awful. Can’t we go somewhere else to discuss this?”
“As soon as you’ve decided to undertake it,” I said.
“Ah. Do I smell blackmail amongst all these other stinks?”
“No, no,” I said quickly. “It is just that some . . . ah . . . forces don’t want the mission to succeed.” That was no lie. “So I am charged with keeping you safe.” Pretty brilliant of me, I thought. He wasn’t going to be hard to handle. An utter child where espionage was concerned.
“Blito-P3. I just came from there. Surveyed the place.”
“Precisely,” I said, “and with all your other accomplishments that was why you were the exact and only officer for the job.”
“So you kidnapped me.” The wry smile showed he thought the whole thing fishy. “Maybe you better tell me about this so-called mission.”
So I told him, keeping it very simple. He was to go to Earth and infiltrate some technology into their culture and preserve the planet. The way I put it, it sounded quite noble and altruistic. A Fleet officer would never know about Invasion Timetables so I omitted that.
“And you considered the best way to begin this was to stage a kidnapping?” said Heller.
“We had to test you to see if you could stand up to the demands of being an agent,” I reminded him.
“So you got
the order before you knew I had passed.”
(Bleep)! He could think! But so could I at this game. You don’t live a decade around undercover work without learning the tricks. You don’t and stay alive, that is.
“We would have been put to the extreme trouble of finding another volunteer,” I said blandly.
“And the trouble of kidnapping him,” added Heller. Then he put up his hand to stop the interchange. “I’ll tell you what I will do. I am not part of your Division. If you can obtain the usual orders from the Fleet Personnel Officer, I will undertake your mission.”
The specter of Lombar moved a bit away from me. I wanted to laugh with relief. But I said, “Oh, I think we can manage that all right.”
With a sweeping bow and hand flourish, I indicated he could precede me through the door.
I had to sign the prisoner out in the lower guardroom and as we entered, the monster Heller had struck down was sitting with the rest, eating some loathsome stew. I was nervous in this place and when the beast made a sudden movement, I flinched back. And then I saw something astonishing.
The huge guard stood up so swiftly he almost knocked over his food pan. He came to rigid attention and crossed his arms on his chest in the formal military salute!
It was not intended for me. Heller casually lifted his hand in the usual reply and flashed a faint but friendly smile. The beast grinned back!
I had never seen a Spiteos guard salute or smile before. I felt eerie, like one would feel if he saw a wraith actually appear in a woods temple: something you see that you know can’t happen—supernatural. I hurriedly zipped my name across the log plate and got out of there with the prisoner.
In the upper levels of Spiteos there are some rooms set aside for Apparatus officers such as I. Very plain and windowless, they nevertheless have a few comforts including baths. I used mine very seldom but it had the necessary personal things.
Technically speaking, I would be removing him from the prison by taking him to my room but I thought Lombar’s last orders would provide for it.
Just to make sure both the contradictory orders were covered, I parked the prisoner in a niche beside the lift tubes and, out of his hearing, made a call to Camp Endurance. The troops there were actual Apparatus troops. I got hold of an officer and arranged for a platoon and around-the-clock surveillance of my room and surrounding passages. I gave explicit orders they were to appear to be guarding against intrusion upon the prisoner while actually preventing his escape. I used Lombar’s name to drive it home and by delaying our progress upward, they had time to post the area.
We entered the barren room. I opened a drawer and offered Heller a chank-pop—anything to take the stench of the prison away. It even leaked into these rooms. But Heller shook his head.
“What I need is a bath,” he said.
I waved my hand at the wall tub, opened a closet and got out a flimsy sleeping robe. He shed his shoes and pants and I dumped them, with the sweater, into the disposal unit—they were beyond salvage.
As he started the spray going, I had a sudden thought. “You know,” I said, popping a chank-pop under my own nose, “you could have made a run for it when you picked up that blastick. You were armed, I was defenseless. You could have used me as a hostage. . . .”
He laughed. He had a very pleasant, easy laugh. After a bit, scrubbing away, he said, “And fight through electric gates, armed guards, mined shafts and blastgun perimeters? And then fight through Camp Endurance and stumble across two hundred miles of the Great Desert? Utter folly. Foolhardy beyond belief. I’m certain the Apparatus would never permit anyone to leave Spiteos alive!”
I was shocked. He could not possibly know where he was. We had passed no windows, no signs. He had been unconscious when he arrived. He might have even been on another planet. And no one, but no one outside the Apparatus knew Spiteos, that ancient landmark, was in use!
“My Gods, how could you possibly know?”
He laughed again, scrubbing away. “My watch. It runs on twenty-six different time bands as well as Universal Absolute Time.”
That didn’t tell me anything. “And . . . ?” I prompted.
“It gives the time lag between here and Palace City and it gives the direction. There’s only one geophysical feature at that distance from Palace City and that’s Spiteos.” I didn’t laugh. I was getting sad. “Any other way?” I asked.
That really amused him. “This rock. Every wall of the place is ‘in-place’ country rock. Black basalt with a 16° dip and a strike of 214°, Type 13 granularity. Look at it. It’s the remains of a volcanic extrusion that built the mountains beyond the Great Desert. Elementary geology for the planet Voltar. Any schoolboy knows that. I knew where I was when I came to. The watch just confirmed it.”
Well, I was one schoolboy that didn’t know it. “Strike” was the compass direction. He must have intuitive compass sense. “Dip” is easy: that’s the angle into the ground. But to be able to classify rock by its visual granular structure—and without a complex analyzer—meant he had eyes like a microscope and in the comparative dark of that cell! And he must have a memory like a library!
But that wasn’t what was making me sad. Here he was, for all he knew, in the hands of enemies just using him, and he was letting me know that he knew where he was. And he was exposing vital abilities which, had they stayed hidden, might have lulled me into a false sense of security. Now I could take precautions against these things. For a spy, all that is not just dumb, it is stupid beyond belief. Using what he had just incautiously revealed, I could lock him up forever and he’d never know where he was!
He’d never make a special agent. Not in a million, million years. I was not going to have trouble making him fail. I was going to have trouble keeping him afloat long enough not to drag me down. Spying takes an instinct. Oh my, he didn’t have it! This wasn’t going to be a failed mission. This was going to be a total catastrophe!
“Make yourself at home,” I said. “I’m going to Government City to get your orders.”
PART TWO
Chapter 5
I am sure you have noticed that the first impression a visitor gets of the Fleet Administration Complex in Government City is that he has just encountered an actual fleet in outer space. When somebody said “buildings,” their architects must have thought “ships.” It is most annoying: there they are, spotted around ten square miles of otherwise barren land, like ten thousand huge silver ships. They’re even in formation! They say the officers and clerks even wear spaceboots! And not a shrub or tree to be seen anywhere!
When I have to fly there, I always feel like I’m an invader having to be repelled. Marines, Marines, Marines, gates, gates, gates, all built like atmosphere ports. Passes, passes, passes. It just occurred to me that maybe I don’t like the place because they always look at my identification plates, see I’m from the Apparatus and sneer. But after two hours I finally got where I was trying to go.
The Fleet Personnel Officer was sitting in a cubicle for all the world like a storeroom on a battleship. The walls were solid, deck to overhead, with machines and screens, dazzling with their flashing, multicolored lights. You’d think he was fighting a battle—and maybe he was, with four million Fleet officers to shift around.
He was probably a nice enough fellow: a bit old, a bit fat. He looked up as though to greet me cheerfully but he didn’t. He frowned a trifle instead. There was just a trace of wondering disapproval in his voice. “You’re from the drunks?”
Now, nobody had announced me as anything but “An officer from Exterior Division,” and I was wearing the noncommittal gray uniform of General Services, not even a pocket patch. I involuntarily looked down at myself. How could he tell? I saw no grease spots, no food stains, no old blood. But I also saw no style, no flair. No pride! Shabby!
I had had it all rehearsed but his remark disconcerted me. “I want transfer orders for Combat Engineer Jettero Heller,” I blurted out. No gradual briefing, no persuasion.
&nb
sp; The Fleet Personnel Officer frowned heavily. “Jettero Heller?” Then he repeated the name to himself. He had buttons and flashing lights all over the place but here he was depending on memory. “Oh, Jet!” He had it now. “The Royal Academy driving champion a few years ago. And wasn’t he later a runner-up for interplanetary bullet ball? Yes. Ah, yes, Jettero Heller. Great athlete.”
All this was very promising for he seemed to have mellowed. I was just opening my mouth to push my request again when he suddenly frowned.
“You’ll have to get clearance from the Admiralty of Combat Engineers. That’s Course Ninety-nine. Just outside that door, you turn . . .”
“Please,” I said. I had already been to that admiralty and they had sent me here. Desperately, I dived into my paper case and snapped out the Grand Council order. “This supersedes all clearances. Please transfer him to the Exterior Division.”
He looked the order all over though I’m sure he had seen hundreds of them before. He peered at me very suspiciously. Then he slapped his palm down on an array of switches, one after the other; he dithered around with his button console, transferring the Grand Council order number into his information network. Then he sat looking at a screen I couldn’t see. He frowned heavily. I half expected some Marines to suddenly rush in and arrest me.
With total finality he slapped his board shut. “No, can’t possibly do it.”
Lombar’s shadow loomed closer. “What’s the matter?” I quavered. “Has the Grand Council order been canceled?”
“No, no, no,” he said impatiently. “The order is in the data bank, all authentic—though I must say, you never can tell when you’re dealing with the drunks.” He dismissed all that and sat there frowning. Finally he tossed the Grand Council order back at me. “It’s just impossible, that’s all.”
Bureaucracy! Actually, I sighed with relief. When one is a member of the Apparatus, real trouble is always a close companion. But bureaucracy is trouble everybody has. It’s a system evolved so that nobody in it is ever responsible for anything. “Why can’t it be done?”