The Vortex Blaster

by Edward E Smith

  “Just this once wouldn’t do any harm, would it, Captain Neelcloud?” Vesta purred. “You zmell zo wonderful, and she zmells nice, too. Pleeze keep her on!”

  “QX. You win!” The Blaster pulled himself loose from the two too-demonstrative females and addressed the group at large. “I think I ought to have my head examined, but I’m signing all of you on as crew. But nobody else. I’ll get the book.”

  He got it. He signed them on. Chief Pilot Thlaskin. Chief Engineer Tommie. Linguist Vesta. Doctor…what? He tried to call her attention by thinking at her, but couldn’t. Then, through Vesta: Manarkans didn’t have names, but were known by their personality patterns. Didn’t they sign something to documents? No, they used finger-prints only, without signatures.

  “But we’ve got to have something we can put in the book!” Cloud protested. “Tell her to pick one.”

  “No preference,” Vesta reported. “I’m to do it. I knew a lovely Tellurian named “Nadinevandereckelberg” once. Let’s call her that.”

  “Nadine van der Eckelberg? Better not. Not common enough—there might be repercussions. We can use part of it, though. ‘Nadine.’ bracketed with her prints…there. Now how about Maluleme?” He turned to the “Classification” listing and frowned. “What to class her as I’ll never know. She’s got just about as much business aboard this bucket as I would have in a sultan’s harem.”

  “You might find quite a lot—and that I’d like to see!” Vesta snickered. “But look under ‘Mizzelaneouz,’ there.”

  Her stiff, sharp fingernail ran down the column almost to the end. “‘Zupercargo’? We have no cargo. ‘Zupernumerary’? That’s it! See? I read: ‘Zupernumerary—Perzonnel beyond the nezezzary or uzhual; ezpedjially thoze employed not for regular zervize, but only to fill the plazez of otherz in caze of need.’ Perfect!”

  “Whose place could she fill?”

  “The cook’s—if the automatics break down,” Vesta explained, gleefully. “She says she can really cook—so even it they didn’t break down she can tape lots of nice things to eat that aren’t in your kitchen banks.”

  “Could be. I can get away with that. ‘Supernumerary (cook 1/c) Maluleme’ and her prints there. Now we’re organized—let’s flit. Ready, Thlaskin?”

  “Ready, sir,” and the good ship Vortex Blaster I took off.

  “Now, Vesta, I s’pose you’ve all picked out your cabins and got located?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “QX. Tell ’em all, except Tommie, to go and do whatever they think they ought to be doing. Tell Tommie to sit down at the chart-table. We’ll join her. I want to find out what she’s got on her mind.”

  Pulling a chart and rolling it out flat on the table, Cloud went on: “We’re in this unexplored region, here, about thirty two dash twenty five.2 We’re headed for Nixson II, about sixty one dash forty six.”

  “Nixson? Why, that’s only three thousand parsecs—a day and a half, say—from Tominga, where I want you to go!” Tommie exclaimed.

  “Check. That’s why I’m going to listen to what you have to say. We can pick Manarka up—sixty five dash thirty five, here; they’ve got two really bad ones—on the way back. It’s a long flit to Chickladoria—’way over there, one seventy seven dash thirty four—but I’ve got to go there pretty quick, anyway. It’s way up on the A list. So, Tommie, start talking.”

  * * * * *

  The run to Nixson II was uneventful, and Cloud rid that planet of its loose atomic vortices in a few hours. The cruiser then headed directly for Tominga, one man short, for Tommie was not aboard.

  “Now remember, no matter what happens, you don’t know any one of us,” had been the Blaster’s parting instructions to her. “After we’ve checked in at the hotel we’ll meet in the lobby. Be sure you’re sitting—or standing—some place where Vesta can pass a couple of words with you without anybody catching on. Check?”

  “Check.”

  Chapter VIII

  VESTA THE VEGIAN

  IMMEDIATELY AFTER SUPPER Cloud called Vesta and Nadine into his cabin.

  “You first, Nadine.” He caught her eyes and stopped talking, but went on thinking. He was amazed at how easy it had been to learn the knack of telepathy with both Luda and the Manarkan. “How did you make out with Tommie? Can’t she read you at all?”

  “Not at all. I can read her easily enough, but she can neither send nor receive.”

  “How about Vesta, then? Any more progress?”

  “No. Just like you. She learned very quickly to receive, but that is all. She cannot tune her mind; I have to do it all.” It also amazed the Blaster that, after learning one half of telepathy so easily, he had been unable even to get a start on the other half. “We might try it again, though, all three of us together?”

  They tried, but it was no use. Think as they would, of even the simplest things—squares, crosses, triangles, and circles—staring eye to eye and even holding hands, neither the Blaster nor the Vegian could touch the other’s mind. Nor could the Manarkan tell them or show them what to do.

  “Well, that’s out, then.” Cloud frowned in concentration, the fingers of his left hand drumming almost soundlessly on the table’s plastic top. “Nadine, you can’t send simultaneously to both Vesta and me, because we can’t tune ourselves into resonance with you, as a real telepath could. However, could you read me and send my thoughts to Vesta, and do it fast enough to keep up? As fast as I talk, say?”

  “Oh, easily. I don’t have to tune sharply to receive—unless there’s a lot of interference, of course—and even then, Vesta can read my shorthand. She learned it before we met you.”

  “Hm…m. Interesting. Let’s try it out. I’ll think at you, you put it down in shorthand. You, Vesta, tape it in Spanish. Get your notebook and recorder…ready? Let’s go!”

  There ensued a strange spectacle. Cloud, leaning back in his seat with his eyes closed, mumbled to himself in English, to slow his thoughts down to approximately two hundred words per minute. Nadine, paying no visible attention to the man, wrote unhurried, smoothly-flowing—most of the time—symbols. Vesta, throat-mike in place and yellow-eyed gaze nailed to the pencil’s point, kept pace effortlessly—most of the time.

  “That’s all. Play it back, Vesta. If you girls got half of that, you’re good.”

  The speaker came to life, giving voice to a completely detailed and extremely technical report on the extinction of an imaginary atomic vortex, and as the transcription proceeded Cloud’s amazement deepened. It was evident, of course, that neither of the two translators knew anything at all about many of the scientific technicalities involved. Nevertheless the Manarkan had put down—and Vesta had recorded in good, idiomatic Galactic Spanish—an intelligent layman’s idea of what it was that had been left out. That impromptu, completely unrehearsed report would have been fully informative to any expert of the Vortex Control Laboratory!

  “Girls, you are good—very good.” Cloud paid deserved tribute to ability. “First chance we get, I’ll split a bottle of fayalin with you. Now we’d better hit the sack. We land early in the morning, and since we’re going to stay here a while we’ll have to go through quarantine and customs. So pack your bags and have ’em ready for inspection.”

  They landed at the spaceport of Tommie’s home town, which Cloud, after hearing Vesta’s literal translation of its native name, had entered in his log as “Mingia.” They passed their physicals and healths easily enough—the requirements for leaving a planet of warm-blooded oxygen-breathers are so severe and so comprehensive that the matter of landing on a similar one is almost always a matter of simple routine.

  “Manarkan doctors we know of old; you are welcome indeed. We see very few Tellurians or Vegians, but the standards of those worlds are very high and we are glad to welcome you. But Chickladoria? I never heard of it—we’ve had no one from that planet since I took charge of this port of entry…”

  The Tomingan official punched buttons, gabbled briefly, and listened.

  �
�Oh, yes. Excellent! The health, sanitation, and exit requirements of Chickladoria are approved by the Galactic Medical Society. We welcome you. You all may pass.”

  They left the building and boarded a copter for their hotel.

  “…and part of its name is ‘Forget-me-not’! Isn’t that a dilly of a name for a hotel?” Vesta, who had been telepathing busily with Nadine, was giggling sunnily.

  Suddenly, however, she stopped laughing and, eyes slitted, leaped for the door. Too late: the craft was already in the air.

  “Do you know what that…that clunker back there really thought of us?” she flared. “That we’re weak, skinny, insipid, underdeveloped little runts! By Zevz and Tlazz and Jadkptn, I’ll show him—I’ll take a tail-wrap around his neck and…”

  “Pipe down, Vesta—listen!” Cloud broke in, sharply. “You’re smart enough to know better than to explode that way. For instance, you’re stronger than I am, and faster—admitted. So what? I’m still your boss. And Tommie isn’t, even though, as you ought to know by this time, she could pull your tail out by the roots and beat you to death with the butt end of it in thirty seconds flat.”

  “Huh?” Vesta’s towering rage subsided miraculously into surprised curiosity. “But you’re admitting it!” she marvelled. “Even that I am stronger and faster than you are!”

  “Certainly. Why not? Servos are faster still, and ordinary derricks are stronger. It’s brains that count. I’d much rather have your linguistic ability than the speed and strength of a Valerian.”

  “So would I, really,” Vesta purred. “You’re the nicest man!”

  “So watch yourself, young lady,” Cloud went on evenly, “and behave yourself. If you don’t, important as you are to this project, I’ll send you back to the ship in irons. That’s a promise.”

  “P-f-z-t-k!” Vesta fairly spat the expletive. Her first thought was sheer defiance, but under the Blaster’s level stare she changed her mind visibly. “I’ll behave myself, Captain Neelcloud.”

  “Thanks. Vesta. You’ll be worth a whole platoon of Tomingans if you do.”

  The copter landed on the flat roof of the hotel. The guests were registered and shown to their rooms. The Forget-Me-Not’s air was hot and humid, and the visitors wore the only clothing to be seen. Nevertheless, Cloud was too squeamish to go all the way, so he still wore shorts and sandals, as well as the side-arm of his rank, when he went back up to the lobby to meet his crew.

  Vesta, tail-tip waving gracefully a foot and a half above her head, was wearing only her sandals. Thlaskin wore shorts and space-boots. Maluleme had reduced her conventional forty one square inches of covering to a daring twenty five—two narrow ribbons and a couple of jewels. Nadine, alone of them all, had made no concession to that stickily sweltering climate. She’d be disgraced for life, Cloud supposed, if she cut down by even one the hundreds of feet of white glamorette in which she was swathed. But Manarkans didn’t sweat like Tellurians, he guessed—if they did, she’d either peel or smother before this job was over!

  Cloud scanned the lobby carefully. Were they attracting too much attention? They were not. They had had to pose for Telenews shots, of course—the Chickladorians in particular had been held in the spots for all of five minutes—but that was all. Like any other space-port city, Mingia was used to outlandish forms of warm-blooded, oxygen-breathing life. Not counting his own group, he could see members of four different non-Tomingan races, two of which were completely strange to him. And Tommie, standing alone in front of one of the row of shop-windows comprising one wall of the lobby—and very close to a mirrored pillar—was intently studying a tobacconist’s display of domestic and imported cigars.

  “QX,” the Blaster said then. “We aren’t kicking up any fuss. Do your stuff, Vesta.”

  The girl sauntered over to the mirror, licked her forefinger, and began to smooth an imaginary roughness out of one perfect eyebrow. Thus, palm covering mouth—

  “He still hangs out here, Tommie?”

  “He still eats supper here every night, in the same private room.” Tommie did not move or turn her head; her voice could not be heard three feet away.

  “When he comes in, take one good look at him and think ‘This is the one’—Nadine’ll take over from there. Then sneak down to the chief’s suite and join us.”

  Vesta, with a final approving pat at her sleek head, sauntered on; past a display of belt-pouches in which she was not interested, pausing before one of ultra-fancy candies in which she very definitely was, and back to her own group.

  “On the green,” she reported.

  “Then I’ll go on about my business of getting things lined up to blow out vortices. You, Thlaskin and Maluleme, just run around and play. Act innocent—you’re just atmosphere for now. Nadine and Vesta, go down to my suite—here’s a key—and get your recorder and stuff ready. I’ll see you later.”

  Cloud came back, however, rather sooner than he had intended.

  “I didn’t get far—I’ll have to take you along if I want to get any business done,” he explained to Vesta. “Up to now, I’ve got along very nicely with English, Spanish, and spaceal, but not here. We’re a long ways from either Tellus or Vegia.”

  “We are indeed. I don’t know what they do use for an interstellar language here—I’ll have to find out and see if I know it yet.” Vesta then switched to English. “While we wait, do you mind if I zpeak at you in Englizh? And will you ztop me and correct, please, the errors I will make? My pronunziazion is getting better, but I ztill have much trouble with your irregular verbs and pronouns. I come, but I am not yet arrive.”

  “I’ll say you’re better!” Cloud knew that she had been studying hard; studying with an intensity of concentration comparable only to that of a cat on duty at a mouse-hole; but he had expected no such progress as this. “It’s amazing—you have scarcely any more accent now in English than in Spanish. I’ll be glad to coach you. What you just said was QX except for the last sentence. Idiomatically, you should have said ‘I’m coming along, but I’m not there yet,’” and Cloud explained in detail. “Now, for practice, brief me on this job we’ve got here.”

  “Thankz a lot. Tommie’s brother, whom we’ll call Jim, runs a tobacco zhop here in town.” Cloud had had to explain what “briefing” meant, and he corrected many slight errors which are not given here. “A man who called himself ‘Number One’ organized a Protective Azzoziazion. Anyone not joining, he zaid, would zuffer the conzequenzez of a looze atomic vortex in his power plant. When he zhowed he meant buzzinez by exploding one right where and when he zaid he would, many merchants joined and began to pay. Jim did not. Inztead, he… I forget the idiom?”

  “‘Stalled.’ That means delayed, played for time.”

  “Oh, yez. Jim ztalled, and Tommie went looking for help, knowing the government here thoroughly corrupt. Impozzible to alleviate intolerable zituazion.”

  “What a vocabulary!”

  “Iz wrong?” Vesta demanded.

  “No, is right,” Cloud assured her. “I was complimenting you, young lady—you’ll be teaching me English before this trip is over.”

  The class in English Conversation went on until the Manarkan warned its two participants to get ready; that Tommie, having identified the gangster, had left the lobby, had joined her brother, and was bringing him with her.

  “Is that safe, do you think?” Vesta asked.

  “For now, before anything starts, yes.” Cloud replied. “After tonight, no.”

  The Tomingans arrived; Vesta let them in and introduced Jim to Nadine and Cloud. The brother was taller, heavier, craggier than the sister; his cigar was longer, thicker, and blacker than hers. Otherwise, they were very much alike. Cloud waved them both into comfortable chairs, for there was no time for conversation. Nadine began to write; Vesta to record.

  The Big Shot—Nadine took an instant to flash into Cloud’s mind a very good picture of the fellow—was in his private room, but if a dinner were to be on the program it would be later. The
re were two men in the room; Number One and another man, whom he thought of and spoke to as “Number Nine.” At present the affair was strictly business. Number Nine was handing money to Number One, who was making notes in a book. Twenty credits from Number Seventeen; 50 from No. 20; 25 from No. 26; 175 from No. 29; 19 credits—all he could raise—from No. 30; 125 from No. 31, and so on…

  The gangsters thought that they were being very smart and cagey in using numbers instead of names, but neither had any idea of the power of a really good telepathic mind, or of that of a really good linguist. Each of those numbers meant something to either or to both of those men, and whatever it was—a name, a picture, a store-front or address, or a fleeting glimpse of personality pattern—Nadine seized and transmitted, either in shorthand or by force of mind, or both; and Vesta taped, in machine-gun-fast Spanish, every written word and every nuance of thought.

  The list was long. At its end:

  “Three more didn’t pay up, huh? The same ones holding out as last time, and three more besides, huh?” This was Number One, thinking deeply. “I don’t like it… Ninety Two, huh? I don’t like it a bit—or him, either. I’ll have to do something about him.”

  “Yeah. Ninety Two. The others all give the same old tear-jerker that they didn’t have it, that our assessments were too stiff for their take, and so on, but Ninety Two didn’t, this time. He simply blew his top. He was hotter than the business end of a blow-torch.” Not much to Cloud’s surprise, Nadine at this point poured into his mind the picture of excessively angry Jim. “Not only he didn’t fork over, he told me to tell you something.”

  There was a long pause.

  “Well, spill it!” Number One barked. “What did he say?”

  “Shall I give it to you straight boss, or maybe I better tone it down some?”

  “Straight!”

  “He said for you to go roast, for fourteen thousand years, in the hottest corner you can find of the hottest hell of Telemachia, and take your Srizonified association with you. Take your membership papers and stick ’em. Blow his place up and be damned to you, he says. If you kill him in the blast he’s left stuff in a deposit box that’ll blow all the Srizonified crooked politicians and lawmen in the Fourth Continent off of their perches and down onto their Srizonified butts. An’ if you don’t get him, he says, he’ll come after you with blasters in both hands. Make it plain, he says, that it’s you he’ll be after—not me. That’s exactly what he told me to tell you, boss.”