Agent of Vega and Other Stories

by James H. Schmitz

  He climbed cautiously back into the car. Out of sight of the house, he pressed a key on the wrist communicator, said, "Chris? This is Dowland. Emergency," and waited for the hum of response from the instrument.

  There was no hum.

  Half a minute later, he had the communicator off his wrist and opened. He couldn't remember having struck his wrist hard enough against anything to have damaged it, but the delicate mechanisms inside were a crystal shambles. There was a portable communicator packed in with his camping equipment. But it operated on grid power.

  It looked like it was going to remain his job for a while, after all.

  * * *

  Miguel Trelawney, in Dowland's unvoiced opinion, was a man who was dying. He was big-boned and heavily muscled, but on the low couch in the living room he looked shrunken. Lead-colored skin and thready pulse. Internal bleeding at a guess—an informed layman's guess. Radiation burns.

  Dowland looked over at the girl. She was disturbed and tense, but nowhere near hysteria. "We might bring him around," he said bluntly. "But it will take some hours at least. He's in bad shape."

  Her hands, clasped together in her lap, went white around the knuckles. "Will he . . . can you save . . ."

  Dowland shook his head. "I don't know if we can save him here. If we got him to one of your hospitals tonight, he should have a very good chance. But we can't do that—unless the grid-power cuts in again."

  She said faintly, "What's happened to him?"

  "Lady, that's fairly obvious. He's been ray-burned."

  "Ray-burned? But how?"

  "I wouldn't know." Dowland opened the medical kit, slid out several of the tiny containers, turned one of them over in his hand. He asked, "Where was he when you found him?"

  "Lying outside the door of the lab."

  "Lab?"

  Jill Trelawney bit her lip. "The building I showed you."

  "Where Paul Trelawney's locked up?"

  "Yes. They call it a lab."

  "Who are they?"

  "Miguel and Paul."

  "What kind of lab is it?" Dowland asked absently.

  "I don't know. They're building something there. Some sort of a machine."

  "Are your uncles scientists?"

  "Yes." Her tone had begun to harden—a Freeholder lady rebuffing a non-Terran's prying.

  Dowland said, "If we knew whether they had radiation suits in that lab . . ."

  "I believe they do."

  He nodded. "That might account for Miguel."

  He took a minute hypodermic syringe from the kit, inserted the needle through a penetration point on the container he had selected, filled it slowly. Jill stirred uneasily, asked, "What are you giving him?"

  Dowland glanced over at her. "I don't know exactly. The brand name's 'medic'. There are around thirty other names for what's probably the same preparation. They're all very popular wherever good doctors and good hospitals aren't readily available. I haven't run into medic on Terra, but I bring along my own supply."

  "What will it do for him?"

  "Well, as I understand it, as soon as I inject this into his arm, it will spread through his body and start looking things over. Medic appears to know what a healthy human body should be like. So it diagnoses what's wrong—cold symptoms, burned-out lung, hangover, broken ankle—and then tries to bring the situation back to normal."

  * * *

  He slid up Miguel Trelawney's sleeve, inserted the needle tip into the thick, flaccid biceps, slowly depressed the plunger. "Medic's supposed to be in the class of a virus—a very well-intentioned virus when it comes to human beings." He removed the needle, glanced at his watch. "Almost six-thirty . . . A hangover'd get knocked out in three minutes. But judging from the condition your uncle seems to be in, it might be four or five hours now before the stuff really begins to take hold with him. If it can bring him back to consciousness by itself, it probably won't happen much before morning. Might be earlier; but I don't think we should wait for that before trying to get your Uncle Paul out of the lab. If he hasn't come out on his own, he may be in the same shape as Miguel. Or worse."

  Jill's face paled slightly. "Yes. I've been thinking of that."

  Dowland stood looking down at her, chewing on his lower lip. "You know, Miss Trelawney, there's something very odd about the fact that you found Miguel lying outside the lab when the door was locked."

  She nodded. "I know. I don't have any explanation for it."

  "Isn't there a storeroom of some kind around—where they might be keeping radiation suits, for instance?"

  "The ranch storehouse is the small square building just south of here. I went through it this morning looking for a key to the lab. There aren't any radiation suits there."

  "You know what those suits look like?"

  "Yes. I've worn them when taking part in attack drills."

  "Would you recognize the lab key if you saw it?"

  "Yes. Miguel showed me the one he usually carries with him." She got up, went over to the mantle above the fireplace, took down a circular wedge of metal, a half-inch thick, with smoothly beveled rim. She handed it to Dowland. "The key is very similar to this one, but at least three times as large."

  Dowland hefted the object shook his head. "Lady, by the weight of it, this thing's metasteel. The stuff they use for bank vaults and the hulls of battleships. And it looks as if the door to your uncles' laboratory has an atomic lock because that's what this type of key is made for. Do you know if the building's lined with steel inside?"

  "It might be. Miguel told me that it had been extremely expensive to build, that he had wanted to make sure no one could get into it while he was away."

  "If it's built of metasteel, he's done just that," Dowland said. "And that makes it tough." He looked at the key in his hand. "What does this key fit into?"

  "I don't know. But I'm sure there's no other door on the ranch that has an—an atomic lock. I found the key in Miguel's pocket this morning."

  "Well, it's probably no good to us," Dowland said. "Now look, Miss Trelawney. I'm carrying a protection gun that can be stepped up to around six times the shock power of a heavy rifle slug. I'll try that out at full charge on the lock to the lab, and then around the walls. But if it's all metasteel, shooting at it won't get us anywhere. Then we might make another search for that key. Or I could try getting down off the mesa to get help."

  Jill looked doubtful. "There's no easy way down off the mesa even in daylight. And at night it would be worse."

  Dowland said, "That part of it won't be too much of a problem. I brought mountaineering equipment along this trip—planned to pick up a Marco Polo ram and a few ewes—piton gun, clamp pitons, half-mile of magnetic rope; the works. Question is, how much good will it do? I've got a camp communicator, but it's grid-powered, and we don't know how far the power failure extends around here at ground level. Is there anyone down in the plain we could contact? They might have horses."

  She shook her head. "I would have heard of that. You could wander around there for weeks before you were seen."

  Dowland was silent a moment. "Well," he said, "it should be worth a try if we can't accomplish anything within another few hours. Judging from my car's position when its power went off, it shouldn't really be more than a ten-mile hike from the bottom of the mesa before I can start using the communicator. But, of course, it will take up a lot of time. So we'll see what we can do here first."

  He slipped his jacket on. "You'd better stay with your uncle, Miss Trelawney. I—"

  He interrupted himself. An unearthly din had begun suddenly outside the house—whistling squeals, then an angry ear-shattering noise somewhere between a howl and a roar. The girl started, then smiled nervously. Dowland asked, "What is that?"

  "Miguel's pigs. I expect they're simply hungry. The feeding equipment in the animal house isn't operating either, of course."

  "Pigs? I've heard pigs make a racket, but never anything like that."

  "These," said Jill, "are rather lar
ge. My uncle is interested in experimental breeding. I understand the biggest tusker weighs nearly two tons. They're alarming beasts. Miguel's the only one who can get close to the boar."

  * * *

  Outside it was early evening, still light, but Dowland went first to the wrecked grid-car to get a flashlight. He'd need it during the night, might even need it immediately if he found he could force an entry into the laboratory. In that case—if the building wasn't metasteel after all—he probably would find no YM inside it. Which, Dowland admitted to himself, would be entirely all right with him.

  But he was reasonably certain it was there. The Overgovernment's instructions about what to watch for remained annoyingly indefinite, but uniformly they stressed the unusual, in particular when associated with the disastrous. And so far, that described the situation here. The large and uncomfortable question was what kind of disaster might be about to erupt next.

  There were other questions, somewhat too many of them at the moment. But the one he wanted answered immediately concerned Jill Trelawney's role. There was a guaranteed way of getting the information from her, but he had to be sure she wasn't as innocent as she acted before resorting to it. At the very least, he had to establish that the activities in the laboratory constituted some serious violation of Overgovernment law—even if not directly connected with YM—and that the girl knew about it. Otherwise, the whole present pattern of the YM-400 search on Terra might become very obvious to all interested parties.

  He thought he had a method of forcing Jill's hand. If she had guilty knowledge, she might consider a non-Terran animal trader, who'd just happened to drop in, literally, a convenient tool to use in this emergency. She wanted to get help, too, though not from the Solar Police Authority. The Trelawneys couldn't possibly be alone in this thing.

  But she couldn't, if guilty, take the chance of trying to make use of an Overgovernment cop. A policeman wouldn't be here at this particular moment by accident. There was some risk in revealing himself—she might react too hastily—but not much risk, Dowland thought. From what he'd seen of her, she'd use her head. She'd make sure of him.

  The uproar from the animal building lessened as he went back across the slope to the entrance of the lab. Miguel's beasts might have caught his footsteps, and started to listen to see if he was coming in. The outer door to the lab—a frame of the weather-proofed wood that covered the building—stood slightly open. Dowland pulled it back, looked for a moment at the slab of metasteel behind it, and at the circular depression in the slab which was the atomic lock.

  In character, so far. Three windows at the back of the house where he had left Jill Trelawney with Miguel overlooked the lab area. Guilty or not, she'd be watching him from behind one of those windows, though she mightn't have come to any conclusions about him as yet. The reference to his "protection" gun had been a definite giveaway; he'd described an IPA police automatic, and that was a weapon civilians didn't carry—or didn't mention to strangers if they happened to carry them.

  But a Freeholder lady might not know about that.

  She couldn't avoid noticing the implications of an IPA antiradiation field. . . .

  * * *

  Dowland moved thirty steps back from the door, took out his gun, and pressed a stud on the side of his belt. Immediately, a faint blue glow appeared about him. Not too pronounced a glow even on the darkening slope, but quite visible to anyone watching from one of the windows. He took a deep breath, sucking air in through the minor hampering effect of the field.

  The rest was a matter of carrying through with the act. He'd known from the instant of looking at the door that he was wasting his fire on metasteel. But he slammed a few shots into the five-inch target of the lock, then worked his way methodically about the building, watching the weatherproofing shatter away from an unmarred silvery surface beneath. The gun made very little noise, but Miguel's hogs were screaming themselves hoarse again by the time he was finished.

  Dowland switched off the AR field, and went back to the house. When he came along the short entrance hall, she was waiting for him, standing half across the living room, hands clasped behind her back. She looked at him questioningly.

  "No luck, Dowland?"

  Dowland shook his head. "Not a bit." He started to shrug the jacket from his shoulders, saw her dart the gun out from behind her, and turned his left hand slightly, squeezing down on the black elastic capsule he was holding between thumb and forefinger. Jill probably never noticed the motion, certainly did not see or feel the tiny needle that flashed from the capsule and buried itself in the front of her thigh. Shocked bewilderment showed for an instant on her face; then her knees gave way, the gun dropped from her hand. She went down slowly, turned over on her side on the thick carpet, and lay still.

  Well, Dowland thought, he had his proof. . . .

  Jill Trelawney opened her eyes again about five minutes later. She made a brief effort to get out of the deep armchair in which she found herself, then gave that up. The dark blue eyes fastened on Dowland, standing before the chair. He saw alarm and anger in them; then a cold watchfulness.

  "What did you do?" she asked huskily.

  "I shot first," Dowland said. "It seemed like a good idea."

  Her glance shifted to Miguel on the couch across the room.

  "How long was I unconscious?"

  "Just a few minutes."

  "And why . . ." She hesitated.

  "Why are you feeling so weak? You've absorbed a shot of a special little drug, Miss Trelawney. It does two things that are very useful under certain circumstances. One of them is that it keeps the recipient from carrying out any sudden or vigorous action. You might, for example, be able to get out of that chair if you tried hard enough.

  "But you'd find yourself lying on the carpet then. Perhaps you'd be able to get up on your hands and knees. You might even start crawling from the room—but you'd do it very slowly."

  Dowland paused. "And the other thing the drug does is to put the person into an agreeable frame of mind, even when he'd rather not be agreeable. He becomes entirely cooperative. For example, you'll find yourself quite willing to answer questions I ask."

  "So you are a police investigator," she said evenly.

  "That's right." Dowland swung another chair around beside him, and sat down facing her. "Let's not waste any more time, Miss Trelawney. Were you going to shoot me just now?"

  She looked briefly surprised.

  "No," she said. "Not unless you forced me to it. I was going to disarm you and lock you in a cellar downstairs. You would have been safe there as long as was necessary."

  "How long would that be?"

  "Until I get help."

  "Help from whom?"

  Angry red flared about Jill's cheekbones. "This is incredible!" she said softly. "Help from Carter."

  "Firebrand Carter?" Dowland asked.

  "Yes."

  "He's associated with your uncles?"

  "Yes."

  "Who heads the group?"

  "Miguel and Carter head it together. They're very close friends."

  "And who else is in it—besides Paul and yourself?"

  She shook her head. "There must be quite a few people in it, but I don't know their names. We feel it's best if we know as little as possible about one another at present."

  "I see. But they're all Terran Freeholders?"

  "Yes, of course."

  "How did you happen to be told about Carter?"

  "In case of an emergency here, I'm to contact him on a tight-beam number."

  "And just what," Dowland asked, "have your uncles been doing here?"

  "Building a machine that will enable then to move back through time."

  "With the help of YM-400?"

  "Yes."

  * * *

  Dowland stared at her thoughtfully, feeling a little chilled. She believed it, of course; she was incapable of lying now. But he didn't believe it. He'd heard that some Overgovernment scientists considered time-travel to be
possible. It was a concept that simply had no reality for him.

  But he thought of the rumors about YM—and of Miguel found lying inexplicably outside the laboratory building. He asked carefully, "Have they completed the machine?"

  "Yes. They were making the first full-scale test of it this morning—and they must have been at least partly successful."

  "Because of Miguel?"

  "Yes."

  "You feel," Dowland said, "that Miguel first went somewhere else—or somewhen else, let's say—and then came back and wound up a little bit away from where he'd started?"

  "Yes."

  "Any idea of how he was hurt?"

  The girl shook her head. "The grid-power failure shows there was an accident of some kind, of course. But I can't imagine what it was."

  "What about Paul? Do you think he's still in the lab?"

  "Not unless he's also injured—or dead."

  Dowland felt the chill again. "You think he may be in some other time at this moment?"

  "Yes."

  "And that he'll be back?"

  "Yes."

  "Can you describe that machine?" he asked.

  "No. I've never seen the plans, and wouldn't understand them if I did. And I've never been inside the lab."

  "I see. Do you have any reason, aside from the way Miguel reappeared, to think that the test was a partial success?"

  "Yes. At three different times since this morning I've heard the sounds of a river flowing under the house."

  "You heard what?" Dowland said.

  "A river flowing under the house. The noises were quite unmistakable. They lasted for about thirty minutes on each occasion."

  "What would that indicate?" he asked.

  "Well, obviously . . . this time period and another one—the one in which that river flows—have drawn close to each other. But the contact is impermanent or imperfect at present."

  "Is that the way the machine is supposed to operate?"

  "I don't know how the machine is supposed to operate," Jill Trelawney said. "But that's what seems to have happened."

  Dowland studied her face for a moment. "All right," he said then, "let's leave it for now. Who developed this machine?"

  "Miguel did. Paul helped, in the later stages. Others have helped with specific details—I don't know who those other people were. But essentially it was Miguel's project. He's been working on it for almost twenty years."