S.T.A.R. Flight

by E. C. Tubb

  “I was going to destroy them,” said Raleigh. “In the furnace.”

  “They don’t want them back at UNO,” said King. “If that’s what you were getting at.”

  Preston nodded and looked at the doctor. “Have you examined them?”

  “I have.”

  “And?”

  “They were very neatly removed,” she said clinically. “There are no signs of crushing or bruising nor the slightest trace of compression. They certainly were never chopped off and the wounds are too even for them to have been removed by hand. Something like a microtome could have done it but that’s about all.”

  “And the rest of him?” Preston looked at the others, “The rest of Lassiter?”

  Raleigh shook his head. “No one knows,” he admitted. “We can only assume that he is dead. They must have discovered him,” he said. “I knew the plan was stupid from the first. The Kaltich aren’t that easily deceived.”

  “What happened?”

  “We managed to get him among a bunch of selectees,” said King heavily. “It was his own idea. He reckoned he could make it. He intended to pass through, look around and find some way back so he could tell us what he’d seen.” He shrugged, broad face impassive. “That’s all. They must have discovered him in some way and killed him. Sending back his hands was just to let us know they knew about it. A warning.”

  “Hands off,” said Preston. He looked at his own, clenched into fists. “Damn them,” he said. “The barbaric swine.” He looked at Raleigh. “What is the UNO going to do about it?”

  Raleigh shook his head.

  “STAR, then?”

  “That’s why we sent for you.” Oldsworth coughed, shielding his mouth with a handkerchief. “We’ve got to make a decision.”

  Preston raised his eyebrows.

  “Let’s review the situation,” said Oldsworth. He was, Preston reminded himself, no fool. No man who had made his kind of money could be. “You don’t remember the Kaltich arriving,” he said. “You weren’t born then. It was fifty years ago back in 1983. I was seventy years old then and had a cancer of the spleen. I’ll be honest — I was damned glad they’d come.”

  “Sure,” said Preston. “They sold you a new spleen. They sold you the longevity treatment and made you young again for another ten years. You,” he added, “and everyone in your position. Hell, you begged them to give it to you. Gave the Kaltich everything they wanted. How do you like being a beggar, Oldsworth?”

  “You’re not being fair,” said Hilda Thorenson. “You’re young and can’t appreciate the desperation of the old.”

  “Think again,” he said curtly. “I watched my grandfather die when a thousand lousy units would have saved him. Given him another ten years at least,” he qualified. “I was eight at the time. Now I’m watching my old man go through the same hell. Only he doesn’t have to worry,” he added. “I’ve got his cash safely put to one side. He’ll make it — if he hasn’t upset the Kaltich in some way. Like I did,” he reminded them. “I let one down in order to attend this meeting.”

  “He didn’t know you,” said Raleigh. “He can’t know who you are.”

  “He could check. The schloss has my particulars.”

  King cleared his throat. “Maybe we could do something about that.”

  Preston shook his head. “It’s too late for that.” And then, to Oldsworth. “Sorry. For interrupting you, I mean.”

  “That’s all right,” said Oldsworth mildly. “I guess you are right in what you say. We did go overboard for the Kaltich. They offered life. What more attractive bait could be dangled before the old? Life and youth both. Sure we took it. We still take it. We are still willing to beg. But that part is all wrong. We shouldn’t have to do that.”

  Preston lit a fresh cigarlet, blew smoke, watched as it hit the table to bounce in spreading mist. They want something, he thought. They asked me to come here with a prime-urgent message and now they’re dodging the problem. Or perhaps they weren’t dodging it. Perhaps they were being clever. He blew more smoke. Clever? He doubted it. King, perhaps, he was a born agent. Raleigh, maybe, he had to have something in order to be able to hold down two jobs, one on each of two opposing sides. The woman? Yes, but in a different way. Her skill was a thing of hands, brains and painstaking care. Oldsworth? He was the odd man out. The financier for the group. What did he have to gain?

  “You sent for me,” he said abruptly. “I’m here. What is it you want from me?”

  “We want you to go through a Gate,” said the woman evenly. “We want you to try.”

  “And wind up like Lassiter?”

  “No. There is danger,” she admitted. “He failed; so could you, but maybe not.”

  Preston dragged at the cigarlet. “Tell me more.”

  “The Kaltich have two great advantages over us,” she said. “One we can do something about. Our own geriatric sciences could, in time, maybe manage to duplicate the longevity treatment. If so, we can nullify one of their advantages. The other we can do nothing about. We still need their Celestial Gates. As yet we haven’t the faintest idea of how they work.”

  “Must you state the obvious?”

  “I wish to clarify the position,” she said sharply. “In order to solve a problem you must first recognize it. STAR was born from resentment, anger, frustration, a desire of individuals to be a part of an active force in the world. Unity is strength. Lassiter forgot that. Did he imagine that he could win the secret of the Gates merely by passing through? Do you?”

  “No,” said Preston, and added, “Is that what you want?”

  She was emphatic. “It’s what we all want, STAR, UNO, everyone. It’s worth a million,” she said casually. “One million in cash if you can win for us the secret of the Gates.”

  “And?”

  “Another million if you can discover the secret of the longevity treatment. STAR doesn’t expect you to work for nothing,” she said. “What do you say?”

  Preston rose to his feet. “Do I get out alive or do you gun me down as I reach the door?”

  “You refuse?”

  “I don’t play a guitar,” he said. “But I’ve got a use for my hands. Yes, I refuse.”

  Oldsworth coughed, this time using a fresh handkerchief. It seemed as if his lungs were tearing loose from his chest. Preston looked at him.

  “You’d better go for a treatment,” he suggested. “Leave it much longer and you’ll be too late. Even the Kaltich can’t resurrect the dead.”

  Oldsworth managed to get himself under control. “I’ve been for a treatment. I was refused.”

  “That’s tough.” So that’s why there’re millions floating around, he thought. You’ve cheated the grave for fifty years. Now it stares you in the face. Now you’re getting desperate. Desperate enough to take any kind of a risk as long as it’s only a financial one. Preston felt disappointed, for a moment he’d imagined the old man had recovered his pride. “Lassiter?”

  “I don’t know. He may have talked, we can’t be certain. If he did most of us in this group are branded. He knew a lot of us,” said Oldsworth. “You too,” he pointed out.

  Preston shrugged.

  “We have a plan,” said the woman suddenly. “It won’t just be a matter of going blindly into the unknown. We think that we can win.”

  “Sure,” said Preston. “You and Lassiter all over again. But it was his hands which came back, not yours.” He crossed to the door. “Sorry. Get yourself another boy.”

  “Call me if you change your mind,” she said. “I’m in the book.”

  Outside it was a bright day, though still early. Too early for the normal rush of morning commuters. A few hopeful derelicts wandered the streets, picking over the trash, looking for something they could turn into food and drink. A wagon drove past looking for any night-born dead. A zany, eyes glazed with dope, staggered back to his pad.

  Preston walked slowly to where he’d planted the bug. A casual walk past showed that it was still there. He checked the
area for watchers but the place was clean. He lit a cigarlet and waited, hiding behind a paper he’d picked up, looking through a tiny hole punched in one of the pages. He was nothing. A man killing time. Someone waiting to start work, someone out of work, someone on his way home, lingering until it was time to go to his share of a communual bed.

  He smoked five more cigarlets and was about to give up when the car arrived. It was a big, black-painted job, the rear compartment hidden behind opaque windows. It stopped where he’d planted the instrument. A girl left the vehicle. She no longer wore a sleeveless dress, sandals and beads. She didn’t even wear paint, at least not much, and he would have bet his life that she now wore underclothes. But he couldn’t mistake her hips. They were clearly visible as she stooped, plucked out the bug and returned to the car.

  FOUR

  Cherry Lee ducked her head as she entered the car and handed the bug to the man sitting in the rear compartment. Chung Hoo took it, looked at it, slowly shook his head. “That wasn’t very wise of you, my dear,” he said mildly. “Now the young man must be suspicious.”

  “I doubt it,” she said. She gasped as the car moved forward, the acceleration throwing her against the cushions. “He can’t know that it was I who planted it,” she insisted. “Even though he found it he could only guess. He’s smart,” she added, “Not many men would think to search themselves before going to an illegal rendezvous.”

  Chung Hoo made no comment. He sat, as bland and benign as a carved Buddha, the bug cradled in his hand. After a moment he looked at it and handed it back to the girl.

  “Return this to the appropriate department,” he said. “Have them check it. It could be faulty, which could be the reason he found it.”

  He’s trying to save my face, she thought. Blaming the instrument instead of me. But I didn’t bungle it. I know I didn’t. Even so he’s sweet for being so considerate. Aloud she said, “Shall I follow him?”

  “Why bother?” He appraised her with his eyes. “There is a better way. Get to know him. Get him to like you — that should not be hard. Maybe he’ll trust you. You could even join STAR.”

  “They are patriots,” he said mildly. “They believe they are working for the good of Earth. They don’t seem to understand that we cannot afford to alienate the Kaltich. We dare not.” He looked through the window as the car approached the UNO building. It looked like a slab of mottled, dirty glass. “We are so close to universal peace,” he said more to himself than the girl. “At last all nations are becoming one. The old frontiers are being swept aside. Passports, customs, tariff barriers, all are going. The new language and the new unit of currency are uniting us all. How foolish it seems to squabble over a scrap of ground when there are worlds without number waiting to be explored.”

  “When?” she asked.

  “I don’t know,” he admittted. “When we are ready.”

  “And just what does that mean?”

  “When we have outgrown the childish habit of forming secret societies,” he said. “Groups such as the Secret Terian Armed Resistance. STAR is dangerous. They want freedom for Earth, Freedom from the Kaltich. They don’t seem to realize that, but for our guests, Earth would be a smoking ruin. War was very close,” he explained. “Fifty years ago it was only a matter of time before someone started Armageddon. There were enough nuclear devices in stock to completely vaporize the planet. I do not believe in the Christian concept of God,” he admitted. “But certainly some greater power seemed to have our welfare at heart.”

  “That is the past,” she said. “Now there is no threat of war.”

  “But there could be,” he said quickly. “If it were not for the Kaltich the old rivalries and jealousies would again spring to life. Fifty years is not long enough to weld a world into a composite whole. Another hundred years and perhaps we shall not need them. Now we do. That is why STAR is dangerous,” he explained. “They may force our guests to leave. That is why you work among the zanies — turning them from the Gates when they seek to destroy. You and others.”

  “Cogs in the machine,” she said. She could not appreciate his dream — but then, she thought, I didn’t live in the old days, I didn’t know what it was like. To wonder each day, she thought, if that day was to be the last. And Chung Hoo knew more than most. His position in UNO saw to that. As permanent secretary to the Secretary General he had more power than most supposed. To him the coming of the Kaltich must have seemed like the descent of angels.

  “Cogs,” he said thoughtfully. “Yes, my dear, you are correct. But what machine could work without its small but essential components? Therefore, my dear, you are more important than I.”

  She sat, hands folded, not answering as the car reached the UNO building and dived down a ramp into the underground car park. She had never thought of herself in quite that way before.

  Chung Hoo ate breakfast in the high-level canteen, a substantial meal of fruit juice, cereal, buckwheat toast, flapjacks and maple syrup with tea and a pipe of opium to follow. It was a large meal but he didn’t feel guilty. He’d been on duty since two a.m., rising at the first news of the fire and disturbance, and this was his first meal of the day. He would eat once more during the twenty-four hour period, probably in eight hours time, and if he got to bed before midnight he would be lucky.

  His secretary looked up from her desk as he entered his office. She was a pale, intense young woman from the European Federation, her hair drawn back in a hard bun, her face devoid of makeup. She practised yoga and thought of Chung as a modern saint.

  “I was about to page you,” she said. “You have a visitor. Sire Eldon of the Kaltich,” she added. “I thought it best to pass him in.”

  “Eldon? Not Kondor?”

  “No, sir. This one is new.”

  Chung thanked her and passed into his own, inner office. The alien was sitting at his desk. He was dressed all in green, a gamma, and Chung fought a momentary irritation. It was bad enough that the Kaltich had sent a stranger, to have sent a man of lower rank was a deliberate insult. He crushed the thought. You don’t know that an insult was intended, he told himself. Don’t confuse the mores of Earth with those of the Kaltich. And yet, after fifty years, he was not wholly ignorant of their ways.

  “I am honoured, sire,” he said, approaching his visitor. “To what do I owe this pleasure?”

  “There was a fire last night close to the Celestial Gate,” said Eldon. “A delivery of supplies was delayed because of it. This must not happen again.”

  “We hope that it will not,” said Chung.

  “If it does the Gate may be closed. It is incredible,” continued the alien, “that you fail to appreciate the service we give you. In return we ask so little. This fire,” he said. “Who started it? What was its cause?”

  “Our young people are getting impatient,” said Chung. “They are overcrowded, unemployed. If you could see fit to grant us access to a new world —” He broke off. The alien wasn’t listening. They are all the same, thought Chung, looking at the hard, white face. All arrogant, all giving the impression that they couldn’t be bothered with the local problems of Earth. And, he told himself, they were probably justified. What was one world among so many? How many? He didn’t know. No one did. No one but the Kaltich and they spoke of worlds as if they were grains of sand. “We shall do our best to prevent a repetition of the trouble,” he said. “We like it even less than you. You may rest —”

  “There is another thing,” interrupted the alien. “As from today the cost of our services will be doubled. You have no one to blame but yourselves,” he pointed out. “The cost of the items we purchase from you has greatly increased since we first did business. It is only fair that the cost of our services should rise in proportion. I am sure, Mr Chung, you will agree with that.”

  Inflation, thought Chung bleakly. A two-edged sword. “These increases,” he said desperately. “They will hit our people very hard. It is not possible for you to reconsider? A subsidy on all goods you purchase, perhaps
?”

  “As from midnight,” said the alien, not bothering to discuss the matter. “It would be best for you to broadcast the information. You understand?”

  “Yes, sire.”

  “That will be all.”

  And that, Chung thought, looking after his departing visitor, was more than enough. He pressed a button on his intercom. “Nader? Chung. Get up here and fast!”

  Nader was the head of the UNO information service. He sucked in his cheeks at the news and savagely kicked a wastepaper basket. “It isn’t going to be easy,” he said, “How the hell can we justify it? The economy is breaking at the seams already. How do I put it over?”

  “Play up the survival aspect,” suggested Chung. “Get the youngsters to start their longevity fund right away. Tread on the smoking, drinking, drug habits. Make them appreciate that saving is all-important.”

  “Don’t Fritter Away Your Lives!” mused Nader. He shook his head: the slogan lacked punch. “It’s going to play hell with the consumer industries,” he pointed out. “The governments too. Those things carry high taxes. We’ll have opposition.”

  “Maybe, but you know how to handle it.”

  “Sure. I can use surrogate artifacts, men and women, boys and girls, hit the sex angle and play up the pioneer spirit. We can even hint that this is the final stage before moving to our new worlds.” Nader hesitated. “I don’t suppose there could be any truth in that? I mean, did that louse say anything about letting us through?”

  Chung shook his head.

  “I didn’t think so,” said Nader disgustedly. He looked at his hands. “Maybe STAR has the right idea,” he murmured. “Maybe we’ve forgotten that to act like a doormat is to be treated like one.”

  “We must trust the Kaltich,” said Chung sharply.

  “Maybe. But maybe we’re just wasting our time.”

  “No,” said Chung. “I can’t believe that.” I can’t believe it because I dare not, he thought. And then, to Nader, “Get on with the presentation right away. World coverage. The new prices start at midnight so we haven’t much time.”