Mission: Earth "Black Genesis" (13 page)

He took a little hammer and with a tap, he knocked off the last half-inch of the plug, caught the fragment and put it in a bag. Then he took a can out of his shoulder sack. The label said Rock Glue, and very badly lettered it was.

He put a gooey piece of rock glue on the plug and put it back in the hole. He tapped it neatly with a hammer and in a moment you couldn't tell that an inspection core had been taken out.

Heller went along to his left a few feet and did the same thing. And, working swiftly, he did it again and again and again, plug after plug after plug!

Well, it was all right to watch him when he was only fifteen feet off the floor. Trouble was, he went up to fifty feet and started the same procedure and every time he looked down, I got an awful feeling. I hate heights!

So, anyway, I skipped ahead.

Heller had gotten himself clear up to the lower edge of the electronic illusion which, from there on up, gave us a mountaintop. And he said something!

I quickly turned it back and replayed it.

"Why," muttered Heller, "do all Apparatus areas stink! And not only that, why do they have to seal the airflow with an illusion so it will never air out!"

Aha! I was getting to him. He was beginning to talk to himself. A sure sign!

He lit a small flamer and turned it so it smoked. He watched the resultant behavior of the small fog. "Nope," he said, "no air can get in. By the Gods, I'll have to find the switch of this thing."

I didn't keep the strip there very long. He kept looking down and three hundred feet under him a dolly operator looked like a pebble. Stomach wrenching!

I sped ahead to find more sound. I found some and stopped. But he was just humming. That silly one about Bold Prince Caucalsia.

A bit later, he tried to talk to the hangar chief who, of course, on my rumor, ignored him. Heller finally put a hand on the man's shoulder and made him face him. "I said," said Heller, "where are the controls for the electronic illusion? I want to turn it off tonight to air the place out! You're trapping moisture in here."

"It's always on," the hangar chief snarled. "It's been on for ages. I don't even think the switches work anymore. It's running on its own power source and it won't have to be touched for a century. You want things changed around here, take it up with the base commander." And he went off snarling about routine, routine, all he needed was one more routine to clutter up his day.

Captain Stabb was over by the ship. The five Antimancos were not housed aboard the tug. They were in

the berthing area of the hangar—much more comfortable and they could more easily get to town. No eighty-foot ladder. It pleased Captain Stabb immensely that Heller had been rebuffed in his passion for fresh air. Oh, he would never last in the Apparatus! These Fleet guys!

Heller went back aboard.

I sped ahead. He had apparently come out again to do some running. He was gradually lightening his weights to adjust his stride to this planet.

Silly athletes.

I shut him off and went back to glooming about my lost dancing girl. The world was against me.

The following day, toward noon, I was just beginning to come out of my dumps when something else happened to free-fall me back into them.

It was a smoking hot day: the August sun had cranked the thermometer up to a Turkish 100—meaning about 105. I had been lying in a shadowy part of the yard, back of a miniature temple to Diana, the Roman Goddess of the hunt. My pitcher of iced sira was empty; I had gotten tired of kicking the small boy who was supposed to be fanning me, when suddenly I heard a songbird. It was a canary! A canary had gone wild! Instantly my primitive instincts kindled! I had bought, a year ago, a ten-gauge shotgun and I had never tried it out! That would handle that canary!

Instantly aquiver, I leaped up and raced to my room. I got my shotgun rapidly enough but I couldn't find the

shells. And that was peculiar as they are big enough to load a cannon with. I went to my sleeping room and started threshing through my bedside drawers.

And then something happened which drove all thought of hunting from my mind.

There was an envelope pinned to my pillow!

It had not been there after I arose.

Somebody had been in this room!

But nobody had crossed the yard to my area! How had this gotten there? Flown in on the wind? There was no wind.

It was the type of envelope which is used to carry greetings in certain Voltar social circles: it gives off a subdued glitter. Had I found a snake in my bed, I would have been less surprised.

I got nerve enough generated to pick it up. It did not seem to be the exploding type.

Gingerly, as though it were hot, I extracted the card. A greeting card. A sorry-you-were-not-in-when-I-called type of card. It had handwriting on it. It said, quite elegantly:

Lombar wanted me to remind you now and then.

And under that formal social script was drawn a dagger! A dagger with blood on it! A dagger with blood on it that was dripping!

I went cold as I burst into sweat.

Who could have put it there? Was it Melahat? Was it Karagoz? Could it be Faht Bey? The hangar chief? Jimmy "The Gutter"? Heller? No, no, no! Not Heller: he would be the last one Lombar would use! The small boy who had been fanning me? No, no, I had had him in sight all morning.

Where were they now?

Was I being watched this minute?

All thought of hunting vanished.

I was the hunted!

With a great effort, I made myself think. Something was obviously expected. Somebody believed I was not doing my job. And if that happened, according to Lombar's last remark, the whoever-it-was had direct orders to kill me!

I knew I must do something. Make an effort, a show of it. And fast.

I had it!

I would tell Captain Stabb to start another rumor about Heller!

I let the shotgun fall. I rushed through the back of the closet. I got the passageway door open and catapulted down it to find Stabb.

The Antimanco was nowhere around. But something else was.

The warplanes!

Two of them!

They must have arrived during the night!

They were ugly ships. A bit bigger than the tug. They were all armor. They were manned by only two. They were a more compact version of "the gun" which Lombar flew. Deadly ships, cold, black, lethal.

Rather timidly, I approached them. To get here now, when would they have had to leave Voltar? They must have been dispatched the very day Heller had bought the tug to have arrived here by now. Such ships were only a trifle faster than freighters. Lombar must have known about the tug purchase the instant it happened! He knew too much, too quickly. He must have spies planted in every...

A voice sounded behind me and I almost jumped out of my wits!

"We been here for hours, Gris. Where have you been?"

I turned. I was looking at a slate-hard man with slate-hard eyes. There were three others behind him. How had they gotten behind me?

They were in black uniforms and they wore red gloves. They had a red explosion on each side of their collars. And I knew what they were. In the Apparatus they are called assassin pilots. They are used on every major Apparatus battle engagement. They do not fight the enemy. They are there to make sure no Apparatus vessel runs away. If it does, if they only think it is running away, they shoot it down! With riffraff of the type that makes up the Apparatus, such measures are necessary. One has to deal with cowards. One also has to deal with mutiny. The answer is the assassin pilot. The Fleet has no such arrangements.

Their manners compare with their duties. He was omitting "officer" from his form of address to me. He did not offer to shake hands.

"That ship," and he flung a contemptuous gesture at the tug, "has no call-in beamer on it!"

Every Apparatus ship is required to have a device imbedded in its hull which an assassin ship, with a beam, can activate: it is vital so they can find an erring vessel and shoot it down.

"It was a Fleet vessel," I said, backing up.

"Listen, Gris, you wouldn't want me to report you for violations, would you?"

I backed up further. "It was just an oversight."

He stepped closer. I had never seen colder eyes. "How can anybody expect me to shoot a ship down

when I can't find it? Get a call-in beamer installed in that hull!"

I tried to back up further but the hull of a warplane was at my back. I felt desperate. "I am not under your orders."

"And we," he said, "are not under yours!"

The other assassin pilot and the two copilots behind him all nodded as one, with a single jerk of their heads. They were very grim, cold professionals at their trade; they wanted things straight!

It was a bad situation. I would sometimes be in that tug. It was unarmed and unarmored. One single shot from either of these warplanes could turn the Prince Caucalsia into space dust in a fraction of a second.

"So, two orders," said the assassin pilot. "One: order the hangar chief to install a call-in beamer on that ship's exterior hull so secretly and in such a place that its crew will never know it is there. Two: I want that ship crippled so that it cannot leave this system on its time drives and try to outrun us."

"There's a Royal officer aboard her," I said.

"Well, decoy him away from the ship so the beamer can be put on the hull. I'll leave the crippling of her up to you as you're the best one to get inside her."

I nodded numbly. I was at a terrible disadvantage. I had left my room so fast I had not taken a gun. I had broken a firm rule never to be around Apparatus people unarmed. And then, I realized, it wouldn't have done me any good even if I had been armed. They would have complained to Lombar I was refusing his orders.

I nodded nervously.

"Then we're friends?" he said.

I nodded and offered my hand.

He raised his red-gloved fingers and slapped me across the face, hard, contemptuously.

"Good," he said. "Do it."

I raced off to give the secret order to the hangar chief. I raced up the ladder and got Heller to come out.

I took Heller to the hangar map room, out of sight of the tug.

He was in work clothes. He had been doing something inside. His red racing cap was on the back of his head. "Where'd the two 'guns' come from?" he asked.

"They're just guard ships," I said. "Stationed here. They've been away. Nothing to do with the mission." It gave me a little lift of satisfaction, thinking of what his reaction would be if he knew they were here especially to keep track of his beloved tug and shoot it down if it did anything odd or didn't return at once from a flight. I only hoped I wouldn't be aboard when they hit it: an unarmed, unarmored tug wouldn't stand a chance!

"We will probably be leaving tomorrow," I said. "While we are near maps, I wanted to show you the U.S. terrain."

"Hello," he said, looking at them. " 'U.S. Geological Survey.' It even shows the minerals!"

"And everything even down to the farmhouses," I said, glad to be able to engage his interest and prevent him from seeing what they were doing in the hangar. "We can make better farmhouse ones, of course, but the minerals are a bonus.

"Now, probably we will be landing in that field there." And I pointed to the section in southern Virginia I had seen noted on the Lombar orders.

"The town," I continued, "is named Fair Oakes. See it there? This over here is a better, more detailed map. This is Hamden County. Fair Oakes is the county seat. Now, see this building? That's the Hamden County Courthouse. The squiggles show it is on a little hill.

"All right," I said. "Now, pay attention. We will

land in this field: it's a ruined plantation and nobody is ever around. The trees will mask us from any road.

"Now, you will leave the ship there, walk up this path that is indicated, pass this farmhouse, walk up the hill to the back of the courthouse and go in.

"You will be issued your birth certificate—an old clerk will be there even though it is after hours. And then you will walk down this hill and go to the bus station.

"There is a late-night bus. You will take it north to Lynchburg. You will probably change at Lynchburg and then go through Washington, D.C., and up to New York."

He was being very attentive but looking at the maps. Actually, it was hardly worth explaining what he would be doing after that. The Rockecenter, Jr. false name Lombar had set up for him would draw attention and he'd be spotted. If he registered even at a motel, somebody would be startled enough to call the local press that a celebrity was in town. But it would be no celebrity: just a false name! And then, bang! Rockecenter's connections would take over. Bye-bye Heller! It was a cunning trap Lombar had laid. There is no Delbert John Rockecenter, Junior!

"You must be sure and use the cover name at all times," I said. "America is very identity conscious. If you don't have identification, they go crazy. So be sure you announce and use your cover name when you get it. It's even a felony not to give a name to the police when they ask for it. Do you understand all that?"

"And what will this cover name be?" said Heller, still looking at the maps.

"Oh, I don't know yet," I lied. "We have to get a proper birth certificate. A name doesn't mean anything unless you can show a birth certificate. It depends on what ones are available there in the Hamden County Courthouse."

"Hey," he said, "they've got some gold marked on these maps. I was reading some books on the United States and it said the gold was all in the West. Look here. There's gold marked in Virginia. And on these other maps, there's gold in Maryland. And there's gold up here in these... New England?... states."