“I don’t care how crude it is,” snapped Gregg. “I just want that box, with the crown jewels safe inside.”
“Tut-tut! Impatience has been the ruin of many a promising young police officer, as I seem to recall my spiritual ancestor of Earth pointing out to a Scotland Yard man who—hm—may even have been a physical ancestor of yours, Gregg. It seems we must try another approach. Are there any people on Phobos who might have known the jewels were aboard this ship?”
“Yes. Two men only. I’ve pretty well established that they never broke security and told anyone else till the secret was out.”
“And who are they?”
“Technicians, Hollyday and Steinmann. They were working at Earth Station when the Jane was loaded. They quit soon after—not at the same time—and came here by liner and got jobs. You can bet thattheir quarters have been searched!”
“Perhaps,” murmured Syaloch, “it would be worthwhile to interview the gentlemen in question.”
Steinmann, a thin redhead, wore truculence like a mantle; Hollyday merely looked worried. It was no evidence of guilt—everyone had been rubbed raw of late. They sat in the police office, with Gregg behind the desk and Syaloch leaning against the wall, smoking and regarding them with unreadable yellow eyes.
“I’ve told this over and over till Tm sick of it!” Steinmann knotted his fists and gave the Martian a bloodshot stare. “I never touched the things, and I don’t know who did. Hasn’t any man a right to change jobs?”
“Please,” said the detective mildly. “The better you help, the sooner we can finish this work. I take it you were acquainted with the man who actually put the box aboard the ship.”
“Sure. Everybody knew John Carter. Everybody knows everybody else on a satellite station.” The Earthman stuck out his jaw. “That’s why none of us’ll take scop. We won’t blab out all our thoughts to guys we see fifty times a day. We’d go nuts!”
“I never made such a request,” said Syaloch.
“Carter was quite a good friend of mine,” volunteered Hollyday.
“Uh-huh,” grunted Gregg. “And he quit, too, about the same time you fellows did, and went Earthside and hasn’t been seen since. HQ told me you and he were thick. What’d you talk about?”
“The usual.” Hollyday shrugged. “Wine, women, and song. I haven’t heard from him since I left Earth.”
“Who says Carter stole the box?” demanded Steinmann. “He just got tired of living in space and quit his job. He couldn’t have stolen the jewels—he was searched, remember?”
“Could he have hidden it somewhere for a friend to get at this end?” inquired Syaloch.
“Hidden it? Where? Those ships don’t have secret compartments.” Steinmann spoke wearily. “And he was only aboard the Jane a few minutes, just long enough to put the box where he was supposed to.” His eyes smoldered at Gregg. “Let’s face it: The only people anywhere along the line who ever had a chance to lift it were our own dear cops.”
The inspector reddened and half rose. “Look here—”
“We’ve got your word that you’re innocent,” growled Steinmann. “Why should it be any better than mine?” Syaloch waved both men back. “If you please. Brawls are unphilosophic.” His beak opened and clattered, the Martian equivalent of a smile. “Has either of you, perhaps, a theory? I am open to all ideas.”
There was a stillness. Then Hollyday mumbled: “Yes. I have one.”
Syaloch hooded his eyes and puffed quietly, waiting. Hollyday’s grin was shaky. “Only, if I’m right, you’ll never see those jewels again.” Gregg sputtered.
“I’ve been around the solar system a lot,” said Hollyday. “It gets lonesome out in space. You never know how big and lonesome it is till you’ve been there, all by yourself. And I’ve done just that—I’m an amateur uranium prospector, not a lucky one so far. I can’t believe we know everything about the universe, or that there’s only vacuum between the planets.”
“Are you talking about the cobblies?” snorted Gregg. “Go ahead and call it superstition. But if you’re in space long enough . . . well, somehow, you know. There are beings out there—gas beings, radiation beings, whatever you want to imagine, there’s something living in space.”
“And what use would a box of jewels be to a cobbly?” Hollyday spread his hands. “How can I tell? Maybe we bother them, scooting through their own dark kingdom with our little rockets. Stealing the crown jewels would be a good way to disrupt the Mars trade, wouldn’t it?”
Only Syaloch’s pipe broke the inward-pressing silence. But its burbling seemed quite irreverent.
“Well—” Gregg fumbled helplessly with a meteoric paperweight. “Well, Mr. Syaloch, do you want to ask any more questions?”
“Only one.” The third lids rolled back, and coldness looked out at Steinmann. “If you please, my good man, what is your hobby?”
“Huh? Chess. I play chess. What’s it to you?” Steinmann lowered his head and glared sullenly.
“Nothing else?”
“What else is there?”
Syaloch glanced at the Inspector, who nodded confirmation, and then replied gently:
“I see. Thank you. Perhaps we can have a game sometime. I have some small skill of my own. That is all for now, gentlemen.”
They left, moving like things of dream through the low gravity.
“Well?” Gregg’s eyes pleaded with Syaloch. “What next?”
“Very little. I think . . . yesss, while I am here I should like to watch the technicians at work. In my profession, one needs to have a broad knowledge of all occupations.”
Gregg sighed.
Ramanowitz showed the guest around. The Kim Brackney was in and being unloaded. They threaded through a hive of space-suited men.
“The cops are going to have to raise that embargo soon,” said Ramanowitz. “Either that or admit why they’ve clamped it on. Our warehouses are busting.”
“It would be politic to do so.” Syaloch nodded. “Ah, tell me—is this equipment standard for all stations?”
“Oh, you mean what the boys are wearing and carrying around? Sure. Same issue everywhere.”
“May I inspect it more closely?”
“Hm?” Lord, deliver me from visiting firemen! thought Ramanowitz. He waved a mechanic over to him. “Mr. Syaloch would like you to explain your outfit,” he said with ponderous sarcasm.
“Sure. Regular space suit here, reinforced at the seams.” The gauntleted hands moved about, pointing. “Heating coils powered from this capacitance battery. Ten-hour air supply in the tanks. These buckles, you snap your tools into them, so they won’t drift around in free fall. This little can at my belt holds paint that I spray out through this nozzle.”
“Why must spaceships be painted?” asked Syaloch. “There is nothing to corrode the metal.”
“Well, sir, we just call it paint. It’s really gunk, to seal any leaks in the hull till we can install a new plate, or to mark any other kind of damage. Meteor punctures and so on.” TTie mechanic pressed a trigger, and a thin, almost invisible stream jetted out, solidifying as it hit the ground.
“But it cannot readily be seen, can it?” objected the Martian. “I, at least, find it difficult to see clearly in airlessness.”
“That’s right. Light doesn’t diffuse, so . . . well, anyhow, the stuff is radioactive—not enough to be dangerous—just enough so that the repair crew can spot the place with a Geiger counter.”
“I understand. What is the half-life?”
“Oh, I’m not sure. Six months, maybe? It’s supposed to remain detectable for a year.”
“Thank you.” Syaloch stalked off. Ramanowitz had to jump to keep up with those long legs.
“Do you think Carter may have hidden the box in his paint can?” suggested the human.
“No, hardly. The can is too small, and I assume he was searched thoroughly.” Syaloch stopped and bowed. “You have been very kind and patient, Mr. Ramanowitz. I am finished now and can find the Inspector m
yself.”
“What for?”
“To tell Him he can lift the embargo, of course.” Syaloch made a harsh sibilance. “And then I must get the next boat to Mars. If I hurry, I can attend the concert in Sabaeus tonight.” His voice grew dreamy. “They will be premiering Hanyech’s Variations on a Theme by Mendelssohn, transcribed to the Royal Chlannach scale. It should be most unusual.”
It was three days afterward that the letter came. Syaloch excused himself and kept an illustrious client squatting while he read it. Then he nodded to the other Martian. “You will be interested to know, sir, that the Estimable Diadems have arrived at Phobos and are being returned at this moment.”
The client, a Cabinet Minister from the House of Actives, blinked. “Pardon, Freehatched Syaloch, but what have you to do with that?”
“Oh . . . I am a friend of the featherless police chief. He thought I might like to know.”
“Hraa. Were you not on Phobos recently?”
“A minor case.” The detective folded the letter carefully, sprinkled it with salt, and ate it. Martians are fond of paper, especially official Earth stationery with high rag content. “Now, sir, you were saying—”
The parliamentarian responded absently. He would not dream of violating privacy—no, never—but if he had X-ray vision he would have read:
“Dear Syaloch:
“You were absolutely right. Your locked room problem is solved. We’ve got the jewels back, everything is in fine shape, and the same boat which brings you this letter will deliver them to the vaults. It’s too bad the public can never know the facts—two planets ought to be grateful to you—but I’ll supply that much thanks all by myself and insist that any bill you care to send be paid in full—even if the Assembly has to make a special appropriation, which I’m afraid it will.
“I admit your idea of lifting the embargo at once looked pretty wild to me, but it worked. I had our boys out, of course, scouring Phobos with Geigers, but Hollyday found the box before we did, which saved us a lot of trouble, to be sure. I arrested him as he came back into the settlement, and he had the box among his ore samples. He has confessed, and you were right all along the line.
“What was that thing you quoted at me, the saying of that Earthman you admire so much? ‘When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be true.’ Something like that. It certainly applies to this case.
“As you decided, the box must have been taken to the ship at Earth Station and left there—no other possibility existed. Carter figured it out in half a minute when he was ordered to take the thing out and put it aboard the Jane. He went inside, all right, but still had the box when he emerged. In that uncertain light nobody saw him put it ‘down’ between four girders right next to the hatch. Or, as you remarked, if the jewels are not in the ship and yet not away from the ship, they must be on the ship. Gravitation would hold them in place. When the Jane blasted off, acceleration pressure slid the box back, but, of course, the waffle-iron pattern kept it from being lost; it fetched up against the after rib and stayed there. All the way to Mars! But the ship’s gravity held it securely enough even in free fall, since both were on the same orbit.
“Hollyday says that Carter told him all about it. Carter couldn’t go to Mars himself without being suspected and watched every minute once the jewels were discovered missing. He needed a confederate. Hollyday went to Phobos and took up prospecting as a cover for the search he’d later be making for the jewels.
“As you showed me, when the ship was within a thousand miles of this dock, Phobos gravity would be stronger than her own. Every spacejack knows that the robot ships don’t start decelerating till they’re quite close; that they are then almost straight above the surface; and that the side with the radio mast and man-hatch—the side on which Carter had placed the box— is rotated around to face the station. The centrifugal force of rotation threw the box away from the ship and was in a direction toward Phobos rather than away from it. Carter knew that this rotation is slow and easy, so the force wasn’t enough to accelerate the box to escape velocity and to lose it in space. It would have to fall down toward the satellite. Phobos Station being on the side opposite Mars, there was no danger that the loot would keep going till it hit the planet.
“So the crown jewels tumbled onto Phobos, just as you deduced. Of course, Carter had given the box a quick radioactive spray as he laid it in place, and Hollyday used that to track it down among all those rocks and crevices. In point of fact, its path curved clear around this moon, so it landed about five miles from the station.
“Steinmann has been after me to know why you quizzed him about his hobby. You forgot to tell me that, but I figured it out for myself and told him. He or Hollyday had to be involved, since nobody else knew about the cargo, and the guilty person had to have some excuse to go out and look for the box. Chess playing doesn’t furnish that kind of alibi. Am I right? At least, my deduction proves I’ve been studying the same canon you go by. Incidentally, Steinmann asks if you’d care to take him on in a game the next time he has planet leave.
“Hollyday knows where Carter is hiding, and we’ve radioed the information back to Earth. Trouble is, we can’t prosecute either of them without admitting the facts. Oh, well, there are always such things as blacklists.
“Will have to close this now to make the boat. I’ll be seeing you soon—not professionally, I hope!”
Admiring regards,
Inspector Gregg
But, as it happened, the Cabinet Minister did not possess X-ray eyes. He dismissed unprofitable speculation and outlined his problem. Somebody, somewhere in Sabaeus, was famiking the krats, and there was an alarming zaksnautry among the hyukus. It sounded to Syaloch like an interesting case.
Copyright 1938 by Davis Publications, Inc.
Reprinted by permission of the author and the author’s agents
Scott Meredith Literary Agency, Inc.
THE WEAPON SHOPS OF ISHER
by A.E. van Vogt
PROLOGUE
MAGICIAN BELIEVED TO
HAVE HYPNOTIZED CROWD
June 11, 1951—Police and newspapermen believe that Middle City will shortly be advertised as the next stopping place of a master magician and they are prepared to extend him a hearty welcome if he will condescend to explain exactly how he fooled hundreds of people into believing they saw a strange building, apparently a kind of gunshop.
The building seemed to appear on the space formerly, and still, occupied by Aunt Sally’s Lunch and Patterson Tailors. Only employees were inside the two aforementioned shops, and none noticed any untoward event. A large, brightly shining sign featured the front of the gunshop, which had been so miraculously conjured out of nothingness; and the Bign constituted the first evidence that the entire scene was nothing but a masterly illusion. For from whichever angle one gazed at it, one seemed to be staring straight at the words, which read:
FINE WEAPONS
THE RIGHT TO BUT WEAPONS IS THE
RIGHT TO BE FREE
The window display was made up of an assortment, of rather curiously shaped guns, rifles as well as small arms; and a glowing sign in the window stated:
THE FINEST ENERGY WEAPONS IN
THE KNOWN UNIVERSE
Inspector Clayton of the Investigation Branch attempted to enter the shop, but the door seemed to be locked. A few moments later, C. J. (Chris) McAllister, reporter of the Gazette-Bulletin, tried the door, found that it opened, and entered.
Inspector Clayton attempted to follow him, but discovered that the door was again locked. It is believed that McAllister went through to the back, as several spectators reported seeing him. Immediately after his reappearance, die strange building vanished as abruptly as it had appeared.
Police state they are baffled as to how the master magician created so detailed an illusion for so long a period before so large a crowd. They are prepared to recommend his show, when it comes, without reservations.
(Autho
r’s Note: The foregoing account did not mention that the police, dissatisfied with the affair, attempted to contact McAllister for a further interview, but were unable to locate him. Weeks have passed; and he has still not been found.
What did happen to McAllister from the instant that he found the door of the gunshop unlocked?)
I
There was a curious quality about the gunshop door. It was not so much that it opened at his first touch as that, when he pulled, it came away like a weightless thing. McAllister had the impression that the knob had freed itself into his palm.
He stood very still, startled. The thought that came finally had to do with Inspector Clayton who, a minute earlier, had found the door locked. The thought was like a signal. From behind him boomed the voice of the inspector:
“Ah, McAllister, I’ll handle this now.”
It was dark inside the shop beyond the door, too dark to see anything, and somehow, his eyes wouldn’t accustom themselves to the intense gloom. Pure reporter’s instinct made him step forward toward the blackness that pressed from beyond the rectangle of door. Out of the corner of one eye, he saw Inspector Clayton’s hand reaching for the door handle that his own fingers had let go a moment before. And he knew instantly that if the inspector could prevent it, no reporter would get inside that building. His head was still turned, his gaze more on the police officer than on the darkness in front; and it was as he began another step forward that the remarkable thing happened.
The door handle would not allow Inspector Clayton to touch it. It twisted in some queer way, in some energy way, for it was still there, a strange, blurred shape. The door itself, without visible movement it was so swift, was suddenly touching McAllister’s heel. Light, almost weightless, was that touch; and then, before he could think or react to what had happened, the momentum of his forward movement had carried him inside. As he breasted the darkness, there was a sudden, agonized tensing along his nerves. Then the door shut tight, the brief, unexpected agony faded. Ahead was a brightly-lit shop; behind—were unbelievable things!
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