So where to start? Well, not with the magnitude of the task in hand, that was for sure. Nor Lysaars' capabilities, which were almost certainly daunting, nor his own, which in contrast to Lysaars', were just about invisible. No. Better to start with a list. Not a conventional one, as it were, but an “intelligence” one. What precisely did he know about his adversary?
He sat back in the monoflight's moulded flight hammock, and he began to list the scraps of intelligence he'd managed to glean:
• Lysaars was involved in or running some sort of covert paint buying caper, with all the stuff going to some out of the way world called Crabbsbsab.
• Whatever was the purpose of this caper, it was important enough to warrant the abduction of two upright citizens of the universe and their exposure to a very dangerous and very possibly lethal process.
• Errh…
Well how about some crumbs:
• Lysaars was a very ugly, very fat git, who had a habit of chewing eggshells.
• He was almost certainly brighter than Doggerbat.
…oh, and one last grain gleaned from overhearing Lysaars' call to D'Kemba from the spaceport warehouse:
• a reference to some spacecraft turning up at Ranamavana, which was obviously both unexpected and unwelcome - and of it being dispatched pretty damn hastily.
And then there was that reference to its crew. Shoot! Renton remembered that they might be… what was it? 'No more than space dust.' Yes, that was it: no more than space dust. Renton gulped. He hadn't really processed this bit before. It must have been all the excitement.
But what did it mean? Had they found out about Lysaars' goings on as well? And had Lysaars then gone and despatched them not only from Ranamavana but also from the living side of life? Had he killed them? Renton shivered. Was there anything else Lysaars had said? He couldn't remember at first, but then he did. He recalled Lysaars saying something about seeing the crew's jitzies. What the hell were these jitzies?
'Well,' thought Renton, 'I might as well find out. It may mean something.'
It did mean something. According to the encyclopædia function of the onboard computer grid it meant: 'the uninhibited and irrational behaviour of subjects suffering from neurone refractional interference however caused. Origin: Old Permene “chizzes”: to play.'
Renton bit his lip. '"Uninhibited and irrational behaviour!" Hell, I saw some of that when I was coming through the spaceport. Those guys messing around with those women. And they were certainly crew. Streuth, was that it? Was Lysaars there as well?'
Renton stared into space - literally - as he considered this puzzle. But that's all it was though. Another unanswered question. There was nothing to turn into a useful weapon against his foe, nothing to help him with his planning. In fact, now he thought about it, there was nothing in this brief review of his intelligence on Lysaars that would help him one little bit in his planning - or in his coming to terms with the scale of his task - and Lysaars' daunting capabilities. He had an impasse here. And he dealt with it in the only way he could. He went to sleep.
When he woke up, he had an idea. It was a silly one but silly enough to work. He had one tangible asset in his possession, one secret weapon in his arsenal. He would use it as the opening shot in his engagement with the forces of evil. He had the very big suitcase that Boz had given him.
He opened a bag of sugared almonds from the monoflight's mini-bar, chose a collection of Omoria blues numbers from the monoflight's extensive musicore, and within twenty minutes he was asleep again.
25.
Crabbsbab is something of a one-horse world. Or maybe that should be a one-animal world. For, when it comes to native fauna, Crabbsbab's is not the most bio-diverse. In fact, the truth is that Crabbsbab possesses just one species of animal that is visible to the naked eye: the unique but redoubtable “scunger”. True, there are other non-vegetable life forms on the planet, but they are either microscopic in size or small enough to buzz around one's head in the evening. And, in reality, the only animals that are literally apparent on this planet are its scungers, the full-time grazers of the yellow-green grass that grows everywhere on its surface. And yes, that is absolutely everywhere. For, in keeping with its one-horse as opposed to one-animal status, Crabbsbab is nothing more than a flat, windswept, yellow-green prairie curved into a planet-sized sphere. Its highest points are the tops of its singular scungers.
And to attempt to describe a scunger is to try to excuse a piece of bad design. Or is it an exercise in no design at all? An animal assembled without a blueprint, a blueprint that would have given it some coherence, some oneness of style? It is difficult to tell.
Certainly its hindquarters start quite promisingly. They are low and impressively lean. And muscular where they need to be. But forward from there, it all goes wrong. Straightaway. Its athletic-looking rear bears no relationship whatsoever to the rest of its body. This is a conglomeration of progressively larger rings of fat, almost obscuring four extremely stumpy legs, and culminating, at the front end, in a series of rolls of fat with two eyes and a snout: the scunger's oversized head. And this, for most of the animal's life, is pressed firmly against the flat earth of Crabbsbab, its snout-end constantly grazing that spiky and yellow-green grass. Oh, and it's day-glo green and the size of a four-storey house.
It looks like some bizarre and overgrown horn of plenty with a bad case of droop. And fortunately, for the colonisers of Crabbsbab, it's about as aggressive as a horn of plenty and almost as slow.
They, the colonisers, arrived after it was discovered that these scungers were prodigious milk producers. And they decided to stay when they'd finally developed a technology that enabled them to extract this milk, not only efficiently but also safely. For, as can easily be imagined, milking a mobile four-storey house, even if it's a slow and pleasantly placid four-storey house, can give rise to a number of problems.
Anyway, they overcame these problems, and now Crabbsbab's principal industry is milk-production. There are a few other industries, but these are either based on its unique milking technology or they simply exploit the planet's position in space relative to other worlds. It has, for example, a thriving if less than efficient, trans-shipment and warehousing activity.
Nevertheless, the fact remains that it is still a one-horse (and one-country) planet, and virtually all interplanetary traffic passes through its one large spaceport - situated in a province of Crabbsbab called Tousselok.
Tousselok Spaceport is, however, not Ranamavana Spaceport. It is not much more than an enormous square of Crabbsbab prairie marked out by a fence of chicken-wire, built to scunger proportions and designed to prevent their bumbling through its confines. Within this mostly empty space is a small terminal building, surfaced with gleaming but inexpensive siliconit, and several hundred less glamorous edifices, laid out in a pattern taken from the higgledy-piggledy school of spaceport design and build. Some are little bigger than potting sheds. Others are bigger than the terminal itself. Some are in use. Others are derelict. Many of those that are in use look derelict. There are few common features in their various designs - and the materials employed in their construction can only have been taken from the “freight of the day” as offered by passing space-vehicles and adapted for the purpose. There are wooden ones, concrete ones, ones made from metallium - and plastisheet, and the odd example in brown viperglas and plasticised carpet tiling. And some of these have withstood the rigours of Crabbsbab's wind and weather better than others. The overall effect is not handsome.
Spacecraft arriving at Tousselok are directed to one of these buildings. Or, if they are very large, to one of a series of glas-hardened and pink stained circles of prairie. Here they sit buffeted by the winds of Crabbsbab until they depart the planet. But this allocation is more random than systematic. And it makes freight loading and unloading, passenger embarkation and disembarkation, and any transfer handling, something of a pig.
Various wheeled vehicles shunt containers, boxes and pallets
of goods around the place, and others carry people. Everything is, in theory, controlled - by a computer pathway device in the terminal. But in practice its operation falls far short of perfect. Cargoes are sometimes misdirected repeatedly. Others are lost for days or even months, abandoned in some forgotten corner of a spaceport building. And some are even reloaded onto the very spacecraft from which they've been unloaded - to be returned to sender for a second attempt. And whilst passengers fare a little better, it is only because they tend to notice being parked in an empty storeroom or being returned to the departure lounge for a third or fourth time.
The spaceport is not an easy machine to operate. Its basic function can be coaxed from it, but it is all a bit hit and miss. And these difficulties have left their mark on the spaceport staff. They are now sloppy in their duties. Very sloppy. And they have stopped caring.
Although he didn't know it, Renton had the perfect spaceport for his intended method of entry into the community of Crabbsbab.
26.
Koldsoor and Loudlippse checked the arrival display for the twenty-third time. It was still there: Boeing monoflight D557 (private), due to enter atmosphere 10.22 CT, landing Tousselok 10.33 CT. It was now 10.20 CT.
Koldsoor poked Loudlippse's arm. 'Cumon, you. Let's get on the roof. I don't wanna miss the bugger. Lysaars will have our guts for girders if we cock this.'
'Don't you mean garters?'
Koldsoor looked fiercely at Loudlippse. 'Garters? What da you mean, garters?'
'You said guts for girders. I believe the expression is guts for garters. That's all.'
'Oh is it? Is it really? Well, Mr Loudlippse, you can think wat y' like, but y' don't know nuffin. What have guts got to do wi' garters? Bumshit!'
'I think you mean bullshit.'
'What! I ought to…'
'Yes, you're quite right, we ought to get on the roof p.d.q. We can't have Lysaars having our guts for girders, can we?'
Loudlippse grinned, turned quickly and was ascending the stairs to the roof gallery before Koldsoor could respond. And by the time Koldsoor found him at the far end of the gallery, there was a useful new distraction. It was the flight path being used by arrivals. Loudlippse pointed to it. 'We should be able to see him in a minute or so. Over there. And I don't think we'll have too much trouble spotting him.'
Koldsoor grunted.
They stood and scanned the sky, their eyes squinting against the glare of a cloudless day.
The monoflight appeared.
'There he is,' grinned Loudlippse. 'Right on time. Got you, my friend. Got you where we want you!'
They watched as the dot became the clearly discernible shape of a Boeing monoflight, and they kept watching as the tiny craft gradually descended to taxiing level and then moved slowly towards its designated parking spot. This turned out to be a building that looked like an oversized dog-kennel. It was just two hundred metres from the terminal.
'Perfec,' said Koldsoor. 'He'll probably walk from there. So you stay here and watch. An' let me know what's goin' on on the laserade. An' I'll nab him when I can. OK?'
'Yes, Koldsoor, that sounds like a fine plan to me. I could not improve on it one iota.'
'One what? You tryin' to be smart agin, boy? You jus' mind your mouth. Or I'll…'
'Hadn't you better get to your post now? We don't want to miss him, do we?'
'Yes, and you dun miss 'im eiver.'
With a final grunt, Koldsoor left his companion. And Loudlippse returned his attention to the monoflight. It was now just gliding into the kennel. 'Splendid,' he thought.
He watched and waited, his eyes firmly glued on the building's entrance.
First a couple of spaceport staff wandered in, and then some smallish boxes were wheeled out. A little while later an empty forklift truck trundled in and out, apparently without purpose, and eventually some luggage was wheeled out. But that was all. There was no sign of their quarry, none whatsoever.
After fifteen minutes, Koldsoor called Loudlippse on the laserade and enquired as to: 'what the frig are you doin?' Sleepin?'
Loudlippse was indignant. 'You want to know when he's coming out, don't you? Well, I'll tell you when he is. And it's not yet.'
'Takin his fuggin time i'n 'e?'
'That seems to be a fair assessment. Yes, I'd say he's definitely taking his time.'
'Well, let me know the minute you see him.'
'You have my assurance, my dear Koldsoor. Please do not fret.'
'What?'
'Never mind, never mind.'
There were the beginnings of a very rude remark from the other end of the laserade as Loudlippse closed down his end of the link and resumed his vigil. But his vigil was in vain. The subject of their expedition to the spaceport never emerged from that kennel.
An hour later they'd been able to confirm that Renton Tenting had however landed - and had apparently left the spaceport. Although they could find nobody who had actually seen him. He had certainly left the monoflight. They went and checked that themselves.
How the hell had he slipped past them? There was just one entrance to that kennel building and it was also the only exit. Loudlippse couldn't possibly have missed him. No way. However, he had his doubts as to whether this confident assertion would be accepted with complete equanimity by Mr Lysaars. In fact, he rather thought that his more likely reaction might involve the transformation of some of those guts into girders, namely Koldsoor's and his own.
And in due course his prognosis proved correct - partially at least. Lysaars went absolutely ape. But his guts were spared as were those of Koldsoor. Unfortunately, however, their brains were not. Later that morning Lysaars himself tried his hand at some pipiltry. With lethal effect. He'd apparently decided that it was about time to inject a little discipline into his troops, and making an example of this particular duo would serve such a purpose quite well. And it did. Lysaars' thugs seemed suitably impressed.
It was a pity that Loudlippse hadn't studied the luggage that had emerged from the kennel-shaped shed a little more closely. Then he might have noticed that one of the suitcases was very large. Actually it was extraordinarily large - especially to have been carried in a monoflight….
As Renton's craft had been making its approach, the space traffic controller, at Renton's request, had linked him with a luggage forwarding agent. Renton had then arranged for his oversized suitcase to be collected directly from the monoflight for immediate onward delivery to a Mr Doggerbat, c/o Units 12/13, Pynyl Chome, Verital, SSI KKYL, and had labelled the suitcase accordingly.
When, just a few minutes later, the monoflight came to rest in its mooring space in the kennel, Renton opened the cabin door and checked that nobody was about. He then tugged the big case from behind the flight hammock and laid it on the floor of the cabin. There was just enough room.
It had two piezzo locks, both activated by a remote. This was still in its pocket underneath the case's handle. He extracted it and pressing its tip, he opened the locks. Then he lifted the lid, pursed his lips and stepped inside the case. 'Here we go again,' he thought.
Without Boz's muscles to help him, it was almost impossible to cram his whole frame inside. He began to think his silly idea was not even a practical idea. But finally, by removing his desert boots, crossing his legs at the ankles and straining his limbs just a little bit more, he managed the job. Then he pulled down the top, pressed the remote - and the locks barrelled shut.
Then he remembered that he'd forgotten to poke a couple of small holes in the case, a bit of vital ventilation for what might be a longish confinement. So he unlocked his container, eased himself out, made a couple of small holes in its top and then endured the agony of repacking himself all over again. And this time he remembered to pack his desert boots as well.
After only a couple of minutes, somebody arrived and announced his arrival with a whole string of swear words - mostly of the heavy-duty variety. They were obviously directed at the size of the suitcase. A lot of tugging went
on accompanied by a lot of further swearing and a lot of disturbing scraping sounds. Renton feared for the interior of the monoflight as well as for his own safety.
Then a painful knock to his knees told Renton that he and his suitcase had been dropped onto a hard surface, and this hard surface then began to transmit the irregular bumps of what could only be a wheeled vehicle - in motion. He was on his way.
As well as inviting broken bones, concussion and suffocation, Renton knew that he was also running the risk of detection at the spaceport - with all its attendant problems and panics. But he need not have worried. Tousselok's finest paid precisely no attention at all to the monster case as it passed through and then out of the spaceport to be transferred to the luggage agent's waiting transport, a wheeled varavan.
Whilst enduring the more irregular bumps of this form of transport, Renton began to consider the even greater risks he was running by having himself delivered directly into his enemy's camp. It gave him the advantage of evading detection, at least initially, and it provided him with the quickest and most direct route to Lysaars, and, he hoped, to the abducted Miss Maiden. But it was not without its dangers. And the more he thought about it, the more he realised that his plan was completely stuffed with the things, with perils of every conceivable kind. He just hoped Doggerbat wouldn't be standing, pipil in hand, as the varavan drew up to the front door of Units 12/13, Pynyl Chome. Just a couple of minutes neglect of the big suitcase would be enough. Even just one minute would be enough.
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