Laumer, Keith - The Star Treasure

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2024-12-13 0 0 368.39KB 123 页 5.9玖币
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The Star Treasure
By
Keith Laumer
PROLOGUE
The wide doors swung open; the elderly man, tall and straight-backed in a braid- and
decoration-heavy uniform advanced across the room, halted, executed a formal salute.
"Good morning, Admiral," said the man who sat behind the immense, mirror-polished
desk. "How pleasant to see you. It's been some time; not since your retirement, I believe."
He smiled faintly, the intricate network of fine wrinkles around his eyes almost invisible
against his dark skin. His small, round skull was entirely hairless. One large, pink-palmed
hand toyed with a silver writing instrument. Except for that and a folded paper the desk
was totally bare.
"I requested an interview two weeks ago," the old man said. His voice had lost its
resonance, but still carried force. His face, hollow and sagging with advanced age, was set
in a grim expression.
"Ah," the seated man said easily. "Unfortunately, I've been much occupied lately”
"I know," his visitor said. "That's the reason for my coming here today.”
The black man's smile faded by an almost imperceptible degree. "To be sure, Admiral.
I've read your note; I understand your concern—”
"You're making a serious mistake, Lord Imbolo. I don't know the reasons for what's
been happening—but whatever they are, they're in error.”
The seated man placed the pen on the desk carefully, as if handling a rare and fragile
object. He sighed. "There's no error, Admiral," he started— "The charges are fantastic!" the
old man cut him off. "They're lying to you, Imbolo!" "I think not, Admiral—”
"You have to call a halt to this pogrom, Imbolo. It can't go on!" The old man's voice
shook, but his eyes glared with the fierceness of a trapped falcon.
"Admiral, you've served the Public long and well; you find it difficult to believe that
changes are taking place—" "I know all about the changes, Imbolo. I've heard the Hateniks
ranting. I've seen the underground papers. I have nothing to do with that. It's the Navy I'm
thinking of. Over three hundred years of tradition are being destroyed by this sneaking
corps of informers, weasels, worming their way into every level of command—”
"You're not in possession of all the facts, Admiral. Rest assured—”
"I'll not rest at all until I've heard your assurance that these cases will be reopened,
your informers called off, and these men restored to duty!" "Impossible," Imbolo said flatly.
The old man's hand slipped inside his silver-buttoned tunic, came out gripping a flat, snub-
barreled power gun. Without a word he raised it, took aim at the still faintly smiling face
before him, pressed the firing stud.
For a long moment he stood, his arm extended, sighting along the weapon, before his
face reflected the realization that nothing had happened. Slowly his arm fell. He seemed to
shrink; the rigidity went out of his face, his shoulders. Abruptly he was merely a withered
figure in an ill-fitting costume. Languidly, Lord Imbolo tapped a spot on the desktop.
Instantly, a pair of immaculately uniformed Marine guards were in the room.
"The Admiral is unwell," he said softly. "See that he's cared for.”
The gun dropped to the floor with a soft thump as the impassive men took the would-
be assassin's arms, turned him, walked him from the room. Lord Imbolo watched them go,
then he sighed, and resumed his interrupted perusal of the latest list of officers and men
suspected of unreliability and other crimes against the Companies and the Public.
PART ONE
One
Midshipman Blane was cashiered at hours on Saturday, Ma on the parade deck of the ship
of the line Tyrant, fifty million tons, on station off Callisto, nine months out of Terra on the
Trans-Jovian cruise.
Blane was a slim, sandy-haired lad only a year out of the Academy. He stood
obediently at attention while the commodore read the findings of the court: guilty of
attempted sabotage in that he did willfully place and attempt to detonate an explosive
device with the intention of destroying a capital Fleet vessel on active patrol in Deep Space.
"In an earlier age," the commodore went on, "a terrible vengeance would have been
extracted from a man who undertook, however ineffectually, the destruction of his ship and
the murder of eighteen thousand shipmates. Today the law holds that society may
legitimately exact only those punishments commensurate with its ability to confer benefits.
"Charles Yates Blane, society has reposed confidence in your abilities and integrity;
that confidence is now withdrawn. Society has conferred on you rank and responsibility; of
that rank and those responsibilities you are now relieved. Society has endowed you with
citizenship and the privileges of participating in her benefits; those privileges are now
revoked. You are no longer a member of the United Planetary Navy, nor have you the right
to wear the uniform.”
At a command the drummers started the roll. The commodore grasped the insignia
on the Midshipman's collar and ripped it away. He stripped the single gold stripe from his
cuffs. He snapped off the ornamental silver buttons with the Fleet eagle, one by one, and
dropped them at his feet Blane didn't move, except to sway a little at each jerk, but tears
were running down his face.
The drums halted. In the aching silence, the vice-Commodore said, "Charles Blane,
ex-officer, ex-citizen, you will now be removed to a place of security and held there until the
arrival of a Fleet picket boat which will transport you to a designated location where you
will be free to work out your destiny unassisted, and unimpeded, by the society which you
have forfeited.”
For the first time a trace of emotion showed on the Commodore's face: the faintest of
sneers—all that was left to a civilized man of the bared fangs of the ancestral carnivore.
"Take him away," he said. The drummers resumed the roll; the guard closed in, fore
and aft, and walked him down the gauntlet of the men and women he'd tried to kill, and
out of our lives.
Afterwards, Paul Danton—Commander Danton during duty hours—stopped to talk to
me.
"What did you think of the ceremony, Ban?" he asked.
"Anachronistic," I said. "Somewhat self-consciously so. But effective. I gave up my
plans for blowing up the ship when those buttons hit the deck,”
"Why do you suppose he did it?”
"I can't conceive. He seems to have gone about it rather badly.”
"I wonder if he really intended to succeed?”
"I assume so—unless it was all a trick to get himself marooned on a Class I world." I
smiled at this whimsy, but Paul looked thoughtful, as if he were considering the possibility.
"Could he have had any legitimate motivation, Ban?”
"For killing us all off? We may not be the best company in the world, but that hardly
justifies such sweeping measures.”
"For a gesture of rebellion," Paul corrected.
"Paul, you haven't been reading Hatenik pamphlets, have you?" I said it jokingly, but
somehow it didn't ring as humorously as I had intended.
"Perhaps even the Hateniks have their points," he said mildly.
" We hate hate, and we'll kill any dirty son of a slime culture who doesn't agree with
us?" I suggested.
"They're fanatics, of course," Paul said. "But can we afford to ignore any voice of our
times?”
"Are you trying to tell me something, Paul?”
"On the contrary," he said. "I'm looking for answers.”
The routine of the ship went on. We moved on out to the vicinity of Saturn. There
were four hours of watch to stand each day; there were dances and banquets and lectures
and concerts and games. Among the ten thousand female crew members there were an
adequate number of young and beautiful ones to make life entertaining. The weeks passed.
I saw Paul now and then; we didn't discuss Hateniks and the basis of civilization. In fact I
had almost forgotten our talk, until the night of my arrest.
It was just after oh three hundred hours when the deck police rapped at my door.
They were very polite about it: The captain's compliments, and would Mr Tarleton report to
the bridge as soon as convenient. Their hands never strayed near the guns at their hips,
but I got the idea just the same.
I hadn't turned in yet. They stood by while I wiped the whiskers off my chin and
pulled on my deck jacket. Only one of them fell in beside me for the walk upstairs; the
other man posted himself beside my door at parade rest and watched us go. I appreciated
his delicacy: frisking an officer's room with him watching would be bad for morale. It was a
long walk back to the A deck lift, a long ride up to G territory. Tyrant wasn't one of these
modern cybernetic jobs, manned by ten men and a switchboard. She had over a hundred
miles of corridor in her. We couldn't have covered over one percent of that, all in a dead
silence like the one before the casket slides into the converter.
Armed guards let us through a big armored door marked Command Deck—
Authorized Persons Only. Inside, a warrant with a face like a clenched fist looked me over
and jabbed buttons on a panel. An inner door opened and I went through and the door
closed softly behind me. I was standing on fine gray carpet, smelling a faint odor of Havana
leaf and old brandy. Beyond a big curved quartz window that filled the far end of the room
Saturn hung, half a million miles away, big enough to light the room like a stage. It was a
view that almost, but not quite took the show away from the man behind the desk.
He was all the things a Fleet Commodore ought to be: big, wide shouldered, square
jawed, with recruiting poster features and iron gray temples, his shirt open at the neck to
show the hair on his chest. The big Annapolis ring glinted on his finger in the dim light
from the desk lamp that was set at just the proper angle to glare in the customer's eyes
when he sat in the big leather chair. I saluted and he motioned with a finger and I sat. He
looked at me and the silence stretched out like a cable under test.
"You enjoy Navy Me, Lieutenant?" His voice was like a boulder rolling over a deck
plate.
"Well enough, sir," I said. I was feeling more baffled than worried.
He nodded as if I had made an illuminating remark. Perhaps I had”
"You come from a Navy family," he went on. "Admiral Tarlatan was a distinguished
officer. I had the honor of serving under him on more than one occasion. His death was a
great loss to us all.”
I didn't comment on that. Most of the Navy had served under my father at one time or
another.
"We live in troubled times, Lieutenant," the Commodore said, brisk now. "A time of
conflicting loyalties." I had the feeling he wasn't talking just to me. There was a soft sound
from the corner of the room behind me and I looked that way and saw the other man,
standing with his arms folded, beside a glass doored bookcase. His name was Crowder; he
was short, soft-necked, with a broad rump and a face to match. I knew him slightly as a
civilian advisor on the commodore's staff. I wondered why he was here. He made a smile
with his wide lips and looked at my chin. To my surprise he spoke:” What Commodore
Grayson means is that certain misguided individuals appear to see such a dichotomy," he
said. "In actuality, of course, the interests of the Companies and the Navy are identical." He
had a strange, uneven voice that seemed to be about to break into a falsetto.
I stood by and waited for the lightning bolt that would destroy the poor fellow who
had been so naive as to interrupt the commodore—with a remark that was 180 degrees out
of phase with what he'd been saying.
But the commodore only frowned a little, in a well-bred way. "A junior officer is at a
disadvantage in assessing what he might call the subjective aspects of a complex situation,"
he said. "Academy life is sheltered; fleet patrol duty keeps a man jumping." He smiled at me
in comradely fashion, bridging the gap in years and rank. Or almost bridging it. Under the
surface charm I caught the glitter of something ominous, like water in the hold.
"You knew Commander Danton quite well?" Crowder threw the question from behind
me, cut it off suddenly, as if he'd said too much. I turned slowly and tried to see into his
face.
"What do you mean, 'knew'?" I said. It came out sounding a little harsher than was
quite appropriate for a junior officer addressing an FS-24.
" Know him' I meant, of course." His voice was still as bland as his kind of voice could
be.”
"I've known the commander since I was a small boy," I said.
"What are Commander Danton's views on the matter of, ah, divided loyalties?" His
tone was a few degrees crisper now.
"Commander Danton is the best man I know," I said. "Why do you ask?”
"Just answer my questions, Lieutenant," Crowder said.
"That'll do, Crowder," Grayson growled. But instead of fading back, Crowder pushed
away from the wall and walked over into the light He frowned at me, at the big man behind
the desk.
"Perhaps you don't quite grasp the situation, Commodore," he said in a tone like a
torn fingernail. "This is a security matter.”
I looked at the little man's doughy face, at the fat neck where his collar had rubbed it
pink. I looked at the commodore and waited for him to squash this underling like a bug
under his boot. The big man looked at the plump civilian and some of the color went out of
his outdoor-man tan. He cleared his throat and stared past me. His eyes looked blind. The
silence was like an explosion.
"Now then, Tarlatan," Crowder said in a saw-edged tone, "when was the last time you
saw Danton?”
I kept my eyes on Grayson's face. His eyes stirred and moved to me. "Answer his
questions," he said. His lips barely moved.
"I don't know," I said.
"What do you mean, you don't know?" Crowder rapped.
"I mean I didn't know it was the last time," I said, and pried into his face with my
eyes, trying to dig some meaning out of it. A sick feeling was growing somewhere down
under my ribs. Paul, Paul, what have they done to you . . . ?
"Are you being tricky, boy?" Crowder snarled, showing his teeth.
I tried to catch Grayson's eye, but he wasn't there any more. He was somewhere far
away, where rank still lived in its high tower, above all contention. I was on my own—and
Crowder was still waiting, rocking on his heels.
I stood up and faced him. "I'm not a boy, Mr. Crowder," I said. "I'm a line officer of the
Navy. And if this is line-of-duty, I suggest we have it on tape." I reached for the record
button on the commodore's desk, and Crowder shot out a hand and covered it.
"Mr. Tarlatan. I suggest you start realizing the position you're in and begin giving me
the kind of cooperation I expect." He let his eyes slide to Grayson. "That the commodore
and I expect.”
"Tell me what you want to hear," I said. "I'll see if I can say it.”
"Has Danton spoken to you of anything—any, ah, discovery he fancied he'd made,
perhaps? Some supposed secret he pretended to have uncovered?”
I looked thoughtful. "He did comment . . .”
"Yes, yes?" Crowder glanced at Grayson triumphantly.
". . . that the Chambertin '78 in the Deck Officers' mess was a trifle tannic," I said.
"But I don't suppose that's any secret.”
Crowder's undershot jaw dropped. His little pig eyes almost disappeared.
"A jokester, eh?" He spat out the words like a cockroach in the soup and reached for
a desk button. Grayson moved then. He stood, looming over the security man like a djinn
over Aladdin.
"That's enough," he said as softly as steel slicing cheese. "Nobody brigs my officers
without a charge that sticks!”
"He's in it!" Crowder granted, but he pulled his hand back.
"Show me proof," Grayson said. "Then we'll talk about it.”
"Turn him over to me for an hour and I'll have all the proof you want!" Crowder's eyes
licked over me like a blowtorch.
"Get out, Crowder," Grayson whispered. The civilian opened and closed his mouth,
but he knew when to stand on a pat hand.
He stalked to the door, looked back from there, looked around at the rug and the
paneled walls and the view behind the big desk. Then he looked at Grayson and smiled a
knowing little smile.
"We'll see, Commodore," he said. His grin made it an insult When the door had closed
behind him, Grayson looked at me. I had the feeling there were things he wanted to say,
but he didn't say them. It was just as well. I wouldn't have believed him.
"That will be all, Mr. Tarlatan," he said in a dull voice. "Consider yourself under
arrest in quarters until further notice." He sat back of the desk, just as he had when I came
in; but it was different now. He didn't look like a symbol anymore; just an old man in a
trap.
Back in my suite, I called Paul's apartment, but there was no answer.
Two
I stripped and stepped into the sonospray and then used the tingler, but I still felt soiled.
As I pulled on fresh clothing, something crackled in the breast pocket.
It was a note on thin blue paper, folded and sealed with a blob of red contact-wax. It
was brief and to the point. This is ninety second paper, so don't linger over it. I may be on
the trail of something very disturbing. If I should drop out of sight, it will mean I was right.
I don't want to involve you in this; but I ask you to convey a message to Trilia: Confirmed.
Will you do this for your friend, Paul I read it three times, looking for the meaning that
seemed to be eluding me, but it became no clearer. Then the paper turned to gray ash in
my fingers and powdered into dust.
I wiped my hands and looked at the blur that the wall had turned into, for as long as
it takes for hope to wither and die. Then the desk phone buzzed. I pressed the button.
"Lieutenant," a cautious voice said. I recognized it as MacDonald, boat deck NCOIC.
"Look, maybe I'm out of line, sir," he said, "but—I just got a prelim code 78.”
"So?”
"That's the change-station alert code, Lieutenant.
Tyrant's going to pull out in a few hours—and we've got a couple boats ex-hull.”
"Go on.”
"Commander Danton logged out at twenty hundred hours, ETR oh four thirty.”
"Destination?”
"Phoebe Station.”
I thought that over; there was nothing on Phoebe but a nav beacon and some
standard emergency gear. Nothing to take a Section Commander out on a lone mission on
off-watch time.
"You said 'boats,' MacDonald.”
"Hatcher took a cutter out half an hour behind the commander. A G-boat, one of the
ones with the paired 20 nun's. And she carried full charges; the son of a bitch checked.”
I chewed my lip and thought about that. I didn't like what I was thinking. Hatcher
was a subordinate of Crowder's—a stupid, brutal man, capable of anything.
"Very well," I said. "Warm up nine-two. I'll be along in a few moments.”
I dialed myself a drink and swallowed half of it, finished dressing. I eased the door
open; the corridor was clear. I stepped out and started toward Y deck, with the feeling that I
was walking in an evil dream.
MacDonald met me in the launch bay. He was a short, well-muscled man with red
hair that grew flat to a round skull, and burn scars along his jaw from a boat deck
explosion in '88.
"She's topped off, sir, full reserves," he said. "Not that that'll help much if the execute
order comes through before you dock back in." His eyes asked questions, but I went past
him. down the row of sleek-hulled boats waiting for any hands that would use them—or
misuse them. He followed, stood by as I climbed in.
"The last time the commander came in from one of these ring-runs, it took me half a
watch to buff the rock burns off his boat," he said. "What's he doing out there, Lieutenant?”
"Worried about the equipment, MacDonald?" I showed him a grin that didn't quite
make it.
"The equipment—and maybe some other things.”
I nodded as if that was the answer I'd expected. "I'm on a special run, in case
anybody asks. That's all you know, Mac, understand?”
"I guess you know what you're doing, Lieutenant." His expression said he doubted it.
His look slid along the line to the two-man G-boat at the end.
"How's if I side you, Lieutenant?" his voice was a little hoarse. It had a right to be: he
was laying twenty-eight years and his neck on the line.
"Negative. You stay here, in the clear. I need a good man behind me.”
I buttoned up and thought some thoughts while the relays clicked and the tube
pressure built. And then I stopped thinking them, because there was nothing among them
that made my future look bright, or very long, even. I stuck with just the one idea: that
Paul Danton was out there alone somewhere; and the G-boat that had followed him was the
Navy's latest hunter-killer, with all guns loaded, and manned by a sadist.
Then the GO light flashed and I closed the lever and they poured a concrete dam in
my lap; when I could see again I was twenty miles out, with the mile-long city of lights that
was Tyrant dwindling behind me and the diamond blaze of the Rings arching across the
screen ahead.
Almost at once I picked up the characteristic residuals from a fleet scout. It took a
few moments for the course computer to take readings, analyze the data and produce an
extrapolation that I liked no better than the other aspects of the situation.
Paul hadn't made for Phoebe Station after all. His track headed straight for the Rings;
to be precise, for a point at the edge of Cassini's Division, the gap between the A and B
rings. The fact that the spot in question was over the Interdict line and twelve thousand
miles into off-limits territory was only a part of my aversion to it: a few million cubic miles
of dust and ice scattered across a few billion cubic miles of space constituted a difficult
obstacle course through which to take a boat, roughly equivalent to strolling across the
sighting-in range at Carswell on a busy afternoon. I was still contemplating that thought
摘要：

TheStarTreasureByKeithLaumerPROLOGUEThewidedoorsswungopen;theelderlyman,tallandstraight-backedinabraid-anddecoration-heavyuniformadvancedacrosstheroom,halted,executedaformalsalute."Goodmorning,Admiral,"saidthemanwhosatbehindtheimmense,mirror-polisheddesk."Howpleasanttoseeyou.It'sbeensometime;notsinc...

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