Kenneth Bulmer (6 page)

"...
a remarkable man," Borisov was braying,
pushing open the swing doors and plodding down the tessellated laboratory
tiling. "A trifle unorthodox, perhaps; but, then, that is the mark of
genius. His work on viruses, alone.
..."

"He is, I'm sure," came another
voice, reaching in to Willi Haffner as he stood there, helpless, before the
wreck of his work. "I really do feel this to be an imposition; but there
are one or two points I would like to have Doctor Haffner's views . . . He is
an acknowledged leader in this field. I haven't seen him in—oh, two, three
years now. He seems to have dropped out of contact with all his old
friends."

The
voice was familiar; but what did that matter alongside the wreck bubbling and
coughing on the bench? The rat's brain lasted longer than the rabbit's. But in
two minutes both were dead.

"Hullo! What's going on?"

Haffner
couldn't reply. Borisov stamped up, his shoes arrogant on the tiling. Haffner
waved a limp hand at the catastrophe and slumped against the bench. His hand
reached for the alcohol bottle.

"I
think, Willi," said Borisov, all the jealousy in him triumphant.
"This means the end for you."

Haffner
didn't answer. Through the red roaring in his brain—his brain!—all mixed up
with the bloody shambles on the bench, he heard Borisov, as if from a long way
away, saying, "You'll receive some separation allowance, of course. But
we're finished with you. Oh—and Doctor Peter Howland is here to see you."

CHAPTER FIVE

T
he
meeting
commenced at nineteen thirty hours under a
low ceiling of tobacco smoke.

Terence Mallow had had no trouble in booking
a small hotel's single meeting hall for this evening. The cover-up story—an
ex-servicemen's friendship league—was barely heeded. Mallow and Kwang,
ex-astrogator, and Sammy Larssen, ex-starcruiser electronics officer, had
inspected the room meticulously and had baffled the two spy eyes and mikes they
found. The job, for men of their aptitude, had been childish. The three also
shared another fact of life in common, apart from expertize in the ways of the
space Navy: they had all been court-martialed and booted out of the service.

Duffy
Briggs and Barny Cain sat chunkily by the door. Across their knees each held a
nasty-looking weapon. Mallow had briefed them very thoroughly.

Colin and Stella Ramsy sat next to each other
in the second row of chairs. Stella wore her only good blouse and suit and
Ramsy had taken a shave. The stimulus of having an object in life again had set
a flush along his cheeks and an alertness in his bearing that made Stella reach
across and clasp his hand.

Nursing
a whisky bottle, Willi Haffner sat next to Peter Howland, who had told him
firmly that the whisky was, from now on, going to be rationed with ruthless finality.

About
a couple of dozen other men and women filled out the rest of the meeting. All
were ex-service—all had been kicked out with contempt. All owned a special
quality that could be put to use.

Looking around, Peter Howland saw a group of
people as dedicated as he was. He remembered his last words to Professor
Randolph at the end of that amazing interview.

"Criminal
it might be, to some," he'd said with conviction. "But you are
right, professor. For the good of science in general and our work in particular—I
am with you all the way."

Remembering those words brought a warm
feeling of comfort. They weren't petty criminals. They were men and women
determined to see that the wealth of the galaxy was shared out more equitably
than it was now.

The
door opened and Briggs was on his feet in
a
single fluid motion, bis gun half-raised.

"Very
meritorious, Mr. Briggs," said Professor Cheslin Randolph, walking in and
looking up at Briggs. "I'm glad to see you so efficient."

Briggs
looked pleased. "Ah—call me Duffy, Prof." Randolph nodded with the
air of a grand seigneur and turned to his companion.

"We're all here now, Colonel. Perhaps
you'd care to find a seat and then we can begin. . . ."

Colonel
Erwin Troisdorff nodded his close-cropped head and took the center seat in the
front row. He eased his bulky body down carefully, favoring his injured leg,
and favoring the company, too, with a single all encompassing glance. His
civilian clothes were neat and well-pressed; but ancient and wearing thin. He
placed his hat, gloves, and cane on the empty seat beside him. Watching the
performance, Peter Howland guessed no one would have the temerity to ask the
colonel to move them.

Speaking
softly to Haffner, at his side, Howland said, "Where on Earth—or off
it—did Randolph dig him up?" "Surely," Haffner said, "that
applies to us all." Mallow, passing, smiled contemptuously and went on, to
take his seat to one side of the dais and below it, facing the grouped chairs.
Professor Randolph hopped up onto the dais and selected the largest chair,
which he piled with cushions looted from others. He looked across the gathering
and cleared his throat.

Silence at once ensued.

"Gentlemen. Please
give me your closest attention."

He
had not deliberately omitted mentioning the ladies present but even as he went
on speaking he wondered why his nephew had been so insistent on including them.
They would prove to be very useful if the full scheme had to be implemented,
Mallow had pointed out, but Professor Randolph felt they would be a hindrance.

"I
believe all of you present at this historic gathering have at one time or
another been badly treated by our modem iniquitous system of social justice. I
do not know you all personally yet, my nephew, Terence Mallow has brought most
of you here. But I hope to rectify that omission very shortly." He paused
and beamed down on the rows of faces. "We are gathered here to plan the
preliminaries to an undertaking that will mark a new phase in the position of
science and the creative thinkers of our civilization. No longer must we be
dictated to by petty bureaucrats."

Everyone listened intentiy. That there was a
job on they all knew. Beyond that—nothing. They could afford to humor this
little old professor in his fancies, as Mallow had warned, if at the end lay
the jackpot.

"I
may add," Randolph rolled on, enjoying himself cast
in
the role of destiny-maker, "that Colonel Troisdorff agrees entirely
with my reading of this affair. The Colonel was cruelly, infamously treated by
the Space Marines. He dared to point out that they were wasting money. His
reward was to be ignominiously ejected from the work of a lifetime, to be cast
adrift, penniless and alone."

"He'll
have me in tears next," Haffner said to Howland. Haffner fondled his
bottle. "I could do with some of the money the government wastes
on
its pretty sailors."

"Normally,"
Randolph said, opening his frog"s-eyes to their fullest, "I would be
the first to say that the government should dictate where money gathered from
the citizenry should be spent. But the time has come when I am prepared to
stand up and declare that the government no longer has my support. The whole
system of our social structure is awry. Normal people have been subverted by a
distorted and false set of values. They clamor after bread and circuses when
the real beauties of life of lasting value are cast aside. And to those I add
the power of scientific research."

To
Mallow, sitting with a smirk across his weak, handsome face, the old boy was
sounding fine. Any waverers among this hand-picked band would be converted for
sure. Mallow, himself, was over that first panicky reaction. He glanced at
Howland. A weak link there. He'd never liked Howland and had been surprised
that the scientist had fallen in so eagerly with Randolph's proposals. As for
old Cussman, expediency dictated he be left in ignorance.

As
Randolph went through the preliminary outlines a stir ran through the
conference haJl. This sounded big. This sounded as though it could turn out to
be the job of the century. Mallow, assisted by Briggs and Cain, tried to watch
everyone. They weren't all one-hundred percent.

A
wheyfaced fellow with a long upper lip, slatey eyes and not much hair, dressed
in foppish bad taste, jumped up so that his chair squealed. Everyone looked at
him.

"Excuse
me—uh—prof—but if you plan the snatch as the vans are taking the stuff to the
spaceport—uh uh. Freddy Finks tried that. He's two years into a twenty stretch
on one of the penal asteroids." He rubbed his sharp nose reflectively.
"Never did find out which one."

"Thank
you—ah—Mister—?"

"Kirkup.
Everyone calls me Fingers and I s'pose you will too. But I don't like it."

"Thank
you, Mr. Kirkup, for your helpful advice. As it happens I do not plan the—ah—snatch
as the bullion is being taken to the spaceport. That seems crude."
Randolph smiled widely upon the assembled company. He was in excellent form.
"You may have noticed that nearly all of you were at one time in the space
Navy. The conclusion, I venture to suggest, is obvious."

Howland
noticed with some amusement that some of them hadn't got it yet. Stella was
speaking furiously to her husband, her eyes brilliant. On Kwatag's olive face a
half smile lowered his eyelids. Duffy Briggs and Barny Cain, the strong-arm
men, glanced at each other wonderingly.

"I
intend," said the eminent and respectable professor, "with the help
of you all, to take over the ship in space."

CHAPTER SIX

"I
don't
agree with you, Terence, and I must again ask
you to remember that I am in charge!" Professor Cheslin Randolph puffed up
his little turkey-chest and distended his frog's-eyes at his nephew.

He and Mallow and Howland had been joined by
Colonel Erwin Troisdorff in the professor's chambers in Lewistead on the day
after the successful first meeting in the hotel. Peter Howland walked about
like a man under an anaesthetic; his mind was wrapped in comforting blankets
of cotton-wool; and science, he felt, was owed a living by all the galaxy.

Under
the professor's onslaught, Mallow ungraciously climbed down.

"All
right, then, uncle. But I ought to put it on record—" He jerked his head
at Howland, Haffner and Troisdorff "that I consider a direct attack with
weapons we understand is the best method."

"I'm
inclined to agree with that." Troisdorff did not wear a monocle and the
effect he gave with his seamed owl's face was that he was naked without one.
"Get aboard and hold 'em up with a few rifles."

"Why,
my dear colonel, do you think we have Doctors Howland and Haffner? Not to
mention myself? This is going to be a scientific expedition, not a murder
jaunt."

"We may have to kill, uncle—"

"Nol"
Randolph's face furrowed with disgust and repugnance. "I cannot tolerate
that kind of thinking for an instant. Here in my department we are working out
a scheme and with Doctor Haffner's help we can implement it in time for the
sailing."

"By the way," said Troisdorff,
casually. "You haven't told us the name of the ship."

"That's right,
colonel," Randolph said evenly. "I haven't."

Howland
smothered a pleased smile. So the old fox wasn't losing his grip. From what
he'd seen of the company dredged together by Mallow, Howland wouldn't have
trusted one of them with a used monorail ticket.

"Well,
all I hope," Mallow said a little sullenly, "Is that the police don't
cotton on. If they do and we have to fight our way out—"

"This is negative thinking, Terence! I
am certain that Howland and Haffner and I can bring off a bloodless coup. The
ship will be ours, and we can dispose of the money at our leisure. That's where
you come in."

At the look flitting across Mallow's face
Howland felt obscure alarm. There was such a thing as a double-cross; but the
fellow was the professor's nephew!

"I
suppose you're absolutely satisfied with the loyalty of the men you've picked,
Mallow?"

Mallow
stared at him. "Quite sure, Howland. Each one is ready to co-operate
fully."

"I'm
glad to hear it. I was wondering what you proposed to do about any one who decided
to quit."

"There'll
be no quitters." Mallow's face thrust unpleasantly forward as he spoke,
yellow lines crimping in the outline of his mouth. "M anyone tries to pull
out now they'll buy themselves a lot of trouble. A lot of trouble."

Randolph
turned on him. "I trust you do not intend any violence, Terence. I agree
that we should not have anyone dropping out now. They might talk. But we have
to observe the decencies . . ."

"If anyone tries to stop us, he'll wind
up . . ." Mallow did not finish the sentence. But the grim nod from
Troisdorff merely underlined the unspoken words.

Tendrils of fear brushed Howland. If he
wanted to get out now, he couldn't. It was too late. He comforted himself as so
many men must have done before him with the thought that his leader abhorred
violence.

He
and Hafiner went off to the laboratory. Randolph had had no trouble with the
Vice Chancellor concerning Haffner. Willi Haffner was a famous scientist who
was carrying out some original research on virus culture and Lewistead was
fortunate, said Harcourt, in being able to offer him laboratory facilities.
Especially, he added with emphasis, now that Haffner had overcome his—weakness.

That had been Howland's doing. Haffner was
down to half a bottle a day and going strong. Having work to do that challenged
him had provided the main spur. When this job had been done, Randolph had
promised him, he could include all the experiments on brains, human and animal,
he wished to undertake when the money had been split up. The notion of furthering
another scientist's work had— surprising Howland—appealed to Randolph.