Mission: Earth "Death Quest" (23 page)

attended by all media, "I could not resist his wiles. In my innocence I did not understand that he was not really trying to protect my milk-white complexion from the sun by lying on me. I didn't get knocked up for five months but now, much to my embarrassment, I'm all swole up with child."

The Whiz Kid could not be reached for comment. His attorneys, Boggle, Gouge and Hound, said that they were not available for comment.

Rumor is rife that the Whiz Kid has fled to Canada, a fact regarded by legal experts as tacit acknowledgment of guilt.

Oh, what a story! And the other papers, particularly the sexier ones, went into wild orgies of description of what had happened. One even pictured the Whiz Kid as dancing in the moonlight with rabbits all around and shouting to them, "Come, come! Let me protect you from the sun! With fifty strokes!"

SCANDAL!

The trap was sprung!

Eagerly I hung on to my viewers to witness the inevitable blowup. The Countess Krak was prone to jealousy. One glimpse of that paternity story would blow the lid off. She might simply leave him!

I watched while they breakfasted. I watched while the butler laid the paper on the table. I watched while they got up and were helped into their coats. I saw them leave their penthouse condo without ever a backward glance toward that paper.

Oh, well. Sometimes the radio was played in the Rolls Royce Silver Spirit. And this morning, news bulletins about the suit were coming on every fifteen minutes: Madison was doing a masterly job of coverage.

But this morning, the Countess Krak told Bang-Bang, who was riding in the front seat while she and Heller rode in back, to put "a good tape cassette on" and he, of course, left to his own choice, put on the Italian opera
Rigoletto,
where everybody kills everybody and even drowns them in a sack still singing. It wasn't the kind of blood I wanted.

At the office, Heller sat down at his big white desk and put in a call to Florida. Right in front of him, folded, lay the morning papers.

The Countess Krak sat down on the arm of an interview chair, watching him patiently. Right in her line of view were those fatal newspapers, folded up but available.

Heller apparently had a lease line to Ochokeechokee and he went into a lot of chatter about some regulation they'd come up against down there about the allowable heights of stacks in swamps. It seemed that a "propulsion stack" had to be at least five hundred feet high to get "impulsion."

"They've got to blow rings," he said. "Big green rings of spores. If they are not propelled high enough, they won't reach the stratospheric winds. One goes every minute and if the stacks are any shorter, the perfection of the ring will foul and the resultant tumble will

impede successive firings. They
have
to be five hundred feet tall."

The contractor at the other end was very unhappy with Florida regulations but said that was what they said.

"They sell sunshine down there," said Heller. "With all the soot and gases in the atmosphere, it's getting pretty dim. Put some pressure on them. Make them see that it's good sense to clean up the world's air."

"Good sense has nothing to do with it," said the contractor. "It's just what's written in the little books the Florida State Inspectors carry. But I'll tell you what I will do: I'll send a lawyer to Tallahassee to talk to the governor. Maybe we can get a waiver on the regulation."

Heller had to be satisfied with that. He clicked off and looked up. He saw the Countess was still sitting there. He said, "Isn't your class ready?"

"Yes, dear," she said. "All fifty of them, some of them the country's best electronic engineers. You didn't give me the notes you made last night."

"Oh, I'm sorry," said Heller. He reached right across the newspapers to an attache case, opened it and brought out a sheaf of notes. He handed them to her.

She glanced at them and then gave him a kiss and walked out the door.

She went down the hall and halted at a sign which said:

Power, Power, Power, Inc.

She straightened her jacket, opened the door and walked in.

The large office had been converted to a temporary classroom. It was filled with men of various ages, ranged

in school chairs. They all rose respectfully. The Countess Krak walked to the platform and blackboard.

An elderly man had been addressing them. But now he surrendered the platform, saying to the group, "I will now turn the class over to Miss Krackle."

The men all applauded politely.

The Countess put down the sheaf of notes on a table. "Gentlemen," she said, "you have been employed as engineers for Power, Power, Power, Incorporated. I am privileged to be able to address some of the top electronic and power engineers of the planet. Some of you have been selected for your abilities in foreign languages as well.

"Far be it from me to tell you, who are experts in the field, how to do your jobs. I am solely here to relay to you certain technology, that with which you will work."

She looked at her notes. "The beaming of power from central collection stations to distribution units and then to consumption absorbers by microwave accumulators and reflectors may be, in some respects, new to you."

She turned to the board, chalk in hand. "If we regard power as a stream of water which yet can be beamed and focused, we can see that a central collection station in a country may receive the power from a source and then deflect and focus it to subreceivers which, in turn, can focus it upon consumption units." She began to draw a pattern upon the blackboard, giving flow lines.

It came to me with a shock that she, using Heller's notes, was laying out a standard planetary power-collec-tion-and-distribution system using microwaves.

That the Countess Krak would be lecturing so learnedly was not much of a surprise for she was simply relaying material.

What got to me was that here was a whole new insidious plot I had not even been aware of. I did not ask myself what they were going to use as a power source, although that was a mystery. All I knew was that if she was genning experts in on microwave-relay technology of power, Rockecenter's empire might well be in the soup! Some of his billions depended upon burning fossil fuel-oil and coal-locally and inefficiently to furnish power expensively and profitably to industries and homes. So what if, as the environmentalists said, Rocke-center practices were wrecking the atmosphere? The environmentalists were missing the whole point! The action was PROFITABLE and that was everything!

The Countess Krak was furthering an insidious plot to destroy Octopus! And that plot was very far advanced, even to the point of hiring and training engineers to build and install equipment!

That wasn't chalk she was holding as she copied Heller's drawings on the blackboard. That was a dagger aimed straight at the heart of Rockecenter and, through him, at Lombar Hisst! If Rockecenter's grip on the planet relaxed, we might no longer be able to export drug ammunition to Voltar!

(Bleep) her!

This had to be stopped!

I looked back at Heller's viewer. He was just sitting at his desk drawing up more notes, translating Voltar technology into Earth terms.

There lay the newspapers with the fatal story, completely neglected!

After half an hour, the Countess Krak came back into his office. I was willing her, straining my neck muscles, to get her to pick up that newspaper.

Heller looked up. "Did it go well?"

"Of course, dear," she said. "Your notes covered all their questions. I've turned the class over to Professor Gen. I think it will take them a month or two of class-work to review all their own texts and reconcile the systems. They have to shed some preconceptions, but they'll make it."

"Well, I'm sure you can take care of that," said Heller. "It's just a matter of their shedding a few prejudices about energy."

The Countess reached across the desk to the newspaper! She picked it up! I really held my breath.

She went over to the bar and got a can. She put it in an opener.

She spread the newspaper on the bar. She dumped the contents of the can on it.

The cat jumped up and said "Meow" and began to eat.

The Countess Krak picked up her purse. "I'm going over to New Jersey now."

She gave him a kiss on the cheek and walked out!

The only one reading that newspaper was the cat!

I ground my teeth!

Then I knew what it was. It was a policy they must have. A conspiracy! You could only be happy on the planet if you never read newspapers or listened to the news. And while this was perfectly true, it gave them no license to gang up on me.

That beautiful story was failing!

She was going right on helping Heller to undermine everything worthwhile: MONEY!

Between the two of them they were going to salvage life on this planet! Oh, the villainy of it!

I knew I would have to act!

After considerable pacing, I went back and read the story again.

INSPIRATION!

No sooner conceived than acted upon. I must attack!

I brushed the better part of the cockroaches off my coat and with determined stride made my way to the subway.

Fifteen minutes later, I stood before a shabby building. It had a porno store on the first floor. It had a massage parlor on the second. The local chapter of the National Association of Mental Stealth was on the third floor. It was the fourth which I wanted.

I went up the stairs.

I set my jaw grimly.

I strode into the offices of Dingaling, Chase and Ambo.

I was about to unleash the most terrible weapon ever devised: the American legal system!

There was no receptionist. I walked right through the empty waiting room and into the second office.

A baldheaded man with foxy, shifting eyes looked up from a scarred desk. He rubbed his hands. He said, "You been run over? You slip on somebody's floor? We're the very people you want to see." He raised his voice, "Chase! Ambo! We've got a customer!"

Two other doors opened. Two other baldheaded men with foxy, shifting eyes rushed in.

"I'm here on the Wister case," I said.

They looked very alert. Chase then approached and patted me over to make sure I wasn't carrying a tape recorder or gun.

"For or against?" said Dingaling, the first man.

"Against," I said firmly.

They promptly got me a chair and all three helped me sit down.

"You're from...?"

"I am sure," I said firmly, "that Madison must have retained you on behalf of Maizie Spread."

They looked wary.

"I am Madison's boss," I said. "My name is Smith. You can check with him but do not tell him I am here."

Chase vanished. I heard him phoning. He came back and nodded to the other two.

"There's a real suit here," I said.

"Oh, come, come," said Dingaling. "It's just a publicity retainer, Mr. Smith. A maximum harassment in the media. The usual thing. An attorney firm like ours does it all the time."

"There's money to be made," I said.

"Oh, come, come, Mr. Smith," said Ambo. "You know full well that this Wister has no money."

"There is something Madison neglected to tell you," I said. "There is a real Jerome Terrance Wister."

They frowned, perplexed.

"He has millions, even billions available," I said.

They stiffened and stared.

"The man Madison put you on to is a double. The

REAL Wister lives in a ten-million-dollar penthouse on

Central Park West, has a domestic staff of twelve and is

driven to his posh office in the Empire State Building in

'a Rolls Royce Silver Spirit."

They were absolutely flabbergasted. They plied me with questions and I answered. '

They began to mutter, "A real case!" "A defenseless millionaire!"

"If you serve your suit subpoena on the real Jerome | Terrance Wister at his penthouse at five o'clock this after– I noon as he comes home, you're on the way to making a f fortune!"

I gave them further details.

When I left, they had made a ring and were dancing round and round in the office, shouting in hysterical joy.

Five o'clock found me glued to the viewers.

The Countess Krak in the Silver Spirit had picked up Heller at the office.

They drove into the garage.

They ascended in the elevator.

Heller unlocked the door at the top and stepped into the small hall. The Countess Krak was right behind him.

A shabby man in a shabby overcoat with a shabby hat pulled over his eyes stepped out from behind a potted plant.

"Jerome Terrance Wister?" he said.

Heller stopped.

The man shoved a court summons into his hand. "You are duly served in the matter
of Spread vs. Wister"
he said and then bolted down the fire escape.

"What is it, dear?" said the Countess Krak.

"I don't know," said Heller, "but he almost got himself shot." He started to toss the paper aside.

The Countess Krak took it from him.

She read a short distance into it.

She went white.

Then suddenly she marched into the salon, across it, to her room and slammed the door!

I had connected!

Heller stood there, rooted.

Then he went to her door. It was locked.

"Dear," he said through the closed portal, "could you tell me what this is all about?"

She was lying on the bed face down with the legal paper crumpled in her hand. She was crying!

"Dear," he called. "Is there something wrong?"

He kept at it and half an hour passed before she ceased to cry.