Collected Short Fiction, page 473
Anders nodded soberly, for he did know the High Space Guard. The Treaty of Space stipulated that the Guard, like the Mandate Commission, must be formed on a ratio of two men from the Earth-Moon Union, and one each from Venus, Mars, and the Jovian Soviet. All were required to swear allegiance to the Mandate. But many, like Franz von Falkenberg—and Anders himself—remained loyal to their native planets. “Strip a guardsman,” cynics put it, “and you’ll catch a spy.”
Now, supposing the interview had ended, Anders rose. But Hood motioned him to wait, and took up a small clip of papers from the iridium desk. Scanning them, the commissioner said briskly: “Your first task will be to find out what these damned asterites are up to. This old Drake and his son have claimed an airless rock, Freedonia, and set up what they call a metallurgy lab. Prob’ly they’re working on seetee, right here under our noses.”
“Likely,” Anders agreed. “I know young Drake.”
Rick Drake had saved his life, Anders reflected, when they met on that runaway asteroid. Because of that incident, he still regarded the young asterite engineer with a perverse hostility.
“Worst thing, my own niece has joined them!” Hood cleared his throat with a sound like an angry bellow. “My own flesh and blood—but I can’t do a thing with her. She has opened an office for them, right here in Pallasport. But you met Karen?”
“I did.” Anders shrugged with a rueful brown smile. “Most beautiful and charming young woman. First thought we were fellow cosmopolitans. But seems she preferred Rick Drake.”
“Damned asterite!” Hood’s fat face was crimson. “And Kay had the confounded nerve to announce her engagement to him.” The small eyes turned shrewd again. “Get seetee, and maybe you can win her back.”
“Not a chance,” Anders said. “She’s in love with Rick.”
“I was hoping you could manage her.” Hood sighed regretfully. “Seems able to outsmart every move we make, against the firm of Drake, McGee & Drake. And I used to think pretty girls were dumb!”
Thinking of Karen’s flame-colored hair, Anders said nothing.
“Visit Freedonia,” Hood went on. “Young Drake is mostly there, working with his father in this mysterious lab. The old man is the pioneer conrraterrene engineer, you know—invented the seetee blinker. And you’ll investigate two other asterites with the Drakes.”
His fat, pink fingers riffled the papers.
“One is a girl named Ann O’Banion. Comes from little Obania. Daughter of a decayed asterite politician. Both she and her father suspected of connection with the Free Space Party, but we never got any evidence. If you can find a pretext, ship them both off to Pallas IV.”
Anders made quick notes on a tiny pad.
“Your other suspect is an old rock rat, known as Rob McGee. Skipper of the Good-by Jane, a broken-down space tug. He’s at Pallasport now, having a new engine installed and taking on a cargo consigned to Ann O’Banion, on Obania—but prob’ly really intended for this lab on Freedonia. Here’s a copy of his manifest.”
“I’ve met McGee.” Anders spoke with remembered awe. “Maybe just a rock rat—but a mighty queer one. Tell you the time to the second without a watch. Or glance at a meteor a thousand kilometers off and tell you the distance to the fraction of a meteor, and the mass to the nearest kilogram. Eh?”
He had been scanning the blurred, flimsy carbon of the tug’s manifest. He caught a surprised breath, and his gray eyes looked quickly across the desk.
“McGee isn’t bound for Obania.” His black shoulders drew straight. “Nothing here for any sort of lab. Not even any regular fuel uranium. Just tons of the special twelve percent concentrate, for that new engine, and other supplies for the ship.”
Hood’s small eyes blinked.
“Then you better find out where he is going!”
“ ’Zactly.” Anders folded the thin yellow sheet and moved to go. At the door of the huge metal room he turned back, grinning. “So I’m the man who came in here to retire? Seems you’re invincible, commissioner!”
“Unless I meet my attractive niece.” Hood’s red face turned serious. “Better watch her, captain. Break a letter of the law and it will take a million dollars’ worth of Interplanet legal talent to keep her from shipping you to Pallas IV.”
II.
Anders hurried back into the curving street. He mounted the swell of the terraformed hill that lifted Pallasport like a bright glass-and-metal knob above the untamed waste of the minor planet. Above the glittering piles of the governmental buildings, he came striding up to the spaceport on the crown of the hill.
On the floodlit field, under the crystal dark of the night sky, he found the Good-by Jane. Leaning askew on her battered ground gear, the little tug resembled a tall steel box balanced precariously on end. Beside the open valve, Rob McGee stood watching stevedores unload the yellow-painted cadmium cans of fuel uranium from a backed-up truck.
A sturdy, wide-shouldered figure in his ancient greenish space coat, the master looked small and and ugly and indestructible as his vessel. He signed a receipt for the fuel metal, and the truck departed. Then he turned calmly, drawling:
“Hello, Captain Anders.”
“Glad to see you, McGee.”
Smiling, he offered his hand. McGee shook it, very solemnly. Then there was an awkward pause. Somehow, Anders thought, he must have lost his old careless ease on that runaway rock. Because, for a moment, he couldn’t think of anything to say.
He really liked McGee—that was the difficult thing. He felt a keen, wondering interest in that strange perception of space and time that made McGee the born spaceman. And he pitied the little man’s loneliness, set apart by his own strange gift.
He liked McGee, but now they were enemies again. It might soon be his duty to take the odd little spaceman and his asterite friends to Pallas IV—for secret contraterrene research could easily be construed as treason against the Mandate.
But McGee, himself, seemed quite at ease. His square, space-beaten face had a look of mild interrogation, but he was calm as his native stars. Silently, he began to fill a short black pipe.
Trying to seem casual, Anders lit a cigarette. He glanced up at the rusty hull.
“Hear you’ve installed a new engine?”
McGee nodded, uncommunicative.
“My fault your old one was damaged, on that runaway rock.” Anders felt apologetic. “All a misunderstanding.” Suddenly he envied Hood’s thick-skinned bluffness. “What’s your acceleration rating now?”
McGee told him, briefly, “Nine hundred.”
“Eh?” Anders stared at the square, battered hull. “So now you’ve got nearly the speed and the range of a modern cruiser. Engine must have cost a lot of money?”
McGee lit his pipe, then admitted:
“We’ve got money.”
“I know,” Anders said. “I saw those kilograms of terraforming diamonds that you and young Drake found on the runaway. Perhaps you’re looking for more?” He glanced at McGee’s stubborn face. “Where are you bound?”
“Cleared for Obania.”
“I know.” Anders grinned. “But I happened to see your manifest. Notice you’re loading mostly twelve percent concentrate for that new engine—enough to take you a hundred times that far.” The space-tanned mask didn’t change.
“Where do you think I’m going?”
“Might be looking for something.” Watching through narrowed steel eyes, Anders tried a shot in the dark. “You might be on the track of something very strange and old? Maybe a bit of the seetee drift, that was shaped a hundred thousand years ago—by beings with contraterrene tools?” That changed the mask, with a hurt expression that made Anders somehow uncomfortable. The squinted eyes blinked. But the seamed square jaw set again on the stem of that short black pipe.
“I’m not talking,” McGee drawled softly. “If you’ve got any more questions, captain, you had better come along to our office and see the manager. Miss Hood does all our talking now.”
“That’s all right with me,” Anders agreed willingly. “But the Guard will have to know where you’re bound.”
McGee locked the valves of his ship and they left the swelling field. Determinedly, the little spaceman said nothing more. His small feet hurried nimbly, to keep up with the strides of the lean spare man in black.
Anders was thinking of Karen Hood, his brown face faintly smiling. He had always known, really, that he didn’t have a chance. Rick Drake had always been the one, that bronze-haired, incoherent giant. And that fact no longer hurt him now. Yet he was conscious of a tingling eagerness at the thought of seeing Karen.
Drake, McGee & Drake occupied a small but modern building just below the field. An austere fluorescent sign glowed above a chaste façade of satiny platinum. The effect, he thought, was even swankier than the huge, expensive pile of the new Interplanet building. A haughty blond reception girl let them into Karen’s office.
The office was stunning. It was big enough to berth a ship, and walled with mellow-tinted fluorescent glass. The sleek furnishings were silver and black obsidian. But the most stunning item was Karen herself.
“Paul—I’m so glad!”
Cataclysmic even in her severe green business suit, she utterly eclipsed the receptionist. She came eagerly around the immense busy desk to give him her strong cool hand. Her red hair had the same intoxicating lights, and the way she walked was still music, and her eyes were bright with pleasure.
But he saw the big photograph over her desk, in the shining obsidian frame. Rick Drake grinned at him, the lean and awkward bronzehaired giant. Anders made the photograph a graceful little bow even as he took her hand.
“Congratulations, Kay!”
She followed his eyes to the picture and he saw the devotion on her high-cheeked face. Her fine skin flushed a little, and her warm expression made a sharp little throb in his throat. But he had always known that he didn’t have a chance.
“Some swank!” His eyes swept the room’s chaste splendor, and indicated the departing receptionist. “Anybody’d think that Drake, McGee & Drake had bought out Interplanet.”
“Good idea!” Her laugh was a bright little bell. “Sit down, Paul, and tell me how you enjoyed home. Looking well again. Don’t you want a job? We need another good engineer, and I think there’s room for your name on the sign.”
“Wish I’d seen you sooner.” Anders tried to smile, but suddenly he felt as awkward as young Rick Drake. “But I’ve just taken on a new assignment for Interplanet.”
“Oh!” It was a cool, hurt sound.
Rob McGee had been standing in the gleaming doorway, calm and shabby and silent, smoking his old black pipe. Now he took it out of his mouth, drawling quietly:
“You see, Miss Karen, Captain Anders got to asking questions. He wants to know where I’m bound, in the Jane. He thinks I’m loading too much fuel, for Obania.”
Karen’s fine nostrils widened as she caught her breath.
“Couldn’t help wondering.” Anders grinned, watching her startled face. “Heard rumors of some seetee artifacts, dating from before the Cataclysm. Thought McGee might be looking for them.”
The color flowed out of her sensitive skin.
“You win, Paul.” Her marmoreal shoulders made a flowing shrug of surrender and she turned to McGee’s uncompromising face. “Go back and get your logbook, Cap’n Rob. It’s lunch time, and we’ll be at the Mandate House. Hurry!”
McGee made a squinted blink and then went out deliberately.
“Clever, Paul.” She smiled at Anders, with flattery in her wide blue eyes. “Now, seems we’ll have to tell you everything. Quite a thrilling story, but a long one. And I don’t think Rick would mind . . . I mean, he wouldn’t really quite die . . . if we have lunch together, just once more, while we talk.”
Anders bowed to the photograph again and held Karen’s coat. It was white Callistonian fur, as swanky as the office. Her candid eyes were bright, and he wanted to touch her flame-colored hair.
They went to the Mandate House and sat at a quiet back table. Karen selected a steak for Rob McGee, and a waiter took their orders. They waited for the little spaceman. Karen was very charming.
But Anders grew impatient.
“ ’Stounding thing!” He tried to hurry her story. “Even the professors, with all their theories of the Cataclysm, never dreamed of contraterrene life. What do you s’pose they were like—those beings?”
Karen gracefully stirred her tea, and his voice went deep with a wondering awe.
“Y’know, when you think of those queer fragments of their shattered planet, drifting in space since before the time of men—it does something to you.” He looked sharply into her wide blue eyes. “How did you come to find them?”
“Cap’n Rob’s story.” She looked expectantly toward the door. “Quite a thriller, too. Mustn’t spoil it for him. You’ll have to wait till he gets here with the log.” She smiled graciously. “Tell me all about Panama City.”
Their orders came. McGee’s thick, smoking steak was duly set out at the third place, but still he didn’t come. Karen looked hopefully at the door, presenting a breath-taking profile as she murmured:
“I can’t imagine what—”
Then the flash of suspicion brought Anders to his feet. Heedless of his crashing chair and the startled waiter, he stared accusingly into the girl’s brightly innocent face. Her blue-eyed wonderment turned suspicion into certainty. Choking, he found no words.
“Bright boy, Paul!” Her red head nodded approvingly. “Knew you’d catch on.”
He gripped the edges of the little table, trembling with wrath. The girl merely smiled gayly up at him. Slowly he became aware of the uneasy waiter and the staring diners across the long room. His brown face flushed.
Still he found nothing to say, for the most of his anger was directed at his own stupidity. The trap had been so simple and transparent, and he had fallen so completely. Savagely, he thought he should have arrested McGee on the field.
“Be a sport, Paul!” Karen was laughing at him. “Sit down and eat your lunch. Cap’n Rob must be fifty thousand kilometers at space by now, and there’s nothing much that you can do about it.”
Grinning, he let the relieved waiter set up his chair.
“That wasn’t very nice, Kay.”
“Wasn’t it?” Baby-blue, her eyes were very innocent. “Perhaps it’s just because I used to work for Interplanet. All I know is what they taught me.” She smiled, too sweetly. “But the fane was legally cleared. We haven’t committed any crime. And your plate’s getting cold.”
He resisted the impulse to slap her.
“But it’s true, Kay?” He leaned urgently across the table. “You’ve really found artifacts from before the Cataclysm, and McGee has started after them? What are they? Writing? Carvings? Tools? Machines?”
She tossed her bright hair.
“Don’t ask silly questions. Paul.” Her eyes turned grave. “Drake. McGee & Drake are doing no contraterrene research for Interplanet. If you want to find out what we know, you’ll just have to join the firm.”
“Sorry, I can’t do that.”
“Then eat your lunch.” That infuriating sweetness left her smile. “Try to forgive me, and let’s talk about Panama City.”
Anders grinned and attacked his plate. He answered her questions about the theater season in Panama City—the critics had said that all the plays were bad, but he enjoyed them. And Karen wasn’t hard to forgive. He even paid cheerfully for the neglected steak that she had ordered for Rob McGee.
III.
Anders escorted Karen back to her platinum door. She had won a total victory, for Drake. McGee & Drake. For he knew that the Good-by fane, with her powerful new engine, was now far beyond pursuit. The riddle of the seetee artifacts would have to wait for answer.
Yet the tall Earthman, returning to the spaceport with long, impatient strides, found the mystery growing in his mind. The theories of the Cataclysm had always seemed remote and improbable abstractions. But today’s events had made that cosmic disaster immediate and real.
Two planets colliding! He made a dazed effort to picture the scene. The destroyed fifth planet had been an older world than Mars; only slightly larger, the German theorists believed. Perhaps it had carried ancient life—or the monuments and bones of life fulfilled and dead before men came on the younger Earth. Not even the German professors knew that.
The Invader had been slightly smaller. It was all of contraterrene matter—stuff of nuclear negatrons and orbital positrons, electrically opposite to the matter of Earth and the doomed fifth planet. Some unguessed freak of the cosmos must have flung it from its native seetee system, and not even the Germans knew what untold ages it had wandered the interstellar void.
It had carried seetee life. The von Falkenberg film was evidence of that. Anders was haunted with a disturbing memory of that too-narrow ramp, winding up inside the hollow golden needle, with its queerly too-high railing.
What had been the builders of that enigmatic contraterrene monument? He tried to picture the things that must have walked that footway and failed. He couldn’t even quite believe in contraterrene life.
Yet seetee, he knew, formed exactly the same series of elements and compounds as terrene matter, identical except for electrical sign. If the chemistry and the physics of it were identical, why not the biology?
A contraterrene man, he reflected, would never be aware of his plight. Not unless he happened to come into contact with normal matter. Anders wondered for a moment if any inhabitants of the Invader had indeed survived the crash. That would be a grisly predicament—to be lost amid planets whose soil and water and very air meant flaming annihilation.
“Nonsense!”
Anders was a practical man. His strenuous profession had left him little time or inclination for such fantastic speculations. Such wild hypotheses were better left for the German academicians. He reached the spaceport and took a Guard tender for the base on Pallas II.
On that tiny fortress moon—one of the six terraformed rocks that had been towed into a wheeling ring of forts and stations about the minor planet—he found the Challenge waiting for his command.
