They soon found themselves down below on H deck making a desultory inspection of burned-out conduits and power distribution boards, with very much else on their minds. It was here that the Mad Monk found them. Marius Nolokov did not announce himself. Like a magician, he seemed to suddenly appear as a dark silhouette in the dim illumination of the emergency lamps.
"I've been looking for you, Troy," he said, somberly. "You, too, Gogarty. You'd better join us."
He came a few steps closer and his enigmatic features emerged from the semi-darkness. The riotous dark hair and long straight beard accentuated the deathly pallor of his rather elongated and sharply-planed face. The sheer blackness of his deep-set eyes gave a startling impression of skull sockets until a battery lamp was suddenly reflected in them, like far twin suns in a nether universe. He wore his habitual black turtleneck sweater under a light plastic jumpsuit of the same color.
"Jesus!" said Fitz. "Where did you come from, Noley?"
"The KPO," said Nolokov. This was ship language for the keel-pod observatory, a small retractable capsule under the hull. "I think you were looking for Frans. He's there."
"Boozie?" Danny glanced sharply at Fitz.
There was something in Nolokov's nature that often discouraged too many questions unless he was ready to talk. They settled for merely following his tall, silently moving figure now. The main question was Boozie. What was on his mind? What was he doing down in the KPO at a time like this? And come to think of it, what the devil was his connection with the Mad Monk, of all people?
Boozie sat in the cockpit center of the keel-pod observatory, surrounded by a bristling array of specialized astrophysical instruments. There was a dim green panel light in front of him, but other than that the small chamber was bathed in silvery starlight. The whole capsule was an inverted transparent bubble which gave a 360-degree view of the firmament. The sun side was shielded off by a retractable panel. Only two distant planets of the alien system outside were visible to the naked eye.
"Hail!" said Boozie, swiveling around in his seat and lifting a narrow flask. "Hail to us, the star gods, bringers of light!" Noting their strained, questioning silence he smirked fondly at his flask. "The last of the old shoot," he drawled. "Jerry says he'll play Noah for me. He'll plant me a vineyard."
They tried to talk sense into him, but he was in a cynically poetic mood.
"Ah, 'dreaming when dawn's left hand was in the sky, I heard a voice within the tavern cry, Awake, my little ones, and fill the cup–!' As the poet Omar said."
"It's my guess," interrupted Danny, "that Jerry has more on his mind than growing grapes."
"Jerry?" said Mabuse. "Now there's an earthy brother, husbanding secret dreams in the gardens of Alcina."
"You and Jerry were kicking around a new idea," Danny said, "about interstellar communication. Is that why you're here?"
Boozie frowned. "I'm here, dear Captain, bosom friend, because there's no place else to go, without taking a very long drop, like our worthy colleague, Eddie Ingraham."
"Come on, Boozie!" said Fitz. "You're back on the stuff, man! Tell us what gives!"
Boozie stared at them almost sullenly out of his somewhat bleary eyes. As he lifted the flask again, it suddenly vanished from his hand. Danny and Fitz shared his momentary bewilderment as he stared at his empty fingers. Then he glared up belligerently at the Mad Monk. "Damn it, Noley, don't play your Svengali with me!"
"Then sober up," retorted Nolokov flatly. He had used his powers of telekinesis to remove the flask.
"That's a lethal weapon! I could throw the book at you!"
"But you won't. You know why we're here."
"Where's that goddamn flask?"
"Later. Now are you going to say what has to be said, or do I tell it my way?"
Neither Danny nor Fitz had ever seen the Monk use his hidden wild talent like this. The unexpected stroke of seeming wizardry was disconcerting, but the issue at hand precluded any further wondering about it.
"Straighten out now, will you, Boozie?" urged Danny. "What's on your devious mind?"
"New worlds, my lad, and our vaunted boon of civilization, the packaged perfection of our advanced intelligence."
"Stow it!" Danny insisted. "What are you getting at?"
For an answer, Boozie reached laboriously into his jacket pocket and finally extracted something. Waveringly, he held out his hand. Fitz and Danny leaned closer between the scopes and spectrographic scanner equipment. All they could make out under the faint panel lamp were a few tattered scraps of what looked like plastic fiber.
"What the hell is that?" asked Fitz dubiously.
"In a word, gentlemen, sabotage!"
Someone had evidently caused the hydrogen explosion. Was the object to cover the destruction of the S-link and make it look accidental? Someone had sought to force the decision to abort the mission and make a landing. The whole cycle of discovery and growing suspicion had started with Jerry Fontaine. He had been down here in the KPO when the explosion occurred. He had dashed up the ladder to H deck and blundered into the fire area. That was when he had received his head injury and heard Fritters screaming.
Later, after recovering from his head wound and the beating from Pike plus the sedatives, he had returned to the recycling access shaft where Fritters had died. Something had been bothering him about the whole disaster. That was when he picked up the scraps he remembered having seen during his crisis of immobility. He had chemically analyzed them and then had gone to Boozie. There could be no question about it. The scraps were molyloc fiberplast, a supertough material used for casings in the preparation of high-powered demolition charges. They had kept their secret and looked around for somebody they might confide in. From the standpoint of trustworthiness, Jerry had opted for the swami, and that had led to Nolokov.
"Outside of Holy Sam," Boozie said, "he's the last one on board to ever get sucked in on ideologies. Besides, with that computer mind of his and his eidetic memory, he can put the pieces together better than any of us."
"Regardless of that," protested Fitz, "who the hell is crazy enough to burn his bridges behind him? Without an S-link–"
"What about the spare?" countered Boozie testily. "Did they know it was missing?"
"If they weren't damned sure of it," said Danny, "what would they have gained?"
"Now we begin to think!" said Nolokov.
"You mean somebody knew there wasn't a spare?"
"Probably got it out of the way long ago."
"But without a spare, to destroy the only existing, link is madness."
Nolokov returned his famous icy smile. "Not if the spare still exists."
"What!" The exclamation was simultaneous from Danny and Fitz. They stared down at Boozie.
He shrugged and waved a hand at the Mad Monk. "Noley, my boy, you're on the air!"
"This may have its beginning," said Nolokov, "long before our journey started. I am referring to an old ghost that was supposed to be dead, the Secessionists."
The incredible theory took form as Nolokov succinctly and coherently laid out the entire fabric of his suspicions. Long after the formation of a world government, some intellectual dissidents had started the so-called Secessionist Movement. They wanted sovereign states again. The movement had been suppressed, but many people had believed that the leaders of the secessionist idea had continued to build more extensive plans in secret. It was now the Mad Monk's theory that a secessionist group had managed to infiltrate the personnel of the Sirius III. Their idea might well be to land on the first suitable planet and to prevent the star ship from ever returning to Earth.
"What better secessionism could you have?" the Monk had argued. "They would have an entire pristine world to mold into a separate state, thus thwarting the lofty ideal of an Intersellar Super State."
"That's too far out!" Fitz objected.
"Unless you realize that all this took some long-term planning, in addition to guidance and control from the Top Deck," said Nolokov.
It was also explained that Jerry Fontaine had belatedly confessed something else. He hadn't been sure but finally he had shared his haunting suspicion with his confidants. Another thing had bothered him about Fritters. He had screamed at him for help, yet his eyes seemed to have a vacant stare.
"Possible hypnosis, gentlemen," said Boozie. "He may have planted the demolition charge himself, under suggestion. Perhaps he was a bit clumsy with some very exotic explosives."
Danny stared at him. "You mean, he was murdered?"
"Necessarily expendable," said Nolokov, "since by then even a brainwashed victim might know too much."
"Bull!" said Fitz with a snort. "I don't buy all that!"
Boozie smirked up at him from the cockpit chair. "Now what would you have done in our place, old buddy?"
Danny answered the question. "As second officer I would have gone to the Skipper with the whole ball of wax."
Boozie laughed. "A merit badge for you, buddy. I thought of that, actually, but Noley shot me down."
"So what's wrong with the commander?"
"Perhaps nothing," said Nolokov. "But if he's the mastermind, which I seriously doubt, you'd be trapped. On the other hand, if he's the pudding-headed martinet of the rulebook that I think he is, he would launch an investigation at once. It would get him nowhere. The opposition is evidently much too clever."
"Then what about going to the Duke?" asked Danny.
"Let me yabbut that one for you," said Nolokov. "That's part of my job, you know, to bring up the smellier side of everyone's so-called reasoning."
"What do you mean by smelly?"
"We go back to the untimely death of Dr. Hahnemann. Remember that this cleared the way for Alonso Madrazo to be the project administrator."
Danny froze for a moment, recalling the warp-storm crisis of almost twenty months ago. "But Pike was closest to him when the accident happened!"
"Accident?" Boozie stared up at him with his usual dour smirk.
"Now you're coming home to my territory," said Fitz. "I always suspected–"
"But that absolves Alonso," said Danny. "He and Pike could never work together."
"You'd make a good yabbut man." Nolokov smiled. "So now we dismiss both your sterling Skipper and the noble Duke. They're not smart enough to pull this. But all such types make perfect stooges, as history has shown."
"Then who?"
"We don't know yet."
"Maybe old Pointed Head," said Fitz. "I wouldn't put anything past him!"
"The pattern is loose," said Nolokov. "I have an intuitive feeling that all the clues are staring at us, but they haven't stood up to be counted: Hahnemann's death, Sergeant Fraters' possible hypnosis and murder."
"We have to keep our heads low," said Boozie. "This is strictly off-the-cuff. No fooling around with Top Deck politics at this stage."
"Noley, you said I'm a likely yabbut man," said Danny. "Let me try this one on you. So we have a mastermind outfit who want a world all of their own, right? How come they'd be silly enough to burn their bridges, as Fitz says, until they knew they had a safe place to land?"
"The ship was on a return course," said Nolokov instantly. "It was their last chance to force a landing. That's why the spare S-link was probably still in existence at the time of the sabotage. It was a return ticket, in case."
"I understand," said Boozie, "that you have added a little extra encouragement on that score, Danny, by spreading it around that Torky Verga might be able to build us a new one. What are you trying to do, get him killed? The probe has proven number four is a sure bet for the secessionists."
Danny and Fitz stared at each other, their faces as white as the Monk's.
"Oh my God!" Danny groaned.
They had to violate the major's order of secrecy. When they told the story of how Torky had just met his death, Nolokov tensed with a new excitement. Boozie sat in his pit and stared helplessly at nothing.
"So it's Adolf!" said Fitz. "Right after the news comes through that the planet's safe, he swings the axe. I'm going to kill that son of a bitch!"
"You'll do nothing," said the Monk. "He's obviously just a tool, if the whole plot actually exists. Besides, what will it get any of us to bring this to the attention of Flight Command or Project Administration? The damage is done. We're committed to a landing. Only time will tell us what to do now."
Boozie finally rallied. He raised his arms to the stars. "Sweet Mother Nature!" he exclaimed. "Don't look now, but somebody has sprung your chastity belt. Our noble breed has arrived, and you, my Gracious Lady, have been had!"
* * * *
The alien dreams persisted ... a far cavernous echo of chanting and distant flutes ... a phantom of ancient temple fires in haunted shadows ... a psychic call to cosmic forces beyond an unseen veil. Lalille had seen a great demigod face, dark scaled and brooding. Jerry had reported the ultimate in fantasy with nymphs and satyrs in an Elysian world. Once he had awakened in sweat from a nightmare, muttering fearfully about a saber-toothed beast with a horned face and blazing triple eyes.
As the star ship slowly penetrated the unknown planetary system, the mystifying part was that only a few of them experienced these consciousness alterations, as Sam referred to them. The swami also advised discretion in discussing the weird phenomena. He himself refrained from any further mention of his sensitivity to an external force of intelligence. He had cautioned Noley several times to silence when the Monk spoke cryptically of a space-time totality.
Whatever the causes, Danny felt subtle change emerging in himself, slowly and vaguely as if he were some new creature awakening from a cocoon. Did it have something to do with the Lily's astrological theories, new planetary influences, or Sam's more awesome egoic and personality ray from the Cosmos? Until we know what we don't know, Sam kept repeating mysteriously, as if he had known the answer to the Star Quest all along.
Danny had tried to approach Freddie several times on personal level, attempting to draw her into a mood of frankness. She had given signs of less rigidity in her attitude but had continued to camouflage her emotions. She and Lalille had taken up such a close company with Tallullah that they might as well have been novitiate nuns with their Mother Superior. Meanwhile, Tallullah had emerged in her new role as a member of the Colonial Council, graciously confident, a champion of reason and a pillar of propriety. Whereas the two younger women struggled with uncertainties, she was at once their shield and counsel. Which seemed to make sense, thought Danny, as long as the propriety front was negotiable.
And then there was man talk in the wardroom or in private quarters with such as Fitz and Boozie and sometimes Jerry Fontaine. Some intuitive force had drawn the four of them together as if Pike were the visible enemy and still others were unmeasured quantities. Fontaine and Mabuse were still reticent about the new idea concerning interstellar communication. It was too way out, Boozie insisted. So they would drift back inevitably to the main topic. If the secessionist plot were valid, would the unknown opposition attempt to thwart future plans for an attempted return to Earth? If they should one day produce enough nuclear fuel, what about the S-link problem?
This was an area of contemplation that had weighed most heavily on Danny's mind. All star ships were designed for an emergency method of interstellar flight where the blosupport and S-link operation were not needed. This was called the hiber mode, meaning a long flight in a tightened ecological system where crew members remained largely in suspended animation. The drawback was that only a few indispensable crewmen and the roborgs could be accommodated on board. Certainly the women as well as most of the other castaways would have to be left behind. It was an undesirable alternative which forced the thinking back to the missing S-link. If Nolokov's theory was right, the spare link might still be in existence.
"Find it," said the Mad Monk, "and you'll find the mastermind behind the secessionist group, the murderer of Ernst Hahnemann, James Frater, and Torquato Verga."
A moment arrived in which a small g
roup of future colonists was gathered on the observation deck prior to landing. The months of slow, suspenseful approach and retrophasing were behind them. This was the orbital phase. A pilot team had descended in the shuttlecraft with a roborg and long-range data link and telemetry controls. The star ship drifted in free-fall around the shining blue-green planet. The viewing chamber had been overcrowded for days, ever since they had arrived in orbit, but now the deck wasn't as much in demand. They would be another week or ten days in their present phase, waiting on surface tests, going through inoculations and decontamination. Only the hardiest or most desperate of the world watchers remained.
This included Lalille and Frederica, for once unchaperoned by Tallullah, although Holy Sam seemed to be a worthy substitute for the Big M. The two girls continued to survey the vast curving face of the planet as if mesmerized by a crystal ball. Some of the scientific group were explaining the data that had been gathered so far. A curious fact was the remarkable similarity of number four to Earth, even including its single moon.
"Of course," said Cyril Stockton, "we're looking at a much more primitive world."
"As if," suggested the swami, "we had truly slipped back through time and were returning to Earth in the distant past."
Stockton's nervous lips twitched almost disdainfully. "A rather silly conjecture," he retorted, "since Earth is number three in the Sol System, not four."
"You're forgetting our little orphan, Vulcan," said Sam.
"I'm deliberately forgetting it, and you should realize that even if what you're saying were true, we'd at least recognize the constellations."
"If I remember correctly," said Boozie, "the Sol system travels through the cosmos at twelve miles per second. Hm-m ... that's about seventy-five light-years for every million years of time."
"Even so," said Stockton with easy confidence, "in a million years–"
Sam interrupted. "You yourself estimated the geological period here as comparable to the late Mesozoic or early Cenozoic, Doctor. Shall we compromise on the Miocene, say perhaps eighteen to twenty million years in the past?"
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