by H. B. Fyfe
Sometimes, he had to admit, he would have preferred having a babe marry and leave the department. Parrish was often helpful in such situations, which was only fair since he created most of them. Twice divorced, the assistant had lost none of his interest in women. He was as clever at feminine psychology as at alien.
“Well, I suppose you’ve heard something of the new squawk,” Smith said to break the silence. “I just don’t see how we’re going to reach this one. The damned fool got himself taken on an ocean bottom.”
He proceeded to outline the facts so far reported. Parrish received them impassively; Lydman began to scowl. The ex-spacer developed special grudges against aliens who attempted to conceal the detention of Terrans.
“First, let’s see where we are before we tackle this,” suggested Smith. “I’ve given you enough on Harris to let it percolate through your minds while we review the other cases. It looks like something we should all be in on.”
Sometimes he would put a case in the charge of one of them, but they were accustomed to exchanging information and advice.
“This business of the two spacers who were nailed for unauthorized entry in the Syssokan system seems about ripe,” he reminded them. “Taranto and Meyers, you remember.”
“Oh, yes,” said Lydman in a withdrawn tone. “The dope.”
“That’s right. There was no trouble getting information about them, just in comprehending the idiot reasoning that would maintain a law that makes it a crime to crash-land on that planet. Terra, like any other stellar government, is permitted one official resident there. Fortunately, we got the D.I.R. to slip him a little memo about us before he was sent out, and this is the outcome. They may even be on the loose right now.”
“Let me see,” mused Parrish. “Bob gave you the formula for something that practically suspends animation, didn’t he?”
“Yeah,” said Lydman. “We figured on the bastards to carry the bodies out and dump them. A bunch of tramp spacers is standing by to pick them up.”
“No reason why it shouldn’t work,” said Smith. “Variations of it have been keeping us in business. Some day we’ll slip up just by relying on it too much, but this looks okay. How is your Greenhaven case coming, Pete?”
Parrish hesitated before answering. He stroked the edge of the table with well manicured fingertips as he considered.
“Maria Ringstad,” he said thoughtfully. “These reporters should be more careful, should have some knowledge of the cultures they poke into. Greenhaven is hardly a colony to swash a buckle through. I suppose she never thought they would bother a newswoman.”
“Did you ever get the answer to what she was after on Greenhaven?”
“Nothing, just passing through!” Parrish snapped his fingers in contempt. “She was on a space liner enroute to Altair VII to gather material for a book. It stopped on Greenhaven to deliver a consignment of laboratory instruments.”
“Those Greenies,” Lydman put in, “are as crazy as bems. What a way to live!”
“They have been described as the bluest colony ever derived from Terra,” agreed Smith. “I shudder to think of the life Pete would lead there.”
Parrish smiled, but not very deeply.
“Miss Ringstad’s mistake was fairly simple-minded,” he said. “They had official prices posted in that shop she visited for souvenirs. When they claimed to be out of the article she fancied, she had the bad taste to offer a bonus price. On Greenhaven, this is regarded as bribery, immorality, and economic subversion, to touch merely upon the highlights.”
Smith sighed.
“Why will these young girls run around doing—”
“I don’t believe you could call her a girl, exactly,” Parrish interrupted.
“Well, this lady, then…”
“I wouldn’t guarantee that either.”
Smith shrugged and pursed his lips. “You’d be a better judge than I,” he admitted innocently. “I yield to superior qualifications.”
Lydman grinned. Parrish maintained his mask.
“I suppose that might make it even more dangerous for her,” Smith went on. “I forget what you said the sentence was, but suppose she starts to get smart in jail. Would any snappy Terran humor pass there?”
“By no means!” said Parrish emphatically. “I would not expect them to burn her at the stake in this day and age, but they would talk about it as being one of the good old ways. Fortunately, their speaking and writing Terran makes this easy. Terrans are all black sinners, but plenty of Terrans are necessary around the spaceports. We keep a few agents among them. One of them is going to pull the paper trick to spring her.”
“I’d rather leave them a bomb,” said Lydman, almost to himself.
Smith frequently wondered that such a rugged man should speak in so quiet a voice. At times, Lydman used a monotone that was barely audible.
“We hope to destroy all evidence,” added Parrish. “Otherwise, it will lead to the usual diplomatic notes, and the D.I.R. will be telling us we never were authorized to do any such thing.”
“Yes,” said Smith, nodding wearily. “Actually, you couldn’t find our specific duties written down anywhere; and there is nothing we are forbidden to do either—as long as it succeeds. Well, none of us will see the day when the D.I.R. will publicly recognize us to the extent of chopping our heads into the basket. They have been yapping at me, though, for drawing complaints in the Gerson case.”
Lydman had been sitting with his gaze narrowed upon a pencil gripped in his big fists. Now he raised his head, scenting interference in his own project.
“How can the Yoleenites complain? They claim they don’t even have Gerson!”
“Easy!” Smith soothed him. “We have an embassy and spaceport there, remember, that you’ve been relying on. You had them make some inquiries, didn’t you?”
“Had to confirm the report somehow. All we had was the story of a kidnapping from the captain of that freighter. It might not have been true.”
“I realize that,” said Smith.
“It wouldn’t have been the first time a spacer got left behind because he didn’t make countdown—or because they didn’t want him around at payoff.”
“Sure,” Parrish agreed smoothly. “You could tell us about that.”
Lydman turned to look at him, so suddenly that a silence fell among them. Parrish averted his gaze uncomfortably, and reached into the breast pocket of his maroon jacket for a box of cigarettes. He busied himself puffing one alight from the chemical lighter set in the bottom of the box.
One day I’ll have to pull them apart, thought Smith, and I’m not big enough. Where does my wife get the nerve to say the neighbors don’t know what to make of an average guy like me, just because I can’t talk about my work?
“At any rate,” he said quietly, “they took the attitude that even to ask them about the incident was insulting. It seemed to rock the top brass.”
“What do they know about Yoleen?” growled Lydman, giving up his scrutiny of Parrish.
“Not a thing, probably. They make decisions on the basis of how many toes they’ve stubbed lately. Right now, it sounds like only routine panic. That reminds me—I meant to check with Emil Starke about that.”
He shoved back his chair and stepped over to a phone table nearby. Switching on both screen and sound, he waited until the cute little blonde at the board came on.
“Pauline, get me Emil Starke at the D.I.R., please. Extension 1563.”
“Yes, Mr. Smith,” said Pauline, and disappeared from the screen.
In a few moments, Smith was greeting a man of about fifty, gray at the temples to the point of appearing over-distinguished.
“Listen, Emil,” he said, getting down to business after the amenities about families and children had been observed. “I have a case on my hands concerning a planet named Yoleen—�
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The man on the screen was already nodding.
“Yes, I heard they were chewing you about that this morning,” he said, smiling. “I trust you preserved some sort of sang-froid?”
“What’s in their minds?” asked Smith.
“Oh…it seems that the Space Force is nervous over the Yoleenites. They are unable to evaluate the culture comfortably. To cover themselves, I imagine, they send a warning now and then on the possibilities of hostile relations.”
“Anything to it?”
Starke grimaced briefly.
“Unlikely. Some of the lads upstairs let it make them nervous.”
Smith chuckled. “Upstairs,” they came and went, but Starke and men like him ran things and knew what went on.
“Then I can go ahead without covering my tracks too deeply?” he asked. “I mean, I won’t have to lie openly to my boss?”
“Give him a few days to see the other side,” Starke assured him, “and he will be demanding to know why you have not taken steps. Have them taken by then!”
Smith thanked him for the advice, switched off, and returned to his place at the table. Nods from the others confirmed that they had heard.
“I have a feeling about those Yoleenites,” grumbled Lydman.
Smith waited for elucidation, but the big man had sunk into contemplation. The other two eyed him, then each other. Parrish shrugged ever so slightly. Smith gnawed at his lower lip.
“Well, then, you’ll be going ahead with what you planned,” he reminded Lydman.
“Oh, sure!” answered the ex-spacer, snapping out of it. “Can’t help it. I’ve already sent him something useful.”
The others smiled. “Something useful” was Lydman’s term for a cleverly designed break-out instrument. Smith hoped that in this case it would not turn out to be a bomb.
“We dug a little mechanical crawler out of the files,” Lydman went on. “The Yoleenites seem to build their cities like a conglomeration of pueblos, very intricate and with hardly any open streets. There would probably be a hundred routes in to Gerson, even if we knew exactly where he is. This gadget is adjusted to home on certain body temperatures which it can detect at some distance.”
“And Gerson would be the only living thing there at ninety-eight point six.”
“Exactly. Of course, the thing has a general direction and search pattern micro-taped in. That’s the best they could do, because the boys have only a rough idea of where the cell would be.”
“It sounds too easy to intercept,” objected Parrish.
“That worries me a little,” admitted Lydman. “It would be worse to fly something in, and it’s impossible to send anyone in because they say they haven’t got him. The gadget is set to have an affinity for dark corners, at least.”
“And how does it get him out?” pursued Parrish.
“It carries a little pocket music player with micro-tapes that will actually play for a couple of hours. They can’t tell for sure that Gerson didn’t have it with him—if they spot it at all. When he opens the back as a little jingle in the first tune will instruct him to do, he has a miniature torch hot enough to cut the guts out of any lock between him and the outside.”
“Someone will be watching for him, I suppose?” asked Smith.
“Sure. Once he’s out of the place, the Yoleenites can hardly demand that we give back what they say they never had. Off to the embassy with him and onto the first ship! And I hope he kills a few of the bastards on the way out—they won’t even have grounds for an official complaint!”
The other two avoided looking at him for a moment. Parrish stirred uneasily.
“I hope it— What I mean is, these Yoleenites give me an uneasy feeling the same as they do you, Bob. Experience tells me that some of these hive-like cultures think along peculiar lines. No wonder the Space Force finds them hard to understand! I recommend that we open a general file on them.”
“It might be just as well,” Smith agreed, considering. “They may give us more business in the future.”
He pushed back his chair and rose.
“Let’s take a break while I see if any new reports have come in. Then maybe we can work out something on the new mess.”
THREE
Louis Taranto sat on his heels against the baked clay wall of the cell, watching the sweat run down the face of his companion. Though he privately considered Harvey Meyers a very weak link, he had so far restrained himself from hinting as much. They were in this hole together, and he might well need the blubbery loudmouth’s help to get out—if there were any way to get out.
Meyers sat on the single bench with which their jailers had provided them, staring mournfully at the rude table upon which he rested his elbows. He was unusually quiet, as if the heat had drained him of all anxiety.
Sloppy bum! thought Taranto. He could at least comb his hair!
They were allowed occasional access to toilet articles which the Syssokans had obtained from the one Terran officially in residence on the planet. Taranto had shaved the day before, but the other had not bothered for more than a week. Meyers was perhaps an inch short of six feet and must weigh two hundred pounds Terran. He had a loose mouth between pudgy cheeks. His little blue eyes seemed always to be prying except during periods such as the present when he was feeling sorry for himself. He had been a medic in the same spaceship in which Taranto had been a ventilation mechanic.
“Glad I was never sick,” Taranto muttered to himself.
Meyers looked up.
“Huh?”
“I said I’m glad I was never sick,” repeated Taranto deliberately, thinking, Let him figure that out if he can!
“This heat’s enough to make anybody sick,” complained Meyers. “Why do they have to keep us up on the top floor of the tower, anyway?”
“You expect a luxury suite in the cellar? What kind of jail were you ever in where the prisoners got the best?”
“Who says I was ever in jail?” demanded Meyers defensively.
Taranto grinned slightly, but made no reply. After a moment, the other returned to his study of the table. He breathed in loudly, his shoulders heaving as if he had been running. To avoid the sight, Taranto let his eyes wander for the thousandth time around the walls of the square cell.
The large blocks of baked clay were turning from dun to gray in the twilight seeping through the four small window openings. Overhead, they curved together to form a high arch that was the peak of the tower. Besides table and bench, the room contained a clay water jug a yard high, a wooden bucket, a battered copper cooking pot, and a pile of coarse straw upon which lay the two gray shirts the spacers had discarded in the heat. In the center of the floor was a wooden trap door which Taranto eyed speculatively.
He reminded himself that he must suppress his longing to smash the next Syssokan head that appeared in the opening.
“It’s getting near time,” he remarked after a few minutes.
Meyers peered at the patches of sky revealed by the windows. They were losing the glare of Syssokan daylight. There had been a wisp or two of cloud earlier, but these had either blown over or faded into the deepening gray of the sky.
“Listen at the door!” ordered Taranto, impatient at having to remind the other.
He rose, wiped perspiration from his face with the palms of both hands, and rubbed them in turn on the thighs of his gray pants. He was inches shorter than Meyers, and twenty pounds or more lighter, but his bare shoulders bulged powerfully. A little fat softened the lines of his belly without concealing the existence of an underlying layer of solid muscle. He moved with a heavy, padding gait, like a large carnivore whose natural grace is revealed only at top speed.
Meyers watched him resentfully.
Why couldn’t I have made it to one of the other emergency rockets? he asked himself. Imagine a bunch of
crazy savages that say even landing here is a crime!
He supposed that Taranto would have pointed to the sizable city where they were held if he had heard the Syssokans called savages. Meyers thought the trouble with Taranto was that he was too physical, too much of a dumb flunky who spoiled Meyers’ efforts to talk them out of trouble.
I had a better break coming, he thought.
He wished he had been in a rocket with one of the ship’s officers who might have known about Syssoka. They would have gone into an orbit about the planet’s star and put out a call for help to the nearest Terran base or ship. As it was, they might be given up for lost even if the other rockets were picked up. The course they had been on before the explosion had been designed to pass this system by a good margin.
Taranto, he recalled, had thought them lucky to have picked up the planet on the little escape ship’s instruments. Taranto, decided Meyers, thought he was a hot pilot because he had been a few years in space. He had not looked so good bending the rocket across that ridge of rock out in the desert. They should have taken a chance on coming down in the city here.
They had just about straightened themselves out after that landing when they had seen the party of Syssokans on the way. It had not taken them long to reach the wreck. They could even speak Terran, and no pidgin-Terran either. Then it turned out that they did not like spacers of any race landing without permission. There had been a war with the next star system; and the laws now said there should be only one alien of any race permitted to reside on Syssoka except for brief visits by licensed spaceships.
“What’s the matter with our government?” muttered Meyers.
“What?” asked Taranto, turning from one of the windows.
“I said what’s the matter with the Terran Government? Why don’t they pitch a couple of bombs down here, an’ show these skinny nuts who’s running the galaxy? Who are they to call us aliens?”
Taranto turned again to the eighteen inch square window, set like the other three in the center of its wall at the level of his shoulders.