by Allen Wold
A hail of bullets came in the doorway. Darcy groaned and rolled out of her chair before the arc of bullets reached her. As the angle of fire increased away from him, Rikard stepped out and sent five heavy slugs smashing into the two men against the far wall who were firing two machine pistols apiece. He jumped back, tripped on the clip he'd dropped when the truncheon had hit him, and went down.
The hall exploded. There was a roar and another explosion. A cloud of stinking smoke billowed into the room, bringing screams with it. There was a third explosion, then silence.
Then Leonid Polski stood in the doorway, his police blaster drawn and smoking. His face wore the hardest expression Rikard had ever seen.
The policeman glanced at him briefly, then holstered his blaster and went to where Darcy lay in a growing pool of blood.
"Don't move her," Rikard said roughly. He struggled to his feet, recovered the clip that had tripped him, and shoved it into his gun. "I think her ribs are broken."
Polski's hands fluttered over her, but didn't touch her. "How are you doing?" he asked her.
"Not good."
"Who do I call for help?" Rikard asked.
"Nobody," Polski said over his shoulder. "What happened?" he asked Darcy.
"Can't talk," Darcy gasped. Polski stood up.
"That one," Rikard said, indicating the woman, who was still alive but unconscious, "was beating her with this." He kicked at the truncheon. "I'd just left when I saw them come in. I don't know why I came back, but I had to."
"You're doing okay, kid," Polski said. He picked up the truncheon and went over to the unconscious woman.
"If I could turn the recorders off," he said, "for just one minute, I could get a lot of satisfaction right now." He hefted the truncheon, then dropped it on the woman's body.
"What about Darcy?" Rikard asked. "Do we take her to a hospital?"
Polski nodded.
"I heard they take your money or your life," Rikard went on.
"They do, but I've got connections, and so does Darcy, so she'll be all right. And besides, they'll know either you or I will come for them if they hurt her, so that will keep them honest. They can do good work if they want to."
"How do we get her there?"
"I've got a couple of my people coming over now with an ambulance. I'm wired in, remember?"
"I know that. It's just I thought you were working alone."
"In a sense I am, but I've got a support crew of seven. The privilege of rank."
Rikard went over and knelt beside Darcy. He didn't know what was between her and Polski, but he was sure it was close. He hesitated a moment, saw Polski's face tense and then relax. He turned back to Darcy.
"You've got help coming," he told her softly.
"I heard," she whispered, using as little air as possible.
"Want any revenge?"
"I'll get it later." She smiled grimly. "If there's any of them left. Thanks for coming back."
"I shouldn't have left."
"No," she answered, and passed out.
"She'll be all right," Polski said as Rikard stood.
"Yeah, she's tough."
"She only called me because you were leaving her behind," Polski went on.
"I just figured that out."
"We've been friends for a long time."
"I know. It's all right. Neither you nor I have to make any decisions or explanations. And besides, if you hadn't shown up, we'd both be dead."
"Just good police timing."
"Sure. When are your people getting here?"
"They're here now. Want to hear about the Man Who Killed Banatree?"
"After I'm sure she's all right."
"After we're both sure. Then I'll talk your ear off. Neither one of us is going to want to sleep tonight."
And then four Federal police officers came in with the stasis carrier.
Part Seven
1
They got to the hospital within a quarter of an hour. Two of the police support crew stayed with Darcy in the emergency room while Rikard and Polski went to talk to the hospital authorities. They had no difficulty convincing them that Darcy should be given the best of care at the best rates going.
The medical equipment here, like everything else on Kohl-tri, was badly outdated, but the surgeons were first class, whatever their reasons for being here. Darcy went into emergency surgery at once, and Polski dismissed his officers.
"You look like you could use some treatment yourself," one of the doctors told Rikard, looking at the bruises on his face.
"No thanks. We just want some coffee, and a place to wait until she comes out."
"The waiting room's down the hall. Coffee will cost you."
"Just bring it," Polski said.
There were several other people in the waiting room. Rikard and Polski found a couple of chairs in a corner where they wouldn't be disturbed. After a few moments a young man brought them their coffee. They sat drinking in silence for a while.
"So tell me about the Man Who Killed Banatree," Rikard said at last. "You said it was a long story. I think we'll have plenty of time."
"How much do you know about it?" Polski asked.
"Not much. That was seventeen years ago. I was only nine years old when it happened."
"I was twelve. Well, I guess I'll begin at the beginning."
* * * *
Telchrome was a world of perpetual spring. Its orbit was nearly circular; its axis did not wobble. Near the poles it was cold enough and snowed enough that skiing and other winter sports went on year round. There were no blizzards. At the equator temperatures varied between sixty at night and ninety during the day, with gentle rainy seasons which were only slightly cooler. In the temperate zones the weather was always perfect. The world was so mild and beautiful that it could be used for nothing other than a paradise vacation planet.
Banatree was one of the poshest resort cities on Telchrome, and hence in the Federation. It had a population of nearly four million, half of whom were employees of the Telchrome Recreation Administration, citizens, or government workers. The other half were tourists who had money to spend. Those on a more limited budget visited other parts of Telchrome. There were even places where you didn't have to spend any money at all once you arrived and proved you had return fare.
A world like Telchrome and a city like Banatree attracted people other than those who just intended to have a good time. Known criminals were turned around at the spaceport. Litterbugs and vandals were fined, made to pay reparations, and deported. The TRA valued its property and made sure the planet was always safe for paying visitors. Nonetheless, occasionally people came who thought they could take advantage of the idyllic planet.
When an unidentified male caller contacted the Banatree city government and demanded a ransom of ten billion, threatening to destroy the city if he was not paid within twenty days, nobody was too worried—until the routine tracing procedures failed to produce the identity of the caller. Even then they were not too concerned, as threats of that nature— though usually much less grandiose—were not all that uncommon. Besides, who could destroy a whole city?
The deadline ran out. A small thermal bomb went off at a racetrack a few kilometers outside Banatree, killing several hundred people. The man contacted the city government again and restated his demands.
This time they decided to take him at his word, though nobody knew how he could carry out his threat. But they stalled and searched, and just when it seemed they might have a lead, with only a day left before the new deadline, a neutron bomb went off in the center of Banatree. Only nine city blocks at the site of the blast were destroyed, but three and a half million people were killed.
At the same time a small freighter at another spaceport on Telchrome was hijacked, though it was over two hours before planetary police took note. When they did, they were certain that the Man Who Killed Banatree, as he was almost instantly called, had taken the ship in order to escape. Police ships followed at once.
; But even that small delay had foiled them. Tracking any ship through non-Einsteinian space was more than just tricky. The hijacked ship stopped momentarily at eleven stars on a long, irregular route before the police cruisers caught up with it and blew off its engines.
When they boarded it, the police found the crew all dead. There was evidence that at each of the eleven stops—all primaries of inhabited worlds—an escape pod had been jettisoned. The Man Who Killed Banatree had gotten off somewhere en route, but no one knew where.
The explosion that killed the city of Banatree had completely destroyed the bomb, of course. Nevertheless, by studying the bomb's effects and residual radiations, police investigators were able to determine that it had been a special type, made using a rare alloy catalyst called barodin, at a battery factory on the industrial world of Pieshark.
The factory had specialized in energy-storage devices of from one to one hundred cubic meters in size. These were thermonuclear, fusion, and electrogravitic devices, which also used barodin in their construction. The factory had been destroyed a standard year earlier by the same type of bomb that had gone off at the racetrack just outside Banatree.
Fifty people had died in the factory explosion, including employees, administrators, and visitors. That explosion, the police now reasoned, had been set off to cover the manufacture and theft of the neutron bomb, and to obliterate the identity of its maker, since none of the victims could be identified. The reason for the explosion had been a mystery until the Banatree disaster.
Federal police investigated each of the eleven worlds where the Man Who Killed Banatree might have found refuge. One or two worlds they could eliminate at once, when the wreckage of the escape pods were found. Other worlds took longer, because the pods could not be located immediately, because local authorities interfered with the investigation, or because population records were slackly maintained. It took seventeen years to narrow the list to one out-of-the-way world, the fifth stop on the hijacked freighter's escape flight. Kohltri.
* * * *
"There's been an awful lot of preliminary work done already," Polski said as he finished the story. It was nearly dawn. "But Kohltri, of course, has presented special problems. Our biggest has been to conduct the investigation without arousing the populace. I'm just the clean-up man, as it were."
"Do you think you'll get him?"
"It's just a matter of time now. The population of Kohltri isn't all that large. And when you eliminate everybody who demonstrably arrived after the Man, or who was probably here before him, that leaves only a few thousand whose presence is not precisely accounted for. And we know he didn't leave. You may be able to drop in on a planet without telling anybody, under just the right circumstances, but you can't leave that way."
"Just a few thousand suspects."
"It's not as bad as it seems. Most of the possibilities are simply too young. They were born here, without records. It's narrowing down fast—at least, in terms of a seventeen-year manhunt it's fast."
"What will you do when you find him?"
"Take him alive, if we can. The government wants to try him publicly. There isn't much doubt he'll be convicted, though, and when he is, he'll be executed. First execution in several hundred years. But the public pressure is too strong to just rehabilitate him."
"I'd say so. There's no way he can get a fair trial."
"Not if what you're trying to prove is that he killed the city. The trial will be to prove that he is in fact the man who fled Telchrome seventeen years ago. There were nine people slaughtered on that freighter. It's the best we can do."
A doctor they hadn't seen before came into the waiting room and looked them over.
"Are you the people who brought Msr. Glemtide in here last night?" he asked.
"We are," Polski said.
"They've just taken her out of surgery. She'll be all right. She'd like to see you now."
They followed the doctor to a fourth-floor ward, where Darcy was lying in a semiprivate room. She looked groggy and her face was puffy, but she was awake, and she smiled when they came in.
"How you doing?" Polski asked, coming up to stand by the head of her bed.
"Seven broken ribs," she said. Her voice was a whisper; her breathing was short and shallow. "Some internal damage, not much, but a lot of bleeding. How am I going to pay for all this?"
"You can owe me," Polski said. "Besides, we convinced them to give us good rates."
"I'll bet you did. Have you been here all night?"
"Sure, nowhere else to go. When can we take you out of here?"
"Ten or twelve days. I'm going to be out of action for a long time. The worst part is"—she looked past Polski at Rikard—"my deal fell through. I won't be able to help pay for your expedition."
"Don't worry about that," Rikard said. "I'll figure something out. You just get yourself well, and then we can all three go looking for whatever's left of that mob."
"Sure thing," she said.
They talked with her a moment more, but she obviously needed rest. Polski arranged for the other bed in the room to be left vacant so that either he or Rikard could stay with Darcy, in case any survivors of the mob that had tried to kill her came back looking for trouble.
Rikard and Polski arranged their schedule to suit the policeman's convenience. Rikard would stay with Darcy until Polski came back from his day's search for the Man Who Killed Banatree, then Rikard would go out, leaving the policeman to sleep in the other bed. Darcy slept most of the time Rikard spent with her, but she seemed glad for his company while she was awake.
When Rikard wasn't sitting with Darcy, he did what he could to prepare an expedition to the ruined Belshpaer city of the Tower of Fives. He moved out of his hideaway into a cheap room to conserve his resources, which were rather depleted by this time. He purchased concentrated food and a collapsible shelter and made arrangements for a jeep, a heavy-duty open-bodied floater, to be available whenever he was ready to go. That took almost his last bill.
Most of his time away from the hospital he spent trying to locate someone to guide him. He needed someone who not only knew where the Tower of Fives was, but who would take the job on speculation. And it had to be somebody he could trust. Meeting this last condition was an almost impossible task. He had no luck finding a suitable guide until the tenth day of Darcy's hospitalization, when Polski came in to take his turn guarding her.
"I ran into somebody who might be who you're looking for," the policeman said. He looked exhausted.
"Who is he?" Rikard asked. He gave Polski his chair.
"His name's Stefan Dobryn. He's one of the people I had to check out as a possible suspect. He was born here. He's a product of his society, of course, but he's proved trustworthy before. He went along as a workman when an archaeological expedition from Zendar went to the Tower about four years ago."
2
Rikard went to see Dobryn at his home that evening. The man wasn't much older than Rikard, and greeted him suspiciously, standing in the door with a drawn gun, a small type of plastic pistol.
"My name's Braeth," Rikard said. "I understand you know where the city of the Tower of Fives is."
"Maybe I do."
"I want somebody to guide me there. Will you do it?"
"Who sent you?"
"Leonid Polski. I have certain information on Belshpaer artifacts."
"So what's in it for me?"
"Five percent. Minimum of a hundred a day after we get back."
"How many people?"
"Just me. I've got the jeep and supplies."
"Small expedition. How about an advance?"
"I have no cash left."
"Real thin, aren't you? What are these artifacts?"
"Would you believe dialithite?"
"Not really. What's your real reason?"
"I think my father is buried somewhere in the Tower of Fives. I want to see his grave. But there may really be dialithite. That's why he went there."
&n
bsp; "First time I ever heard of it."
"Me too."
Dobryn stared at him a moment longer, then lowered his gun. "Come on in and let's talk about it."
It was a small but comfortable suite of rooms. Dobryn motioned Rikard into a chair and took one himself.
"So," he said, "you're offering me a hundred a day but you have no money."
"If we find nothing, I'll have the deposit on the jeep, and I'll sell the shelter. That ought to cover it."
"I'd have to lay off at the mines. How about one fifty a day?"
"I can see that."
"You really think there's dialithite there?"
"There was, eleven years ago. I've seen the man who got away. He had a handful."
"No kidding. And you didn't take it from him?"
"You think maybe he gave me the chance? Besides, what I really want is my father. If you find any dialithite, you can have whatever you can carry."
"Generous. And what about you?"
"I have big pockets too."
"Whatever I can carry is more than 5 percent."
"Maybe you could suggest somebody else who could guide me.
"I sure could, but you have to sleep sometime."
"Okay, Dobryn, I've told you what I want. That's the best offer I can make. I can leave tomorrow morning. Will you guide me?"
"Look, man, I just don't know who you are, that's all."
"And I don't know you either. The only person I really know here is Darcy Glemtide, and she's just a visitor herself. I came here to you because Polski said you could be trusted."
"I don't know anybody named Polski. Glemtide? No, that doesn't mean a thing to me. Okay, look, here's what I'll do. I'll guide you out there. You guarantee me a thousand plus one fifty a day and 10 percent or whatever I can carry."
Rikard took the loan agreement on the jeep out of his pocket and handed it to Dobryn.
"You collect the whole remainder of the deposit," he said, "or keep the jeep if you want. It's been paid for. And 10 percent or whatever you can carry, whichever is less."
Dobryn looked over the loan agreement. "Okay, it's a deal." He handed the document back. "Give that to me when we're on the road tomorrow. Pick me up here. I'll be home."