“This is Tim Tompkins, O Venerated One. He is in my class at school. He gave me some information today that helped me understand why things have gone so badly for me so far.”
Quickly we filled the Venerated One in on what had happened since my arrival.
“Something is definitely skigpoo in Gulzeemia,” he said when we were finished.
“But I still don’t understand why someone would do this to me,” I said.
“Don’t whine!” he snapped. “Never whine. Think instead. The reasons are obvious if you follow the money.”
“The money?” asked Tim, sounding puzzled. “What money?”
“Meenom is here on a trade mission. He gets only a tiny percentage of whatever trade develops, but as Founding Trader, he will get it on everything going between this planet and others. If Earth turns out to be a good trade center, his profits could be stupendous. Unless…”
“Unless what?” I cried.
“Unless he is removed from the mission—in which case whoever develops the trade instead will receive that money.”
“But we don’t know if we’re going to be able to find anything tradeworthy,” I said.
“Think!” repeated the Grandfatherly One. “Just because you don’t know something, doesn’t mean someone else doesn’t. Anyone who did would have a powerful motive for sabotaging the mission of your Fatherly One. The more valuable the item, the more powerful the motive.”
“I don’t get it,” said Tim. “How would anyone else know something like that?”
The Grandfatherly One snorted, a sound he likes to make no matter what language his container is programmed for. “Just because this planet is restricted doesn’t mean other members of the federation haven’t been down here poking around. Let’s assume that’s the case and someone wants to ruin the mission. So they think, ‘All right, what’s the best way to get at Meenom?’ And the answer is, through his soft spot—which is you, Pleskit. Certainly you have a record for causing problems, especially after Geembol Seven.”
Tim glanced at me. I wanted to tell the Grandfatherly One to drop it, but feared that if I did he wouldn’t tell me the other things I wanted to know. So I interrupted with a question.
“What should we do?”
“I think you boys need to do some investigating.”
“Can’t you just tell the Fatherly One what is going on?”
“I would if I could get his attention! I can’t believe I came all this way to be ignored! I should have died and gotten it over with when I had the chance. Send him to me if you can find him. Send him right now, if you can.”
“Alas, he is not here. He’s going to be on television tonight with Senator Hargis, to debate the mission.”
“Uh-oh,” said the Grandfatherly One. “I hope he’s not walking into a trap.”
“Do you think he’s in danger?” I cried.
“Not physical danger. But I wonder if his enemies have set this up with the intent of humiliating him.”
“What can we do?” asked Tim.
“I already told you—start doing some investigating. After all, if the training modules were sabotaged, odds are good that it was an inside job.”
“You mean someone within the embassy is trying to get me?”
“I’m just saying it’s a possibility. Now look, if you two do go snooping around, for Gimblat’s sake, be careful. Whoever is doing this is playing for big stakes.”
“Thank you for your wisdom, O Venerated One,” I said, bending my sphen-gnut-ksher toward his tank in a gesture of respect.
“Yeah, yeah, yeah. Now go on, will you? I need to take a nap. Space and stars, but I wish I had never agreed to postponing the final Death Trip. I get so tired these days. Probably because I can’t exercise.”
“It was a pleasure to meet you, sir,” said Tim.
“Yeah, yeah, yeah. You seem like a nice kid. Don’t let Pleskit get you into too much trouble.”
CHAPTER 19 [TIM]
THE TRAITOR
After we left Pleskit’s grandfather, I said, “Okay, let’s think about this. Who are the main suspects?”
“You and I,” said Pleskit promptly.
“Huh?”
“You and I are the ones who suspect someone tampered with the modules.”
This was going to be more difficult than I thought. “I mean, who are the people we have to be suspicious of? Everyone who works here, I suppose. How big is the embassy staff?”
“Just three. I already introduced you to them.”
I looked at Pleskit in astonishment. “You only have three people to run this entire building?”
Pleskit looked as astonished as I felt. “Well, that’s not counting McNally. Why would we need more?”
“So who does the cleaning, and stuff like that?”
Pleskit laughed. “The building cleans itself! It can cook, too, for that matter. We only brought Shhh-foop because the Fatherly One will need a real cook when he starts to host official dinners.”
“How come the place is so big?” I asked, still confused. “You could have twenty people living here and they wouldn’t bump into each other.”
“The staff will expand if the mission is successful,” said Pleskit. He paused, then added, “I think the building can expand, too, if we need it to.”
“It must be fun to be an alien,” I said, feeling jealous.
“Actually, so far, it has mostly meant being lonely,” Pleskit replied, somewhat bitterly.
“Gee, thanks a lot.”
“Do not be offended!” said Pleskit quickly. “I am speaking of what is past. The training modules did not warn me that your people are so sensitive.”
“Well, speaking of those training modules, we have to figure out who was monkeying with yours. Now, if Barvgis, Shhh-foop, and Mikta-makta-mookta are our suspects, the next question is, who has a motive?”
“According to the Fatherly One, money is a motive for everyone,” said Pleskit.
“Well, that doesn’t do much to narrow things down. Hmmm. Do any of them particularly dislike your, uh, Fatherly One?”
“Not that I can think of. He is gruff, but fair.”
I sighed. “Okay, scratch off motive. Let’s move on to opportunity.”
Pleskit looked at me strangely. “How do you know so much about this, Tim? Are you planning a life of crime?”
I almost got offended again, until I reminded myself that one reason I was interested in aliens was that they would be so different from us. Since we would be as different from them as they are from us, I shouldn’t expect Pleskit to understand me automatically.
“I don’t ever plan to commit a crime. I just read a lot of Hardy Boys books.”
“Books about healthy boys talk about crime?”
I sighed. “The Hardy Boys are a team. Brothers. They solve crimes.”
“Ahhh,” said Pleskit. The purple knob on his head sent out an odor that made me think of clear stream water. At least, it did at first. Suddenly the smell turned rank and sour, like rotten cabbage mixed with chemical waste.
“Eww, Pleskit!” I yelped, grabbing my nose to pinch it shut. “What does that mean?”
His face looked grim. “I have just realized at whom the fateful finger of suspicion should be pointing.”
“Who?”
“Barvgis!”
“That slimy round guy? Why him?”
“Because he handles all official documents and materials. Therefore, he would have had the best chance to interfere with my training modules.”
“But he was so nice,” I said, not wanting to believe it.
“The Fatherly One taught me long ago that sometimes nice people are truly nice, and sometimes they are the ones who are most skeezpul.”
“What’s skeezpul?”
Pleskit looked embarrassed. “Sorry. I did not mean to say that.”
“But what does it mean?”
“I cannot tell you.”
“Why? Is it like some top secret thing?”
; “No.”
“Well, then what is it?”
“A word so bad that it cannot be translated into your language.”
“Cool!” I said. “What does it mean?”
Pleskit looked at me strangely. “I just told you, it cannot be translated.”
“Oh. Yeah. Well, skip that. What are we going to do about Barvgis?”
“Let us enter his room to seek incriminating data.”
“Won’t he fry our butts if he catches us?”
Pleskit shuddered. “Why would he cook our hind ends? He is not an eater of intelligent beings.”
“It’s just an expression. I was saying that I’m afraid we could get in a lot of trouble.”
“I already am in a lot of trouble.”
Well, that was true. But I wasn’t—at least, not yet. The thing was, if I was going to be Pleskit’s friend, I couldn’t back out when he needed my help just because I was a little afraid. Besides, if Barvgis really had sabotaged Pleskit’s training modules, he had done a truly horrible thing.
“Okay,” I said. “Let’s go.”
Pleskit smiled at me. “Thanks, pal.”
* * *
The staff living quarters were located in a long, smooth-sided hallway. I didn’t realize the walls were smooth at first, because they looked like a living jungle—a purple living jungle. The effect was so real that when I first saw it, I reached out to touch one of the leaves; I was astonished when my hand hit a solid wall.
“Nice, isn’t it,” said Pleskit. “We change it every few days. This is a scene from a planet named…” He paused, then made a series of knuckle cracks, burped twice, and sent me a smell like overripe cherries. “Sorry,” he said. “It’s another one of those words that doesn’t translate.”
“It’s awesome,” I said as I watched an utterly strange creature swing through the trees in the distance.
“The room of Barvgis is here,” said Pleskit, leading me down the hall. Suddenly he stopped. His eyes went wide. The knob on his head made a smell that even I could tell meant raw terror.
CHAPTER 20 [PLESKIT]
SNOOPING
“He’s coming!” I whispered to Tim.
“Who?”
“Barvgis!”
Tim did that trick of changing color again, only this time he turned almost pure white. “How do you know?” he hissed.
“Can’t you smell him?”
“Of course not!”
This was no time to discuss the inadequacies of an Earthling’s nasal equipment. “Come on,” I said. “We’ve got to get out of here.” I pulled him toward a door on the other side of the hall.
“It’s locked!” said Tim. His voice was low, desperate.
I cracked my knuckles at the door, then pushed it open.
“How did you do that?”
“It’s a combination lock. Come on. And be quiet!”
We slipped inside and closed the door carefully behind us. Once we were inside, I felt better. “That was a close one,” I said, leaning against the door.
The room was dark, almost cavelike. A warm, woody smell filled the air. The far wall, about ten feet away from us, had three doors.
“Where… where are we?” asked Tim.
“These are the rooms of Mikta-makta-mookta. We should be safe here—unless she comes in, of course. Her people are quite ferocious about their privacy.”
Tim groaned. “How will we know when Barvgis is gone?”
“We’ll just give him time to get into his room. We’ll have to come back later, but—”
I stopped speaking.
“What?” said Tim. “What is it?”
“That should not be here!”
“What? What shouldn’t be here?”
“That,” I said, moving toward one of the three doors. On the far side of it was a glassy tube, capped with green metal beautifully shaped into the form of a kibooble vine. The tube was about three feet wide and stood nearly as tall as the ceiling.
“What is it?” asked Tim, following closely at my heels.
“A transporter.”
“You mean like ‘Beam me up, Scottie’? You guys really have those things?”
I turned toward him. “Sometimes I feel as if we are not speaking the same language. Aren’t Scotties something you use to wipe your nose?”
Tim shook his head. “Never mind that. Can this take a person from one place to another?”
“Precisely!” I said, pleased that he had figured it out so quickly. “It’s an elevator, and it transports people.”
“An elevator?” He sounded disappointed.
“Yes. You know, for going up and down in. Only there should not be a private one in this room. It is against—”
I stopped, struck silent by terror, as a light began to glow on the top of the tube.
“What’s the matter?” asked Tim.
“Someone is coming! Hide. Hide!”
“Where?” squeaked Tim.
I spun around, looking for somewhere, anywhere, that we could get out of sight. In the far corner I saw a large brown sphere with a small opening in the front. “In there!” I hissed, grabbing Tim’s arm and pulling him toward it.
He followed me through the opening. It was dark and cozy inside.
“What is this place?” he whispered.
“Mikta-makta-mookta’s bed. Now be quiet!”
Cautiously I moved my head so that one eye could just barely see out of the bed’s entrance hole. Tim positioned himself at the other side of the hole.
So we both saw the figure that arrived in the elevator.
It was Senator Hargis.
“Holy Moses!” whispered Tim. “What’s he doing here?”
“I do not have the slightest idea.” I was trying to decide whether we should step out and challenge him. But in that same instant I heard the outer door slide open.
I expected Senator Hargis to look frightened, maybe even try to hide. I half expected him to dive into the bed where Tim and I were!
But he just stood there, smiling.
I considered jumping out to warn Mikta-makta-mookta, even though doing so would reveal our hiding place. Tim must have sensed that, because he grabbed my arm and shook his head. I realized he was right. That private elevator wasn’t supposed to be here to begin with. So the odds were good that anyone who came up in it had been invited by Mikta-makta-mookta herself.
“Harr-giss!” she cried. “What are you doing here?”
Before he could answer, she ran to him and threw her arms around him. They began to kiss, which surprised me so much that I let out a gasp.
“What was that?” cried Mikta-makta-mookta.
Senator Hargis started to sniff. He turned his head from side to side, very slowly. When he stopped, he was staring at the bed in which Tim and I were hiding.
“Whatever it was came from in there!” he said.
He began walking toward us.
CHAPTER 21 [TIM]
EVIL PLAN
Icy terror gripped my heart. Pleskit and I slid away from the opening of the bed, trying not to make a sound. But the wood shavings Mikta-makta-mookta used as her mattress rustled slightly as we moved through them.
A moment later Senator Hargis thrust his head through the opening of the bed. His eyes were hard, his voice cold as he asked, “What are you little gnerfs doing here?”
That was when the truth about Senator Hargis really sank in on me. He was another alien! I wondered if he had replaced the real Senator Hargis, or if had he been here in disguise for many years.
“Climb out of there, Pleskit,” said the senator. “Let’s see who you’ve got with you.”
For a minute I hoped Pleskit might zap Hargis, the way he had Jordan. When he didn’t, I wondered if it was because he was afraid, or because he knew that Hargis would be shielded against it.
“Sorry, Tim,” whispered Pleskit as we met at the opening. “I did not mean to get you into so much trouble!”
I wanted to say something cool and sli
ck, to show I wasn’t worried. Too terrified to think of anything like that, I just nodded.
As I climbed out of the bed, Senator Hargis slapped something cold against the back of my neck. It stung. I tried to reach back to touch it, to pull it off. To my horror, I found that my arms would not obey my command.
Hargis laughed. I saw that he had a small black box in his hand, something that looked like a control panel.
“Just what are you two doing in my private quarters?” demanded Mikta-makta-mookta. She sounded as furious as I was frightened.
“It was an accident!” I said. “We were just trying to get away from Barvgis.”
She wiggled her nose. “What does Barvgis have to do with this?”
“We thought he was the one who tampered with my training modules,” Pleskit told her. “We wanted to check his room for evidence, but when we were at his door I smelled him coming. We ducked into your room to hide.”
Mikta-makta-mookta made a sour chuckling sound. “So you stumbled onto the truth by accident.”
“An unfortunate accident for them,” said Harr-giss. “We cannot afford to let them live with this information.”
I moved to a point beyond terror. “Nooooo!” I screamed. I tried to fling myself to the floor, and found that I couldn’t—which only made me all the more frightened. “No No No NO NO! You can’t kill us!”
“Oh, shut up, you little nitwit,” said Mikta-makta-mookta, sounding weary. “We’re not going to kill you. What kind of savages do you think we are? Great Mook, Harr-giss, do you think it’s worth what we’ll have to put up with to exploit this planet even if we do wrest it from Meenom’s control?”
I stood still (I seemed to have no choice), feeling astonished, relieved, and slightly offended. “If you’re not going to kill us, what are you going to do?” I asked.
Harr-giss gave me a nasty smile. “We’re going to wipe your brains, you silly little Earthling.”
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