by Ipomoea
"Time factor, son. Takes time to fix up sabotage on that scale. Not long to actually do it mavbe, but time to find the right people and arrange it. Now, you got an ethergram, and you departed right away, right? So the available time, Earth end, was slight. But whoever sent that gram could have sent instructions—"
"Mv father sent it!"
"How do you know? Could have been anvbodv!"
"Not in those words!" Hutten said it harshly and with emphasis. "That was a phrase with meaning only between father and myself. He sent it. And he did not arrange to have me killed. That's out!"
"What is all this?" Louise demanded, almost dancing with curiosity. She had discarded her cape in the warmth of the ship and now her opulent curves positively quivered as she scented news in a big way. Venner leaned back in his seat, leaving Sam to tell her of his two previous escapes. Her dark eyes burned with interest at the account.
"That rat!" she said explosively, as he fell silent.
"Who? My father?"
"No! Of course not! No, I mean that Captain Bates! There I am, on the same ship—and the times I've sweetened him to let me in on anything worth a mention! And there you are, almost killed—twice! And not so much as a word from him!"
"He said something about adverse publicity. . . ."
Venner roared. "Why are we wasting time on that garbage! Joe, are we stable now? Right, come back here and listen in. Miss Martinez, if you re only half a newswoman, you have a complete passenger list of that ship. Yes? Let me see it. Joe, look this over, just in case it rings any bells/'
"But—" Sam began a protest, and Miss Martinez opened her mouth too, to argue, but the old man was vehement.
"Use your heads, can't you? Somebody gimmicked your suit, and your M-X door on Martian Three. And then somebody blew the Ceti Queen. Somebody who knew that the first two tries had failed. So it's somebody who is right here along with us in this caravan. Obvious? What's more, that somebody probably does not know, yet, that he has failed again."
"You'll have to explain that," Louise suggested. "I was with you as far as—oh, I get it. Whoever fixed that last—thing-would definitely not be on the Ceti Queen. And only there would they know that Dr. Hutten did not come aboard."
"You're getting there." The old man approved, then glanced to his assistant. "Anyone significant, Joe?'
"There are only two who seem important enough to consider. One's a mining engineer bound for Zera; the other's a physicist on his way to Ophir to study sun-stones. Both Japanese. The rest are just tourists and sightseers, and a few professionals in business."
"No Japanese villains, Joe. I will defer to your judgment in almost everything else, but not that." Sam watched the interplay curiously. The impassive servant shrugged fractionally, handed the passenger list back to Louise, and waited. He was handsome, Sam thought again, if only he didn't seem so damned mechanical. Venner seemed uncertain, needing to justify himself. He swung on Sam.
"You'll go along with that, Hutten, that a Japanese would never be a party to a power play? Would never take violent action against the lives of other people?"
"It's a bit sweeping." Sam hesitated thoughtfully. "It's always a dangerous thing to generalize about nationalities. I would certainly hate to put the finger on anyone on that kind of basis. I mean, the Japanese may be notorious for know-how but they do not have an exclusive on it. After all, your man, here, claimed to know how to produce the sabotage we were discussing. And you are the boss of a technological industry."
Venner removed his cigar, stared at it darkly, then put it back in his mouth and snorted. "This is like trying to find a black cat in a dark cellar—and we don't even know it's there. . . ."
A warbling from the control panel cut short his delibera-
Hons. Joe slid back to his seat, slapped a control, and they heard the warp-master.
"All ships, attention please. We have clearance from base to proceed. Pilots will relinquish control to me, please."
Clustering and warp-out was nothing to watch, Sam thought, as he saw four large ships and a straggle of smaller ones gradually take up a coherent pattern around the warp-ship. Like odd-shaped planets about a sun, they spun slowly around the center, where the warp-ship hung, looking like a silver-plated orange that someone had sat on. Distantly, the darkness was pinpointed with stars and there was the crescent side of Mars itself. And then, all at once, there was nothing but a milky wall in space, a shimmering grayness that met the eye in all directions. It was like being on the inside of a giganHc smoke bubble. There was no sensation. Nor gravity, either.
"Free fall for a while," Venner explained, "until the point has been set up. The aim, I suppose you'd call it. Then the warp-ship will put on an artificial-G for us. This bit is pretty dull/'
"I've heard we can get out and move around, just as if we were in atmosphere," Louise said, and the old man nodded.
"That's right. Once we're all hull down on the warp-ship you can step out, go for a walk, fly, swim, do whatever you like. This is a small universe of its own, now."
"What I was thinking," she murmured, "was that I could take a walk around the other ship that's going as far as CeH, and maybe smell out some suspicious characters."
"Ceti Princess. That one, in blue and gold." Joe pointed.
"Plenty of time for that," Venner objected. "Right now we have to figure some way of keeping you anonymous, Hutten."
"That shouldn't be any trouble. I'll just stay here, on the ship. I have no urge to go walking in space, thank you!"
"Maybe not, but I want you to meet and have a talk with the warp-master. You, me, and Joe. You see, to become a warp-master—to be able to understand and control the Yashi-Matsu effects—you have to be pretty good as a philosopher, and it can't do any harm to throw our problems onto the shoulders of a man like that. Who've we got this trip, Joe?"
"It was on the list. Dr. Hakagawa, sir." "Hah! That clinches it. Hakagawa is an old friend of mine."
"Hey, what about me?" Louise raised her sharp-edged voice in protest. "If you're not going to let me snoop around that other ship, you might at least invite me to talk to the warp-man. You make him sound like somebody important."
"He is. All right, Miss Martinez, just as you please. But first we have to camouflage Hutten here, somehow. This ship is equipped for just about any emergency a man can think of, but we do not carry disguises."
"I can fix that," she declared confidently, and scuffled in her pouch to bring out a pair of glasses. Hutten received them with distaste. They were black-rimmed, built in an arch to swoop around his forehead, and softly resilient so that they would fit almost any head. They made him feel foolish, once he had them on, but the lenses were plain and did not obstruct his field of vision at all.
"Very handy," she explained, "when a girl wants to look intellectual. You just hold still now while I fix you with a moustache."
By the time she had finished snipping short bits from her black hair and sticking them to his top lip with nail polish, the ships had all settled into place on the warp-ship, which now looked like an overloaded pincushion. The familiar feel of one-fourth-G helped them to navigate their way to the air lock and out. The warp-ship itself was a considerable surprise to Hutten. It was bigger, a lot bigger, than he had estimated from a distant view, and the surface was not polished but chased into shimmering grayness. There were hatchways, great oval ports, which gave access to stairways leading down and in. Venner let his servant lead, and, quite irrelevantly, Sam realized he had a touch of faint irritation at the smoothly efficient way this massive man seemed to do everything. He also noticed, couldn't help noticing, the certain familiar gleam in Miss Martinez's eye as she kept pace with Joe. He couldn't blame her at all, but he had to admit to himself that any time a woman gave him that kind of interested look it would be on account of his possible wealth, not for his personality.
"Like an onion," Venner mumbled. "Skin inside of skin all the way in to the core. It has to be like that. You need a certain mini
mum surface to act as the field matrix, whereas the generator itself is fairly small. So, typical of the Japanese, they make use of all the intervening spaces."
Sam had grasped that much unaided. As they went down more companionways, heading always in to the core, he saw that the various levels were occupied with vending machines, information booths, souvenir counters, all sorts of amenities that the ships couldn't find room for. And there was already a sprinkling of other passengers roaming among the various attractions. They came to an inner level where there was an impression of power and sound, and the floor spaces were taken up by the block-bulks of enigmatic machinery. Here, too, were sightseers, but they moved slowly or not at all, and they seemed to stare engrossedly at the featureless mechanisms.
"There are always weirdos," Venner rumbled. "See them? You can get a kind of mind-bending kick out of just standing within the primary field of the generators. That's what thev're doing. Anything for hallucination!"
The remark was obviously edged at Hutten, and he accepted it. "No society, as far as we know, has ever been completely free of the need to escape from reality, to foster some kind of illusions. You might even say it is man's ability to dream that has led to so much of his progress: imagine it first, then go ahead and try to realize it. If that works in even a small percentage of cases, you get a dividend."
"I'll second that," Louise declared unexpectedly. "Life would be dull, wouldn't it, if you couldn't dream a little now and then?"
"There's a difference," Venner argued. "Imagination, yes, but being so hopped up that you can't tell the difference between reality and illusion is something else again. And you can't live in a fantasy world, not for long anyway."
"That's not true," Joe said in his ever-calm tones. "Subject to precise definition, fantasy is part of the biological pattern. Under stress the body secretes various chemicals which have the effect of altering perception, reaction and emotion. To a certain degree, everyone lives in a fantasy world. The individual manufactures his own reality' by selection, whether consciously or not, simply because one cannot adequately attend to all stimuli at once."
"But that's not the same as deliberately ducking unpleasant facts." Venner stuck to his guns doggedly, but Joe was unmoved.
"Is there any law," he demanded, "which says we must endure unpleasant facts, uncomfortable reality? If there is, then we break it every time we employ anesthetics, or take a pill for a headache. That is simply the logical extension of your postulate."
"Hah! I should know better than to argue with you, Joe. Skip it, we seem to have arrived."
They had come face to face with a door of darkly glossy wood, in the center panel of which was a scanner-eye. Joe put his palm over it, and at once there came the softly confident voice they had heard over the radio.
"Who is calling, please?"
Joe removed his hand and, to Sam's amazement, broke into a rapid itchy-atchi stream of Japanese, of which nothing made sense except a phonetic version of his own name, Miss Martinez's and Venner's. There came an immediate response in the same fractured sounds. Sam noted the adulatory gleam in Miss Martinez's eye, and felt renewed irritation. This was ridiculous. All Japanese learned Standard English automatically. There was absolutely no call for this virtuoso display, it was just showing off. The door slid open, Joe stood aside and waved them through. Sam heard Miss Martinez gasp, and he caught his own breath when it came his turn to see.
This was a large cabin, at first glance so undecorated as to seem bleak, like a drink of plain cold water after too much strong coffee and sugar. The floor was glass-smooth redwood, the walls plain ice blue panels. A large rice-straw mat took up one fourth of the floor. There were cushions in profusion and a long, lacquered coffee table. Standing to greet them was a slim, black-haired, lean-faced Japanese of unguessable age and a wide and beautiful smile. His black tunic rustled as he bowed low.
"Miss Martinez. Mr. Hutten. Please be welcome to my establishment. Would you care for o-cha and sake? I regret I cannot serve you in the old ritual manner, but must ask you to help yourselves. I also ask your pardon for the fact that I must keep my warning-sounder in place. A precaution." Slim fingers went to the gleaming metal band about his brow. Presumably the machinery control was somewhere handy but concealed. Sam couldn't see it. Looking quickly about, he had started a formal phrase of thanks and acceptance when his eye was caught and held by the one really ornamental highlight of the austere chamber.
In a rectangular recess in the wall to the right of their host was a picture. A picture-in-depth. And yet not, he corrected himself again, because it moved. At first glance it was a pictorial scroll, the image of a black and white crane, very lifelike. But it moved. In exquisite slow motion its great wings beat the air. The scroll seemed suspended in front of a deeply distant view of a stream where ferns and lilies nodded in a breeze, but at the same slow pace.
"You like my tokonoma, Mr. Hutten?"
"I do. I can't help it. So unexpected, yet so right here."
"Good! That is its purpose, to provide a focal point for the room. The kakemono—the scroll-picture—is a family one. The crane flies to remind me that nothing waits, not even time. Please be seated. Miss Martinez here. Dr. Venner, there. You here, Mr. Hutten. And you, my old friend, here in the honor-seat."
Joe hesitated. "Would it be more fitting for someone else?"
"No. I insist. Mr. Hutten, it is our custom that the guest of honor is seated closest to the tokonoma. The place would be yours in any other circumstance, but this young man will always be guest-of-honor where I, Koni Hakagawa, am concerned. You understand?"
"All right with me." Sam lowered himself awkwardly to a cushion, glad of the reduced gravity that saved him some agony in his hip-joints. "I hadn't counted on being anybody's honored guest anyway. People seem to get the wrong notions about me very quickly, but I'm surprised it has got this far so fast."
Venner, squatting, took a sip of tea, then replaced his cigar. "Koni and I are old friends, Hutten. He knows I wouldn't bring him a guest unless he was somebody significant. There's this, too. Anything we say in this room won't go any further. Get that good, Miss Martinez."
s
VII
The warp-master was a good and attentive listener, and Orbert Venner was a pretty good explainer too. For all his eccentric mannerisms, Sam had to admit that his brain functioned efficiently enough.
"Hai!" Hakagawa sighed, after the condensed account was ended. "So desu. One thing, at least, is immediately apparent. You are in no further danger, Mr. Hutten, until you reach Verdan. You may have takusan troubles, many worries on your mind, but not that one. For think—this is a miniature universe here, with no room to escape the consequences of any action. And whoever is threatening you is
no fool. But neither is he one of my people, this I assure »»
you.
"Didn't say he was," Sam protested. "All I say is that all the ways used were technical, which is a straw in the wind."
"Quite so. I ask, have you offended one of my countrymen?"
"Certainly not! Not to my knowledge or intent, anyway."
"It was necessary to ask. You see, Mr. Hutten, my people are not saints. We chafe, we know anger, we take offense, just like anyone else. And we like to balance accounts, to make all square. But this is for individuals. If you approached a Japanese person and suggested, like this, '1 wish you to do thus and so to injure a certain other person. For this I will reward you much,' he would refuse."
"Always? Without exception?"
"There are always exceptions." Hakagawa shrugged fractionally. "But not in the intelligence level we are considering. You see, there is an ethic. We are taught rational pragmatism from our first days, all of us. It is, with us, almost a religion. One of the rules tells us this: if one person can hire me to injure another, then some other person can hire yet another to injure me, or pay me more to betray the first. So, very soon, no one is safe, there is no peace of mind to be had. So the original proposition
is unworkable. So we do not do it. You see?"
"That's beautiful!" Louise enthused. "Why, if everybody felt like that what a lot of misery would be averted."
"It has a flaw," Hutten got in fast. "It has the defect of its virtue. Like this. If I am more powerful than you, and I'm your enemy, you can't do a thing about it. Right, sir?"
"Quite so." Hakagawa nodded his agreement. 'That is why I said we had an ethic. We do not abuse power, nor do we seek it. We do not, for the same reason, seek wealth, or position. Because none of these can be had without causing injury to someone else."
"That's the key issue," Joe pointed out, "in any code. It will only work if everybody agrees to abide by all the rules."
"That is a concept not suited to Western thought," Hakagawa mused, then eyed Sam keenly. "You, Mr. Hutten, are a man of wealth, position and power. There, if anywhere lies the root cause of your troubles." "But I'm not any of those things!"
"You are your father's heir. Had it occurred to you that he sent for you because he is in dancer? That he wants to pass some of his burden on to you? That with you removed he would be alone? That with him also removed, someone else would be able to assume his position?"
"I have no desire to become involved in any power struggle in the Ceti three-world complex!" Sam declared, but Hakagawa shrugged.
"My friend, you are involved, whether you wish it or not."
It was a highly unsatisfactory interview by any standards. Sam gave it considerable thought in the days which followed, and derived no comfort from it. He found it impossible to imagine his father, the craggy-hard old Rex Hutten, in any kind of danger—or crying for help if he was. And he knew little, and didn't want to know more, about the internal power-politics of the Zera-Ophir-Verdan business world. All he was certain of was that someone had gone to inordinate lengths to stop him from getting to Verdan, and that he still had not the faintest idea who, or why. In a vacuum like that, any suspicion "comes easily. He tried one on old Venner.