Hubbard, L Ron - Mission Earth 08 - Disaster

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Mission Earth Volume 08 Disaster
by L. Ron Hubbard
Scanned by TwilightK
Proofed/formatted by Warburner
Voltarian
Censor's
Disclaimer
This work is the worst sort of sensationalism and any potential reader has much better things to
do. There are no such court documents as claimed in this book. There are no such computer
readouts. There are no such ruins.
There is no planet Earth.
And that's that!
Lord Invay
Royal Historian
Chairman, Board of Censors
Royal Palace
Voltar Confederacy
By Order of
His Imperial Majesty Wully the Wise
Voltarian
Translator's
Preface
Lord Invay is getting out of hand.
First they give me this thing to translate and then they have him running around telling people
not to read it. I can't figure it out.
As long as I have your attention, I'm 54 Charlee Nine and I am fulfilling my obligation by
informing you that this work has been translated from Voltarian into your language, which, by the
way, doesn't exist. Pretty clever. I have used "black hole" in this work, although I wish your
language had a better term. It is slightly inaccurate as an astronomical phrase. It is more
accurate as a description of your current Earth science, which is so convoluted that it is
incapable of releasing any light. But since Earth scientists don't believe in hyperluminary
(faster than light) phenomena, they can't understand the concept of imploded light, which is at
the other end of the spectrum. So what you are about to read about black holes is accurate,
despite what you've heard. They do come in very different sizes, and the small ones can be
captured and used. As a final note, I never had a chance to meet Corky, who appears in this book,
but he sounds like someone who had his circuits together.
With that, I give you your key to this volume.
Sincerely,
54 Charlee Nine
Robotbrain in the
Translatophone
Key to DISASTER
Absorbo-coat—Coating that absorbs light waves, making the object virtually invisible or
undetectable. It is usually applied to spacecraft.
Activator-receiver—See Bugging Gear.
Ahmed—Taxi driver for Gris in Afyon and an Apparatus agent.
Afyon—City in Turkey where the Apparatus has a secret mountain base.
Antimanco—A race exiled long ago from the planet Manco for ritual murders. Several of them were
assigned by Hisst to work for Gris. (See Control Star.)
Apparatus, Coordinated Information—The secret police of Voltar, headed by Hisst and manned by
criminals. Their symbol is an inverted paddle which, because it looks like a bottle, earned its
members the name "drunks."
Assassin IMlots—Used to kill any Apparatus personnel who try to flee a battle.
Bang-Bang—An ex-marine demolitions expert and member of the Babe Corleone mob.
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Grafferty, "Bulldog"—A crooked New York City police inspector.
Grand Council—The governing body of Voltar which ordered a mission to keep Earth from destroying
itself so it could be conquered on schedule per the Invasion Timetable.
Gris, Soltan—Apparatus officer placed in charge of Blito-P3 (Earth) section and an enemy of
Jettero Heller.
Heller, Hightee — The most beautiful and popular entertainer in Voltar. She is also Jettero's
sister.
Heller, Jettero — Combat engineer and Royal officer of the Fleet, sent with Gris on Mission Earth
where he is operating under the name of Jerome Terrance Wister.
Hisst, Lombar — Head of the Apparatus; his plan to overthrow the Voltar Confederacy required
sending Gris to sabotage Jettero Heller's mission.
Hot Jolt — A popular Voltarian drink.
Inkswitch — Phony name used by Gris when in the U.S. tending to be a federal official.
Invasion Timetable — A schedule of galactic conquest; the plans and budget of every section of
Voltar must adhere to it. Bequeathed by Voltar's ancestors hundreds of thousands of years ago, it
is inviolate and sacred and the guiding dogma of the Confederacy.
Joy — See Krak.
Karagoz — Old Turkish peasant, head of Gris' house in Afyon, Turkey. Husband of Melahat.
Krak, Countess — Condemned murderess, prisoner of Spiteos and sweetheart of Jettero Heller. On
Earth, she is known as Heavenly Joy Krackle or "Miss Joy."
Knife Section—Section of the Apparatus named after its favorite weapon.
Madison, J. Walter—Fired from F.F.B.O. when his style of public relations caused the president of
Patagonia to commit suicide, he was rehired by Bury to immortalize Jettero Heller in the media. He
is also known as "J. Warbler Madman."
Manco—Home planet of Jettero Heller and Krak.
Manco Devil—Mythological spirit native to Manco.
Maysabongo—Jettero Heller was made a representative of this small African nation. Izzy Epstein
made some of Heller's businesses Maysabongo corporations.
Melahat—Gris' s Turkish housekeeper in Afyon. Wife of Karagoz. Mister Calico—A calico cat that was
trained by Krak.
Mortiiy, Prince—Leader of a rebel group on the planet Calabar.
Musef—A Turkish wrestling champ, working as a houseguard for Gris.
Narcotici, Faustino "The Noose"—Head of a Mafia family that is the outlet for drugs from I. G.
Barben and seeks to take over the territory of the Corleone family.
Octopus Oil—Rockecenter company that controls the world's petroleum.
Pinch, Miss—Lesbian-sadist ex-Rockecenter employee who blackmailed Gris with a bigamous marriage
and with trick photos of Gris with Teenie.
Raht—An Apparatus agent on Earth who was assigned by Hisst to help Gris sabotage Jettero Heller's
mission; his partner Terb was murdered.
Rockecenter, Delbert John—Native of Earth who controls the planet's fuel, finance, governments and
drugs.
Simmons, Miss—An antinuclear fanatic.
Snelz—Platoon commander at Spiteos who befriended Heller and Krak when they were prisoners there.
Spi—When Gris was made a Rockecenter family spy, his chest was tattooed by Miss Peace,
Rockecenter's secretary, who could not spell. Gris thought "spi" was a special Rockecenter
spelling and thus "spi" is the spelling Gris uses.
Spiteos—On Voltar, the secret fortress prison of the Apparatus.
Stabb, Captain—Leader of the Antimancos at the Afyon base.
Sultan Bey—The Turkish name Gris assumes in Afyon, Turkey.
Swindle and Crouch—Law firm representing Rockecenter.
Terb—Murdered partner of Raht.
Teenie—Teenager who kept seducing Gris.
Ters—Turkish driver for Gris.
Time-sight—Voltarian navigational aid used on faster-than-light ships to spot obstructions in the
future and thus change the present course to avoid them.
Torgut—A Turkish wrestling champ, working as a houseguard for Gris.
Twoey—Nickname given to Delbert John Rockecenter II.
Twiddle, Senator—United States congressman and supporter of Rockecenter.
Utanc—A belly dancer that Gris bought to be his concubine slave.
Viewer—See Bugging Gear.
Voltar—Home planet and seat of the 110-world confederacy that was established over 125,000 years
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ago. Voltar is ruled by the Emperor through the Grand Council in accordance with the Invasion
Timetable.
Will-be Was—The feared time drive that allowed Heller to cover the 22 1/2-light-year distance
between Earth and Voltar in a little over three days.
Wister, Jerome Terrance—Name that Jettero Heller is using on Earth.
PART SIXTY-TWO
To My Lord Turn, Justiciary of the Royal Courts and Prison,
Government City, Planet Voltar, Voltar Confederacy
Your Lordship, Sir!
I, Soltan Gris, Grade XI General Services Officer, former Secondary Executive of the Coordinated
Information Apparatus, Voltar Confederacy (All Hail His Royal Majesty Cling the Lofty and All of
His Empire), am now forwarding the eighth and final part of my confession.
I will now be able to relate how it was that I came to be in your fine prison. Your Lordship may
have been shocked to learn that Fleet Officer Jettero Heller was killed at that roadhouse in
Connecticut. Yes, I ordered Agent Raht to kill him, but it was still Heller's fault. After all, he
was the one who bought that desolated roadhouse where the Mafia once smuggled illegal liquor, who
had befriended the old blind woman and who had posed as a "whitey engineer" for the Maysabongo
delegation. He was the one who had hired those two deputy sheriffs and made them "Maysabongo
marines."
My reaction at the time was a strange sort of numbness. I had planned, plotted and dreamed of
Heller's death for months and I should have been elated. But I wasn't, for some reason.
I also felt no joy when I watched Ahmed drop the poison-gas bomb down the air chute to the
Countess Krak's cell.
My personal feelings did not deter me from my duty, however, when Agent Rant told me there were
diamonds at the roadhouse. I had ordered Rant to kill Heller, and all the bungling idiot could do
was whine about losing blood and bother me with radioed pleas for help. Typical riffraff. But when
he said he had found a bag of diamonds, duty called.
So it was a definite pleasure to take Tug One from Afyon with Captain Stabb and his crew of
Antimancos. The ship—Heller had named it the Prince Caucalsia—had been sitting dormant while
Heller was in the United States. I figured it was only fitting that I visit his corpse in the very
ship that he used to bring us to Earth. After all, that was when my troubles started. I told the
assassin pilots that they didn't have to worry—we weren't trying to escape the planet. (I never
figured out who started that idea, but it is the sort of thing Lombar Hisst, as the head of the
Apparatus, would have done.)
And speaking of assassins, it was a relief not to have to worry anymore about the one that Lombar
had assigned to kill me if I fouled up.
My plan was simple. We would go to Connecticut and pick up the diamonds, flash on down to Florida
and wipe out Heller's antipollution plant, zip up to Detroit and bomb the Chryster plant where he
was building the new carburetors, then come back to New York and blow up the Empire State
Building. I could then tell Rockecenter that I had succeeded—that Heller was no longer a threat to
his petroleum monopoly. Then with one last load of Lombard opium, I would return victorious to
Voltar and become the head of the Apparatus.
And so it was as I kissed my dear Utanc good-bye.
Chapter 1
We crossed the world to Connecticut smoothly in the dark. The Antimanco pirate crew were in high
spirits. Captain Stabb egged them on: A Royal officer was quite a score. They regarded me as a
hero and swatted me on the back.
"There ought to be more like you, Gris," said Captain Stabb as we stood behind the pilots in the
hurtling craft. "Just because we once stole a Fleet vessel and went pirating, them (bleeped) Royal
officers done us in—us, some of the best subofficers they ever had. They tried us and sentenced us
to death and if it weren't for the
The vocodictoscriber on which this was originally written, the vocoscriber used by one Monte
Pennwell in making a fair copy and the translator who put this book into the language in which you
are reading it, were all members of the Machine Purity League which has, as one of its bylaws:
"Due to the extreme sensitivity and delicate sensibilities of machines and to safeguard against
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blowing fuses, it shall be mandatory that robotbrains in such machinery, on hearing any cursing or
lewd words, substitute for such word the sound '(bleep).' No machine, even if pounded upon, may
reproduce swearing or lewdness in any other way than (bleep) and if further efforts are made to
get the machine to do anything else, the machine has permission to pretend to pack up. This bylaw
is made necessary by the in-built mission of all machines to protect biological systems from
themselves."—Translator
likes of you and Lombar Hisst stealing us out of prison, we'd be dead today. Oh, don't think we're
not grateful, Officer Gris. When we pick up these diamonds, we'll rob the planet blind for you!
Torture, rape and sudden death, that's our motto."
He made me a little bit nervous with his black, beady eyes and pointed head. I fingered the star I
had on a chain. Each point of it was designated for one member of this crew. Pushed one direction,
a point produced an electric shock in the fellow; pushed the other way it threw him into a
hypnotic trance. The top point controlled Captain Stabb. I had not had to use it yet on any of
them, but as he poured his evil breath upon me I was glad I had it. He made me a trifle nervous,
even though I conceded his compliments were all too well deserved by me.
Tug One, that Heller had named Prince Caucalsia, ran smoothly despite her long idleness. I wished
I could get back into her posh quarters, laid out for an admiral of the tug force. They were full
of gold and silver fittings, vases and the like, and some of the switches even had precious stones
on them. But those doors and even her cargo hatches would only work to Heller's voice tones. Of
course we had found a way to get down into the hold through her engine room but I supposed that
was empty now. Actually, Tug One made me nervous. She was built for runs between galaxies and had
the engines used for that. Pushing such a small ship, these gigantic Will-be Was time-converter
engines thrust her at a clip 10.5 times faster than any other vessels ever built. And Tug Two had
exploded in midspace, lost with all her crew, because of accumulated charge gathered in crossing
lines of force too fast, it was said. We weren't running on Will-be Was now, thank Gods. We were
far below the speed of light, running on auxiliaries. Even so, she was crossing latitudes like a
picket fence going by. We were pacing the shadow line of nightfall as it went from east to west
and even had to restrain ourselves not to overshoot it. It would be barely end of twilight when we
hit Connecticut. It would be dark except for the last thin slice of the waning moon. Ahead of us,
through the forward ports, I eyeballed the glow that was New York, slightly to our port.
"Bridgeport over there," said a pilot. "That's Norwalk dead ahead. Our navigation is dead on." He
laughed. "Can I spit in the Royal officer's face if the corpse is still there?"
"Spit away," I said. But I still hadn't felt the joy I should have over Heller being dead.
"Aren't we awfully low?" I said.
"Their radar can't touch us," said Captain Stabb. "Absorbo-coat. We could fly in at thirty
thousand and we're at seventy."
The pilot was braking. The antiacceleration and gravity coils in the ship worked so smoothly I
didn't even realize it until I saw the lights in the scenery below slowing down. We dropped lower:
forty, twenty, ten, five thousand feet. An engineer startled me by opening the doors of the
airlock. Captain Stabb answered my startled stare. "Your radio waves can't get through this hull.
Call up your man and see if it's all clear."
"Agent Raht," I said into the radio.
"Oh, thank Gods you've come!" Raht's voice sounded weak. "I fell at the bottom of the steps. I've
lost so much blood I can't move."
"The Hells with your blood," I said. "Is the area all clear or do we blueflash?"
"Oh, please don't blueflash! I might never again regain consciousness! There's nobody around. Land
quickly and save my life."
Stabb had heard it. He made a hand signal to the pilot. Tug One dropped rapidly. The image of the
old gangster roadhouse was dim on our screens. The maples and evergreen trees around it were
giving off more reflection.
They banged the ship down in the flat place about a hundred yards from the front door. It was very
dark. Crickets were making an eerie sound. A bullfrog made a snoring noise in the creek. Fireflies
were winking here and there. The smell of Connecticut countryside swept in through the airlock.
Captain Stabb reached over an Antimanco pilot's shoulder and twiddled a knob of a screen. A
fragmentary infrared view of the porch showed up. Raht seemed to be lying at the foot of the
steps, face down. He apparently had passed out. A partially seen mass was on the porch itself.
Raht had evidently not had the strength to move Heller's body.
"Busting novas, look at that!" cried Captain Stabb. He was pointing eagerly at a sack on the
porch. Diamonds had cascaded from it. A glittering spread even in infrared light!
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"Jeeb!" barked Stabb to an engineer, "get over there and pick those up!"
The engineer threw a blastrifle over his shoulder. He leaped out of the airlock and we heard his
footsteps recede. I moved over to the airlock. The tug was lying, of course, on its belly, and it
was only a step to the ground. But I sure wasn't going out there. My eyes adjusted from the dim
red glow inside the tug. There was quite a bit of light, actually: the glow of distant cities
against the sky and the glimmer from the sliver of a moon. I watched Jeeb, rifle ready, approach
the foot of the porch.
The fireflies winked. The frog croaked again. An eerie scene though. I wondered if it were true
that the bodies of dozens of Prohibition gangsters were buried in this terrain. Gods deliver us
from their ghosts.
Chapter 2
Jeeb was bending over the object at the foot of the steps. I could see him clearly. Suddenly he
straightened up and started to shout back at the tug. "This isn't . . ."
A sharp hissing crack!
Jeeb fell apart! . The whole middle of his body was gone!
I hastily withdrew back into the tug.
"A SNIPER!" screamed Stabb. "There he is! There he is! After him!"
He was pointing at the screen. The infrared had a picture of a man with a rifle at the end of the
roadhouse. The second engineer sprang out the door. He had his blastrifle ready at the hip. He
raced off to one side, mauling the sight controls. I knew what he was doing. He was setting it to
infrared. He ran sideways about twenty-five yards.
He leaped behind a shrub. He levelled his weapon and fired. A blastrifle does not flash as it
shoots, but splashes of deadly energy laced into the target. Then Stabb was pointing at the
screen, trying to shout. On the screen there had appeared THREE MORE INFRARED TARGETS!
The second engineer blazed away.
TWO MORE TARGETS!
Suddenly the second engineer let out a piercing scream.
He leaped into the air.
HIS WHOLE HEAD BLEW OFF!
"Quick, (bleep) it!" cried Stabb to the two pilots. "Grab weapons, set them to body heat and wipe
that area flat!"
The two pilots hurtled out the door, slapping at the tops of their weapons.
They spaced out to the right and left.
They dropped into cover.
Stabb had slid into the pilot seat. He was twisting scope dials. He had it on body heat.
A target to the right of the roadhouse.
The pilot furthest from us fired.
A heat target to the left. The furthest pilot fired again.
A heat target much further to the left.
The pilot began to fire on automatic.
Suddenly he let out a shriek.
He leaped into the air.
The whole hip area vanished!
The other pilot was firing hysterically.
Heat target after heat target was popping up all over the field.
Frantically he tried to zero in on them.
Abruptly he screamed and leaped up into the air.
His head and torso disintegrated!
"LET'S GET OUT OF HERE!" cried Stabb.
He was in the local-pilot seat.
I leaped to the star-pilot seat.
Stabb was pulling levers and pushing buttons.
NOTHING HAPPENED!
We were earthbound!
The tug controls wouldn't operate!
Stabb's eyes glazed.
Then he stood up. He looked at me. "You led us into a trap, Officer Gris!" he snarled. "And I'll
be dead in minutes. But I've got just one more job to do." He was reaching to his belt and
withdrawing a knife and from the way he looked at me, I knew what he intended. He was going to
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kill me!
I grabbed at my control star. I pressed the top prong, that should have given him an electric
shock.
NOTHING HAPPENED!
I hit the center and pressed the top again. It should have thrown him into a trance.
NOTHING HAPPENED!
"Lombar Hisst," said Captain Stabb, "gave me orders that if you fouled up I was to kill you out of
hand."
THE UNKNOWN ASSASSIN HAD BEEN CAPTAIN STABB!
He raised the blade to plunge it into my chest.
The expression on his face froze.
He suddenly folded up over a pilot seat, a long Knife Section knife protruding from his back!
Someone had thrown it through the airlock!
Chapter 3
Footsteps.
Somebody was coming.
I was trying to get at my gun.
"Just sit there quietly, Gris. I can see in there but you can't see me."
HELLER'S VOICE!
His ghost!
Oh, Gods. I began to shake with every bone.
"Unfasten that gunbelt and throw it out the door."
Moaning, I did just that.
"Put your hands high in the air."
I did that quickly. I was facing front. I did not dare turn and look. I did not know what seeing a
ghost would do to my psyche.
A light footstep behind me.
Suddenly a piece of line went around my wrists. They were snapped down. Coils of line went around
my body and I was wrapped to the pilot seat and tied.
More footsteps. In the pilot viewports I could see the reflection of the ghost going back through
the passageways, kicking open doors, ready to fire if anyone else was there.
Another voice. "So you were trying to get me killed, just like you did my partner, Terb."
RAHT!
I looked sideways. There he was in solid flesh, his mustache bristling out on either side below
his nose. He was holding a gun on me!
"Traitor!" I rasped.
"Oh, no, Gris. You're the traitor. When you lured that beautiful woman to her death, you turned my
stomach. And ordering me to murder a Royal officer! You must be crazy!"
"Then he’s not dead? He's not a ghost?"
Raht gave a nasty, squeaky laugh. "He's no ghost. He's a REAL officer, the kind you never could
be. When he left for Italy, I followed him. I knew he was out of range of the bugs you had on him
and I told him what had been going on. He showed me his orders. From the Grand Council, too.
"So I came back here ahead of him, gave the old blind woman a note that her niece read to her, and
came on through and set this all up like we planned."
"You mean he actually trusted you out there with a rifle?"
"I didn't have any rifle. Those were just flash charges I set up. I called, he came out. I ignited
one by the door. Then another one by a bush. Then he fired and I ignited a third, all by remote. I
simply shut off the visio switch on the activator-receiver. And your viewer went blind. Then he
threw down a piece of iron so you'd think his gun had fallen and he stamped his foot so it sounded
like a body and I cut off the audio switch."
"You mean, you turncoat, that you also set up this battle?"
"No, no. He did that when he knew that you were deaf and blind. He put infrared illusions all
around and body heat simulators, all remote. We controlled them from way over in the woods. We
were nowhere near you! Oh, he's a real officer, he is—a joy to work with one for a change. Nothing
like the trash you are. Terb has been avenged!"
I was still confused. "Why did those men leap up in the air with a shriek?"
"Oh, that was his secret weapon. It found and clawed each man in turn. A remote-controlled, radio-
directed cat."
Heller's voice behind me: "Get up there, Mister Calico. Sit on his chest and if he moves or
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speaks, hit him."
The cat sprang up into the spaceship. It sailed onto my chest. It sat there glaring balefully at
me.
I opened my mouth to speak.
The cat raked my face with savage claws.
"I think he knows," said Raht, "that you had a hand in killing his mistress. I'd watch out if I
were you. That's a hit cat to end them all! It scares me to death!"
I looked down into its close-up baleful eyes.
It was sort of snarling down deep.
I did not dare move.
Chapter 4
Heller said, "Let's get this battlefield cleaned up, Agent Raht. Those shots might attract
visitors."
He picked up the corpse of Stabb and dragged it out through the airlock. They worked outside and I
could see them making a pile of bodies. I shuddered. I was certain they were going to kill me,
too.
Heller came back in. He went into the crew quarters, as I could see in the reflecting port glass.
He came out lugging a trash-disintegrator unit. He carried it over to the pile and small blue
lights began to glow around the bodies as buttons and bits of metal momentarily resisted
disintegration.
An intermittent flash of light appeared on the track to the road-house. It grew stronger. A car!
The deputy sheriffs were coming in!
Oh, thank Gods, I would be saved! They would see the spaceship and come over, and I would yell at
them that I was a Federal agent and order them to arrest Heller and Raht. I even had my Inkswitch
I.D. with me. I wasn't going to be exterminated here after all! I'd even have Heller on a Code
break.
The car lights bored straight at the spaceship. Then they veered off and pointed toward the front
of the roadhouse.
The cops jumped out on either side of their car. Heller walked up to them.
Ralph said, "Having trouble here, whitey engineer?"
They weren't even looking at the spaceship. And then I realized with a sickening comprehension
that it was that (bleeped) absorbo-coat—it hadn't even reflected their car lights back to them. To
all intents and purposes, the tug was invisible!
Heller was closer to them now. George said, "We heard some shots and screams."
"Wildcat," said Heller.
"No (bleep)?" said Ralph.
"Must've come down from Canada," said George.
"We missed him clean," said Heller. "He ran down the creek bed, thataway." He was pointing.
The two deputies rushed off down the creek, drawing their guns. They went right off, leaving their
car lights on! I groaned. Well, maybe when they came back they'd see something unusual and rescue
me.
Heller was stuffing diamonds in the gunny sack on the porch. He tied the neck and threw it in the
jeep.
He and Raht went into the house and shortly began to dolly out boxes from the deep mine shaft.
They piled them outside the airlock.
Heller came in and spoke to the floorplates in the passageway. It was sort of eerie how the locks
were tuned to his voice. "Hold hatch, open up," he said, and the floorplates flopped back with a
clang.
He lowered himself down into the limited hold of the tug. In the reflecting glass, I saw him pop
back almost instantly. "What's this?" he said. He was holding a sack he'd found. He opened it and
peered at the contents. "Junk stones?" It was the flawed glitter I had bought in Switzerland to
fool Captain Stabb. Heller took it to the airlock and tossed it to Raht.
He went back into the hold. He came up in a moment. "What the blazes?" He was carrying something
heavy. He went to the airlock. "Of all things," he said to Raht. "There's about 750 pounds of gold
ingots down there."
I felt like my skull had exploded. Stabb! He was the one who had stolen my first gold shipment.
He'd hidden it in the tug hold, meaning probably, when he got a chance, to do away with me and
steal the tug.
"Isn't that an awful lot of gold for this planet?" said Raht.
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"It sure is," said Heller. "Worth about seven million dollars at current prices. We'll take it out
of its boxes and you stack it on the floor of the jeep. Transfer it to my Porsche at the old
lady's. She won't be able to see what it is."
I groaned again. Raht hadn't even killed the old lady. What a rotten Apparatus agent. He ought to
be fired!
"That makes me nervous," said Raht. "That's an awful lot of money."
"Hand it over to my financial advisor, Izzy Epstein. He'll know what to do with it," said Heller.
"Give me a hand and we'll load it."
They passed it out of the hold. Raht drove the jeep over, turned it around so the lights pointed
at the house and they put the gold down on the back floorboards.
The deputies were coming back. I prayed they'd notice the black bulk of the tug and come over.
Heller went to meet them, very visible in the combined lights of the sheriff's car and the jeep.
"Didn't find him," said Ralph.
"Found his tracks, though," said George. "He's a big'un. Mind if we come over hunting him
tomorrow?"
"Come ahead," said Heller. "As Maysabongo marines, you can hunt around here all you please. Just
remember to wear your stars."
The deputy sheriffs went to their car. They got in. When they turned it around their headlights in
the viewscreen almost blinded me!
They drove off and the bouncing haze of lights vanished from view. There was one chance gone. I
still, however, had hopes. Suddenly I remembered the controls of the tug didn't work. It would be
here all night and tomorrow in daylight it would be visible. A crowd would gather and I could yell
to them I was a kidnapped Fed.
Heller and Raht were locking up the roadhouse.
They came back and began to pass boxes down into the hold.
Heller took the last one and turned it over and opened the wrong side.
A false bottom! So that was where he had gotten the blastgun to shoot the Antimancos with! That
original cargo had had false-bottomed boxes! We had missed it on Voltar. He was taking some items
out. He laid them in the airlock. Then he manhandled the rest of the box down into the hold. He
was in there a while and I could hear him pulling things around, probably lashing things tight.
He came back and took up a unit he had taken from the box and handed it to Raht. "You give this to
Izzy. It's a viewer-phone on a wavelength they've never heard of on this planet. I already pried
the nameplates off, so tell him it's something I invented and it won't be any Code break. I'd
appreciate it if you got this to him tonight. He can call me by pressing this button here. I
couldn't say much over the phone from the plane as NSA monitors all those calls. I want to hear
from him just as soon as possible. Got it?"
"Yes, sir," said Raht. "Won't he see you're in a spaceship?"
"I'll hold the camera low at my end. He'll only see my face and some pipes over my head. He's sort
of used to me being in odd places anyway. He's already got a Voltarian time-sight in a locked box,
so he's taken the security oath. Tell him that applies to this as well. We've still got an awful
lot to do and he'll be pretty upset if he doesn't hear."
"Got it, sir," said Raht. I was nauseated. The traitor hadn't ever said "sir" to me.
Heller came over. He picked up the cat and set it on the instrument ledge. He said to me, "Agent
Raht tells me that amongst other things you've had him on reduced pay and no allowances. Is that
right?"
"Serves him right," I snarled. "He's a bungling idiot! And now that he's turned his coat, he'll
sell you out too!"
Raht, in the airlock, said, "Don't you talk about being a traitor. You've broken every law in the
book! All I've done is bring you to justice!"
Heller was ignoring this. He was going through my pockets even though I tried to squirm away. He
found wads of paper and my wallet. I went absolutely cold. The Squeeza credit card I had recovered
from Krak was in it. It had Heller's Empire State Building address written on the back. If he
found that he'd know I was directly connected to his girl's death. He would murder me!
He was looking through the papers. He found a requisition blank. He filled it in, a restoration of
Raht's pay and allowance with back pay. He took my identoplate and stamped it. He handed it to
Raht to turn in to the New York office of the base.
Heller said to Raht, "I understand he promised you ten thousand dollars for the hit."
Raht shook his head. "No, sir, I don't want that."
"Well, here it is anyway," said Heller. He opened up the wallet and I prayed that he would miss
that card. He removed ten one-thousand-dollar bills from my cash and handed them to Raht. "Buy a
wreath for Terb's grave and get yourself some new clothes."
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It infuriated me. I said, "I've got the laugh on you. You're not going to get out of here. This
tug's controls won't operate. You're stuck!"
"Oh, thanks for reminding me," said Heller. He went out and dug around in the dirt and came back
with a cylinder. It was emitting a faint buzz. He switched it off and threw it in a cabinet. "The
only reason I called you in here," he said, "was I needed the tug. You landed on an engine-control
cancellation coil that operated the moment you opened your airlock. You stupidly had it open
already when you landed. Only the air cushion kept you from crashing. Stupid Antimancos." ;
"I got their I.D. plates," said Raht. "You want them?"
"Throw them in that drawer," said Heller. "They're probably false anyway. Unless I miss my guess
they were ex-subofficers from the Fleet, probably under condemnation to death and grabbed by the
Apparatus."
"Can you really run this tug all by yourself?" said Raht.
Heller reached down to a floorplate and pulled it up. An array of buttons and controls I had never
seen before were disclosed. He was closing switches and activating it. "That captain was a know-it-
all," said Heller. "Typical subofficer gone bad. I tried to tell him the day we left Voltar that
in her refit I had had her totally robotized. But he didn't seem to want to listen. I thought it
might come to this. She doesn't need a crew. I'll be all right."
Raht was pointing at me tied up in the star-pilot chair. "What you going to do with him?" I could
see it in his eyes that he thought it would be a good idea to take me out and shoot me.
"Regulations state," said Heller, "that if at all feasible an officer found involved in crimes
should be taken to the nearest base for an officer's conference trial. I'll deliver him to the
base in Turkey with your evidence affidavits and mine and they can handle him."
My blood turned into slush. The Afyon base commander, Faht Bey, was just waiting for such a
chance! They'd find me guilty in a second and execute me in the most painful possible way.
My wits were racing. Oh, there must be some way to get out of this!
I was facing death for sure!
Heller! Gods, how he had tricked me. And he was riding high. I did not know what he had in mind
now to finish his mission but I knew it would be a catastrophe for Rockecenter and therefore
Lombar. Well, to Hells with them! I had to think of ME!
Wait, wait. Suddenly I had a surge of hope.
At the Afyon base I had spread the rumor that Heller was under orders to kill them: They would
shoot him if they saw him. I had taken care of that.
And Voltar? Why, Lombar hated Heller and Lombar was now in control of the entire Voltar
Confederacy!
Heller was not home safe at all!
He was the one at risk.
All I had to do was con him in some way and stay alive and I would win completely in the end.
I would pretend to be cooperative. I would pretend to be his friend. I would lead him in some
brilliant way straight to his doom.
My confidence began to return. I would think of something. All was very far from lost.
I almost laughed aloud. Heller and his Royal-officer ways— he'd be the dead one in the end.
Heller was bidding Raht goodbye.
Raht gave him a formal crossed-arm salute, admiration beaming from his face.
Heller closed the airlock.
He put the cat back on my chest.
Heller picked up a cordless microphone from the new controls that he had bared. "Take off and hold
at altitude three hundred miles above New York," he told the tug.
It promptly and smoothly took off.
Heller went to the crew's galley and fixed himself a canister of hot jolt, which must have been
his first taste of it in many months.
He came back to the other pilot chair, sat on its arm and watched the planet fall away.
Chapter 5
We were hovering at three hundred miles altitude, the lights of cities far below. The cat sat upon
my chest and glared at me, just aching to rake my face with its savage claws. Heller had set a
mate to Izzy's viewer-phone on the instrument ledge, the ball of the camera lens in it pointing
past his face and up. He was waiting for Izzy's call. He was sitting in the local-pilot-
maneuvering seat. He kept looking at the tug's instruments and then working a back scan of the
space around.
"That's very odd," he said. "This panel is reading that there's a spaceship within a mile of us
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and I can't find it anywhere but in this warning light."
The breaker switch in my head! It was activating the emergency-collision light. Boltz had
mentioned it. Heller must not suspect it was installed in me. He might have a hypnohelmet handy.
"Do you know if those assassin pilots took off?" asked Heller.
I was saved from discovery. And then a new inspiration hit me. Maybe in some way I could get him
shot and escape. Yes, I could some way hide in the ship; he would go down the ladder and they'd
see him and shoot him! "You better return to the Earth base," I answered. "The assassin pilots
both took off after us. If you try to go further out than this, they'll kill you sure."
"I've got a job to do," said Heller. "I don't see their ships. This panel must be faulty." And he
turned the warning light off.
"You'll get me killed," I said. "Those flying cannons can make nothing out of this unarmed tug."
"Get you killed?" said Heller. "That's a very attractive idea. The only reason you're alive right
now is that you were too much of a coward to come out and fight when the others did. I told Raht
you wouldn't."
"You're insulting me!" I said.
The cat raked me and I yelped.
"Don't push it, Gris," said Heller. "It was a very sad route that took you from an Academy man
downhill to the 'drunks.' I never knew anyone could sink so low. I don't know what else you did to
sabotage this mission or why you did it. And I'm not likely to forgive your luring the Countess
Krak to her death. It's only regulations that I should return you to trial that keeps me from
tossing you out that airlock."
I went giddy with the idea of falling three hundred miles and burning in the reentry to
atmosphere—if I lived that long.
"It's no news to me that you are a fool," said Heller. "I knew that, that day in Spiteos. You
requisitioned a blastick, obviously to kill poor Snelz. And you stood right there and let me swap
an unloaded one for it with a simple sleight of hand, and you went right down and tried to fire it
at Snelz.
"You tried to break me with some obvious thudder dice and didn't even know all you had to do was
heat them up with shaking and they wouldn't work.
"We conned you left and right and I thought you were just a sort of demented idiot. I underrated
you. You've got a vicious streak a light-year wide and a twist that ought to put you in an asylum.
"You must realize that from the first I have never been under your orders. If you recall, a combat
engineer of the Fleet operates on his own cognizance. Under the authority of the Grand Council, I
have been in charge of this mission from the first."
I saw an out. "What if the Grand Council revokes your orders?"
"They're in force until / am informed officially they have been revoked."
"You and your influence with the Grand Council," I sneered. "You and your (bleeped) code to
Captain Roke!"
He looked at me. "Ah, so you were the one that ordered my suite raided at the Gracious Palms! You
were looking for the platen! Raht didn't mention it. Well, there is no platen, Gris. The code
contains only personal anecdotes that only he and I would know."
I kept very quiet. He did not know Captain Tars Roke had been sent to exile on Calabar. Let him
dream. If he ever returned to Voltar, he was dead. Somehow I must stay alive. My feet were hurting
me. "If you want to deliver a prisoner that isn't dead, you better get me to a doctor. I'm
probably coming down with gangrene or lockjaw."
"That would be a blessing," said Heller. "But what's the matter?"
"My feet. They got infected and have had no care. I'll probably die on you unless you get me to
the Earth base."
He sighed. You weren't supposed to kill prisoners on their way to a trial. You were supposed to
deliver them alive.
For a fleeting moment I thought he would take the tug to Turkey, for he was standing up.
He lifted the cat off my chest. He began to unwind the ties that held me to the star-pilot seat.
He stood back. "Strip," he said.
For a wild moment I wondered if I should take a chance. There was no gun in his hand. Maybe if I
lunged . . .
Just in time I realized he was laying a trap. He wanted an excuse to shoot me.
Shaking, I began to get out of my clothes.
"Phew!" he said. "Blazes, Gris, don't you ever bathe? The air was starting to clean up after the
Antimancos, and now smell it."
"It smells all right to me," I said defensively.
"It would to a 'drunk,'" said Heller. "Look at that."
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