Mission: Earth "Fortune of Fear" (20 page)

Abruptly the auditorium lights came on!

What must have been a stage electrician sprang up to a balcony platform and got a spotlight going. He threw it onto Heller and turned it blue and red and yellow and white. Then he must have heard a signal from Mamie for he swivelled it over onto her on the stage. She was holding her hands up to command attention. They lifted Heller up over the footlights and turned their faces to Mamie.

In a voice that would have made a Greek orator roll in his grave with envy, Mamie roared out, "Now, ladeeees and gentlemen, you proud employees of the newly named Lucky Bonanza Casino Corporation! Get the paddles chunking, the yachts flying! Get the Boardwalk swept and the dice and wheels rolling in the dough. Tote that barge and lift that roll! In short, as your president and general manager, I advise you to get back to work! What do you say?"

The crowd cheered! It rushed out of the auditorium, on its way.

Heller looked around at the deserted hall. He looked at Mamie and Tom-Tom and the Countess. He asked them, wonderingly, "What did I approve?"

The others had their minds on different things. Nobody answered.

Heller asked, "How did the lights come on?"

Tom-Tom stopped tightening a drumhead and looked at Heller timidly. He said, "I couldn't go to the utility company offices myself. I know as treasurer I should handle them, but I wouldn't know if I was paying the right bank notes out, so I sent the band leader. The lights, phone, water and furnaces should all be on shortly, as he keeps good time."

Heller looked around. "But they can't start gambling in the casinos or even make change in the stores. There isn't any cash."

The Countess Krak was at his elbow. "I didn't tell you, dear, as you seemed so busy. But I put three sacks of that money in a ventilator shaft. It's about a million and a half, they guess. I gave it to Mamie so she could get your corporation going."

Mamie said, "And it is really appreciated, honey. It's enough to pay utilities, get money in the cashier's cages and fill up the slot machines so we can start pulling in some dough."

Heller asked them, "What did I approve?"

But he was being pushed out of the auditorium by Mamie. They got to the lobby.

It was jammed with newly arriving people! MOBS! There were four long lines at the desk where clerks were swiftly checking them in.

Heller looked out a side window. The parking lot was jammed with newly arrived cars. And more were strung out down the road, honking their way forward inch by inch. He said to Mamie, "Why are all those people coming in?"

She said, as she pushed him up some steps, "I guess it's to see the scene of the battle. It's all over national TV. Burning tanks, exploding landing craft, shot-down planes. The wrecks are all out there, real and authentic, too! The PR people did a great job on press-agenting your taking Atlantic City by storm. They even used some film clips of the Normandy D-day landing in World War II. It's been on every network since midmorning. But Atlantic City press agents have always been tops."

I snorted. Atlantic City press agents be (bleeped). That was Madison!

The Countess Krak said, "Was there a battle, dear? I was in the laundry room and corridors. I did hear shooting. But I didn't know you'd been down on the beach."

They had reached the former office of
capo
Gobbo Piegare. Mamie inspected the place; she picked a beautifully sculpted black hand off the desk and dropped it in the wastebasket and dusted off her fingers. She then removed Heller's coat and sat down in the elegant, yellow desk chair. From it she had a view of the Boardwalk, which was getting noisier.

She tossed the jacket to Heller. "You sure are clever, sailor. Having a stand-in doing autographs for you. It can be pretty tiring, as stars like me know only too well. But listen, sailor: when you choose a double, pick one that looks more like you. I can't abide buckteeth."

"Double?" said Heller. "Where is the double?"

Oh, my Gods. I certainly smelled Madison here in his relentless search for front page.

"Why," said Mamie, "he's out there now on the Boardwalk, autographing like mad. Clever idea. Wears one out posing for TV crews. But the double is handling it well."

The Countess said, "So you don't have to go out, dear."

Heller peeked through the window down at the

Boardwalk. It was SWARMING with public and vendors and reporters and cameramen. The double, Madison's phony "Whiz Kid"-glasses, big jaw, buckteeth and all-was standing on a wrecked army-surplus tank while some effects man rekindled the flames within it.

"I sure won't," said Heller, flinching. He turned back into the room. "Will somebody please, please tell me what I approved?"

Mamie sat up in the sumptuous desk chair. "Well, you see, none of the staff has been paid for ages. And they know the corporation can't pay them and it's winter and there are no jobs open." She looked at him questioningly as if to say, did he really want to know?

"Please tell me," begged Heller.

"Well, in short, sailor, I told them that if you approved it, they could have 100 percent of the profits of the whole corporation and all its holdings, after expenses, until all their back wages, withholding tax and pension fund was caught up. After that, you said they could only have 60 percent. However, that won't be for a long, long time."

Heller sat down suddenly in a chair. And well he might! For, to all intents and purposes, so far as income for an owner was concerned, Atlantic City again had just changed hands!

THE WHOLE ENTERPRISE HAD BEEN TAKEN OVER BY THE STAFF!

Mamie went on. "But I need an opinion from you on something very important."

Breathlessly, he said, "What?"

Mamie said, persuasively, "Don't you think I should order my name put up in lights on each casino-hotel? Real big: 'Mamie Boomp, President and General Manager.' How do you think that would go over?"

Very faintly, Heller said, "Wonderful." Then after a little he turned to Countess Krak, "Dear, I think it's time we went back to New York."

Oh, did I guffaw! Heller's venture to get Izzy out of debt had made exactly no progress at all! It had only brought more trouble. Moreover, he was now discouraged and of very low morale.

I decided then and there to stop worrying about him and let him sink. There was no slightest sign that he would do anything productive or active, and when the word came from Lombar, he and the Countess Krak would still be in the U. S. floundering around. They didn't have a prayer of completing before I could get the word and kill them both!

My euphoria revved right up to top-peak. It was I who was winning. Me, me, me!

The next morning my beauty sleep was shattered by a shrieking sizzle at my bedside. It interrupted a beautiful dream: Heller and Krak were in a bread line in New York and a Manco Devil was standing there with a soup ladle, not only refusing them food but also banging them expertly over the head with the sharp edge.

The shrieking sizzle was the intercom. It was quite unusual for it to buzz, for Faht Bey never wanted any help from me if he could possibly escape it. So it must be an emergency.

I pushed the button.

It was!

Faht Bey said, "Come to the hangar quick! They're killing Doctor Crobe!"

I would have said, so what, why are you calling me? But he had closed the line.

It occurred to me that I should not be careless. Life is full of chances. I had learned from Bury to always have an alternate solution in case something went wrong. I might need Crobe in the event that Heller and Krak muddled through.

I got into some clothes. I armed myself very heavily. I went down the tunnel to the hangar to give Faht a piece of my mind. Things had changed and he had better find out about it.

He was waiting for me at the hangar end.

"Since when," I asked him acidly, "am I responsible for everyone on this base?"

"You sent for him!" said Faht Bey. "You had him brought from Voltar. And now look!"

Crobe was halfway up the hangar wall, hanging by his fingernails.

On the hangar floor, fifty feet below him, were the four assassin pilots and the five Antimancos. And they were furious!

They were yelling curse words up at Doctor Crobe, the like of which I had never heard before. Unprintable! An awful din!

"I won't let them shoot at him. He's only two feet away from an earthquake stability box," said Faht. "They might hit it and cave the whole place in."

True enough: the small box which kept an invisible bar beam going to brace two walls apart was right by his head.

I didn't want to go near the assassin pilots: they are pretty dangerous people to be around even when they're calm. And right then they were definitely not calm. They were howling and jumping up and down.

Faht Bey's hand pushing against my back propelled me into the scene.

"What's this?" I said.

A stream of vituperation sprayed at me from all sides. Only with difficulty could I piece together what had happened.

Doctor Crobe had lifted the detention cell key off the guard. Sometime during the night he had crept out of the cell where he should have been studying English. An assassin pilot had awakened at the cut of a guard bayonet and had the bleeding slash to prove it.

Good Gods, Doctor Crobe sure did not have very good sense, to attack an assassin pilot!

Ploddingly, plugging away, I kept asking them if Crobe had volunteered any slightest explanation for this breach of good manners. Perhaps if I could get to the bottom of this, it could be handled.

No one at ground level had the necessary information. In fact, they were making such a din, I doubt they understood my line of interrogation.

There was only one thing for it, I realized in a spurt of genius: ask Doctor Crobe.

I got a small bullhorn and focused it on him. "Why were you cutting on an assassin pilot?" I shouted up at him.

He had hold of the beam box itself now. He looked down with his wild, zealot eyes. His voice, coming from way up there on the wall, was pretty thin.

"I was just studying English!" he shouted down in his clumsy Voltarian. "I was only doing what you told me to do, Officer Gris."

That caused more smoke and profanity down where I was. Hastily, I yelled back, "I didn't tell you to cut anybody's throat!"

"You gave me texts on psychology and psychiatry as part of my reading assignment! They say man has a reptile brain in the lower middle of his skull. That was news to me, and I was only trying to find out! Why all this furor over somebody just trying to do his homework?"

Well, he had a point. The assassin pilots and the Antimancos didn't see it that way.

"You gave him some books that told him to do that?" snarled an assassin pilot.

I thought it prudent to change the subject. "If we can get him down from there, he can show you it is just a clinical matter."

They surged at me. I got my back to the wall and a blastick out. "Look," I said, "why don't you go someplace and have a conference and cool off. I'll get him down and we can discuss it like gentlemen."

They looked at the 800-kilovolt blastick. They looked up at Crobe.

"Later," said the assassin pilot.

They left, snarling considerably, leaving me and Faht Bey.

I yelled up at Crobe, "You can come down now."

"I can't. I am certain I will fall," he yelled back.

"We'll rig a safety net!" I yelled. "Hold on."

The hangar crew had been very inconspicuous during the argument. Faht Bey dug them out from behind things and made them get a net. They stretched it out below Crobe.

"You can jump now," I yelled up at him.

"My hands won't let go!" he yelled back.

I told Faht Bey and the hangar crew to wait right there. I went up the tunnel to my gun case. I selected out a needle stun rifle and came back.

Faht Bey took one look at it. "Don't shoot up there! You could hit that electronic-beam support box he's holding on to."

I told him icily, "You are questioning my marksmanship. I can hit a songbird at half a mile with this. How can I miss Crobe at fifty feet?"

I put the stun rifle on its lowest setting. The hangar crew around the safety net covered up their heads. Faht Bey ran all the way to the office and peeked back out.

Kneeling, I braced the weapon.

I took perfectly accurate aim. Right on Crobe's right hand as it clutched the box.

I fired!

The box exploded!

Down came Crobe!

Down came ten tons of rock!

Smoke and dust spiralled in the gloom.

Faht Bey hit the clanging general emergency alarm button.

DEAFENING!

From all over the base people came streaming in to man the guns.

Faht Bey quickly redirected them into an emergency damage and rescue operation.

They began to dig the hangar crew out.

Crobe they found in the bottom of the net where he had landed safely, only to be at once bombarded by rock following him down.

Apparently the beam box had shorted and the beams had ceased to support the walls they proofed against the numerous earthquakes of the area, and slabs of rock had sheered away from old faults.

These people were making a lot of to-do about nothing. The hangar walls were intact except for a few pockmark holes a yard or less in diameter. No equipment had been damaged unless you counted one safety net. There wasn't even anybody dead-only a fractured skull or two, and Prahd could patch those up.

But everybody passing me was giving me a most undeserved glare.

I had found what was wrong. The power pack in the needle stun rifle had not been recharged for two years and, low-powered, had missed his hand and shot low. My marksmanship was not in question. But nobody would stop long enough to hear the explanation.