Throughout the area, the Drift practically exploded. Great banks of living matter came rolling down through the sky toward the hopper. Behind, through and ahead of the sentient tides, moving a hundred times faster than the plankton, rushed dozens of vast sausage shapes, their business ends opened into wide, black gapes.
Holati Tate hurriedly knocked off the hopper’s thunderous Lorelei song and went fast and straight away from there. Far behind him, he watched the front lines of the plankton clouds breaking over a converged mass of Harvesters. A minute later the giants were plowing methodically back and forth through the late evening snack with which he had provided them.
The experiment, he decided, had to be called a complete success. He got his bearings, turned the hopper and sent it arrowing silently down through the shadowy lower air, headed for Warehouse Center on the southern side of the local arm of Great Gruesome Swamp.
Supply Manager Essidy was a tall, handsome man with a small brown beard and a fine set of large white teeth, who was disliked by practically everybody on the Project because of his unfortunate reputation as Commissioner Ramog’s Number One stooge. Perhaps to offset the lonely atmosphere of his main office at Warehouse Center, Essidy was industriously studying the finer points of a couple of girl clerks through his desk viewer when he was informed that Senior Assistant Commissioner Tate had just parked his hopper at Dome Two.
Essidy clicked his teeth together alertly, lifted one eyebrow, dropped it again, cleared the viewer, clipped a comm-button to his left ear and switched the comm-set to “record.” Of the eight hundred and thirty-seven people on the Manon Project, there were nine on whom the commissioner wanted immediate reports concerning even routine supplies withdrawals. Holati Tate was one of the nine.
Essidy’s viewer picked up the S.A.C. as he walked down the central corridor of Dome Two and followed him around a number of turns, into a large storeroom and up to a counter. Essidy adjusted the comm-button.
“. . . Not just for atmospheric use,” Holati was saying. “Jet mobility, of course. But I might want to use it under water.”
The counter clerk had recognized the S.A.C. and was being respectful. “Well, sir,” he said hesitantly, “if it’s a question of pressure, that would have to be a Moon-suit, wouldn’t it?”
Holati nodded. “Uh-huh. That’s what I had in mind.”
Back in the office, Essidy lifted both eyebrows. He couldn’t be sure of the Bio Station’s current requirements, but a Moon-suit didn’t sound routine. The clerk was dialing for the suit when Holati added, “By the way, got one of those things outfitted with a directional tracker?”
The clerk looked around. “I’m sure we don’t, sir. It isn’t standard equipment. We can install one for you.”
Holati reflected, and shook his head. “Don’t bother with it, son. I’ll do that myself . . . Uh, high selectivity, medium range, is the type I want.”
“. . .That’s all he ordered,” Essidy was reporting to Commissioner Ramog fifteen minutes later, on the commissioner’s private beam. “He checked the suit himself—seemed familiar with that—and took the stuff along.”
The commissioner was silent for almost thirty seconds and Essidy waited respectfully. He admired the boss and envied him hopelessly. It wasn’t just that Commissioner Ramog had Academy training and the authority of the Academy and the home office behind him; he also had three times Essidy’s brains and ten times Essidy’s guts and Essidy knew it.
When Ramog finally spoke he sounded almost absent-minded, and Essidy felt a little thrill because that could mean something very hot indeed was up. “Well, of course Tate’s familiar with Moon-suits,” Ramog said. “He put in a sixteen-year hitch with the Space Scouts before getting assigned to Precol.”
“Oh?” said Essidy.
“Yes.” Ramog was silent a few seconds again. “Thanks for the prompt report, Essidy.” He added casually, “Keep the squad on alert status until further notice.”
Essidy asked no foolish questions. The matter might be hot right now, and it might not. He’d hear all he needed to know in plenty of time. That was the way the boss worked; and if you worked the way he liked, another bonus would be coming along quietly a little later to be quietly stacked away with previously earned ones. Essidy looked forward to retiring from the service early.
Commissioner Ramog, in his private rooms at Headquarters, let the tiny beam-speaker slip back into a desk niche and shifted his gaze toward a slowly turning three-dimensional replica of Manon which filled the wall across the room. The commissioner was a slender man, not very big, with a wiry, hard-trained body, close-cropped blond hair and calm gray eyes. At the moment he looked intrigued and a trifle puzzled.
The obvious first item here, he told himself, was that there simply wasn’t any spot on the surface of this planet where the use of a Moon-suit was indicated. The tropical lakes were too shallow to present a pressure problem—and the fauna of those lakes was such that he wouldn’t have cared to work there himself without both armor and armament. He could assume therefore that Senior Assistant Commissioner Tate, having checked out neither armor nor armament, wasn’t contemplating such work either.
The second kem: a directional tracker had a number of possible uses. However, it had been developed as a space gadget, and while it could be employed on a planet to keep a line on mobile targets, either alive or mechanical it looked as if Tate’s interest actually might be centered on something in space—
Nearby space, since the only vehicles available to personnel on Manon had a limited range.
Dropping that line for the moment, the commissioner’s reflections ran on, one came to the really interesting third item—which was that Tate was an old-timer in Precol service. And as an old-timer, he knew that a requisition of this kind would not escape notice on an Academy-conducted Project. In fact, he could expect it to draw a rather prompt inquiry. One had to assume again that he intended to accomplish whatever he was out to accomplish with such equipment before an inquiry caught up with him—unless, of course, he had a legitimate explanation to offer when the check was made.
In any event, Commissioner Ramog concluded, no check was going to be made. At least, none of the kind that the senior assistant commissioner might be expecting.
Ramog stood up and walked over to the viewwall. There were two other planets in the system of Manon’s great green sun. Giant planets both, and impossible for a man in a hopper to approach. Neither of them had a moon. There would be stray chunks of matter sprinkled through the system that nobody knew about, but Tate didn’t have the equipment for a planned prospecting trip. He had the experience: his record showed he’d taken leave of absence a half dozen times during his Precol service period to take part in private prospecting jaunts. But without equipment, and the time to use it, experience wouldn’t help him much in sifting through the expanses of a planetary system.
And that left what really had been the most likely probability almost to start with. The commissioner switched off the image of Manon and replaced it with that of Manon’s Moon Belt.
The planet had possessed a sizable satellite at one time; but the time lay far in Manon’s geological past. What was left by now was debris, thick enough to provide both a minor navigational problem and an interesting night-time display, but not heavy enough to represent a noteworthy menace to future colonists. So far there had been no opportunity to survey the Belt thoroughly.
But anyone who was using a hopper regularly could have made an occasional unobserved trip up there.
He couldn’t, however, have left his vehicle. Neither to make a closer investigation, nor to pick up something he thought he’d spotted. Not unless he had a Moon-suit.
The commissioner felt excitement growing up in him, and now he could allow it to come through. Because there was really only one reason why an old-timer like Tate would violate Precol regulations so obviously. Only one thing big enough! The thing that Commissioner Ramog had come to Manon to find. An Old Galactic artifact—
“Right here.” A cool feminine voice.
“See what you got on Tate during the day.”
“The S.A.C.? He was out with Argee for two hours this afternoon. No coverage on that period.”
Ramog frowned a little, nodded. “I have her report here. A Project Five item. What else?”
“Afterwards—Warehouse Center . . .”
“Have that, too.”
“I’m scanning the tapes,” Mora said. And presently, “Seems to have been in his hopper alone since early morning. Location checks to his station. Nothing of interest, so far. Hm-m-m . . . well, now!”
“What is it?”
“I think,” Mora told him, “I should bring this in to you. He’s going to be gone two or three days.”
“I’ll come out.” Ramog already was on his feet. “Get me a current location check on that hopper of his.” Mora looked around as he came hurriedly into the office. “No luck, commissioner. Hopper can’t be traced. He’s gone off-planet.”
Ramog’s eyes narrowed very briefly as he dropped into a chair at her desk. “Start up the playback. And don’t look so pleased!”
Mora smiled. She was a slender, quick-moving, black-haired girl with big eyes almost as dark as her hair. “That’s my little blond tiger!” she murmured.
His face was flushed. “What do you mean?”
“I mean,” she said, “that I feel very, very sorry for the S.A.C.” She started the playback. “The other one talking is Chelly. Ecologist. Tate’s unofficial second-in-command at the station.”
Ramog nodded impatiently. There weren’t more than a dozen sentences to the conversation between Holati Tate and Chelly. Mora shut off the playback. “That’s all there is to his tape.” She waited.
Ramog had had a bad moment. The S.A.C. had simply put Chelly in charge of station operations for the next two or three days, until he returned. No explanation for his intended absence, and Chelly seemed only mildly surprised. But obviously he wasn’t involved in what Tate was doing.
What had bothered Ramog was the sudden thought that Tate might have arranged for an off-planet rendezvous with an FTL. But a second or two later he knew it wasn’t possible. The Precol patrol boat stationed off Manon would spot, report, and challenge anything equipped with a space drive before it got close enough to the system for a hopper to meet it. The patrol-boat’s job was a legitimate one: a planet undergoing orderly processing became a Federation concern and closed to casual interlopers. But in this case it insured that wherever Holati Tate was heading, he would have to return to Manon eventually.
The commissioner had relaxed a little. He smiled at Mora, his mind reverting to something she’d said a minute or so ago. A thrill-greedy, sanguinary little devil, he thought, but it would be regrettable if he ever had to get rid of Mora. They understood each other so well.
“You know,” he told her, “I seem to feel very sorry for the S.A.C., too!” He added, “Now.”
She gurgled excitedly and came over to him. “Are you going to tell me what it’s all about?”
“Don’t be stupid,” Commissioner Ramog said tolerantly. An operation like this was a game to Mora. But she wasn’t stupid. She was the most valuable assistant he’d ever developed.
“How many possible lines of action?” she persisted.
Ramog already had considered that. “Three,” he said. “And I don’t think we’d better waste any time.”
As it happened, it was Ramog’s third line of action with which Holati Tate became involved when he dropped back into Manon’s atmosphere two and a half planet days after his departure. Had he set the hopper down then in some wild section of the planet it would have been a different story. Ramog had been obliged to consider the possibility that the S.A.C. would be so lacking in human trustfulness that he might bury some item of value where it would never be found by anyone else.
An electronics specialist by the name of Gision was, therefore, on Holati’s tail in an armed hopper as soon as he was spotted again, and he followed the S.A.C. around the curve of the planet as unobtrusively as one hopper could follow another. However, Holati Tate was merely heading by the shortest route for his Bio Station. When he settled down there, Gision took up a position halfway between Headquarters and the Bio domes and waited for developments.
At the Bio Station Essidy took over. For the past eighteen hours Essidy had been conducting an unhurried inventory of the station, assisted by a small crew of husky warehouse men. Holati locked his hopper when he got out, and it wasn’t Essidy’s job to do anything about that. He merely reported to Ramog that the S.A.C.—looking a little travel-worn and towing a bulky object by a gravity tube—had gone to his personal quarters. The object appeared to be, and probably was, the packaged Moon-suit. A few minutes later, Holati re-appeared at the hopper without the object, climbed in and took off. Gision reported from his aerial vantage point that the S.A C. was going toward Headquarters now and was told by Ramog to precede him there.
Essidy was chattering over the private beam again before Gision signed off. Holati Tate had left his quarters sealed, but that had been no problem. “We got the thing unwrapped,” Essidy said., “It’s the Moon-suit, all right, and nothing else. He’s got the directional tracker installed. It’s activated. And that’s the only interesting thing in these rooms.”
“Go ahead,” Ramog said quietly. “What’s the reading on the tracker?” Essidy checked again to make sure. “Locked on Object,” he reported. “At two to twenty thousand miles.” And that was all Ramog had wanted to know. For a moment he was surprised to discover that his palms were slippery with sweat.
“All right, Essidy,” he said. “Seal up his rooms and bring the suit over here, immediately.” He added with no change in inflection, “If anyone has tampered with that reading before I see it, I’ll burn him and you personally.”
“Yes, sir,” Essidy said meekly. “Shall I have the boys go ahead with the inventory to make it look right?” Ramog said that would be fine and cut him off. The commissioner was actually enormously relieved. His third line of action was unreeling itself smoothly, and even if Tate got suspicious and panicked now it wouldn’t present a serious problem, though it might still make the operation a little messy.
One could even hope for the S.A.C.’s own sake, Ramog thought, smiling very faintly now, that he wouldn’t panic. The third line of action was not only the least risky, it was by far the most humane.
Holati Tate set the hopper down a hundred yards from the Headquarters vehicle shelter entrance. The service crew chief’s voice said over the intercom, “Better bring her in, sir. We’re on storm warning.”
Holati obediently turned the hopper, slid her into the shelter and grounded her. The entrance door closed a hundred yards behind him.
“Want her serviced, sir?”
“No, no; she doesn’t need it.” Holati set the hatch on lock, got out and let it snap shut behind him. He looked at the crew chief. “I’ll be taking her out again in thirty minutes or so,” he said. Then he walked off up the dome tunnel toward the office sections.
The crew chief looked around and saw the hopper’s hatch open. He frowned.
“Hey, you!” He went up to the hatch. “Who’s that in there? She don’t need servicing. How’d you get in?”
The man named Gision looked out. He was a large man with a round face and a sleepily ferocious expression.
“Little man,” he said softly, “just keep the mouth shut and take off.”
The crew chief stared at him. Gision was tagged with a very peculiar reputation among the best informed Project personnel, but the crew chief hadn’t had much to do with him personally and he habitually ignored Project rumors. Rumors about this guy or that started up on almost any outworld operation; they could usually be put down to jumpy nerves.
He changed his mind completely about
that in the few seconds he and Gision were looking at each other.
He turned on his heel and walked off, badly shaken. If something was going on, he didn’t want to know about it. Not a thing. He wasn’t an exceptionally timid man, but he had just realized clearly that he was a long way from the police of the Federation.
Mora was in temporary charge of the, communications offices, though Holati Tate didn’t see her at first. He walked up to a plump, giggly little clerk he’d talked to before. She was busy coding a section of the current Project reports which presently would perform some fantastic loops through time and space and present themselves briskly at the Precol Home Office in the Federation.
Holati looked around the big room. “Where’s Trigger Argee?” he inquired.
The clerk giggled. “Visiting her boy friend—” She looked startled. “My . . . I guess I shouldn’t have said that!”
So Holati discovered Trigger had been offered a special four-day furlough from the commissioner to go console Brule Inger in the brig, which was stationed in the general area of Manon’s southern pole. He could imagine Trigger had been a little suspicious of the commissioner’s gesture, but naturally she’d accepted.
He pulled down worriedly on his left ear lobe and glanced over to the far end of the room where three other clerks were working. “Who’s in charge here, now?”
“Mora Lune’s in charge,” said the little clerk. She giggled. “If there’s something . . . maybe I can help you?”
“Hm-m-m,” Holati Tate said dubiously. As the little clerk told the others afterwards, he looked mighty nervous at that moment, hesitating as if he didn’t know what to say. As a matter of fact, he felt rather nervous. “This Mora Lune,” he went on at last. “Who’s she?”
“The commissioner’s secretary,” explained the girl. “Mostly. She does all kinds of things, though. Sort of his assistant.”
Complete Short Fiction (Jerry eBooks) Page 67