by Jack Sharkey
The pilot, as per my videophoned request, was waiting there for me. I saw him as I stepped into the cool shadows of the building from the hot yellow sunlight outside. He was tall, much taller than I, but he seemed nervous as hell. At least he was pacing back and forth amid a litter of half-smoked cigarette butts beside the gleaming tailfins of the spaceship, and a fuming butt was puckered into place in his mouth.
“Anders?” I said, approaching to within five feet of him before halting, to get the best psychological effect from my appearance.
He turned, saw me, and hurriedly spat the butt out onto the cement floor. “Yes, sir!” he said loudly, throwing me a quivering salute. His eyes were a bit wild as they took me in.
And well they might be. An Amnesty-bearer can suddenly decide a subject is not answering questions to his satisfaction and simply blast the annoying party to atoms. It makes for straight responses. Of course, I was dressing the part, in a way. I wore the Amnesty suspended by a thin golden chain from my neck, and for costume I wore a raven-black blouse and matching uniform trousers and boots. I must have looked quite sinister. I’m under six feet, but I’m angular and wiry. Thus, in ominous black, with an Amnesty on my breast and a collapser in my holster, I was a sight to strike even honest citizens into quick examinations of conscience. I felt a little silly, but the outfit was Baxter’s idea.
“I understand you were aboard the Phobos II when the incident occurred?” I said sternly, which was unusual for my wonted demeanor.
“Yes, sir!” he replied swiftly, at stiff attention.
"I don’t really have any details,” I said, and waited for him to take his cue. As an afterthought, to help him talk, I added, “At ease, by the way, Anders.”
“Thank you, sir,” he said, not actually loosening much in his rigid position, but his face looking happier. “See, I was supposed to pilot the kids back here from Mars when their trip was done, and—” He gave a helpless shrug. “I dunno, sir. I got ’em all aboard, made sure they were secure in the takeoff racks, and then I set my coordinates for Earth and took off. Just a run-of-the-mill takeoff, sir.”
“And when did you notice they were missing?” I asked, looking at the metallic bulk of the ship and wondering what alien force could snatch fifteen fair-sized young boys through its impervious hull without leaving a trace.
“Chow time, sir. That’s when you expect to have the little—to have the kids in your hair, sir. Everyone wants his rations first—You know how kids are, sir. So I went to the galley and was about to open up the ration packs, when I noticed how damned quiet it was aboard. And especially funny that no one was in the galley waiting for me to start passing the stuff out.”
“So you searched,” I said.-
Anders nodded sorrowfully. “Not a .trace of ’em, sir. Just some of their junk left in their storage lockers.”
I raised my eyebrows. “Really? I’d be interested in seeing this junk, Anders.”
“Oh, yes, sir. Right this way, sir. Watch out for these rungs, they’re slippery.”
I ascended the retractable metal rungs that jutted from a point between the tailfins to the open airlock, twenty feet over ground level, and followed Anders inside the ship.
I trailed Anders through the ship, from the pilot’s compartment—a bewildering mass of dials, switches, signal lights and wire—through the galley into the troop section. It was a cramped cubicle housing a number of nylon-webbed foam rubber bunks. The bunks were empty, but I looked them over anyhow. I carefully tugged back the canvas covering that fitted envelope-fashion over a foam rubber pad, and ran my finger over the surface of the pad. It came away just slightly gritty.
"Uh-huh!” I said, smiling. Anders just stared at me.
I turned to the storage lockers. “Let’s see this junk they were suddenly deprived of.”
Anders, after a puzzled frown, obediently threw open the doors of the riveted tiers of metal boxes along the rear wall; the wall next to the firing chambers, which I had no particular desire to visit. I glanced inside at the articles therein, and noted with interest their similarity.
“Now, then,” I resumed, “the thrust of this rocket to get from Mars to Earth is calculated with regard to the mass on board, is that correct?” He nodded. “Good, that clears up an important point. I’d also like to know if this rocket has a dehumidifying system to keep the castoff moisture from the passengers out of the air?”
“Well, sure, sir!” said Anders. “Otherwise, we’d all be swimming in our own sweat after a ten-hour trip across space!”
“Have you checked the storage tanks?” I asked. “Or is the castoff perspiration simply jetted into space?”
“No. It’s saved, sir. It gets distilled and stored for washing and drinking. Otherwise, we’d all dehydrate, with no water to replace the water we lost.”
“Check the tanks,” I said.
Anders, shaking his head, moved into the pilot’s section and looked at a dial there.”Full, sir. But that’s because I didn’t drink very much, and any sweating I did—which was a hell of a lot, in this case—was a source of new water for the tanks.”
“Uh-huh.” I paused and considered. “I suppose the tubing for these tanks is all over the ship? In all the hollow bulkhead space, to take up the moisture fast?”
Anders, hopelessly lost, could only nod wearily.
“Would it hold—” I did some quick mental arithmetic—“let’s say, about twenty-four extra cubic feet?”
He stared, then frowned, and thought hard. “Yes, sir,” he said, after a minute. “Even twice that, with no trouble, but—” He caught himself short. It didn't pay to be too curious about the aims of an Amnesty-bearer.
“It’s all right, Anders. You’ve been a tremendous help. Just one thing. When you left Mars, you took off from the night side, didn’t you?”
“Why, yes, I did, sir, But how did you—?”
“No matter, Anders. That’ll be all.”
“Yes, sir!” He saluted sharply and started off.
I started back for Interplanetary Security, and my second—and I hoped, last—interview with Chief Baxter. I had a slight inkling why the Brain had chosen me; because, in the affair of the missing Space Scouts, my infallible talent for spotting the True within the Apparent had come through nicely. I had found a very interesting clinker.
4
"Strange,” I remarked to Chief Baxter when I was seated once again in his office, opposite his newly replaced desk. "I hardly acted like myself out at that airfield. I was brusque, highhanded, austere, almost malevolent with the pilot. And I’m ordinarily on the shy side, as a matter of fact.”
“It’s the Amnesty that does it,” he said, gesturing toward the disc. It lay,on his desk, now, along with the collapser. I felt, with the new information I’d garnered, that my work was done, and that the new data fed into the Brain would produce some other results, not involving me.
I looked at the Amnesty, then nodded. “Kind of gets you, after awhile. To know that you are the most influential person in creation is to automatically act the part. A shame, in a way.”
“The hell it is!” Baxter snapped. “Good grief, man, why’d you think the Amnesty was created in the first place?”
I sat up straight and scratched the back of my head. “Now you mention it, I really don’t know. It seems a pretty dangerous thing to have about, the way people jump when they see it.”
“It is dangerous, of course, but it’s vitally necessary. You’re young, Jery Delvin, and even the finest history course available these days is slanted in favor of World Government. So you have no idea how tough things were before the Amnesty came along. Ever hear of red tape?”
I shook my head. “No, I don’t believe so. Unless it had something to do with the former communist menace? They called themselves the Reds, I believe…”
He waved me silent. “No connection at all, son. No, red tape was, well, involvement. Forms to be signed, certain factors to be considered, protocol to be dealt with, government agencies to be checked wi
th, classifications, bureaus, sub-bureaus, congressional committees. It was impossible, Jery, my boy, to get anything done whatsoever without consulting someone else. And the time lag and paperwork involved made accurate and swift action impossible, sometimes. What we needed, of course, was a person who could simply have all authority, in order to save the sometimes disastrous delays. So we came up with the Amnesty.”
“But the danger. If you should pick the wrong man—”
Baxter smiled. “No chance of that, Jery. We didn’t leave it up to any committee or bureau or any other faction to do the picking. Hell, that would have put us right back where we’d been before. No, we left it up to the Brain. We’d find ourselves in a tight situation, and the Brain after being fed the data, would come up with either a solution, or a name.”
I stared at him. "Then, when I was here before, I was here solely to receive the Amnesty, it that it?”
Baxter nodded. “The Brain just picks the men. Then we tell the men the situation, hand over the Amnesty, and pray.”
I had a sudden thought. “Say, what happens if two men are selected by the Brain? Who has authority over whom?”
Baxter grimaced and shivered. “Don’t even think such a thing! Even your mentioning such a contingency gives me a small migraine. It’d be unprecedented in the history of the Brain or the Amnesty.” He grinned, suddenly. “Besides, it can’t happen. There’s only one of these—”he tapped the medallion gently “—in existence, Jery. So we couldn’t have such a situation!”
I sank back into the contour chair, and glanced at my watch. Much too late to go back to work. I’d done a lot in one day, I reasoned. Well, the thing was out of my hands. Baxter had the information I’d come up with, and it had been coded and fed to the Brain. As soon as the solution came through, I could be on my way back to the world of hard and soft sell.
“You understand,” said Baxter suddenly, “that you’re to say nothing whatever about the disappearance of the Space Scouts until this office makes the news public? You know what would happen if this thing should leak!”
The intercom on Baxter’s desk suddenly buzzed, and a bright red light flashed on. “Ah!” he said, thumbing a knob. “Here we go, at last!”
As he exerted pressure on the knob, a thin slit in the side of the intercom began feeding out a long sheet of paper; the new answer from the Brain. It reached a certain length, then was automatically sheared off within the intercom, and the sheet fell gently to the desktop. Baxter picked it up and swiftly scanned its surface. A look of dismay overrode his erstwhile genial features.
I had a horrible suspicion. “Not again?” I said softly.
Baxter swore under his breath. Then he reached across the desktop and tossed me the Amnesty.
“I hope you know what you’re doing,” said Baxter at the gleaming glass doorway of the spaceport. “Why a man who has absolute authority should choose to ride public transportation when he could have his pick of the fleetest government ships on Earth—”
I didn’t tell him it was because of little details like stereo-vision, autobars, and, not least of all, comfort, that I had chosen to ride the Valkyrie. She sat waiting even now, far out in the. center of the landing strip, two hundred towering feet of silver, crammed with all the luxuries engineering ingenuity could put aboard her. I had, thanks to a government credit card, a private cabin. I intended to enjoy myself, this trip.
I’d managed to convince Baxter that it was less likely the public would suspect there was anything amiss if I went to Mars incognito, with the Amnesty worn under my clothing, for use only in emergencies. An Amnesty-bearer arriving on Mars in a government ship might cause talk. Disastrous talk.
Baxter was rattling on and on, giving me the names of my contacts on Mars for the seventeenth time, and I was giving him perfunctory nods as though I was paying attention, though I was actually watching the other passengers leaving the check-in desk. After all, I’d be in space with them for almost two days. You never know what might develop.
The co-rider I had in mind was a girl, with hair like irridescent comsilk, and a figure that made the stereovision starlets look 2-D in comparison. She had her back to me, but even before she turned around, I knew she was beautiful. It was just the way she stood there, facing the passenger-check robot. She—well, she stood like a girl who is beautiful.
Then she turned around, and I gave my instincts an A plus.
Her eyes were the deepest of blues, actually a purple tone, and they were wide, serious and shining. There was a certain determination about the set of her jaw that I liked, and her lips were like soft red velvet. A man could kiss those lips and sink- slowly into warm crimson seas; lose himself in the heated softness of their gentlest pressures.
“Delvin!”
Baxter’s voice shattered my reverie, and I tore my eyes from the girl, though the aftereffects of dreaming left my mind in confused fragments. “Huh?” I said, looking at his face and almost failing to recognize it.
“I said—” Baxter’s voice was impatient and over loud, “—that you had best, in the interests of open-space safety, not flash that Amnesty while you’re aboard the Valkyrie. Passengers have a way of working themselves into a panic that is almost an uncanny gift! They’ll all start suspecting their neighbors of treason, or worse, and—”
But I wasn’t hearing his diatribe any more. As he’d spoken that first sentence, the girl with the shimmering comsilk hair had been passing within a few feet of us, and I’d felt, rather than actually seen, her slender shoulders stiffen beneath the blue silken fabric of her blouse. And she’d hesitated for,a moment in midstep, as though she were going to turn about and see which man in the universe was the one to whom the Amnesty had been given.
I watched her move out into the sunlight, crossing the field in brisk but dainty strides. Any second now, I told myself. She thinks she hasn’t been seen. She’s getting far enough away so that—Aha! Now!
Halfway to the ship, the girl turned, apparently busily concerned about the clasp of her handbag, as though it had come open without warning. I kept my head turned, to look as though I were watching Baxter. But my eyes were still on her. She looked at me. Then she turned and went on toward the ship.
“Had to see who I was!” I said to myself. “So now she knows I’ve got the Amnesty. And so—And so, what?”
5
Since antigravity, artificial gravity, and low-thrust takeoffs were still in the realm of science-fiction, even the luxury liners like the Valkyrie had to bed their passengers down in shock-absorbing couches until the ship was free of gravitation. So it wasn’t until we’d achieved escape velocity from Earth that I saw the girl again.
I’d decided to wander into the lounge and try to locate her. It would be an easy task if she were present, what with her startling good looks. But it turned out to be even simpler than that.
She came to me.
I was just easing myself out of my couch, when my cabin door opened and closed. And locked.
That last part intrigued me even before I turned about. I was wondering what sort of menace I had to meet, and bewailing the fact that the collapser was still in my luggage, when I saw who my visitor was. I started to smile, but the smile left as I saw the saw-edged steak knife in her hand.
“Listen, whoever you are!” she said. Her voice was low, angrily intense, but still a pleasure to hear, somehow.
“I’m listening, I assure you!” I said, politely. “A voice like yours doesn’t caress these tired old eardrums every day.”
She accorded my compliment a smile, but it was a bleak one, and there was a certain wry lift to her left eyebrow. “Very suave, I’m sure,” she said. “But I’m not in the mood, thank you. Now, you just sit down on your bunk and behave, and—”
“Mind if I get a cigarette?” I asked, gesturing toward my traveling case. I tried to be casual about it, but I must have failed. I lose my head around women, as I’ve said.
“I’ll get them for you,” she said, waving the knif
e’s glittering blade at me. I moved away and sat on the edge of my bunk. She flicked the clasp open, and spread the two halves apart. There were two shirts and some underwear in the case, plus the collapser. Not a cigarette to be seen. She looked at me, narrow-eyed.
“I don’t smoke,” I explained weakly.
“You Amnesty-bearers!” she grated between even, white teeth. “Ready to destroy everybody with impunity, aren’t you! You wouldn’t even wait to find out what I wanted!”
“I haven’t said a word,” I pointed out delicately.
“You lied about the cigarettes,” she accused.
“How would you treat a stranger who burst into your cabin with an unsheathed knife?” I said, exasperated.
She looked down at the knife, and reddened. “Maybe I was a bit abrupt about this. It’s just that—” Her face suddenly crinkled up, and her deep blue-violet eyes burst into tears. Then the knife fell to the carpet, and her face was buried in her hands. I leaned forward and removed the knife from within her reach, then took her by the shoulders.
She whimpered hopelessly, between shuddering sobs, “Am I under arrest?”
“Depends,” I said. “Depends entirely on why you came in here like this. And what my possession of the Amnesty has to do with it. And how,” I added, puzzled, “you seemed to know so much about Amnesty-bearers and their vile dispositions!”
She took her hands from her face, streaked with tears, and said, with a shy grin, “I was guessing at that part. I just kind of assumed they’d all be pretty intolerant. Who wouldn’t be, with all that power?!”
“Well, I wouldn’t for one,” I said defensively. “I only bite when I’m bitten.”
She found a handkerchief somewhere and began sopping up the wet spots from her complexion; a complexion, I noted happily, that did not come off with water.
“Have a chair,” I said, and rang for the steward. “I hope you drink?”
“Not a lot,” she admitted. “But I could use one right now.”
“Good,” I said, watching her as she poised gracefully on the chair before my cabin’s private stereo set. “By the way, my name’s Jery. Jery Delvin.”