Shock Diamonds

by E. R. Mason

  “But if she’s down there somewhere you’ll need me to help spot her.”

  “I pulled a photo of her, Patrick. It’s in my pocket. I’ll know her. Wilson and Danica will have copies of their own. But she’s not down there. This is not a place where you get big money for slaves.”

  “But I should share in the risk. I should be there.”

  “Patrick, you will only add to the risk. We’ve got to be smart. We’ll want to get in and out quickly. We’re strangers here. We don’t even know what’s down there. We may encounter some resistance, if you know what I mean. I’m taking people who are best at defending themselves.”

  “What about me?” demanded Catherine. “I’m no pushover, and I’m bigger than Danica. You’d still have a pilot on board, if I went.”

  “Cath, Danica has certain skills you don’t know about. Listen, you guys, you’ve got to trust me on this. I know what I’m doing.”

  A disgruntled silence followed. I tried to sound conciliatory. “Do all you guys still have the translators in your ears?”

  Wilson said, “You know, I forgot about those things. I went in a Chinese restaurant back in Cocoa Beach, and the servers were making insulting comments about me. I pounded my fist on the table and one of them spilled a tray.”

  “I’ll pull a couple more sets out for Catherine and Patrick, just in case.”

  R.J. spoke. “May I suggest something more, Adrian?”

  “What’s that?”

  “ Why don’t we use three of the bio-trackers?”

  “Those ones we tag alien wildlife with to track them? The ones that are inserted under the skin?”

  “That’s the ones.”

  “You want to inject those things under our skin?”

  “We have two eminent doctors aboard.”

  “I hate needles,” said Wilson.

  “He doesn’t pass out, does he?” asked Catherine.

  Wilson ignored the comment. “I’m thinking serious weapons, Adrian.”

  “Well, we can’t go in there loaded for bear. We’ll take the small stunguns that fit in your pocket.”

  “Nearly naked,” complained Wilson. “I’m at least wearing a vest underneath.”

  I tapped the intercom. “Plot us for a descent to the large complex on the next orbit, Dan.”

  “Already programmed, Adrian. De-orbit in twenty-eight minutes.”

  “She doesn’t believe in waiting around, does she?” said Patrick.

  “She probably can’t wait to go,” said Wilson.

  After rushing around to assemble everything needed, I managed to slide down into the right-hand pilot seat just as Danica was rotating the spacecraft for the de-orbit burn. When the turn was complete, she paused to rub her forearm where Catherine had injected the tracking device. I strapped in and a moment later the OMS engines gave a kick and the ship began to sink toward the surface.

  So down and down we went. Black sky faded to gray. Through the lower windows, surface details began to come into focus beyond the hazy, dirty-gray micro-atmosphere. Misgivings crept in. The terrain below looked less and less inviting. It was not a place to live. It was an untrustworthy way station for creatures far from home, there only because there was no better layover available.

  Down we went, to a place where the inhabitants were less familiar and probably more dangerous than the unknown chunk of rock they inhabited. The space above Tolkien’s corona was extremely clean, no satellites, no space junk, leaving our collision avoidance system display unmarked. Griffin’s gravity repulse system had no problem adjusting to ground radar readings. Within the moon’s corona haze there were varying layers both of temperature and pressure, but nothing extraordinary.

  “Hold at one hundred?” asked Danica.

  “Briefly. Let’s look for a parking place that’s not reserved, shall we?”

  “How would we know?” she replied.

  “Let’s hope we don’t get any tickets on our windshield. That open area just ahead is far enough out. It seems less popular. Try there.”

  There seemed to be more spacecraft on the ground than had been apparent in the surface imagery. Most were about half the size of the Griffin and looked like they belonged to a mother ship somewhere. Scattered among them, however, were a few considerably larger. None had a sterling, shipshape appearance. They were all beat-up, uncared-for work horses. It made the Griffin stand out more than I liked.

  We bumped down onto hard ground, and as we ran through our shut-down procedures a portion of the complex was visible through the forward view ports. Dust was constantly blowing between buildings and vehicles. The only thing missing was tumbleweed. A few indistinguishable biped forms, ankle-length desert outer wear billowing out behind them, pushed through the wind, quickly disappearing indoors. One particularly unsettling, shape-changing life-form kept passing by on the street. We couldn’t tell if it was one individual or several. One other resident was equally confounding. It was a brown spider-like thing, the size of a shopping cart, and had five thick spider legs with camel feet that pumped up and down like pistons. The oval body was a soft brown with no discernable markings, no eyes, and no mouth. It was impossible to tell if it was a pet, a predator, or a person.

  Wilson, Danica, and I strapped on our utility belts and pulled on hooded jackets to shield us from the sand. Our colleagues stood by with worried stares. We popped open the door of the aft airlock, stood back from the first blast of air and dust, then deployed the ramp and hurried down so they could close up. Standing at the bottom, we were all asking ourselves what the hell we were doing, but none of us was willing to admit it. The air was chilled and smelled like ozone. There was a chorus of howling in the wind coming from different directions. The protective atmospheric dome twinkled overhead through the haze.

  With a raised voice Wilson asked, “Where’s the visitor’s center do you think?”

  Danica laughed nervously.

  “There’s an awful lot of landing craft around here. Remember, let’s just try to be one of them.” I replied.

  “Okay, but if that spider thing starts coming my way…”

  No sooner had he started to speak than one of the creatures appeared from behind the nearest vehicle on our left, passing close by in front of us. It was making a chirping sound like a cricket, and to our amazement, the translators in our ears converted the sound into a seafaring-styled song any longshoreman with enough whiskey in him would have been proud to sing.

  As it disappeared from view, Wilson looked at me with a forced smile and shouted, “Well, that’s not something you see every day!”

  A fifty-yard hike through parked spacecraft brought us to the main dirt street. Periodically, we had to shield our faces with our arms from the blowing sand. Most of the vehicles we passed by bore paint and markings scarred from the effects.

  Emerging onto the wind-blown street, we found a very crudely arranged township of metallic structures, most of which had been created from expended materials originally intended for other purposes. One structure on our right was a fuel storage tank with doors cut and welded. Next to it, a ten-foot tall round cement piping system had been closed in with metallic sheets, one of which was an entrance. Farther down, the fuselage of an old spacecraft was positioned sideways to the street, its view ports glazed over, a rear port door hatch banging in the wind. We watched a hooded figure cross over and enter what looked like a huge boxcar on the left. There seemed to be a trail in the sand more frequently traveled there. It was our best bet. I headed for it.

  The entrance to the place was a hatch, adapted to the sidewall of the boxcar. I pulled hard to open the spring-loaded, makeshift door, and we all stepped inside, our hoods shielding our faces. The place was so well-lighted and packed it startled me. There were a few hard-to-identify forms, although most of the occupants were of the humanoid variety, features and extremities notwithstanding. The interior was bigger than expected. There were long and short tables scattered around the room. A variety of gaming was in progress. I
t was noisy and alien-stuffy. Makeshift booths lined the right-hand wall, separated by panels of uneven cut metal supported by junk pieces of conduit. There was a counter at the far end of the place, backdropped by a wide variety of supplies. A creature with a vacuum cleaner mouth, no nose, and beady eyes manned the counter. He had reptilian skin for a scalp. Oddly enough, he looked friendly.

  Most of the clientele looked us over as we entered. Most quickly returned to what they were doing. It looked like business transactions were taking place everywhere. In only a few moments, voices became raised again as negotiations resumed. There were bottles on some tables, along with discarded paper plates well cleaned of food products. A quick count gave me thirty-four individuals. To my surprise, ten of them looked perfectly human. There was an empty table with four chairs near the entrance where the wind was a nuisance every time the door opened. We moved over and sat.

  Trophies decorated the walls. They were parts from spacecraft repairs, drilling rig components, duct work with shards from some sort of significant explosion, some beaten up paper with photos of creatures who did not appear to be heroes, various types of alien labeling printed by each image. Before I had a chance to say anything, a very short man with green-brown hair on the sides of his head came trotting up to us. His face was so wrinkled it was impossible to see where specific features began or ended. He wore a plaid vest over no shirt, baggy canvas trousers, and black boots. He seemed cheery. He pointed to a sign on the wall that was written in script that looked like Arabic. After questioning stares from all of us, he laughed and proclaimed, “If you must sit, you must drink.”

  Wilson slapped his hand on the table and declared, “Well, I think I like this place! What have you got, my friend?”

  I interrupted. “We’ll all have water, please.”

  The little man turned to me with an even bigger smile. “Water is the most expensive.”

  I dug in my flight suit pocket and pulled out a gold coin and handed it over. “Will that do?”

  “One more will cover it and me,” he answered hopefully.

  I gave him another and he dashed off.

  The faces nearest us were exotic. I couldn’t tell if the two on our left were male or female or neither. They wore Mideastern-styled robes and black veils pulled across their faces. There seemed to be a permanent smile through the veil, though almost nothing else was visible. They were bald with deep-tanned skin, the eyes orange-yellow.

  At the rectangular brown table beyond them, two individuals were shoving a tablet of some sort back and forth at each other. It was not possible to tell if it was a negotiation or a game. They remained expressionless the entire time. One had short green tubes for ears and golden scales for skin. The mouth protruded from the face; the eyes were sunk back in it. His companion was nearly the opposite. A brown, woolly shag covering allowed only the eyes, nose, and mouth to be seen. Four fat fingers with black fingernails, also covered by shag.

  We had to look around with extreme care. We all knew the wrong eye contact could produce undesirable results. A moment later the short little man returned with our drinks. Yellowish-brown water in shot glasses. Danica tried to hide her repulsion. Wilson smelled his glass carefully. As I took my glass, I also took my first chance. I summoned our little waiter closer. “Lugal Amar.”

  I watched him closely for reaction. The little man had the best poker face I had ever seen. There was not a glimmer of recognition or surprise. I held another gold coin out low. It surprised me when he snatched it up, leaned forward, and pointed to the man behind the counter at the other end of the room. He wiped our table quickly with an oily rag and dashed off.

  Danica quietly proclaimed, “I’m not drinking this. There’s someone’s urine in it.”

  “What did he tell you?” asked Wilson.

  I glanced quickly around. “Nothing, but he pointed to the guy behind the counter when I mentioned the name Lugal Amar.”

  “It can’t be this easy,” replied Wilson.

  “That was the name Patrick was given. And this is the place he was asked about. It was either a false lead, or we’re in the right place.”

  “So we should go talk to the man behind the counter, you think?”

  “Not we. Me. I’ll pick up some of whatever he’s got over there, and do my best to make small talk.”

  “May still be a dead end.”

  “May be.”

  I slid my chair back, stood, pretended to take a sip of my urine, and swaggered nonchalantly toward the man at the sales counter. The only thing he was selling that I could recognize was a wooden box with cigars in it. He crossed over to meet me as I came to the counter. I gestured to the cigars and held out a gold coin. He removed two and handed them to me without speaking. I held out a second gold coin and softly said, “Lugal Amar.”

  He looked me over carefully, and did not try to conceal his understanding. He nodded and pointed to a man sitting alone in a booth at the back of the place. There was no one else around that spot, so no question about who he was pointing to. I slid the coin across the counter to him, tucked my cigars inside my coat, and headed that way.

  The man in the booth was human in every way. He did not look up as I approached. He seemed completely sure of himself. I stood a moment trying to get some clue from him. Big leather trench coat with a high collar. Black stovepipe boots. Rings on his fingers. Short dark hair, weathered skin on a rough-cut face. A scar under the left ear running down to the neckline. Finally he looked up, nodded, and gestured to the opposite seat.

  We sat in silence for a moment. He glanced up occasionally as he pulled out a cigar, then dug in the breast pocket of his coat for a light. I reached into my jacket and drew out the photo of Patrick’s daughter and slid it across the table in front of him. He dragged a big wooden match on the table’s edge, let the flame rise up, then leaned forward and lit his cigar. After a good long healthy draw on the thing, he smiled and blew it in my face.

  That was the last thing I remember.

  Chapter 13

  “Tell me something, are you fucking stupid, Tarn?”

  The place had more shadow than light. Crates stacked high overhead. Enough gravel on the floors you could not make out what kind of floor it was. One overhead light beneath a dish-shaped, silver shade that never stopped swinging. I was in a hard wooden chair. Hands well-tied behind. Ankles fastened just as securely. The man with the cigar sat backwards in a similar wooden chair. There were others behind I could not see. He kept looking up at them and smiling. They did not speak.

  “Where are we? How do you know my name?”

  “That answers that.” The man looked up at his cohorts behind me. “He is fucking stupid. Tarn, you show up here in a government confiscated ship, you go waltzing into The Barter Zone asking for a name that is a code word for somebody snooping around who shouldn’t be, and you don’t even wear dark glasses. You think these people don’t know who you are, dumb fuck?”

  “Look, there’s no need for all this clandestine shit. I’m only trying to track down somebody’s daughter.”

  The room erupted into laughter. I estimated six of them. The smell suggested the others were a bit grungier than the one interviewing.

  “Well, good luck with that! You know how many daughters have passed through these doors, Tarn? Human females are especially valuable. They’re in demand, you might say. They are popular meat, and best of all Earth’s government doesn’t bother to come looking for them. Once they leave the main auction, they can end up anywhere within a few trillion miles of here. How would you track a single one down, even if you were a free man, which you’re not?”

  “How can you do this? Sell out your own species? Is that what you’re saying?”

  “It’s a simple import-export business, Tarn. It’s just that people happen to be the commodity.”

  “You steal their lives.”

  “You think? We take some overly attractive bitches who are so vain and spoiled they think they are royalty. Or sometimes some
asshole executive pisses off the wrong person somewhere and we take the self-important idiot and show him how the other half lives. Sound like much of a crime, Tarn? World governments rip people off worse than that everyday. Man, you are a naive bastard.”

  “Sorry, I just can’t see it. There’s better ways to make a living.”

  “Are you kidding? What would I be on Earth? A shipping clerk trying to work my way up to supervisor? Out here I am a Captain of a ship with a crew of thirty or more. I can go anywhere and do anything I want and get wealthy while I’m doing it. Does that answer your question?”

  “It’s going to catch up with you.”

  He leaned back and smiled. “But not today, Mr. Tarn. Today it has caught up with you.”

  “At least tell me one thing. How did I go so wrong, exactly?”

  “Where didn’t you go wrong is more like it. Don’t you know who built that nice ship you're flying?”

  “What’s that got to do with anything? It was designed by a carrier pilot. I don’t recall his name.”

  “I asked you who built the thing. Who paid for it? Don’t you know?”

  “ Some conglomerate.”

  “No, it was financed by a man name Blackwell.”

  An idiot light suddenly went off in my head. I had missed something in the short conversation with Stan Lee. When I had asked him about Patrick’s problem, he had repeated that he could not give me anything else on the name Dorian Blackwell. He had been telling me the two cases were connected, but I hadn’t picked up on it. “What’s Blackwell got to do with it?”

  “I handled Blackwell’s shipping requirements before the asshole got visions of world domination. How do you think an idiot like that got where he was? He was in the import-export business, just like me. His product was those precious sons and daughters you’re so concerned about.”

  “Blackwell was set up with those off-world religious groups?”

  “He was set up with anybody willing to pay the right price.”

  “So how does the Griffin fit in?”