New Writings in SF 10 - [Anthology]

by Edited By John Carnell

  Dag came in, “Pin-point that central building with its black column. Selective destruction. Be ready to fire on signal.”

  Neal Banister came in, “Commander to Commissar. Conference set up.”

  In the small control cabin of Interstellar X there was only room to stand. Carter stayed in his distant eyrie and Mortimer had his Second on an auxiliary console in the power pack ready to initiate a countdown.

  Fletcher said, “Thank you, Commander. I’ll say this. There’s a very dodgy phase coming up. You saw what happened to Three-Four. This time we shall strike first. But the I.G.O. charter is explicit about the use of force. We are not here to make punitive retaliation. I am going ashore to see Hablum. Accept no orders about the ship unless I bring them myself. If the ship is threatened destroy that central power source in Jasra. A second’s delay to think about it will be too long. Again, if my personal call sign is repeated without stop from this”—he demonstrated the small cigarette case unit transmitter—”do the same. Any questions?”

  “None, Commissar.”

  Amethyst-blue light was coming up to dim out Jasra’s many still-lighted windows when Fletcher made a second ceremonial approach to its space port reception area. This time he went armed in the uniform of a military commander with the over-riding rank insignia of an I.G.O. Commissar on his left epaulette. Massey accompanied him, carrying a heavy-duty laser which could neutralize space in fifty-cubic-metre blocks or punch a needle hole through a metre of hardened steel.

  The scout car was back in its docking collar and he told the tender which brought him in to stand off and cruise about waiting for a call.

  He went through to the centre dais and a ring of guards closed in behind him. He said, “What has happened to Interstellar Three-Four?”

  The port controller looked insolently confident. This demonstration of power had confirmed him as Hablum’s man and he believed that Sabazius now had a weapon which made them independent of outside interference. He said curtly, “I would have expected your own Commander to have kept you informed. He took off at a time and for a destination which is listed in the control tower log.”

  “That is not so. The ship was destroyed with your knowledge. You are displaced and this port is taken out of Sabazian control until I am satisfied that proper operating conditions have been re-established.”

  Not being physiologically adapted for it, there was not much laughter on Sabazius. But the controller drummed up what would pass for a sneering grin which remained fixed on his round turnip face as Fletcher’s laser beam sprayed out and ended his contribution to the exchange of views. Simultaneously, Massey took the rear guard in a wide-angled burst. Then he swivelled slowly and dropped every Sabazian in sight.

  One guard, quicker than his fellows, had unslung his carbine and hastily pumped out a shot which took an intricate flight path in a succession of ricochets among the many pillars of the rotunda. Then he fell rigidly forward with the carbine at his shoulder making one leg of a supporting tripod. The set looked like a shop outfitter’s basement.

  Dag said, “Get the scout car, Lieutenant. I want to know what has happened to Richardsen.”

  Massey was back on a count of twenty and Fletcher had already checked records purporting to show routine flight exchange signals from Three-Four and a clearance which showed she was now out of the gravisphere of Sabazius. No doubt the machine would be set up to do the same service for Interstellar X.

  In the car, he said, “We’ll check at the guest house, they might just be holding him there.” They swept on to the terrace of their suite and blasted the closed screens. The rooms were empty. Even the poker players next door had gone, leaving the playing discs in mute witness of a game unfinished.

  Jasra was a big city. Arne Richardsen could be anywhere. It seemed unlikely that the experimental block would also be a prison. Dag said, “We’ll give Earth Consul a call. There’s one other thing to clear up.”

  Victor Lamech rolled reluctantly out of his wide bed and blinked warily in the strong light. He looked an unhappy man when Fletcher grabbed a handful of his blue silk pyjama top and backed him against the cold basalt block of his bedroom wall. A convulsive wriggle from the tumbled bed made it clear that he had found ways of making the lonely station less of an all-time chore.

  Dag said, “How did the Sabazians know that my ship was undermanned?”

  Lamech blustered, “You will pay for this, Fletcher. I am an accredited Consul with diplomatic immunities. You cannot do this to me.”

  “No?” Fletcher began a systematic and impersonal thump of the large head on to the unyielding wall. He asked again, “How did they know?”

  Pressure on the man’s neck was making his eyes project.

  “I have ... to supply ... details ... incoming Earth ... nationals.”

  “How did you know these details? My manifest was on I.G.O. security.”

  There was silence and a diversion. A small, silvery nude Fingalnian girl wriggled suddenly out of bed and made a run for the door where Massey had the pleasure of catching her.

  Fletcher looked again at Lamech, tightened his grip and hammered back his head, as though he had lost interest in anything the man might have to say. He asked one more question.

  “Who told you?”

  ‘Gilmore. Sub-Controller Gilmore. He is related to me by marriage, you understand. He always lets me know of interesting developments.”

  So that was it. Dag remembered Gilmore. A communications executive who had been grounded on his say-so, when the man had been found making off-the-record transactions in Fingalnia. Hence the hot-pillow addition to his brother-in-law’s Consulate.

  That was one thing sorted out.

  “Another thing. Where would they be likely to take Arne Richardsen?”

  Broken on the main count, Lamech was anxious to help. Sitting on the bed, massaging his neck, he said, “There is an internment block below the guard barracks. You would never gain entrance without a permit from the Metropolitan Governor himself.”

  “Right, Lamech. You have been helpful. You just might live. You can show us the way.”

  “Like this?”

  “Why not, you will be sitting down. Count your blessings.”

  Massey said, “What about this one?”

  “Bring her along. It adds a touch of phantasy.”

  The small scout car was full. Fletcher and Lamech in front, Massey and the beautiful silvery girl in the rumble. At the last moment, Massey found her a cellular blanket, for his own peace of mind and she was wearing it, like a poncho, to mid-hip length.

  Lamech wasted no time and Fletcher took the car in arrow swoops to the gates of the guard barracks.

  Underslung the length of the small car, a heavy calibre laser tube raked along the double-leaf bronze door and it sagged away before them. Volleys from embrasures beside the door drummed along their infrangom sides and with hardly a check Fletcher drove through the opening gap.

  In the centre was an open courtyard and they roamed round it looking for away into the circular block of building.

  Lamech said, “Down there.”

  There was a ramp and another bronze door and the car went down like an angry wasp. Inside the door a heroic jailer died standing four-square with his carbine at his shoulder blazing at the oncoming car, and then they found Arne Richardsen.

  Stripped to the waist, hanging by his wrists turning slowly like any free-hanging mass in a current of air. Broad back raw from a preliminary flogging, anacrusis to the execution arranged for later in the day.

  The Fingalnian girl was all for sacrificing her blanket and then cradled his head on her lap and stroked his hair. She was obviously going to be a big help.

  Spinning in its own length, the car was ready to break out when a rumble penetrated its acoustic shell and reminded Dag that such a place would have its inner defences. He stopped, with half a metre of freedom as the whole corridor before him filled from edge to edge with black basalt block, dropping from the roof li
ke a seal in any Pharaoh’s tomb.

  Turning in a second’s fraction, he was in time to see the matching block close off the distant end.

  The car’s heavy-calibre laser blasted a socket like the hole for a shot-firing charge. It was going to take some little time to get out. He slowly traversed their world. Forty metres of corridor with six cell-cubicles opening off. All blind built into an immensely thick wall. Even then it seemed foolish of Hablum to do this. It was only a question of time before they were out to make the reckoning.

  Fletcher left Massey working at it and got out again to look at the ground. Then he imagined for one second of confusion that the end wall had become a mirror of polished glass. His own familiar figure was advancing towards him. Exact in every detail. Tall, erect, meeting his own eyes in a hypnotic stare.

  Massey’s voice was shouting to him as though through a metre of acoustic padding, “Commander! It is the image of destruction. Your signal! Your signal!”

  Dag Fletcher knew how difficult it must have been for any victim to evade the contact. They would move forward, fascinated, wanting to grasp annihilation to them. He fought his will to get a hand to his pocket and bring out the transmitter. Five metres, four metres, coming on slowly with the inevitability of death.

  Massey had left the car and was shouting in his ear, “The signal!”

  He thumbed down the switch and the tiny short-wave surge went out. It depended on reaction times and what sort of watch was being kept.

  Susan Brault heard the faint etiolated bleep and roused Mortimer before a count of two. It was instantly plain to her that Dag might well be in the building itself. But she would follow his instruction if it cut out her own heart. She said, “On three, Commander. On three. Coming up. Now.”

  Dag Fletcher saw his own three-dimensional form coming to close the gap as to an ultimate judgment. This was what the world saw of him then. Detail crystal clear. Pucker over the left eye from that burn from way back. Grey streak of hair. Now the finality of oblivion. He could reach out and touch. Now he knew what it was, a projection of exact detail in an expression of negative mass. One plus minus one is nothing. Cancellation.

  The image took the last step and he could feel the immense output of energy which gave it form. His mind went calm and steady to accept the onset of oblivion.

  Massey hurled himself forward to break the deadlock which seemed to have numbed Fletcher’s mind, and found himself thrown against the basalt corridor wall. The floor was trembling as if in seismic spasm. When he picked himself up Fletcher was still there, alone and shaking his head as though to clear his eyes of double vision.

  Dag said, “Thank you for that, Lieutenant, I won’t forget it. Now we have to dig our way out of here.”

  When the scout car homed on its docking collar at the entry port of Interstellar X, they were met by Neal Banister. He said, “There’s a change of heart over there, Dag. Hablum went up with his H.Q. The moderates are all eager to call you uncle. You’re a revolutionary hero.”

  “It will still cost them two hundred million for Three-Four. I want that signed on the line or Jasra will have to be evacuated.”

  “They’ve offered that agreement.”

  * * * *

  One missing delegate in the circle of welcome was Susan Brault and Dag had a moment’s self-deprecating doubt. Possibly, with all the new staff, she had re-established an old acquaintance. He took a cigarette from his useful case and went on to his cabin. At the end of the line, one was always alone. Necessarily so. Deep down, he knew it and accepted it.

  When he slid back the door he saw that the small space had been transformed for a very old-fashioned welcome. She was wearing the diaphanous, sari-like dress which was Bromius’s contribution to Galactic haute couture. Draped over the right shoulder, bare to the waist on the left, to symbolize that the heart had nothing to hide.

  She said uncertainly, “I hate official receptions. The only things worth saying can only be said in the strictest privacy.”

  In her warm, dark eyes, he could see a reflection of himself moving towards her, and the notional line showed no sign of an ending in the forseeable future. Which was all any reasonable man could want to see at any one moment of time.

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