Mission: Earth "Disaster" (22 page)

Hound tried to distract me by making me sit down while he shaved me, but I clung to the confession with a grip of steel. I continued to thumb through it while I was dressed and all the time I was eating breakfast, looking at it, wondering about it. His descriptions of the Planet Earth seemed so real, I could not possibly imagine how he could have made them up.

My eye was wandering over a page where an investigative reporter, Bob Hoodward, had overturned the presidency. That didn't quite ring true. What was an "investigative reporter"? I tried to imagine it. Obviously, it was somebody who investigated and wrote a book about it. Yes, that must be it. But to overturn a presidency? That seemed to be laying it on rather heavy. There was no such profession as "investigative reporter" in the Confederacy. Had Bob Hoodward overturned the whole planet? No. The confession also said that he had gotten shot.

My mother interrupted my work by telling me that Corsa and her brother had been waiting on the lawn ever so long for me to come out and play bat ball. Of course I had to go and for the next hour had to watch Corsa galloping about shaking the ground while her brother broke bats. And when I got battered through a backstop by a sizzler, it was very plain to me that if I ever got pushed into marrying her and had to spend my life listening to their raucous provincial laughter whenever I fell down, life would be a very dreary thing. Modon was definitely not for me!

Showering off the sweat and turf stains, I was in the grip of desperation.

Seeking anything to get my mind off such awful fates, I returned to the subject of the confession. Wrapped in a towel, I turned over the pages of the Mists of Time. Yes, Folk Legend 894 was missing. Then, as I closed the book, my eye lit on its publisher. The Interior Division! It was a government book! For some reason they had seen fit to delete this reference to Blito-P3!

I stood in sudden shock. My schoolbooks were government.

The encyclopedias were government. Everything I had been examining was government printed!

If the Gris confession were true, then I WAS STARING AT THE GREATEST GOVERNMENT COVER-UP IN THE LAST MILLENNIA!

It was the first time I had suspected that the government would ever do such a thing. Believe me, reader, it shook me. I had always been brought up carefully to believe that, in government, truth, decency and honor were inseparable. Every relative I had, had dinned it into me! And I believed it myself! Could a government: actually pretend something didn't exist which did? Could it be partners with a lie? Incredible!

Then I was shaken again. But this time it was by Hound, who was trying to get me into some pants.

This was the way my life was going: pushed this way and that. I was being made the victim of a tailor-made destiny that might have fitted any of them but certainly did NOT fit me!

Almost musingly, while my scarf was being tied too tight, I wondered what it would be like to be a free agent, dashing around overthrowing governments like that Bob Hoodward. It must be very satisfying. Even if you got shot.

I quivered with a sudden idea. If I were an investigative reporter and exposed the biggest cover-up of the millennia and wrote it in a book, they'd HAVE to publish it! Otherwise I could go on lecture tours and tell people that they lived under repressive censorship!

And if I published a great expose, my name would be emblazoned across the skies of Voltar! There would be no more of this laughter behind hands because no one published my odes. There would be no more pushing of me into horrifying posts. There would be no threat of living a life battered with raucous, provincial laughter. They would have to admit that, yes, indeed, Monte Pennwell : was a WRITER!

I could even hear my great-uncle Lord Dohm telling the Chief Justiciary at lunch, "You know those great reviews my nephew Monte is getting? Well, we gave him his start right here." How proud he would be!

But wait, I had better be a little more steady on my facts. Had there been a government cover-up? Or was that copy of the Mists of Time just a printing error?

I knew I was taking my life in my hands. My cousin, Sir Chal, is an older man and is bent on getting me to take a job as a filing clerk in the Royal Astrographic Institute, and he is a very deceptive sort of chap. He usually appears sort of dreamy and out of this world but he can come back into it fast enough when the occasion arises.

I took a grip on my nerve and flew down to their domed building south of the city. I wondered exactly how an investigative reporter would act. Casual? Furtive? Disarming? Open?

I would try furtive. I went into his outer office where they kept the files and to a clerk who has known me since I was just a little boy, I said, "Flipper, could you let me have some old charts? I want some decoration for my study. Something antique."

"Why, certainly, young Monte," he said and waved his hand to an anteroom. "Drawers 35 to 190. Just check with me to be sure you don't take the only copy we have."

I went in and fumbled about, pulling out charts. They were printed three-dimensionally on flat paper and they showed complex systems. Some were even nicely decorated with little trees and inhabitants around the borders. On one of them the planets were animated by an optical trick and even a comet could be made to sail across the sky—a real curiosity. And then I couldn't believe my eyes. IT WAS THE BLITO SYSTEM!

And there, plain as day, was Blito-P3!

I raced straight into my cousin's office. He looked up and said, "Monte, as I live! Come down to take the filing job, I see."

I had known beforehand it would be dangerous to go in there. I hastily waved the chart. "Cousin Chal!" I said. "Here is a planet that isn't mentioned in government books. Blito-P3!"

He came down from his clouds. "What planet?"

"Blito-P3!" I said. "The one they call Earth locally! It isn't in any government text and yet here it is right here on this chart!"

He frowned. "Let me see that," he said. He looked at it. "Why, this chart is one of the old astromotion types. We haven't printed those for a thousand years!"

"It shows this planet!" I said, pointing to it and making it move around its sun. "No modern text mentions it!"

"Astromotion charts were inaccurate," he said. "They were inadequate for astrogation. They had minutes of error in them."

"Yes, but that inaccuracy wouldn't include including a whole planet in error!"

"Give me that chart," he said. It was a strange thing to say because he already had it. I didn't like the grimness in his tone.

He went out into the outer office. He said, "Who gave Monte this chart?"

"Why, I did," said Ripper.

"Flipper," said Sir Chal, "I've been thinking for some time that you need to freshen up as a professional. I'm ordering you to space-survey duty, effective at once."

Flipper looked at me accusingly.

It was quite a row. It took me an hour to get connected through to my Aunt Ble and get her to get her husband Lord Cross to catch the transfer order as it came through the Royal Personnel Office and change it to librarian on one of our family estates. I couldn't have Flipper's head rolling into my lap and staring at me with accusing eyes.

I wasn't permitted to retain the chart. But I had something else. A conviction.

THERE WAS A GOVERNMENT COVER-UP ON THE SUBJECT OF BLITO-P3!

And another conviction: Being an investigative reporter was not without perils!

But I could begin to see my name glimmer in the skies of Voltar. The nightmare of Modon faded a bit.

NOW what would I do?

I sat in my air-speedster and thought about it.

I had the Gris manuscript with me. There was another clue in it but I was pretty nervous about following it up: it would be very dangerous.

My great-uncle Guz was the civilian Assistant Lord of the Fleet. He has adamant political opinions and he talks about politics by the hour. There is no stopping him. He also drinks tup by the gallon and you have to drink with him. His ideal plan for me is a position at a desk in his office receiving notables. They also drink tup. Association with Sir Guz alone would ruin anyone's health and such employment would lead to a very early demise with liver trouble.

I had the number of the original patrol craft that surveyed Earth on the first Heller trip. The Fleet slavishly keeps records of every vessel it ever had.

You realize, dear reader, that I undertook these perils for your sake.

I headed for the Fleet administrative complex in Government City.

Typical of any Fleet installation, it looked like a formation of spaceships. They are laid out on blue gravel walks and "lawns." You practically have to go through airlocks to get into the buildings.

I had figured that my great-uncle Guz, at this time of the day, would have returned from lunch. My luck was out. He was just leaving and nothing would do but that I come along and meet Admiral Blast who was departing later today for an inspection tour of all 110 Fleet planetary bases. Admiral Blast turned out also to be a great tup drinker. He thought it would be a terribly good idea for me to come along as part of his inspection party and get some idea of each of the 110 main planets of the Confederacy: I could sign on as a civilian aide and help him fend off notables. My great-uncle Guz thought it would be splendid training for my post in his office, as I would get an insight into the politics of every planet. The two of them practically had me packed up and on board before, mercifully, tup took over and they went off arm in arm singing "Spaceward Ho!"

I let my tenor fade out and I faded likewise. Two hours hence, they wouldn't remember me at all. I slipped back into the main building. I found the office labelled Fleet Vessel Logs, Archives, and walked in.

I would try the direct approach this time. "Sir Guz said I could look at some old ship logs," I said, knowing full well my great-uncle wouldn't remember anything about it one way or the other.

An old spacer with half his face burned off said, "What ship?"

I said, "Patrol Craft B-44-A-539-G."

He indicated a cubicle and I went in and sat down in front of the screen. The vessel's log began to roll off before my eyes. There was a slow button and a stop button on the console. There were also a lot of other controls.

It was speeding along toward the date I wanted. I pushed slow.

THEN, THERE IT WAS!

Entry by entry, the whole cruise rolled off. It had left Voltar carrying Combat Engineer Jettero Heller, had proceeded to Blito-P3, surveyed it without landing and had returned. Fifteen weeks' worth of log and routine action.

Aha! This was the ship Lombar Hisst, Chief of the Apparatus, had

then grabbed at the patrol base, seizing all of its crew and sending them to Spiteos.

But none of that was in the log. It simply went blank for a bit. Then suddenly there were more entries. They started with a refit and proceeded on with routine duties.

Hastily, I found a reverse button and backed it up. The blank area had a little symbol appearing beside it on the screen. It was a green spiral. I looked at the code on the machine side and it said the symbol meant "See Fleet Intelligence."

I glanced out of the cubicle at the clerk. He was busy at something else. I addressed the console keyboard. It was not too different than a library keyboard at school. I punched the green-spiral key and then fed in the patrol-craft number.

Payoff!

PATROL CRAFT B-44-A-539-G. IN A ROUTINE CHASE OF SPACE SMUGGLERS IN COORDINATES 80/45/32, FLISTEN SECTOR, FLEET CRUISE VESSEL BAULK DISCOVERED AND REPOSSESSED SAID CRAFT.

Aha! The reason neither Gris nor anyone else could find the crash was that that crooked Death Battalion squad had sold the vessel to smugglers! They hadn't crashed it as ordered.

Wait. There were some more symbols. I deciphered that if one wanted the battle report one should punch in Fleet Cruise Vessel Baulk. But if one wanted the disposition of the patrol-craft crew, one should punch in Fleet Intelligence.

I was not interested in the battle with smugglers but I was interested in the patrol craft's crew.

In the Gris narrative, he had gone to Spiteos where the crew had been imprisoned, had gotten a prostitute and had put her and poisoned food into the cell and had supposed they would shortly all be dead.

YET HERE WAS A FLEET INTELLIGENCE REPORT ON THIS CREW!

Believe me, I lost no time punching it in! '

And here it came!

CONFIDENTIAL

From: Craftleader Soams, Patrol Craft B-44-A-539-G

To: Fleet Intelligence Officer Bis

SIR! Pursuant to your request that I make a report to you in full, it is my pleasure and duty to do so.

SIR! When we received emergency orders to take off, we boarded our craft and went skyward. Fifteen men of the Apparatus Death Battalion suddenly emerged from hiding in the ship and overpowered us.

SIR! There is an Apparatus fortress two hundred miles across the Great Desert which is not on our charts. It is a black castle generally supposed to be a primitive ruin. But it is totally policed and defended.

SIR! The twenty of us, names attached, were incarcerated contrary to all regulations. We were stripped naked and thrown in an underground cell.

SIR! We would have starved to death had it not been for our skill in catching vermin.

SIR! We would have died of thirst had it not been for underground water leakage.

After some days we were approached by a General Services officer, brown hair, brown eyes, who did not identify himself.

SIR! He wanted information concerning our cruise to Blito-P3 and, in particular, data concerning JETTERO HELLER, Royal officer, who was nominally in command of the survey we undertook of said unconquered planet. In particular, he wanted to know any weaknesses of said Royal officer, Heller.