I got up from the half-reclining angle I’d been making with the wall, and shuffled across the room as Dr. Perelson stuck his head around the corner and said, “It’s for you.” He looked as though someone had put aluminum hydrogen sulfate in his mouthwash.
I picked up the receiver and looked at Brock’s face in the screen. He didn’t even give me a chance to talk. “What are you trying to do?” he shouted explosively.
“Trying to find Jaqueline Ravenhurst,” I said, as calmly as I could.
“Oak, you’re a maniac! Why, by this time, it’s all over Ceres that the boss’ daughter is missing! Shalimar Ravenhurst will have your hide for this!”
“He will?” I gave him Number 2—the wide-eyed innocent stare. “Why?”
“Why, you idiot, I thought you had sense enough to know that this should be kept quiet! She’s pulled this stunt before, and we always managed to quiet things down before anything happened! We’ve managed to keep everything under cover and out of the public eye ever since she was fifteen, and now you blow it all up out of proportion and create a furore that won’t ever be forgotten!”
He gave his speech as though it had been written for him in full caps, with three exclamation points after every sentence, and added gestures and grimaces after every word.
“Just doing what I thought was best,” I said. “I want to find her as soon as possible.”
“Well, stop it! Now! Let us handle it from here on in!”
Then I lowered the boom. “Now you listen, Brock. I am in charge of Jack Ravenhurst, not you. I’ve lost her, and I’ll find her. I’ll welcome your co-operation, and I’d hate to have to fight you, but if you don’t like the way I’m handling it, you can just tell your boys to go back to their regular work and let me handle it alone, without interference. Now, which’ll it be?”
He opened his mouth, closed it, and blew out his breath from between his lips. Then he said: “All right. The damage has been done, anyhow. But don’t think I won’t report all this to Ravenhurst as soon as I can get a beam to Raven’s Rest.”
“That’s your job and your worry, not mine. Now, have you got any leads?”
“None,” he admitted.
“Then I’ll go out and dig up some. I’ll let you know if I need you.” And I cut off.
Dr. Perelson was sitting on his couch, with an expression that indicated that the pH of his saliva was hovering around one point five.
I said, “That will be all, Dr. Perelson. Thank you for your co-operation.” And I walked out into the corridor, leaving him with a baffled look.
* * * *
At the next public phone, I dialed the BANning number again.
“Any news?”
“Not from her; she hasn’t reported in at all.”
“I didn’t figure she would. What else?”
“Just as you said,” he told me. “With some cute frills around the edges. Ten minutes ago, a crowd of kids—sixteen to twenty-two age range—about forty of ’em—started a songfest and football game in the corridor outside Colonel Brock’s place. The boys he had on duty there recognized the Jack Ravenhurst touch, and tried to find her in the crowd. Nothing doing. Not a sign of her.”
“That girl’s not only got power,” I said, “but she’s bright as a solar flare.”
“Agreed. She’s headed up toward Dr. Midguard’s place now. I don’t know what she has in mind, but it ought to be fun to watch.”
“Where’s Midguard now?” I asked.
“Hovering around Brock, as we figured. He’s worried and feels responsible because she disappeared from his apartment, as predicted.”
“Well, I’ve stirred up enough fuss in this free-falling anthill to give them all the worries they need. Tell me what’s the overall effect?”
“Close to perfect. It’s slightly scandalous and very mysterious, so everybody’s keeping an eye peeled. If anyone sees Jaqueline Ravenhurst, they’ll run to a phone, and naturally she’s been spotted by a dozen different people in a dozen different places already.
“You’ve got both Brock’s Company guards and the civil police tied up for a while.”
“Fine. But be sure you keep the boys who are on her tail shifting around often enough so that she doesn’t spot them.”
“Don’t worry your thick little head about that, Dan,” he said. “They know their business. Are you afraid they’ll lose her?”
“No, I’m not, and you know it. I just don’t want her to know she’s being followed. If she can’t ditch her shadow, she’s likely to try to talk to him and pull out all the stops convincing him that he should go away.”
“You think she could? With my boys?”
“No, but if she tries it, it’ll mean she knows she’s being followed. That’ll make it tougher to keep a man on her trail. Besides, I don’t want her to try to convince him and fail.”
“Ich graben Sie. On the off chance that she does spot one and gives him a good talking to, I’ll pass along the word that the victim is to walk away meekly and get lost.”
“Good,” I said, “but I’d rather she didn’t know.”
“She won’t. You’re getting touchy, Dan; ’pears to me you’d rather be doing that job yourself, and think nobody can handle it but you.”
I gave him my best grin. “You are closer than you know. O.K., I’ll lay off. You handle your end of it and I’ll handle mine.”
“A fair exchange is no bargain. Go, and sin no more.”
“I’ll buzz you back before I go in,” I said, and hung up.
Playing games inside a crowded asteroid is not the same as playing games in, say, Honolulu or Vladivostok, especially when that game is a combination of hide-and-seek and ring-around-the-Rosie. The trouble is lack of communication. Radio contact is strictly line-of-sight inside a hunk of metal. Radar beams can get a little farther, but a man has to be an expert billiards player to bank a reflecting beam around very many corners, and even that would depend upon the corridors being empty, which they never are. To change the game analogy again, it would be like trying to sink a ninety-foot putt across Times Square on New Year’s Eve.
Following somebody isn’t anywhere near as easy as popular fiction might lead you to believe. Putting a tail on someone whose spouse wants divorce evidence is relatively easy, but even the best detectives can lose a man by pure mischance. If the tailee, for instance, walks into a crowded elevator and the automatic computer decides that the car is filled to the limit, the man who’s tailing him will be left facing a closed door. Something like that can happen by accident, without any design on the part of the tailee.
If you use a large squad of agents, all in radio contact with one another, that kind of loss can be reduced to near zero by simply having a man covering every possible escape route.
But if the tailee knows, or even suspects, that he’s being followed, wants to get away from his tail, and has the ability to reason moderately well, it requires an impossibly large team to keep him in sight. And if that team has no fast medium of communication, they’re licked at the onset.
In this case, we were fairly certain of Jack Ravenhurst’s future actions, and so far our prophecies had been correct…but if she decided to shake her shadows, fun would be had by all.
And as long as I had to depend on someone else to do my work for me, I was going to be just the teenchiest bit concerned about whether they were doing it properly.
I decided it was time to do my best to imitate a cosmic-ray particle, and put on a little speed through the corridors that ran through the subsurface of Ceres.
My vac suit was in my hotel room. One of the other agents had picked it up from my flitterboat and packed it carefully into a small attaché case. I’d planned my circuit so that I’d be near the hotel when things came to the proper boil, so I did a lot of diving, breaking all kinds of traffic regulations in the process.
I went to my room, grabbed the attaché case, checked it over quickly—never trust another man to check your vac suit for you—and headed for
the surface.
Nobody paid any attention to me when I walked out of the air lock onto the spacefield. There were plenty of people moving in and out, going to and from their ships and boats. It wasn’t until I reached the edge of the field that I realized that I had over-played my hand with Colonel Brock. It was only by the narrowest hair, but that had been enough to foul up my plans. There were guards surrounding the perimeter with radar search beams.
As I approached, one of the guards walked toward me and made a series of gestures with his left hand—two fingers up, fist, two fingers up, fist, three fingers up. I set my suit phone for 223; the guy’s right hand was on the butt of his stun gun.
“Sorry, sir,” came his voice. “We can’t allow anyone to cross the field perimeter. Emergency.”
“My name’s Oak,” I said tiredly. “Daniel Oak. What is going on here?”
He came closer and peered at me. Then: “Oh, yes, sir; I recognize you. We’re…uh—” He waved an arm around. “Uh…looking for Miss Ravenhurst.” His voice lowered conspiratorially. I could tell that he was used to handling the Ravenhurst girl with silence and suede gloves.
“Up there?” I asked.
“Well, Colonel Brock is a little worried. He says that Miss Ravenhurst is being sent to a school on Luna and doesn’t want to go. He got to thinking about it, and he’s afraid that she might try to leave Ceres—sneak off you know.”
I knew.
“We’ve got a guard posted at the airlocks leading to the field, but Colonel Brock is afraid she might come up somewhere else and jump overland.”
“I see,” I said. I hadn’t realized that Brock was that close to panic. What was eating him?
There must be something, but I couldn’t figure it. Even the Intelligence Corps of the Political Survey Division can’t get complete information every time.
After all, if he didn’t want the girl to steal a flitterboat and go scooting off into the diamond-studded velvet, all he’d have to do would be to guard the flitterboats. I turned slowly and looked around. It seemed as though he’d done that, too.
And then my estimation of Brock suddenly leaped up—way up. Just a guard at each flitterboat wouldn’t do. She could talk her way into the boat and convince the guard that he really shouldn’t tell anyone that she had gone. By the time he realized he’d been conned, she’d be thousands of miles away.
And since a boat guard would have to assume that any approaching person might be the boat’s legitimate owner, he’d have to talk to whomever it was that approached. Kaput.
But a perimeter guard would be able to call out an alarm if anyone came from the outside without having to talk to them.
And the guards watching the air locks undoubtedly had instructions to watch for any female that even vaguely matched Jack’s description. A vac suit fits too tightly to let anyone wear more than a facial disguise, and Brock probably—no, definitely—had his tried-and-true men on duty there. The men who had already shown that they were fairly resistant to Jack Ravenhurst’s peculiar charm. There probably weren’t many with such resistance, and the number would become less as she grew older.
That still left me with my own problem. I had already lost too much time, and I had to go a long way. Ceres is irregular in shape, but it’s roughly four hundred and eighty miles in diameter and a little over fifteen hundred miles in circumference.
Viking Test Field Four, where McGuire 7 was pointing his nose at the sky, was about twenty-five miles away, as the crow flies. But of course I couldn’t go by crow.
By using a low, fairly flat, jackrabbit jump, a man in good condition can make a twelve hundred foot leap on the surface of Ceres, and each jump takes him about thirty seconds. At that rate, you can cover twenty-five miles in less than an hour. That’s what I’d intended on doing, but I couldn’t do it with all this radar around the field. I wouldn’t be stopped, of course, but I’d sure tip my hand to Colonel Brock—the last thing I wanted to do.
But there was no help for it. I’d have to go back down and use the corridors, which meant that I’d arrive late—after Jack Ravenhurst got there, instead of before.
There was no time to waste, so I got below as fast as possible, repacked my vac suit, and began firing myself through the corridors as fast as possible. It was illegal, of course; a collision at twenty-five miles an hour can kill quickly if the other guy is coming at you at the same velocity. There were times when I didn’t dare break the law, because some guard was around, and, even if he didn’t catch me, he might report in and arouse Brock’s interest in a way I wouldn’t like.
I finally got to a tubeway, but it stopped at every station, and it took me nearly an hour and a half to get to Viking Test Area Four.
At the main door, I considered—for all of five seconds—the idea of simply telling the guard I had to go in. But I knew that, by now, Jack was there ahead of me. No. I couldn’t just bull my way in. Too crude. Too many clues.
Hell’s fire and damnation! I’d have to waste more time.
I looked up at the ceiling. The surface wasn’t more than a hundred feet overhead, but it felt as though it were a hundred light-years.
If I could get that guard away from that door for five seconds, all would be gravy from then on in. But how? I couldn’t have the diversion connected with me. Or—
Sometimes, I’m amazed at my own stupidity.
I beetled it down to the nearest phone and got hold of my BANning number.
“Jack already inside?” I snapped.
“Hell, yes! What happened to you?”
“Never mind. Got to make the best of it. I’m a corner away from Area Four. Where’s your nearest man?”
“At the corner near the freight office.”
“I’ll go to him. What’s he look like?”
“Five-nine. Black, curly hair. Your age. Fat. Name’s Peter Quilp. He knows you.”
“Peter Quilp?”
“Right.”
“Good. Circulate a report that Jack has been seen in the vicinity of the main gate to Area Four. Put it out that there’s a reward of five thousand for the person who finds her. I’m going to have Quilp gather a crowd.”
He didn’t ask a one of the million questions that must have popped into his mind. “Right. Anything else?”
“No.” I hung up.
* * * *
Within ten minutes, there was a mob milling through the corridor. Everybody in the neighborhood was looking for Jaqueline Ravenhurst. Then Peter Quilp yelled.
“I’ve got her! I’ve got her! Guard!”
With a scene like that going on, the guard couldn’t help but step out of his cubicle to see what was going on.
I used the key I was carrying, stepped inside, and relocked the door. No one in the crowd paid any attention.
From then on up, it was simply a matter of evading patrolling guards—a relatively easy job. Finally, I put on my vac suit and went out through the air lock.
McGuire was still sitting there, a bright blue needle that reflected the distant sun as it moved across the ebon sky. Ceres’ rotation took it from horizon to horizon in less than two hours, and you could see it and the stars move against the spire of the ship.
I made it to the air lock in one long jump.
Jack Ravenhurst had gone into the ship through the tube that led to the passenger lock. She might or might not have her vac suit on; I knew she had several of them on Ceres. It was probable that she was wearing it without the fishbowl.
I used the cargo lock.
It took a few minutes for the pumps to cycle, wasting more precious time. I was fairly certain that she would be in the control cabin, talking, but I was thankful that the pumps were silent.
Finally, I took off my fishbowl and stepped into the companionway.
And something about the size of Luna came out of nowhere and clobbered me on the occiput. I had time to yell, “Get away!” Then I was as one with intergalactic space.
Please! said the voice. Please! Stop the drive! Go back! M
cGuire! I demand that you stop! I order you to stop! Please! PLEASE!
It went on and on. A voice that shifted around every possible mode of emotion. Fear. Demand. Pleading. Anger. Cajoling. Hate. Threat.
Around and around and around.
Can’t you speak, McGuire? Say something to me! A shrill, soft, throaty, harsh, murmuring, screaming voice that had one basic characteristic. It was a female voice.
And then another voice.
I am sorry, Jack. I can speak with you. I can record your data. But I cannot accept your orders. I can take orders from only One. And he has given me his orders.
And the feminine voice again: Who was it? What orders? You keep saying that it was the man on the couch. That doesn’t make sense!
I didn’t hear the reply, because it suddenly occurred to me that Daniel Oak was the man on the couch, and that I was Daniel Oak.
My head was throbbing with every beat of my heart, and it felt as if my blood pressure was varying between zero and fifteen hundred pounds per square inch in the veins and arteries and capillaries that fed my brain.
I sat up, and the pain began to lessen. The blood seemed to drain away from my aching head and go elsewhere.
I soon figured out the reason for that; I could tell by the feel that the gravity pull was somewhere between one point five and two gees. I wasn’t at all used to it, but my head felt less painful and rather more hazy. If possible.
I concentrated, and the girl’s voice came back again.
“…I knew you when you were McGuire One, and Two, and Three, and Four, and Five, and Six. And you were always good to me and understanding. Don’t you remember?”
And then McGuire’s voice—human, masculine, and not distorted at all by the reproduction system, but sounding rather stilted and terribly logical: “I remember, Jack. The memory banks of my previous activations are available.”
“All of them? Can you remember everything?”
“I can remember everything that is in my memory banks.”
The girl’s voice rose to a wail. “But you don’t remember! You always forgot things! They took things out each time you were reactivated, don’t you remember?”
The Randall Garrett Megapack Page 56