Eric Frank Russell - WASP

VIP免费

2024-12-13 0 0 350.32KB 149 页 5.9玖币

侵权投诉

WASP by Eric Frank Russell

Chapter I

HE AMBLED INTO the room, sat in the indicated chair and said

nothing. The baffled expression had been on his face quite

a time and he was getting a bit tired of wearing it.

The big fellow who had brought him all the way from

Alaska now departed, silently closing the door and leaving

him alone with the man contemplating him from behind the

desk. A small plaque informed that this character's name was

William Wolf. It was inappropriate: he looked more like a

bull moose.

Wolf said in hard, even tones, "Mr. Mowry, you are entitled

to an explanation." A pause, followed by, "You will get one."

Then he stared unblinkingly at his listener.

For a long-drawn minute James Mowry suffered the intent

scrutiny before he asked, "When?"

"Soon."

With that, Wolf went on staring at him. The gaze was

unpleasantly piercing, analytical, and the face around it

was about as warm and expressive as a lump of hard rock.

"Mind standing up?"

Mowry stood up.

"Turn around."

He rotated, looking bored.

"Walk to and fro across the room."

He walked.

"Tsk-tsk!" grunted Wolf in a way that indicated neither

pleasure nor pain. "I assure you, Mr. Mowry, that I am quite

serious when I ask you to oblige by walking bow-legged."

Splaying his knees as much as possible, Mowry stumped

around as if riding an invisible horse. Then he resumed his

chair and said pointedly. "There'd better be money in this.

I don't come three thousand miles and make like a clown for

nothing."

"There's no money in it, not a cent," informed Wolf. "If

lucky, there is life."

"And if out of luck?"

"Death."

"You're damnably frank about it," Mowry commented.

"In this job I have to be." Wolf stared at him again, long

and penetratingly. `You'll do. Yes, I'm sure you'll do."

"Do for what?"

"I'll tell you in a moment." Opening a drawer, he extracted

some papers, passed them across. "These will enable you

better to understand the position. Read them through - they

lead up to what follows."

Mowry glanced at them. They were typescript copies of

press reports. Settling back in his chair he perused them slowly

and with care.

The first told of a prankster in Roumania. This fellow had

done nothing more than stand in the road gazing fascinatedly

at the sky, occasionally uttering ejaculations and loud phrases

such as, `Blue flames!' Curious people had joined him and

gaped likewise. The group became a crowd, the crowd became

a mob, and the bigger the mob the faster it grew.

Soon the audience blocked the street, overflowed into

side-streets. Police tried to break it up, making matters worse.

Some fool summoned the fire squads. Hysterics on the fringes

swore they could see or had seen something weird above the

clouds. Reporters and cameramen rushed to the scene.

Rumours raced around. The government sent up the air force

for a closer look. Panic spread over an area of two hundred

square miles from which the original cause had judiciously

disappeared.

"Amusing if nothing else," remarked Mowry.

"Read on."

The second report concerned a daring escape from jail of

two notorious killers. They had stolen a car, made six hundred

miles before recapture. Their term of freedom had lasted

exactly fourteen hours.

The third detailed an automobile accident. Three killed,.

one seriously injured, the car a complete wreck, the sole

survivor had died nine hours later.

Handing back the papers, Mowry said, "What's all this to

me?"

"We'll take those reports in the order as read," began Wolf.

"They prove something of which we've long been aware but,

maybe you haven't realised yourself. For the first one, that

Roumanian did nothing, positively nothing save stare at the

sky and mumble. All the same, he persuaded a government

to start jumping around like fleas on a hot griddle. It shows

that in given conditions action and reaction can be hopelessly

out of proportion. Also that by doing insignificant things in

suitable circumstances one can obtain results monstrously in

excess of the effort."

"I'II give you that." Mowry conceded.

"Now the lamsters, They didn't do much either; climbed a

wall, grabbed a car, drove like mad until the petrol ran out,

got caught' He leaned forward, continued with added emphasis,

"But for most of fourteen hours they monopolised the

attention of six planes, ten helicopters, one hundred and

twenty patrol-cars, eighteen telephone exchanges, uncountable

phone lines and radio link-ups, not to mention police,

deputies, posses of volunteers, hunters, trackers, forest rangers

and National . Guardsmen to a grand total of twenty-seven

thousands scattered over three states."

"Phew!" Mowry raised his eyebrows.

"Finally, let's consider this auto smash. We know the cause;

the survivor was able to tell us before he died. He said the

driver lost control at high speed while swiping at a wasp

which had flown in through a window and started buzzing

around his face."

"It nearly happened to me once."

Ignoring that, Wolf went on, "The weight of a wasp is under

half an ounce. Compared with a human being its size is

minute, its strength negligible. Its sole armament is a tiny

syringe holding a drop of irritant, formic acid, and in this

case it didn't even use it. Nevertheless it killed four big men

and converted a large, powerful car into a heap of scrap."

"I see the point," agreed Mowry, "but where do I come in?"

"Right here," said Wolf. "We want you to become a wasp"

Leaning back, Mowry eyed the other contemplatively, then

commented, "The muscle-bound lug who brought me here was a

Secret Service agent who had satisfied me as to the genuineness

of his credentials. This is a government department.

You're a high-ranking official. But for those facts I'd say

you’re crazy."

"Maybe I am,' gave back Wolf, blank-faced, `but I don't

think so."

"You want me to do something?"

"Yes."

"Something extra-special?"

"Yes."

"At risk of death?"

"I'm afraid so."

"And for no reward?"

"Correct"

Mowry stood up, reached for his hat. "I'm not crazy either."

"You will be," said Wolf, in the same flat tones, "if you rest

content to let the Sirians kick us out of existence."

Letting go the hat, Mowry sat down again. "What d'you

mean?"

"There's a war on."

"I know. Everybody knows." He made a disparaging gesture.

"We've been fighting the Sirian Combine for ten months. The

newspapers say so. The radio says so. The video says so. The

government says so. I am credulous enough to believe the

lot of them."

"Then perhaps you're willing to stretch your credulity a bit

further and swallow a few more items," Wolf suggested.

"Such as?"

"The Terran public is complacent because to date nothing

has happened in this sector. They know that already the

enemy has launched two determined attacks against our solar

system and that both have been beaten off. The public has

great confidence in Terran defences. That confidence is

justified; no Sirian task force will ever penetrate this far."

"Well, what have we to worry about?"

"Wars must be won or lost and there's no third alternative.

We cannot win merely by keeping the foe at arm's length.

We can never gain victory solely by postponing defeat."

Suddenly and emphatically he slammed a heavy fist on his desk

and made a pen leap two feet into the air. "We've got to do

more than that. We've got to seize the initiative and get the

enemy fiat on his back while we beat the bejazus out of him."

"But we'll get around to that in due course, won't we?"

"Maybe," said Wolf. "Or maybe not. It depends."

"Depends upon what?"

"Whether we make full and intelligent use of our resources,

especially people - meaning people such as you."

"You could be more specific," Mowry suggested.

"Look, in technical matters we are ahead of the Sirian

Combine, a little ahead in some respects and far ahead in

others. That gives us the advantage of, better weapons, more

efficient armaments. But what the public does not know -

because nobody has seen fit to tell them - is that the Sirians

also have an advantage. They outnumber us by twelve to one

and outweigh us by material in the same proportion."

"Is that a fact?”

"Unfortunately it is, though our propagandists don't bother

to mention it. Our war-potential is superior qualitatively. The

Sirians have superiority quantitatively. That's a very serious

handicap to us. We've got to counter it in the best way we

know how. It won't be done by playing for time while we

make the effort to breed like flies."

"I see." Mowry gnawed his bottom lip, looked thoughtful.

"However," Wolf went on, "the problem becomes less formidable

than it looks if we bear in mind that one man can shake

a government, two men temporarily can put down an army

twenty-seven thousands strong, or one small wasp can slay

four comparative giants and destroy their huge machine into

the bargain." He paused, watching the other for effect,

continued, "Which means that by scrawling suitable words upon

a wall, the right man in the right place at the right time might

immobilise an armoured division with the aid of nothing more

than a piece of chalk."

"You're concocting a pretty unorthodox form of warfare."

"So much the better."

"I am sufficiently perverse to like such methods. They appeal

to me."

"We know," said Wolf. He took a file from his desk, thumbed

through it. "Upon your fourteenth birthday You were fined

one hundred Sirian guilders for expressing your opinion of

an official, upon a wall, in letters twenty inches high. Your

father apologised on your behalf and pleaded the impetuosity

of youth. The Sirians were annoyed but let the matter drop."

"Razaduth was a scheming, pot-bellied liar and I say it

again." Mowry eyed the file. "That my life-story you've got

there?"

"Yes."

"Nosey lot, aren't you?"

"We have to be. Regard it as part of the price to be paid

for survival" Shoving the file to one side, Wolf informed,

"We've a punched card for every Terran in existence. In no

time worth mentioning we can sort out electronically all those

who have false teeth, or wear size eleven shoes, or had red-

haired mothers, or can be relied upon to try dodge the draft.

Without trouble we can extract any specified type of sheep

from the general mass of sheep and goats."

"And I am a specified sheep?"

"Speaking metaphorically, of course. No insult is intend."

His face gave a craggy twitch that was the nearest it could

come to a smile. "We first dug out about sixteen thousand

completely fluent speakers of the several Sirian dialects.

Eliminating the females and children brought the number

down to nine thousand. Then, step by step, we cut out the

elderly, the infirm, the weak, the untrustworthy, the

temperamentally unsuitable, those too short, too tall, too fat,

too thin, too stupid, too rash, too cautious, and so forth.

We weren't left with many among whom to seek for wasps."

"What defines a wasp?"

"Several things - but mostly a shorty who can walk slightly

bandy-legged with his ears pinned back and his face dyed

purple. In other words, one who can play the part of a native-

born Sirian and do it well enough to fool the Sirians."

"Never!" exclaimed Mowry. "Never in a month of Sundays!

I'm pink, I've got wisdom teeth and my ears stick out."

"The surplus. teeth can be pulled. Surgical removal of a

sliver of cartilage will fasten your ears back good and tight,

leaving no visible evidence of the operation. Painless and easy,

with complete healing in two weeks. That is medical evidence;

so don't argue it." Again the craggy twitch. "As for the purple

complexion, its nothing startling: There are some Terrans a

good deal more purple-faced than any Sirian, they having

acquired the colour via many gallons of booze. We can fix

you up with a dye guaranteed firm for four months, also a

retinting kit that will enable you to carry on as much longer

as may be necessary."

"But -"

"Listen to me. You were born in Masham, capital city of

Diracta which is the Sirian home planet. Your father was a

trader there at the time. You lived on Diracta until age

seventeen when you returned with your parents to Terra. Luckily

you happen to be a half-pint of just about Sirian size and

build. You are now twenty-six and still speak perfect Sirian

with a decided Mashambi accent which, if anything, is an

advantage. It lends plausibility. About fifty million Sirians

speak with Mashambi accents. You're a natural for the job

we have in mind"

"What if I invite you to thrust the job right up the air-shaft?"

asked Mowry, with great interest.

"I would regret it," said Wolf, coldly, "because in time of

war it is an old, well-founded adage that one volunteer is

worth a thousand conscripts."

"Meaning I'd get my call-up papers?" Mowry made a gesture

of irritation. "Damn! - I'd rather walk into something

of my own accord than be frog marched into it"

"So it says here," informed Wolf, motioning toward the file.

"James Mowry, twenty-six, restless and pigheaded.- can be

trusted to do anything at all-provided the alternative is

worse."

"Sounds like my father. Did he tell you that."

"The Service does not reveal its sources of information."

"Humph!" He pondered a little while, asked "Suppose I

volunteer, what follows?"

"We'll send you to a school. It runs a special course that is

fast and tough ~ and takes six to eight weeks. 'You'll be

crammed to the gills with everything likely to be useful to

you: weapons, explosives, sabotage, psychological warfare,

map reading, compass reading, camouflage, judo, radio

techniques and maybe a dozen other subjects. By the time

they've finished with you, you'll be fully qualified

to function as a complete and absolute pain-in-the-neck."

"And after that?"

"You will be dropped surreptitiously upon a Sirian held

planet and be left to make yourself as awkward as possible."

There was a lengthy silence at the end of which Mowry gave

begrudgingly, "Once when my father was thoroughly aggravated

he said, "Son, you were born a fool and you'll die a

fool." He let go a long, deep sigh. "The old man was dead

right. I hereby volunteer."

"We knew you would," said Wolf, imperturbably.

He saw Wolf again, that being two days after he had

finished the arduous course and passed with satisfactory

marks. Wolf arrived at the school, visited him in his room.

"What was it like?"

"Sheer sadism,” said Mowry, pulling a face. "So almighty

tough that I'm beaten up in mind and body. I feel like a

half stunned cripple."

You'll have plenty of time to get over that. The journey

will take long enough. You're leaving Thursday."

"For where?"

"Sorry, I can't tell you. Your pilot carries sealed orders to

be opened only on the last lap. In case of accident or

successful interception he destroys them unread."

"What's the likelihood of us being grabbed on the way

there?"

"Not great. Your ship will be. considerably faster than

anything the enemy possesses. But even the best of vessels can

get into trouble once in a while. We're taking no chances. You

know the stinking reputation of the Sirian Security Police,

the Kaitempi. They can make a slab of granite grovel and

confess its sins. If they snatch you en route and learn your

intended destination they'll take counter-measures and try

to trap your successor on arrival."

"My successor? raises a question nobody here seems

to answer. you can tell me, huh?"

"What is it?"

"Will I be entirely on my own? Or will other Terrans be

operating on the same planet? If there will be others how

shall I make contact?"

"So far as you're concerned you'll be the only Terran for

a hundred million miles around," responded Wolf. "You will

have no contacts. By the same token, you won't be able to

betray anyone to the Kaitempi. Nothing they can do will

extract from you information that you don't possess. Maybe

you'll sweat and scream and invent stuff to make them lay

off, but it won't be genuine information."

"It would sound better if you didn't smack your lips over

the horrid prospect," reproved Mowry. "Anyway, it would be

some comfort and encouragement to know that other wasps

are similarly active even if only one to a planet."

"You didn't go through this course all on your ownsome,

did you? The others weren't here merely to provide company

for you." Wolf held out a hand: "Good hunting, be a curse to.

the foe - and come back."

"I shall return," assured Mowry; "though the way be flinty

and the road be long."

That, he thought as Wolf departed, was more of a pious

hope than a performable promise. To be dropped single-

handed upon a hostile planet was to be plunged neck-deep

into a genuinely menacing situation. Casualties could be

expected sooner or later. Indeed, Wolf's remark about 'your

successor' showed that losses had been anticipated and steps

taken to provide replacements..

It then occurred to him that perhaps his own status was

that of somebody else's successor. Maybe on the world to

which he was going some unlucky character had been trapped

and pulled apart very slowly. If so, it would be a world

fore-warned and ready for him. Right now the Kaitempi would

be watching the skies, licking their chops in anticipation of

their next victim, a dope named James Mowry, twenty-six,

restless and pigheaded.

Oh, well, he had committed himself and there was no backing

out. Looked like he was doomed to become a hero from

sheer lack of courage to be a coward. Slowly he developed a

philosophic resignation which still possessed him several

weeks later when the corvette's captain summoned him to

the mid-cabin.

"Sleep well?"

"Not in the last spell," Mowry admitted. "The propulsors

were noisier than usual, the whole ship shuddered and

creaked. I spent most of the time lying in my bunk and

inventing new cuss-words."

The captain gave a wry smile. "You didn't know it, but we

were being chased by four Sirian destroyers. We hit up top

speed and lost them"

"You sure they aren't still tracking us?"

"They've fallen behind range of our detectors, therefore

we're beyond range of theirs."

"Thank heavens for that," said Mowry.

"I've opened the orders. We're due to arrive in forty-eight

Earth-hours."

"Where?"

"On a planet called Jaimec. Ever heard of it?"

"Yes, the Sirian news-channels used to mention it every

once in a while. It's one of their outpost worlds if I remember

aright, under-populated and not half developed. I never met

anyone from there and so don't know much about it." He

registered mild annoyance. "This secretiveness is all very well,

but it would help a fellow some to let him know where he's

going and give him some useful information about the place

before he gets there. Ignorance could prove damn dangerous;

it might cost me my neck. Maybe I'm finicky but I value my

neck."

"You'll land with all the data we've got," soothed the captain.

"They've supplied a stack of stuff along with the orders."

He put a wad of papers on the table, also several maps and

a number of large photographs. Then he pointed to a cabinet

standing against a wall. "That's the stereoscopic viewer. Use

it to search these pics for a suitable landing place. The choice

is wholly yours. My job is to put you down safely wherever

you choose and get away undetected."

"How long have I got?"

"You must show me the selected spot not later than forty

hours from now."

"And how long can you allow for dumping me and my

equipment?"

"Twenty minutes maximum. Positively no more. I'm sorry

about that but it can't be helped. If we sit on the ground and

take it easy we'll leave unmistakable signs of our landing, a

whacking big rut that can soon be spotted by air patrols and

will get the hunt after you in full cry. So we'll have to use

the antigravs and move fast. The antigravs soak up power.

Twenty minutes output is the most we can afford."

"All right." Mowry gave a shrug of resignation, took up

the papers and started reading them as the captain went out.

Jaimec, ninety-fourth planet of the Sirian Empire. Mass

seven-eighths that of Terra. Land area about half that of

Terra's, the rest being ocean. First settled two and a half

centuries ago. Present population estimated at about eighty

millions. Jaimec had cities, railroads, spaceports and all the

other features of alien civilisation. Nevertheless, much of it

remained undeveloped, unexplored and in primitive condition.

He spent a good many hours making close, meticulous study

of the planet's surface as shown in the stereoscopic viewer,

meanwhile wondering how the big photos had been obtained.

Evidently someone had taken a considerable risk to play close

with an aerial camera. War had a hundred unsung heroes for

every one praised and draped with medals.

By the fortieth hour he had made his choice. It had not

been easy to reach a decision. Every seemingly suitable dropping

place had some kind of disadvantage, proving yet again

that the ideal hideout does not exist. One would be beautifully

positioned from the strategic viewpoint but lack adequate

cover. Another would have first-class natural concealment but

dangerous location.

The captain came in saying, "I hope you've picked a point

on the night-side, If it isn't, we'll have to dodge around until

dark and that's not good. The best technique is to go in and

get out before they've time to take alarm and organise a

counter-blow."

"This is it' Mowry indicated the place on a photo. "It's a

lot farther from a road than I'd have liked, about twenty miles

and all of it through virgin forest. Whenever I need something

out the cache it will take me a day's hard going to reach it,

maybe two days. But by the same token it should remain safe

from prying eyes and that's the prime consideration"

Sliding the photo into the viewer, the captain switched on

the interior lighting and looked into the rubber eyepiece. He

frowned with concentration.

文档加载中……请稍候！
如果长时间未打开，您也可以点击刷新试试。

下载文档到电脑，查找使用更方便

5.9 玖币 0人已下载

立即下载 VIP免费下载

摘要：

WASPbyEricFrankRussellChapterIHEAMBLEDINTOtheroom,satintheindicatedchairandsaidnothing.Thebaffledexpressionhadbeenonhisfacequiteatimeandhewasgettingabittiredofwearingit.ThebigfellowwhohadbroughthimallthewayfromAlaskanowdeparted,silentlyclosingthedoorandleavinghimalonewiththemancontemplatinghimfrombe...

展开>> 收起<<

Eric Frank Russell - WASP.pdf

共149页,预览30页

还剩页未读，继续阅读

声明：本站为文档C2C交易模式，即用户上传的文档直接被用户下载，本站只是中间服务平台，本站所有文档下载所得的收益归上传人(含作者)所有。玖贝云文库仅提供信息存储空间，仅对用户上传内容的表现方式做保护处理，对上载内容本身不做任何修改或编辑。若文档所含内容侵犯了您的版权或隐私，请立即通知玖贝云文库，我们立即给予删除！

Eric Frank Russell - WASP

相关推荐

开通VIP享超值会员特权

作者详情

相关内容

热门标签

举报选择: