Black Genesis

Chapter 1

The next morning, I felt pretty cheery, I can tell you. I got up early and put on an orange silk shirt and black pants and a cobra-skin belt, with shoes to match.

I had melon and cacik — cucumber salad with yogurt, garlic and olive oil dressing — and I washed it down with very sweet coffee. Delicious. When I criticized it to the cook, he looked so woebegone, I really had to laugh. The whole staff looked woebegone, having been up all night trying to find something they had not done. The joke was on them. I really laughed.

Then I got busy with a big sheet of paper. I am a long way from a draftsman but I sure knew what I wanted. It was up to somebody else to try to make it out.

The school owned another piece of property a little bit closer to town. It had been planned to build a staff recreational hall there but I had other ideas.

I was designing a hospital. It would be one story, with a basement. It would have numerous wards and operating rooms. It would also have a parking lot. It would be surrounded by a wire fence made to look like a hedge. And in the basement it would have numerous private rooms nobody would suspect were there. It would have an Earth-type security system. Every room would be bugged.

I was going to register it as the “World United Charities Mercy and Benevolent Hospital.” I was going to make my fortune with it. They really train you in the Apparatus. “When you mean total evil,” one of my professors in Apparatus school used to say, “always put up a facade of total good.” It is an inviolable maxim of any competent government.

Finally, I finished it, hoping I could make the plan out myself — I had scratched out and changed quite a bit.

Then I had to write a bunch of orders: one to our Voltar resident engineer to dig some tunnels to it; another to our Istanbul attorney firm to get it registered real fast; another to the World Health Operation for the attorneys to forward which said it was a magnificent donation to the world of health and please could we use their name, too; and another to the Rockecenter Foundation for a grant “for the poor children of Turkey” — they always hand out money if their executives can get a slice back and if Rockecenter can get his name up in lights as a great humanitarian (hah! that would be the day!).

The last letter was just a dispatch. Here at the Blito-P3 base they have the usual Officers Council, chaired by the base commander, that is supposed to pass on new projects. But, as Section Chief of 451 and Inspector General Overlord, I surely didn’t need their consent. I just told them that this is what was going to happen and they could lump it. To Hells with their staff recreation. And besides, didn’t the Grand Council Order say to spread a little advanced technology on the planet? So they could go to Hells and do what they were told. I stamped it with my identoplate loud and plain. They knew better than to trifle with me. I even added a postscript to that effect.

It was quite a relief to get all this tedious work done. So I called for the housekeeper.

When she came in, hollow-eyed from no sleep, scared as to what I might want now, I said, “Melahat Hanim” (a very polite way of addressing a woman in Turkey is to add “hanim” to her name — it flatters them; they have no souls, you know), “has the beautiful lady arrived from Istanbul?”

She wrung her hands and shook her head negative. So I said, “Get out of here, you female dropping of camel dung,” and wondered what else I could do to while away the hours before ten. It’s no use going to town too early — the roads are too cluttered with carts.

Then I thought I had better check on Heller. I didn’t much care to know what he was doing in the ship so I hadn’t even bothered to rig the 831 Relayer.

The recorder was grinding away, the viewer was off. So I figured I might as well start early. I turned the viewer on and began to spot-check forward.

Last night he had simply walked home and gone aboard. Limping! Must have hurt his foot.

Speeding forward, I heard a shrill whistle on the strip. So I went back over it at normal speed.

I saw the airlock open and then, way down at the foot of the ladder, there was Faht Bey, holding a hull resonator against the tug’s plates.

“There you are,” said Faht Bey, looking up. “I’m the base commander, Officer Faht. Are you the Crown inspector?”

“I’m on Grand Council orders, if that’s what you mean. Come on up.”

Faht Bey was not about to climb that eighty feet of rickety ladder from the bottom of the hangar to the airlock on the vertical ship. “I just wanted to see you.”

“I want to see you, too,” said Heller, looking down the ladder. “The clothes in your costume section are too short and the shoes there are about three sizes too small for me.” I was disappointed. He hadn’t hurt his foot, it was tight shoes. Well, you can’t always grab the pot.

“That’s what I wanted to see you about,” Faht Bey yelled up at him. “The people in town are looking all over for somebody that fits your description. They say he waylaid two popular characters at different times in an alley and beat them up with a lead pipe. One has a cracked neck and the other a broken arm and fractured skull. They had to be shipped into Istanbul to be hospitalized.”

“How’d you know it fits my description?” said Heller. My Gods, he was nosy. “This is the first time you’ve seen me.”

“Gris said what you looked like,” said this (bleep) Faht Bey. “So please don’t take it badly. It’s my guess you’ll be leaving here in two or three days.” Well, (bleep) him! He must have read Lombar’s order to Raht! “So I’ve got to invoke my authority on the subject of base security and ask you not to leave this hangar while you’re here.”

“Can I wander around the hangar?” said Heller.

“Oh, that’s all right, just as long as you don’t leave the outside-world end of the tunnels.”

Heller waved him an airy hand. “Thanks for the tip, Officer Faht.”

And that was the end of that one. I sped ahead to the next light flash that showed the door was open.

Heller was going down the ladder, zip, zip. He landed at the bottom with a tremendous clank. It startled me until I realized he was wearing hull shoes with the metal bars loose.

He started clickety-clacking around, a little notebook held in his hand, making jots and touching his watch now and then. He went around the whole perimeter of the hangar, clickety-clack, POP. I knew what he was doing. He was just amusing himself surveying the place. These engineers! They’re crazy. Maybe he was practicing his sense of direction or something.

I kept speeding the strip ahead. But that was all he was up to. He’d stop by doors and branch tunnels and make little notes and loud POPs.

Now and then he’d meet an Apparatus personnel. The first couple, he gave them a cheerful good morning. But they turned an icy shoulder to him. After that he didn’t speak to anyone. My rumor was working!

He got into some side tunnels and took some interest in the dimensions of the detention cells. It would be hard to tell they were cells for they were not as secure as Spiteos — no wire. They just had iron bars set into the rock. The base crew who had redesigned the place had overdone it on detention cells — they had made enough for hundreds of people and never at any time were there more than a dozen. They were empty now.

Speeding ahead, I saw that he had stopped and I went back to find what was interesting him so much.

He was standing in front of the storage room doors. They are very massive. There are about fifty of them in a curving line that back the hangar itself, a sort of corridor. The corridor has numerous openings into the hangar itself.

They were all locked, of course. And the windows in the doors, necessary to circulate the air and prevent mold, are much too high up to see through. I was fairly certain he would not even guess what they contained.

Lombar, when the pressure was put on Turkey to stop growing opium, had really outdone himself. He had ordered so much of it bought, it would have glutted the market had it all been released. Now, there it was, nicely bagged in big sacks. Tons and tons and tons of it.

But even if one jumped up and got a look through the windows, there was nothing to be seen. Just piles of bags.

Heller examined the floor. But what was there to find? Just the truck wheel wear.

He bent over and picked up some dust and then, to wipe his hand, I suppose, he put his hand in his pocket and brought it out clean.

Unconcerned, he just went on clickety-clacking along with the occasional POP.

Again he stopped. He was sniffing the air. He was looking at a huge barred door. And he certainly wouldn’t be able to get in there — it was the heroin conversion plant!

He went up to it and knocked. How silly. Nobody was in there. It only operates once in a while. But still he knocked, very sharp raps.

Heller must have given it up. He made some notes. Just some figures. Pointless.

And there he went again, clickety-clacking, POP along.

He’d stop by an exit tunnel, go down it a bit and come back. I had to laugh. He even went up the exit tunnel which led to my room! He could never suspect the villa lay on the other side. He didn’t even try the switch which opened the door, didn’t even see it, apparently. It would have brought him within ten feet of where I was sitting.

Some spy!

It had only taken him an hour.

Then he’d done a little sketch, all neat, very fast. Apparently there was nobody near to give it to, to show them how good he was — or maybe he had understood they weren’t talking to him. He just climbed back up into the ship.

And that was that.

I had to laugh. What couldn’t he have discovered if he had been a real trained spy! And what did he have? A silly map he could have gotten in the base construction office anyway.

I packed it up. It had turned ten and I had really important things to do — namely, making Soltan Gris rich!

Chapter 2

The villa had three cars, all more or less in what Turkey considers running condition. I went out and considered them. The Datsun pickup was more or less full of the remains of vegetables from the morning marketing. The Chevy station wagon had an empty gas tank. That left the French Renault sedan. I think the car had been left over from the wreckage of World War I: they believe in making cars last in Turkey.

The body was dented from several direct hits, the windshield was cracked. It had to be cranked because the battery was dead. It kicked and had been known to break somebody’s arm, so I got Karagoz to crank it. And off I went to town.

I dreamed that soon I would buy a long, black, bulletproof limousine, the kind gangsters have. I even knew where there was one: a Turkish general had been killed in the 1963 military take-over and the car was for sale cheap.

The Renault, however, had its advantages. It steered erratically and could be counted on to drive carts off the road. They are stupid gigs, usually heavily laden, drawn by donkeys, and they really clutter the place up. If you swerve in close to the donkey as you pass, the cart winds up in the ditch. It is very comical. You can watch the driver shaking his fist in the rearview mirror.

I was just enjoying my fifth cart upset when I noticed I was passing Afyonkarahisar: the vast bulk of the rock rose 750 feet in the air.

Abruptly, I pulled to the left and stopped. I blocked a chain of carts coming from town, but they could wait. I leaned out and looked up the face of the rock.

Even though it was powdered with cement dust, you could see that it had handholds if you didn’t mind losing a few fingernails. Still, I would never attempt to climb it. Never. And in the dark? Absolutely never!

My interest in this was a matter of character, not the character of Heller — I already knew he was crazy — but in the character of a man who had suddenly become vital in my plans of riches: Jimmy “The Gutter” Tavilnasty. He said he had seen Heller climbing it. Obviously, the feat was impossible. Therefore Jimmy “The Gutter” Tavilnasty was a pathological liar. Good. I would watch it when I spoke with him later today and made him my offer.

The engine had died so I got out and cranked it. The drivers of the halted carts were screaming and shaking their fists. I screamed and shook my fist back, got in and drove the rest of the way to town.

The Mudlick Construction Company was my destination. It has branch offices all around Turkey. It does a lot of government contracting and therefore must be crooked. I double-parked and went in.

My business was soon transacted. The manager took my sketch and estimated the cost. When he heard I wanted the hospital built in six weeks, he raised the price. I walked out and he rushed to the sidewalk and brought me back and halved the amount. But he said he would have to build it of mud, the favorite construction material of this district. I told him it had to be of first-class materials. We compromised by planning to build it half of mud and half of proper materials. Then I doubled the price and told him he would owe me half, as a kickback. We signed the contract and parted firm friends.

When I came out two motorists were glaring at me so I glared back and cranked the car and drove to the Giysi Modern Western Clothing Our Specialty Shop for Men and Gentlemen. I would much rather shop in Istanbul but I hadn’t much time and I knew I would have to dress right for my call on Jimmy “The Gutter” Tavilnasty. It was vital I make an impression.

The selection was pretty poor, really. But it is the law that Turks must not look like Turks but dress like Americans or Italians and I was lucky. They had just received a shipment from Hong Kong of the very latest Chicago fashions.

I found a gray suit, a black shirt, a white tie, black and white oxfords and a gray fedora hat. They all more or less fit. I changed in back, shortchanged the clerk by palming and swapping a five-hundred lira note for a five at the last instant, glared him into thinking it was his mistake and was on my way.

I looked pretty sharp as I admired myself in a shop window reflection. Just like a film gangster.

Rapidly, I made a round of hotels, looking for Jimmy “The Gutter” Tavilnasty. It does not take long to do in Afyon. There aren’t many hotels. The clerks shook their heads. No trace of him.

Well, I had another errand. I went to the Pahalt General Merchandise Emporium. It is patronized by peasants and they certainly get charged pahalt, which in Turkish means “high-priced.” In a back room, I had a little talk with the proprietor.

I told him I wanted him to put up a sign that said he bought gold. He said the gold mining districts, such as they were, were further north. I said that didn’t matter: at his prices, the women of the family had to sell their jewelry, didn’t they? And he said that was true. So I told him that any gold he bought from said impoverished peasants, at London prices, I would buy from him at a ten percent markup. He said there wouldn’t be much, but I said how much there was was a secret between us and so we made the sign and he put it up.

Now, I had a way to explain all the gold I was about to dump on the market when the Blixo arrived. I could point out that gold was bought in Afyon. When I unloaded chunks of mine in Istanbul, I would probably never bother to buy the proprietor’s gold.

In the pleasant noonday sun, I sat basking double-parked on the street, trying to figure out where Jimmy “The Gutter” had gotten to. Some carts were blocked. A policeman came along and disturbed my concentration. He bent over and stuck his bristling mustache in the window. Then he said, “Oh, it’s you!”

Well, that was quite a compliment, the way he said it. Sort of alarmed. They think I am the nephew of the original subofficer that was the war hero. After all, I live in his house. He moved on rather quickly to bawl out the carts I was blocking. Oh, it was good to be home!

It must have sparked my wits. Where would a gangster go in this town? Of course, the Saglanmak Rooms! Now, saglanmak, in Turkish, means “to be obtained” or “available.” But there is another word, saklanmak, which means “to hide oneself.” Now, according to that great master, Freud, the unconscious mind can twist words into meanings closer to the intent of the person. These are called “Freudian slips.” This was what must have happened. No matter that he probably didn’t speak Turkish, Jimmy “The Gutter” Tavilnasty had made a Freudian slip.

Besides, it was the only place in town the Mafia ever stayed.

I drove through the gathering crowd of fist-shaking peasants and proceeded to the Saglanmak Rooms. But I was cunning now. I double-parked a block away and cased the joint.

There was a balcony that ran around the outside of the second floor and a stairway to it — a vital necessity if one had to get out a window and escape quickly.

I went in. I walked up to the desk. The clerk was a young Turk with his hair plastered down. He had earlier told me no such name was in the hotel. I didn’t bother with him. I reached over the desk and into the niche for the box of room cards. The clerk stood back.

I went through the cards. No Jimmy “The Gutter” Tavilnasty.

He had said he had been around for weeks. I checked dates. And there it was! John Smith!

“I thought,” I sneered at the clerk, “that you said Tavilnasty wasn’t here!”

He was reaching for the phone. I clamped his wrist. “No,” I said. “He is a friend. I want to surprise him.”

The clerk frowned.

I laid a ten-lira note on the desk.

The frown lightened.

I laid a fifty-lira note on the desk.

The clerk smiled.

“Point out the room,” I said.

He indicated the one at the exact top of the steps on the second floor.

“He is in?” I asked.

The clerk nodded.

“Now, here is what I want you to do. Take a bottle of Scotch — the Arab counterfeit will do — and two glasses and put them on a tray. Just three minutes after I leave this desk, you take that tray up to his room and knock.”

I kept laying hundred-lira notes on the counter until the clerk smiled. It was a seven-hundred-lira smile.

I had him note the time. I synchronized my watch.

I went back out the front door.

In a leisurely fashion, but silently, I went up the outside steps.

With care, I marked the exact outside window of the indicated room. It was open.

I waited.

Exactly on time, a knock sounded on the door.

A bed creaked.

I stole to the window.

Sure enough, there was my man. He had a Colt .45 in his hand and he was cat-footing to the door. His back was to me at the window.

I knew it would be this way. Mafia hit men lead nervous lives.

Jimmy “The Gutter” Tavilnasty reached for the knob, gun held on the door. That was my cue!

The door was swinging open.

I stepped through the window.

I said, in a loud voice, “Surprise!”

He half-turned in shock.

He sent a bullet slamming into the wall above me!

The shot had not even begun to echo before he charged out the door.

The effect was catastrophic. He collided with the clerk and tray!

In a scramble of Scotch and glasses, arms, legs and two more inadvertently triggered shots, they went avalanching down the stairs.

With a thud and final tinkle they wound up at the bottom.

I trotted down the stairs after them and plucked the gun from Jimmy “The Gutter’s” stunned hand.

“What a way to greet an old pal,” I said. That’s the way to handle them. Purely textbook psychology. It says to get them off-balance.

Tavilnasty was not only off-balance, he was out cold.

The clerk lay there looking at me in horror. I realized I had Tavilnasty’s gun pointed at him. I put the safety on. I said, “You were clumsy. You broke that bottle of Scotch. Now get up and get another one on the house.”

The clerk scrambled away.

I picked up Tavilnasty and got him over to a small back table in the lounge. He was coming around.

The clerk, shaking, brought in another bottle of Scotch and two glasses.

I handed Tavilnasty his gun.

I poured him a drink. He drank it.

Then his ugly, pockmarked face was really a study. “What the hell was that all about?”

“I just didn’t want to get shot,” I said.

He couldn’t quite understand this. I poured him another drink.

I tried another tack. “I could have killed you and I didn’t. Therefore that proves I am your friend.”

He considered this and rubbed a couple of bruises on his head. I poured him another drink.

“How’s Babe?” I said.

He really stared at me.

“Oh, come on,” I said. “Babe Corleone, my old flame.”

“You know Babe?”

“Sure, I know Babe.”

“Where did you know Babe?”

“Around,” I said.

He drank the Scotch.

“You from the DEA?”

I laughed.

“You from the CIA?”

I laughed.

“You from the FBI?”

I poured him another drink. “I’m from the World Health Operation. I’m going to make you your fortune.”

He drank the drink.

“Now listen carefully,” I said. “We are building a new hospital. It will be in full operation in about two months. We have new techniques of plastic surgery. We can change fingerprints, dental plates, larynxes, facial bones.”

“No (bleep)?”

“Absolutely. Nobody else can do it but us. Nobody will know. Hippocratic oath and so forth.”

“Is that like the Fifth Amendment?”

“Absolutely,” I said. “But down to business. You know the Atlantic City mob. You know lots of mobs. Right?”

“Right,” he said.

“Now, those mobs have people hiding out all over the place. Those people can’t show their faces because they are in all the fingerprint and police files of the FBI and Interpol. Right?”

“Right.”

“If those people are smuggled in here to the World United Charities Mercy and Benevolent Hospital, we will physically change their identity, give them new birth certificates and passports, all for a stiff fee, of course, and you personally will get twenty percent of what they pay.”

He found a paper napkin and laboriously started figuring. Finally, he said, “I’d be rich.”

“Right.”

“There’s one thing wrong,” he said. “I can spread the word. I can get big names in here in droves. But I can’t do it.”

“Why not?”

“Because I have a job. There’s a contract out.”

“I know,” I said. “Gunsalmo Silva.”

“How’d you know that?”

“I got sources.” I fixed him with a lordly stare-down the nose. “Gunny Silva won’t be back here for seven weeks. So you got six weeks to recruit some trade for the hospital.”

“I’d need money for expenses. I can’t hang this on Babe.”

“Take your expenses out of the advance payments,” I said.

“Hey!” he said, smiling.

“And,” I said, “if you bring in lots of trade and payments ready to begin in two months, I’ll throw something else in.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah. I’ll give you Gunsalmo Silva on a silva platter!”

“No (bleep)?”

“Set him up for you like a clay pigeon!”

With tears of gratitude in his eyes, he held out his hand, “Buster, you got yourself a deal!”

Ah, psychology works every time!

A bit later I returned to my car, fought my way through the crowd protesting the street blockage, cranked up and drove away.

I felt I was driving on air!

Soltan Gris, a.k.a. Sultan Bey, was on his road to becoming filthy rich!

And, after all, hadn’t the Grand Council said to spread a little technology around on this planet? Where it would really do some good?

Chapter 3

The sun was hot, the sky was clear, as I hurtled down the road.

Then I remembered that I even had a dancing girl coming today!

My prospects seemed so brilliant that I could not help doing a thing I almost never do. I burst into song:

Frankie and Johnny were lovers. Oh, my Gods, how they could love. They swore to be true to each other.

As true as the stars above…

There was an obstruction. It was a string of ten laden camels. They were humping and grumbling along, but I didn’t see any driver. The horn of the Renault was busted so I had to veer out into the other lane to see what was at the head of this parade.

Aha! I thought so!

Around here they sometimes put a lead rope on a donkey and the animal apparently knows where to go and he just leads the hooked-up string of camels to their destination. Shows you how dumb camels are when even a jackass is brighter than they are!

Here was my chance!

I resumed singing at the top of my voice:

He was my man! But he done me wrong!

I swerved in tight past the donkey. It was either my bump on his nose or it may have been the singing.

He dropped the lead rope, brayed and took off!

Ten camels exploded. They went bucking off the road into the sunflower field, spraying packs in all directions, trying to follow the donkey.

Oh, did I laugh!

I drew up at the International Agricultural Training Center for Peasants, knocked over a No Parking sign that shouldn’t have been there and bounced into the base commander’s office.

The contrast between his face and my mood was extreme.

He moaned; he held his head in his hands a moment. Then he looked up. “Officer Gris, can’t we possibly have a little less commotion around here?”

“What’s a No Parking sign?” I said, loftily.

“No. Not that. Last night there was that fight and today our agents in town tell us there are complaints from cart drivers, complaints from the police on your double-parking and just a moment ago I had a call that you and some gangster were shooting up a hotel. Please, Officer Gris. We’re not supposed to be so visible here. Before you came, it was all—”

“Nonsense!” I cut him off sharply. “You were not in tune with this planet! You were becoming hicks and hayseeds! You weren’t keeping up to it — you weren’t with it. You leave such things to me. I am the expert on Blito-P3 sociological behaviorism! You should watch their movies. You should even go to see some of the movies they make in Turkey! They do nothing but shoot people and blow things up! But I have no time now to educate you in the psychological cultural cravings of this place. I’m here on business.”

I threw the pack of contracts down on his desk and he picked them up wearily with a what-now shake of his overpadded head.

“Hospital?” he said. “A half a million dollars?”

“Exactly,” I said. “You leave the statecraft to me, Faht Bey.”

“This hasn’t been passed by our local Officer’s Council. Our financial agent will faint!”

I knew that financial agent. He was a refugee from Beirut, Lebanon, one of their top bankers before a war wrecked the banking industry there and ran him out. A very wily Lebanese. “Tell him to get his hands out of the money box before I cut them off,” I said. “And that reminds me. I’m low on lira. Give me thirty thousand this time.”

He quivered his way into the back room and returned with thirty thousand Turkish lira. He made a notation in a book and then he stood right there and counted off ten thousand lira and put it in his pocket!

“Hold it!” I yelled at him. “Where did you get a license to steal our government’s money?” It made me pretty cross, I can tell you.

He handed over the twenty thousand. “I had to give it to the girl. Out of my own cash.”

“The girl? What for? Why?”

“Officer Gris, I don’t know why you had her sent back to Istanbul. Our agent there said she was clean. And I saw her. She was actually a very pretty girl. She closed out her room and she flew all the way down here. Oh, she was mad! But I handled it. I went up into town: she was standing right on the street making an awful row. I gave her ten thousand lira for you — it’s only ninety dollars American — and I put her on a bus so she could get back to Istanbul.”

“I didn’t order her sent back!” I screamed at him.

“Your friend the taxi driver said you did.”

Believe me, I was mad! I stalked out of there and got the Renault started, ran over another No Parking sign just to show they couldn’t trifle with me and drove toward home lickety-split, expecting that taxi driver would be there.

The Renault didn’t make it. It ran out of gas. I left it in the road and walked to the villa which was only about an eighth of a mile, planning all the way what I was going to tell that taxi driver.

He wasn’t there.

I gave Karagoz what-for about the car and sent him and the gardener to push it home and refused to let them push it with another car, I was so mad.

No girl.

Nothing to do.

I barricaded my door. I sulked for quite a while. And then, needing something more to get mad about, I went into the real room back of the closet and turned on the viewer.

Heller couldn’t go anywhere: he didn’t have any money. Heller was really no worry to me now. In a couple of days, I’d hear from Raht; we’d use the tug to take Heller to the U.S., and shortly after, he’d be arrested as an imposter and jailed. It didn’t make any difference now, what he was doing. But maybe it was something I could find fault with.

And there he was, using the corridor outside the storerooms as a running track. He apparently had two bags of running weights over his right and left shoulder as I could see the weight sacks bouncing as he trotted. Him and his exercise! Adding weights to keep his muscles in trim despite the reduced gravity of this planet. Athletes!

That wasn’t anything I could really snarl about, so I thought I’d better check earlier. I backed to the point I’d left him and raced it ahead.

Oho! He had been very busy! After his silly survey, he had been inside the ship no time at all.

I couldn’t quite make out what he first did.

There were strange things on his legs. He stopped at the ladder bottom when he exited from the ship and adjusted something on his ankles. He had some bags and a coil of rope slung around him and I couldn’t quite see the ankles because the gear swung in the way.

He went straight to the construction shop. A technician was in there, fiddling at a bench. He spotted who it was that had invaded his cave and quickly looked away, saying nothing.

“I want to borrow your hand rock-corer,” said Heller in a friendly voice.

The technician shook his head.

“I’m awfully sorry,” said Heller, “I’ll have to insist. This appears to be earthquake country and you have an awfully big excavation here. There seems to be flaking in the rock. I am concerned for the safety of my ship. It will probably be here on and off and it must not be risked by a cave-in. So please lend me a corer.”

The technician almost angrily took a small tool from a drawer and thrust it at Heller. Heller thanked him courteously and went off.

These combat engineers! Heller took a hitch on his bags and began to climb the vertical interior rock face of the hangar wall!

I knew what he had on his ankles now. They are just called “spikes” but actually they are little drills that buzz briefly as they drill a small hold in rock or other material. In the Apparatus we used them for second-story work. But engineers climb mountain faces with them. There is a drill in the toe of the boot, one on the heel, one on the outside and one on the inside of each ankle. They terrify me: you can drill a hole in your inside anklebone with them!

Heller just spiked his way up the wall. Ouch! He was wearing them on his wrists, too! Had he worn these last night to go up Afyonkarahisar? No, I was sure he hadn’t. They would have been visible in the fight and a breach of the Space Code.

Ah, he was wearing them now because he was working. He had to stop and do other things. He was about fifteen feet from the hangar floor now. The corer started up. It set my teeth on edge.

With the tool, he drilled a plug out of the rock face. It was about an inch in diameter and three inches long: just a little shaft of stone.

He held it real close to his eye, inspecting it. The section exposed the rock grain. He examined it very critically. It sure looked all right to me!

He took a little hammer and with a tap, he knocked off the last half-inch of the plug, caught the fragment and put it in a bag. Then he took a can out of his shoulder sack. The label said Rock Glue, and very badly lettered it was.

He put a gooey piece of rock glue on the plug and put it back in the hole. He tapped it neatly with a hammer and in a moment you couldn’t tell that an inspection core had been taken out.

Heller went along to his left a few feet and did the same thing. And, working swiftly, he did it again and again and again, plug after plug after plug!

Well, it was all right to watch him when he was only fifteen feet off the floor. Trouble was, he went up to fifty feet and started the same procedure and every time he looked down, I got an awful feeling. I hate heights!

So, anyway, I skipped ahead.

Heller had gotten himself clear up to the lower edge of the electronic illusion which, from there on up, gave us a mountaintop. And he said something!

I quickly turned it back and replayed it.

“Why,” muttered Heller, “do all Apparatus areas stink! And not only that, why do they have to seal the airflow with an illusion so it will never air out!”

Aha! I was getting to him. He was beginning to talk to himself. A sure sign!

He lit a small flamer and turned it so it smoked. He watched the resultant behavior of the small fog. “Nope,” he said, “no air can get in. By the Gods, I’ll have to find the switch of this thing.”

I didn’t keep the strip there very long. He kept looking down and three hundred feet under him a dolly operator looked like a pebble. Stomach wrenching!

I sped ahead to find more sound. I found some and stopped. But he was just humming. That silly one about Bold Prince Caucalsia.

A bit later, he tried to talk to the hangar chief who, of course, on my rumor, ignored him. Heller finally put a hand on the man’s shoulder and made him face him. “I said,” said Heller, “where are the controls for the electronic illusion? I want to turn it off tonight to air the place out! You’re trapping moisture in here.”

“It’s always on,” the hangar chief snarled. “It’s been on for ages. I don’t even think the switches work anymore. It’s running on its own power source and it won’t have to be touched for a century. You want things changed around here, take it up with the base commander.” And he went off snarling about routine, routine, all he needed was one more routine to clutter up his day.

Captain Stabb was over by the ship. The five Antimancos were not housed aboard the tug. They were in the berthing area of the hangar — much more comfortable and they could more easily get to town. No eighty-foot ladder. It pleased Captain Stabb immensely that Heller had been rebuffed in his passion for fresh air. Oh, he would never last in the Apparatus! These Fleet guys!

Heller went back aboard.

I sped ahead. He had apparently come out again to do some running. He was gradually lightening his weights to adjust his stride to this planet.

Silly athletes.

I shut him off and went back to glooming about my lost dancing girl. The world was against me.

Chapter 4

The following day, toward noon, I was just beginning to come out of my dumps when something else happened to free-fall me back into them.

It was a smoking hot day: the August sun had cranked the thermometer up to a Turkish 100 — meaning about 105. I had been lying in a shadowy part of the yard, back of a miniature temple to Diana, the Roman Goddess of the hunt. My pitcher of iced sira was empty; I had gotten tired of kicking the small boy who was supposed to be fanning me, when suddenly I heard a songbird. It was a canary! A canary had gone wild! Instantly my primitive instincts kindled! I had bought, a year ago, a ten-gauge shotgun and I had never tried it out! That would handle that canary!

Instantly aquiver, I leaped up and raced to my room. I got my shotgun rapidly enough but I couldn’t find the shells. And that was peculiar as they are big enough to load a cannon with. I went to my sleeping room and started threshing through my bedside drawers.

And then something happened which drove all thought of hunting from my mind.

There was an envelope pinned to my pillow!

It had not been there after I arose.

Somebody had been in this room!

But nobody had crossed the yard to my area! How had this gotten there? Flown in on the wind? There was no wind.

It was the type of envelope which is used to carry greetings in certain Voltar social circles: it gives off a subdued glitter. Had I found a snake in my bed, I would have been less surprised.

I got nerve enough generated to pick it up. It did not seem to be the exploding type.

Gingerly, as though it were hot, I extracted the card. A greeting card. A sorry-you-were-not-in-when-I-called type of card. It had handwriting on it. It said, quite elegantly:

Lombar wanted me to remind you now and then.

And under that formal social script was drawn a dagger! A dagger with blood on it! A dagger with blood on it that was dripping!

I went cold as I burst into sweat.

Who could have put it there? Was it Melahat? Was it Karagoz? Could it be Faht Bey? The hangar chief? Jimmy “The Gutter”? Heller? No, no, no! Not Heller: he would be the last one Lombar would use! The small boy who had been fanning me? No, no, I had had him in sight all morning.

Where were they now?

Was I being watched this minute?

All thought of hunting vanished.

I was the hunted!

With a great effort, I made myself think. Something was obviously expected. Somebody believed I was not doing my job. And if that happened, according to Lombar’s last remark, the whoever-it-was had direct orders to kill me!

I knew I must do something. Make an effort, a show of it. And fast.

I had it!

I would tell Captain Stabb to start another rumor about Heller!

I let the shotgun fall. I rushed through the back of the closet. I got the passageway door open and catapulted down it to find Stabb.

The Antimanco was nowhere around. But something else was.

The warplanes!

Two of them!

They must have arrived during the night!

They were ugly ships. A bit bigger than the tug. They were all armor. They were manned by only two. They were a more compact version of “the gun” which Lombar flew. Deadly ships, cold, black, lethal.

Rather timidly, I approached them. To get here now, when would they have had to leave Voltar? They must have been dispatched the very day Heller had bought the tug to have arrived here by now. Such ships were only a trifle faster than freighters. Lombar must have known about the tug purchase the instant it happened! He knew too much, too quickly. He must have spies planted in every…

A voice sounded behind me and I almost jumped out of my wits!

“We been here for hours, Gris. Where have you been?”

I turned. I was looking at a slate-hard man with slate-hard eyes. There were three others behind him. How had they gotten behind me?

They were in black uniforms and they wore red gloves. They had a red explosion on each side of their collars. And I knew what they were. In the Apparatus they are called assassin pilots. They are used on every major Apparatus battle engagement. They do not fight the enemy. They are there to make sure no Apparatus vessel runs away. If it does, if they only think it is running away, they shoot it down! With riffraff of the type that makes up the Apparatus, such measures are necessary. One has to deal with cowards. One also has to deal with mutiny. The answer is the assassin pilot. The Fleet has no such arrangements.

Their manners compare with their duties. He was omitting “officer” from his form of address to me. He did not offer to shake hands.

“That ship,” and he flung a contemptuous gesture at the tug, “has no call-in beamer on it!”

Every Apparatus ship is required to have a device imbedded in its hull which an assassin ship, with a beam, can activate: it is vital so they can find an erring vessel and shoot it down.

“It was a Fleet vessel,” I said, backing up.

“Listen, Gris, you wouldn’t want me to report you for violations, would you?”

I backed up further. “It was just an oversight.”

He stepped closer. I had never seen colder eyes. “How can anybody expect me to shoot a ship down when I can’t find it? Get a call-in beamer installed in that hull!”

I tried to back up further but the hull of a warplane was at my back. I felt desperate. “I am not under your orders.”

“And we,” he said, “are not under yours!”

The other assassin pilot and the two copilots behind him all nodded as one, with a single jerk of their heads. They were very grim, cold professionals at their trade; they wanted things straight!

It was a bad situation. I would sometimes be in that tug. It was unarmed and unarmored. One single shot from either of these warplanes could turn the Prince Caucalsia into space dust in a fraction of a second.

“So, two orders,” said the assassin pilot. “One: order the hangar chief to install a call-in beamer on that ship’s exterior hull so secretly and in such a place that its crew will never know it is there. Two: I want that ship crippled so that it cannot leave this system on its time drives and try to outrun us.”

“There’s a Royal officer aboard her,” I said.

“Well, decoy him away from the ship so the beamer can be put on the hull. I’ll leave the crippling of her up to you as you’re the best one to get inside her.”

I nodded numbly. I was at a terrible disadvantage. I had left my room so fast I had not taken a gun. I had broken a firm rule never to be around Apparatus people unarmed. And then, I realized, it wouldn’t have done me any good even if I had been armed. They would have complained to Lombar I was refusing his orders.

I nodded nervously.

“Then we’re friends?” he said.

I nodded and offered my hand.

He raised his red-gloved fingers and slapped me across the face, hard, contemptuously.

“Good,” he said. “Do it.”

I raced off to give the secret order to the hangar chief. I raced up the ladder and got Heller to come out.

I took Heller to the hangar map room, out of sight of the tug.

He was in work clothes. He had been doing something inside. His red racing cap was on the back of his head. “Where’d the two ‘guns’ come from?” he asked.

“They’re just guard ships,” I said. “Stationed here. They’ve been away. Nothing to do with the mission.” It gave me a little lift of satisfaction, thinking of what his reaction would be if he knew they were here especially to keep track of his beloved tug and shoot it down if it did anything odd or didn’t return at once from a flight. I only hoped I wouldn’t be aboard when they hit it: an unarmed, unarmored tug wouldn’t stand a chance!

“We will probably be leaving tomorrow,” I said. “While we are near maps, I wanted to show you the U.S. terrain.”

“Hello,” he said, looking at them. “ ‘U.S. Geological Survey.’ It even shows the minerals!”

“And everything even down to the farmhouses,” I said, glad to be able to engage his interest and prevent him from seeing what they were doing in the hangar. “We can make better farmhouse ones, of course, but the minerals are a bonus.

“Now, probably we will be landing in that field there.” And I pointed to the section in southern Virginia I had seen noted on the Lombar orders.

“The town,” I continued, “is named Fair Oakes. See it there? This over here is a better, more detailed map. This is Hamden County. Fair Oakes is the county seat. Now, see this building? That’s the Hamden County Courthouse. The squiggles show it is on a little hill.

“All right,” I said. “Now, pay attention. We will land in this field: it’s a ruined plantation and nobody is ever around. The trees will mask us from any road.

“Now, you will leave the ship there, walk up this path that is indicated, pass this farmhouse, walk up the hill to the back of the courthouse and go in.

“You will be issued your birth certificate — an old clerk will be there even though it is after hours. And then you will walk down this hill and go to the bus station.

“There is a late-night bus. You will take it north to Lynchburg. You will probably change at Lynchburg and then go through Washington, D.C., and up to New York.”

He was being very attentive but looking at the maps. Actually, it was hardly worth explaining what he would be doing after that. The Rockecenter, Jr. false name Lombar had set up for him would draw attention and he’d be spotted. If he registered even at a motel, somebody would be startled enough to call the local press that a celebrity was in town. But it would be no celebrity: just a false name! And then, bang! Rockecenter’s connections would take over. Bye-bye Heller! It was a cunning trap Lombar had laid. There is no Delbert John Rockecenter, Junior!

“You must be sure and use the cover name at all times,” I said. “America is very identity conscious. If you don’t have identification, they go crazy. So be sure you announce and use your cover name when you get it. It’s even a felony not to give a name to the police when they ask for it. Do you understand all that?”

“And what will this cover name be?” said Heller, still looking at the maps.

“Oh, I don’t know yet,” I lied. “We have to get a proper birth certificate. A name doesn’t mean anything unless you can show a birth certificate. It depends on what ones are available there in the Hamden County Courthouse.”

“Hey,” he said, “they’ve got some gold marked on these maps. I was reading some books on the United States and it said the gold was all in the West. Look here. There’s gold marked in Virginia. And on these other maps, there’s gold in Maryland. And there’s gold up here in these… New England?… states.”

“Oh, that was all mined out back in what they call ‘colonial’ times. Way back.” I didn’t know much about geology but I knew that much. I’d seen it before and last year had told Raht to go dig some up and he’d laughed fit to burst. It was then he had explained the maps probably meant “had been.”

“I see,” said Heller. “These surveyors just noted what they call indicators: rose quartz, iron hat, serpentine schist, hornblende. But these… Appalachian?… mountains and those to the northeast are some of the oldest mountains on the planet and I guess you could find anything in them if you looked. This northern… New England?… area was all scuffed up with glaciers in times past: that’s obvious from the topography. So maybe some of the glaciers cut the tops off some peaks and exposed some lodes. Country sure looks pushed around.”

I kept him chattering happily about what he saw. Just a (bleeped) engineer. Sitting here while they bugged his blessed ship! Stupid beyond belief where the Apparatus was concerned. A child in the hands of espionage and covert operations experts. Why be interested in maps? The only thing he’d see for many a year to come was the inside of a penitentiary.

An hour went by. The hangar chief tossed me a signal behind Heller’s back.

“All right,” I said. “But there’s just one thing I, as your handler, must caution you about. Book of Space Codes Number a-36-544 M Section B. Disclosure that you are an extraterrestrial is not authorized. You must not reveal your true identity in any way. The Voltar penalties for that would be far more severe than anything this planet could hand out. You know that and I know that. So for your own protection, I must ask you to give me your word, as a Royal officer, that you will not reveal your actual identity.”

“Soltan, are you trying to insult me? You are bound by those codes, too. You’re not the Emperor to be laying down Voltar law in your own name. But as long as we are on this subject, you do anything to violate Space Codes, and, as a Royal officer and personally, I will have you before the Grand Council stretched so long and thin you’ll sound like a chorder-beat if they pluck you.”

“I was just trying to help,” I said lamely. But I was laughing inside. I knew he would use the fatal name we gave him. He was so dumb, we’d even bugged his ship behind his back.

“Well, here’s to a successful mission,” I said, standing up and shaking him by the hand. “I am sure you will be a great agent. Just what we want.”

As I went out, I looked again at the warplanes: the huge maws of their single cannon could blast away half a planet: the tug wouldn’t even be a swallow for them. With a shudder, I hurried off to the hangar quarters for ship crews to find Stabb. I would spread a new rumor that Heller had secret orders to kill them all, including the assassin pilots. Maybe, then, they’d slaughter Heller before we left and I’d never again have to ride in that (bleeped) tug! I don’t like warplanes and I’d detest being shot down by one.

Chapter 5

I was in no fit mood for what I received next.

With a new pitcher of iced sira, I was just lying back in the temple’s shadow once more when, pell-mell, here came Karagoz.

“You got a caller,” he said. “The taxi driver says he’s got to see you right away.”

I uncoiled like a striking snake. “(Bleep) him!” Here was something I could vent my venom on! “Show him into the atrium!” There was a fountain there. Maybe I could hold his head under water until he drowned!

The atrium, the courtyard which the main Roman house was built around, usually was quite bare and forbidding, a suitable place for an execution. But today, it was changed. Karagoz and the gardener had brought in some tall, vased plants; expensive new rugs draped the tiles; comfortable seats were ranged around the fountain and the play of the water made the place musical and cool. (Bleep). Wrong setting!

The taxi driver was standing there spinning his cap airily around a forefinger. He was smiling and cheerful. (Bleep)! Wrong mood!

Well, I’d soon cut him down to size! “What the Hells do you mean sending a perfectly clean girl back to Istanbul?”

He didn’t seem to remember. Then he said, “Oh, that girl! Oh, you were lucky, Sultan Bey. The doctor found she had (bleep) and (bleep) both. A walking epidemic! A total hellcat in the bargain. You said to take her for a ride, so I got her rid back to Istanbul!”

I knew he was lying. I was just sucking in my breath to really blast him and demand a return of some lira, when this crazy nut had the nerve to sit down! In my presence! Right on a padded lounge! It took my breath away. Such gall!

But there was a sly, conspiratorial air about him. He looked at the doorway and satisfied himself that we were alone. “Officer Gris,” he whispered, “I’ve really run into something!”

I hoped he was going to tell me he had smashed up his car completely. But he looked too cheerful. There is something about people about to whisper secrets that makes one listen.

“When that girl blew up on you,” he whispered, “I knew you would be upset. I certainly didn’t want to tangle with you.”

That was better. Proper respect after all! I sat down and leaned closer to hear better. “A couple weeks ago,” he continued in a low voice, “I heard of a certain fellow to the east of here, over at Bolvadin to be exact. So I ran over there in my off-time — I won’t charge you for the trip because we’re friends.”

This was better.

“What would you say to a real dancing girl? Not some Istanbul whore that can just twitch her belly, but a real one!”

I leaned closer.

“Listen, Officer Gris. This is really wonderful. The Russians in Turkmen, over on the other side of the Caspian Sea, have been grabbing the nomads and forcing them onto collective farms. They’re mopping up the whole Kara Kum Desert!

“Them as don’t settle get shot. It’s pretty grisly. But listen, there’s a plus side to it for us.” He drew very close. “Rather than live like that, guess what? The women,”

and he looked around carefully and lowered his voice, “are selling themselves off!”

Oh, did he have my attention now!

“These girls,” he continued, “are real Turks. The Turks, you know, inhabited an area from the Caspian to Siberia at one time. They all speak the same language. They hardly even have local accents. And, Officer Gris, they’ve maintained all their original social customs and these girls are nomad desert girls and they are the absolute cream of all Turkish dancers! And they’re also experts at… well… you know.”

He came even closer. “They’re virgins because the tribal customs won’t have it otherwise. So there’s no danger of you know what.”

I was right on the edge of my seat.

“Now, what they have to do is smuggle them out from behind the Iron Curtain. They have to push them from the Kara Kum Desert to the Caspian Sea port of Cheleken. Then they are carried down to the Iranian port of Pahlevi. They cross Iran and at the border town of Rezaiyeh, they are smuggled into Turkey. They are taken to Bolvadin and she can be brought here.”

He sat back. I didn’t. “I am sure you can furnish identity papers. As she would be a real Turk, speaking Turkish, that’s easy. Well, what do you say?”

My head was spinning! What an opportunity! And right in my line! When you’re an expert in tradecraft, you can appreciate these things.

“What would she look like?” I slavered.

He looked around again. We were still alone but he lowered his voice. “He had already sold most of them. Actually, he only had just one left. And I don’t think she’ll be wanting takers very long.” He was secretively fishing in his pocket. “Her name is Utanc.” And he handed me a photograph.

Oh, Heavens, my heart almost turned over!

The face! The beautiful face!

She looked very young, possibly eighteen. She had enormous eyes, vivid even though they were downcast. She had a perfect heart-shaped face. Her lips were very full and a finger posed against the lower one obscured them not at all. She seemed to be withdrawing slightly.

Of course! Utanc! Turks name their women after qualities. And utanc means “shame, modesty, bashfulness.”

So sweet! So beautiful! So utterly frail! So undefended!

An emotion very foreign to me welled up. An absolute passion to protect her welled up in me. I felt I should at once charge over the border, slay the whole Russian Army, cast myself at her feet and beg for just one smile.

I sighed and somehow tore my eyes away. I turned the photograph over. On the back, in pencil, was written: $5,000 U.S. Cash.

“You’d own her completely,” whispered the driver. “She would be your slave forever. And saving her from the raping Russian troops would earn her gratitude to such a degree, she would never be able to thank you enough!”

Well, what could I do?

I reached into my pocket and I hauled out five thousand U.S. dollars and literally pushed them at him.

“There’s the transport costs and commissions,” said the driver. “They come to another five thousand.”

I reached into my pocket and hauled out the other five thousand.

He got up. “I’m so glad to be able to do you a favor, Sultan Bey. We’ll forget about my gas and travel time.”

He tried to refuse the wad of lira I thrust at him. Finally he shrugged and took it.

“It will take them a week or so to smuggle her through,” he said. “Now I’ve got to rush back to Bolvadin to get this payment in before she is sold to someone else.” And he hurried off and I heard his tires screech as the “taxi” departed. I certainly hoped he was in time.

And that night, I slept with her photo on my pillow and, oh, did I dream beautiful dreams!

I felt so good that when, in the dawn, I made out Faht Bey beside the bed, I wasn’t even annoyed.

“Raht radioed in,” he said. “He’s all set. You can leave for America as soon as it is dark.”

I didn’t even hear him as he left, probably he was saying he would tell the tug crew.

I clutched the photo in my hand and kissed it passionately. Gods bless the raping Russian troops if they were delivering into my hands such a treasure as this! There’s a lot to be said for communism!

Chapter 6

We took off as soon as dusk thickened into deep black.

There are some — persons with hypercritical attitudes and chronically given to nitpicking — who might try to say that the heady prospects of owning a real, live dancing girl distracted me from my duties. But this would be the purest cabal.

That day before take-off I was the slave of duty. I browbeat Faht Bey into giving me all the money I would need and then some. I armed myself thoroughly with Earth weaponry. I collected all the necessary equipment. I threatened the villa staff thoroughly and even had one of the small boys throwing up again.

I connected up the 831 Relayer and, slave of duty that I was being, inspected what Heller was up to inside the ship.

He was making candy!

That’s right! He was standing in the after-galley with pots and pans. He even had an apron on! He was using a big spoon to test a simmering mess of the gooiest, most nauseating-looking candy I have ever seen!

I thought, well, well, he must have learned it from his sister. He was being so precise, I thought, isn’t that sweet? And actually was so revolted that I didn’t even spot it was an English pun until much later.

A little later, I checked again. He had a whole bunch of little papers and he was putting the candy down on them in blobs.

When I came back from threatening the staff again, Heller had the pieces all wrapped up in wax paper. They seemed to be very hard and had a spiral pattern of red and white stripes.

I knew he was being silly. There’s lots of candy just like that in America. You can buy it all over the place. It’s even advertised in big colorful ads in the crew’s hangar library, foreign magazine section.

Oh, good, I said sarcastically, he’s preparing for his trip. And I dismissed it.

Oh, I was very busy that day before take-off. I spent at least two hours on Apparatus business which more than made up for the ten I spent reclining on the lawn, daydreaming about Utanc.

The launching went off without a hitch. It is very simple to travel on Earth: it has only one moon and even it is not all that bright. So all one has to do is launch in the darkness and then follow the night as it creeps along the planet surface. One dawdles along about three hundred miles up and then descends quickly to find himself at the same local time as that of one’s departure point.

Captain Stabb certainly showed an expertise in such things. The Apparatus school could well add some lectures on piracy and smuggling. He told me several amusing stories as we descended, including one about wiping out a whole city. Uproarious!

We followed the textbook landing procedure, however.

Below us was the deserted plantation: the empty, fallow field, the ruined house with two front pillars gone, the slave shacks passed to ruin.

About five hundred feet up, Stabb hit the paralysis button. A heavy flash of bright blue light struck down from the ship in a cone, lasting only a split second; if seen by anyone they would suppose it to be the reflection of headlamps of a turning car or a lightning flash on the horizon.

Stabb thudded the tug down right on target, within the screen of trees, horizontally, on its belly.

The second pilot slammed open the airlock door. The second engineer, in combat dress, was on the ground in a second. He was carrying a heat detector which he pointed in a sweep at the terrain.

The bright blue light knocks any living thing in the area unconscious. The heat detector tells one if there is now anyone lying there. Standard operation. Saves one from having some nasty surprises. And actually is quite humanitarian: one doesn’t have to kill a chance observer, one can just go off and let the person come to, wondering what hit him, not running around screaming, “Voltar pilots have just violated Code Number a-36-544 M Section B!” Dead bodies are hard to get rid of on the spur of the moment and bring in nosy sheriffs and things.

The second engineer’s detector flashed red! Something had been knocked out by the blueflash!

The first pilot, blastrifle at ready, sprinted in the direction of the indicator beam. Stabb was tensed at the tug controls, ready to take off again in case the alert turned out to be an ambush.

The Virginia night was August, muggy hot. A thin sliver of moonlight silhouetted the copse of trees. A wind sighed through the weeds around the spaceship.

Then a bark of laughter. The first pilot came running back. He was holding an opossum by the tail! He threw it to one side. “Seems all clear,” he said.

“All clear!” said the second engineer, tossing his heat detector back into the airlock.

Stabb peered into the night, his close-set eyes intent. “Where the Hells are they? We’ve got to be back at the base before the sun rises there!” He glanced at his watch. “We’ve only got twenty-five minutes to hang around here!”

Suddenly, running feet in the distance, coming down a weed-grown road.

Raht burst into view. He was lugging two enormous suitcases.

He is the most unremarkable-looking Earthman one ever cared to see. Aside from a bristling mustache he affects, there is not one other feature to make him stick in memory. The perfect spy. He is from the planet Modon and glad they were to get rid of him.

He boosted the suitcases into the airlock. He was panting with exertion. But he saw me in the dim shimmer of interior light. “Cripes!” he said, “It’s Officer Gris himself.” He always has a bit of a complaining note when he speaks.

“What have you got in these suitcases?” I demanded. “The orders were to get expensive luggage filled with clothes.”

He pushed them further into the airlock. “Clothes cost money. You’ve no idea what inflation is, I made up the weight with rocks!”

He had made up the weight with money in his own pocket, I said to myself. But I hit the buzzer to the back and picked up the bags to take them to Heller. I did not want him to see the agents that would be tailing him from here on out.

Heller had released the passageway doors. I struggled through and dumped the two huge suitcases in the salon. They were expensive-looking cases.

He was sitting at the table. I said, “You’ll find clothes in there. Get dressed fast. Take no clothes of your own. You only have a little over twenty minutes, so don’t dawdle.” I left him, closing the doors behind me.

Raht was still breathing hard. I drew him into the crew salon. He took out a sheaf of documents. “Here’s his military school diploma.”

I read:

It was a very imposing diploma. It had Confederate soldiers holding rifles at port arms. It had banners and cannons. Very fancy.

“Here’s the rest of the papers,” said Raht. They were attested transcripts of subjects and grades.

“What clever forgeries,” I said.

“Hells no,” said Raht. “They’re the authentic signatures. The school closed last spring for keeps and the ex-faculty will do anything for a buck. You think I want to get sent up for forgery?”

Always complaining, even when you give him a compliment.

“Where’s Terb?” I demanded. “We haven’t got much time.”

“Maybe he’s having trouble. The old clerk at that (bleeped) courthouse didn’t want to come down after hours.”

Captain Stabb looked in, pointing at his watch. “We’re going to have to race to make it now. We have to get back while it’s still night!”

But here was Terb, leaping in through the airlock. Terb is one of the most unremarkable Earthmen you’d ever want to see. A bit on the plump side, a bit swarthy, but you would never pick him out in a crowd. He’s from the planet Dolo and they were very glad to get rid of him.

“Not Officer Gris himself!” he said. “We must be important after all! Raht, I been wrong. All this time I been telling you we was just dirt and now…”

“Shut up,” I said. “Is the birth certificate fixed?”

Terb nodded. He took a small electric switch out of his pocket. “The old clerk wants to see him so he can attest the certificate is issued to a real person known to him that ain’t dead. He don’t like to be thought crooked. This bird we got here will present himself, hand over another C-note, get the certificate all signed. Then the instant he walks down the steps of that courthouse, I hit this and good-bye clerk, good-bye records. I planted the bomb before dawn today. Right in the record files!”

I gave them the activator-receiver. “This is a special bug. You must keep this within two hundred miles of him at all times.”

“But we got him bugged,” said Raht. “There’s bugs in those clothes and there’s bugs in those suitcases and we have the activator right here. We can’t possibly lose him!”

“This is another type of bug, an aerial bug,” I lied. “It’s inserted in his elbow and registers if he handles explosives or touches guns: we don’t want you getting shot.”

Oh, that was different!

“We can spot him from a ship with this,” I lied. “Now this is the 831 Relayer. Keep it right with the activator-receiver.’’

They got that.

“Just leave them turned on all the time. See, they look like a telephone connection box. You can put them on the outside of any building or under a bed.”

They promised.

Then Raht said, “Money. For us. Inflation is awful!”

I handed them a draft on the Chase-Arab New York Bank. They were happy. So was I: it was government money.

I gave them a few tips. Then I said, “Now get out of here before he sees you.”

They went diving out of the airlock, sprinted past the faintly moonlit plantation house and were gone.

Stabb was looking at his watch.

Heller came out. And oh, I had to laugh! Clothes to fit men six feet two inches tall aren’t to be had in southern Virginia. They were all too small!

Raht had done a wonderful job. The jacket was LOUD! Huge red and white checks. The pants were LOUD! Huge blue and white stripes. The hat was a bright green, banded Panama: too small! The shoes were orange suede and too tight! The shirt was purple!

He would stand out like a searchlight!

The clothes did look expensive, like they’d been bought by someone with lots of money and no taste at all.

And they looked like they had been outgrown.

Wonderful!

He was lugging the two huge suitcases.

“Don’t you think this wardrobe is a bit garish?” he said.

“In the height of fashion! In the height of fashion!” I replied.

I rapidly told him again where he was supposed to go to get his birth certificate. I handed him the other papers.

Then I knelt down in the airlock, pointing a night scope up the road. I wanted to make sure Raht and Terb were out of sight and that the area was still clear. Something was moving in the brush.

“I’m a bit hungry,” said Heller behind me. And then he seemed to wander off into the ship.

Stabb came to me. “He says he wants…”

“Give him whatever he wants,” I said. There was something moving over there by a slave cabin.

Heller was there again. “I’m going to need some money.”

Oh, yes. His money. The orders said five thousand dollars so he’d look affluent. I pulled two thousand out of my pocket and handed it to him. Three thousand wasn’t bad for a night’s work.

He was closing up some straps on a suitcase.

“We’re awful close to time,” said Stabb.

I saw what the object that had been moving was. A fox. To Hells with it.

I stood up and turned to Heller. I put out my hand. He, however, didn’t take it. Instead, he was extending a letter to me. “Do me a favor, would you, and mail this? I promised to keep him informed.”

I took it and put it in my pocket. I was too intent on getting rid of him to pay it any heed. “Well, good luck, Jettero,” I said. “This is it. Off you go.”

He dropped to the ground, lugging the two big cases. He limped off past the moonlit plantation house.

“Bye-bye, Heller,” I said to myself. “And I hope you make a lot of good friends in the pen!”

“We’re taking off,” said Stabb.

I got out of their way. The second engineer dropped out of the airlock with a machine in his hand. Stabb lifted the tug six feet off the ground and held it there. The second engineer ducked around with his machine and made all the grass stand up straight where the ship had been. He threw his machine into the airlock. The second pilot gave him a hand back aboard. They closed the latches.

The captain said to me, “Are you under orders to make our ship incapable of leaving this solar system?”

As a matter of fact, I was. From the assassin pilot. But it wouldn’t do to tell Stabb his ship was to be disabled. “Why?” I said.

“He took the time-sight out of the flight deck just now,” said the captain. “And if there’s another one, we can’t get to it. He’s double-barred all his cabins and storage spaces: we won’t be able to get into them even with a blastgun! Without a sight, we can’t fly her in outer space. But I suppose that’s what you required: you said to give him anything he wants.”

So what? Who wanted to ride in this (bleeping) tug and maybe get shot down?

Stabb sent the ship hurtling into the sky.

Now to race back to the base and land just before dawn.

Stabb cranked the tug auxiliaries up toward the speed of light.

I was jubilant.

Heller was off my hands!

I couldn’t wait to get back to a viewer and see how he got everything he had coming to him. The (bleepard). All the trouble he’d caused!