Collected Short Fiction, page 530
“How do you figure that, Nicky?” Jenkins felt his lean fists clench and open, as he groped for words to shatter his uncle’s bland skepticism.
“The loss of those tools and weapons and Lazarene’s know-how is just like a seetee shock to all the planets,” he said desperately. “They don’t feel it yet, but death is in them. The seeds of contraterrene war are planted.”
Brand murmured easily: “An ingenious analogy, Nicky.”
“Those raiders fired a seetee shot at Freedonia.” Jenkins drove grimly on. “That means they aren’t interested in the real, creative power of seetee. What they want is control of the thorium and uranium reserves.”
His uncle nodded, smiling.
“An excellent political analysis, Nicky.”
“But the Brand transmitter can prevent war for those fissionable elements,” Jenkins insisted. “With free power everywhere, war for power can’t exist.”
“Quote,” Brand murmured sardonically. “From my own book, I believe.”
“It was true when you wrote it.” Jenkins tried to lower his voice. “It’s still true. We must finish the Freedonia plant, before that unknown enemy is ready to strike.” Calmly, Brand sipped his drink. “I’m afraid that might be difficult.”
“Our installations weren’t damaged by the shot,” Jenkins assured him. “I know the whole rock is poisoned with radio-isotopes, but the machines are intact and the fuel bins are full. All we need is the condulloy that Mr. Drake ordered, to complete the transmitter.”
Smiling regretfully, Brand shook his lean, impressive head.
“I promised Drake that metal,” he agreed. “But condulloy costs two millions a ton, and we must buy it slowly. The market can’t absorb—”
Staring hard at the candid, ruddy face of Brand, Jenkins broke in abruptly. “I understand you have already bought three hundred tons of condulloy for Freedonia.” Brand’s lean jaw sagged, and his gray eyes narrowed.
“How do you know that?”
Jenkins shook his head.
“You win, Nicky.” Brand chuckled cheerfully. “I believe you do have the makings of a financial engineer, after all.” He rose lazily. “Would you like to see the metal?” Jenkins nodded, watchfully.
Tall in the magnificence of gold-and-purple dress pajamas, Brand moved deliberately to the mahogany bar. Swinging it away from the wall, he revealed a hidden doorway. Jenkins followed him down the narrow steps beyond.
The aluminum segments of a paragravity loading tube were coiled like a monstrous serpent in the rock-hewn tunnel below. Brand knelt, beyond it, to work a combination lock. He swung open a heavy steel door, and stepped back dramatically. Jenkins peered wonderingly into a wide steel vault, piled high with silver-gray ingots.
Trembling, Jenkins, turned to Brand.
“If you had this metal, he demanded savagely, “why didn’t you keep your promise?”
“I’ll tell you,” Brand murmured. “Come on back to the den.”
He locked the massive door again. Shaken with a bitter amazement, Jenkins followed him back past the retracted loading tube to the pleasant room above. He swung the bar back over the doorway, and carefully mixed himself another drink.
Jenkins waited, in a sick daze of apprehension.
“Cheer up, Nicky.” Brand took an easy-chair. “Better have a drink,” he advised sardonically. “Because you’re going to need one.”
Grimly, Jenkins shook his head. “I like you, Nicky,” Brand went on. “I feel you’ve earned my trust. That’s why I’m going to tell you the truth about Seetee, Inc.”
“What about Seetee?”
“You’re an excellent spatial engineer,” Brand said, “but you don’t seem to know the principles of financial and political engineering. You don’t appear to understand that our firm is a rather paradoxical enterprise. While it is chartered and licensed to do contraterrene research, the first condition of its-existence is the continued failure of all such experiments.”
Jenkins stiffened to a bleak astonishment.
“Old Jim Drake would never understand that,” Brand continued, “though I tried to tell him. He insisted on going ahead as if he actually intended to complete the transmitter and deluge the planets with free power.”
“He did,” Jenkins whispered. “Why not?”
Smiling tolerantly, Brand finished his drink.
“Because the Fifth Freedom would ruin Seetee, as surely as it would Interplanet.”
“Then what’s the purpose of the corporation?”
“Now we’re getting places, Nicky.” Brand nodded his dark, distinguished head, approvingly. “All you need is an engineer’s understanding of the economic and political forces acting in the Mandate, and you’ll see the necessary answers as clearly as I do.”
Jenkins shook his head stubbornly.
“We might begin a generation ago, with the Spatial War.” Brand lighted a fat blond cigar. “History says the Allied Planets won. History, as usual, is wrong.”
“But the planets got their freedom.”
“No more than Interplanet had already granted them,” Brand retorted. “They were all still dependent on power metals from the terrene drift, and Interplanet played on their own jealousies to make them accept the Mandate for the asteroids—to referee the cold war that Interplanet is slowly winning.”
“But free power would stop that war.”
“It might.” Brand nodded tolerantly. “Except that no major planet is willing to accept the economic and political impacts of contraterrene power—nobody with a stake in the status quo wants that kind of seetee shock!”
Jenkins winced from that phrase. “But seetee weapons are in a different category,” he broke in bitterly. “Every planet has been pouring out money to get them, and one planet bought Lazarene—”
“You’re jumping ahead of our story,” Brand reproved him gently. “Four years ago, when I came to the Mandate in search of a profitable promotion, that was the situation I found—deadlock!”
Brand exhaled pale smoke.
“None of the planets was winning that cold war, or making any progress with seetee research. The engineers were killing themselves before they learned any secrets for the spies to steal. Drake—the only man with any real know-how—was on trial for illicit experiment.” Brand chuckled infectiously. “What a situation!”
Jenkins stiffened bitterly.
“Made to order for a bit of expert financial and political engineering.” Brand gestured expansively. “Those stupid bureaucrats were about to jail the only man able to work the drift. I saw the opportunity, and Gast helped make the arrangements.”
“I—” Jenkins swallowed hard. “I don’t get this!”
“Just a bit of engineering,” murmured Brand. “Intelligent analysis and logical use of existing forces. All the planets wanted seetee knowhow. Old Drake had it. So I founded Seetee, Inc.”
“You don’t mean—” Jenkins shook his head unbelievingly. “You didn’t sell Drake’s seetee technology.”
Brand nodded urbanely.
“But not in any very useful form,” he explained. “I processed Drake’s confidential progress reports to remove any really valuable hints, and then disposed of them through Adam Gast to the various commissioners—always arranging to let each man feel, for a price, that he was getting something unique.”
Jenkins stumbled to his feet, lean hands knotting into quivering fists. He wanted to smash the red, hollowcheeked, sardonic face of the big man in the chair, but Brand merely grinned.
“I know exactly how you feel, Nicky,” he said sympathetically, “because I went through the same thing myself, twenty years ago. The trouble is what they teach you in school.”
Jenkins let his fists relax, still breathing hard.
“They make everything seem so easy,” Brand went on. “They teach you astrogation and nucleonics and paragravitics and everything else in spatial engineering. You think you can make all the planets over into scientific wonderlands. But you’re wrong, Nicky.”
Brand’s red, rawboned face, for an instant, seemed sadly wistful.
“Because they don’t teach you practical politics or real economics. The technical problems are easy, but they don’t teach you human nature. And that’s the real barrier to the sort of wonderland that young engineers dream about, Nicky. The blind ignorance and crushing stupidity and clutching greed and sheer cowardice of human beings!”
Brand gestured largely with the dead cigar.
“That’s the field before you, Nicky. You must learn to analyze those human forces, as I do, and exploit them efficiently. You’ll find that field far more profitable than ordinary spatial engineering!”
Jenkins gulped.
“Look at my own career,” Brand urged him smoothly, “As a young fool, idealistic as you are, I proposed an honest effort to establish the Fifth Freedom. All I got was my name on a black list. But now, founding Seetee for any other purpose, I’ve become a billionaire.”
Jenkins clenched his fists again, to try to stop his voice from quivering.
“So the whole firm is a fraud?”
“I don’t like the word,” Brand protested amiably. “And it doesn’t really fit. When you steal a billion dollars, it becomes very respectable high finance. Our investors appear to believe that we’ll soon be selling power to all the planets, even though common sense ought to tell them that any real success would break the corporation.”
Jenkins sat down again. He caught his breath and tried to think. Staring unbelievingly at the lean, lazy stranger in the other chair, he tried in vain to understand him.
“I’m not that bad, Nicky,” Brand protested softly. “The most respectable men in the Mandate are our partners in this scheme. The first block of Seetee shares was bought by the branch manager of Interplanet—”
“Tell me this!” Jenkins broke in harshly. “If you didn’t ever mean to build the transmitter, why have you bought that condulloy?”
“For emergencies.” Brand grinned innocently. “It’s a convenient form of wealth, compact, portable, anonymous.”
Jenkins swayed, biting his lip. “Something else,” he rasped. “If you were selling us Out, which planet would be the highest bidder? Whose man is Lazarene?”
“Please, Nicky!” Brand’s rugged, honest-seeming face looked hurt. “Even if the cruel realities of life bruise your tender idealism, you ought at least to credit me with too much intelligence to sell seetee weapons to any power.”
“Somebody bought, them,” Jenkins rapped flatly. “Somebody is about to open a seetee war. Whatever you’re done—can’t you see that the only way to stop it is to start the Brand transmitter?”
“You’re naive, Nicky.” Brand sighed regretfully. “I’m afraid you haven’t been listening. The raid on Freedonia is likely to precipitate a grave interplanetary crisis, I admit. But the practical answer is no romantic experiment with any high-sounding Fifth Freedom. The real answer, soundly based in political and economic engineering, is our merger plan.”
Jenkins blinked from speechless outrage.
“Don’t you see the balance of forces, Nicky? And don’t you understand that the mere threat of seetee war enormously increases the potential value of our shares?” Brand looked at his watch. “Now you really must excuse me—Gast will be waiting.”
“But you can’t—” Jenkins staggered weakly upright, lean arms lifted in a shocked gesture. “You can’t waste time cooking up another crooked scheme, while the peace of the planets is hanging in the balance. Let me have your yacht and eighty tons of that condulloy—”
Brand was chuckling softly.
“You’re out of your head, Nicky: No wonder, I suppose, after all you’ve been through. Ask Amador for a sleeping pill if you need it.” Brand was at the door. “Good night, Nicky. I think you’ll feel better in the morning.”
XI.
The world had fallen apart.
Even the stern verdict of Dr. Worringer had not shattered Jenkins utterly. The bright code of the spatial engineers had maintained his purpose and his courage, even when he knew that he was dying.
Now, however, the blandly sardonic words of his famous uncle had leveled everything. That fine tradition was smeared and trampled. If Martin Brand, the greatest of all. the spatial engineers, could calmly confess such monstrous frauds—what was the use of anything?
Jenkins didn’t need a sleeping pill. His purpose was turned to hollow mockery and his hope was broken. He staggered back to the empty splendor of the teak-paneled bedroom, and meekly let the swarthy servant waiting help untie the knotted sash, already reeling with sleep.
He woke early. The sun was gone again, and the towering ranges beyond his windows loomed gray and immense in cold starlight. The mansion was very quiet. He sat up in the huge bed, remembering that he had an urgent job to do.
It took him a moment to be sure that Worringer’s sentence was anything more than an evil dream, because the mechanism of his body had reacted while he slept, against fatigue and despair. The seed of death was planted in him, but still he felt quite well.
Hope and purpose, too, had somehow knitted back again. Sitting on the edge of the bed in the dark, he began to think of ways to remove eighty tons of condulloy from his uncle’s secret vault to poisoned Freedonia.
That appeared remotely possible until he padded silently to open his door and peer down the wide hall toward his uncle’s den. A dark man sat at a little table there, polishing silver with his hands but sweeping the hall with black, narrowed eyes. That guard saw Jenkins, and stiffened silently.
Jenkins closed the door.
Martin Brand was evidently well prepared to defend his precious hoard. These swarthy men were doubtless loyal, and Brand was armed and armored with his influence and his great wealth. His genial suavity, Jenkins sensed, concealed a ruthless resolution.
Restlessly, Jenkins dressed. The time was nearly six, but still the mansion was quiet. He wondered how long such peace could last, since the raid on Freedonia; and a pang of sharp unease made him turn on the little photophone receiver by his bed, twisting the knobs that moved the mirrors and tuning prisms on the roof above, hunting a news broadcast.
He got the petulant drone of a recorded voice on Jupiter Light, reading statistics to prove the accomplishment of the newest ten-year plan on Ganymede in six years, and indignantly denying capitalistic charges that slave labor had been used in the Ionian thorium mines.
He got Luna Light, and a singing commercial urging listeners to take a trip on the Seetee ship, to buy a suite on Easy Street—Twisting the knob impatiently, he caught a blare of dance music, which ceased abruptly.
“Ladies and gentlemen, we interrupt this broadcast to bring you an important official announcement.” The. speaker sounded too silkily suave. “This is Mandate Light, the voice of the asteroids, serving your government. And there’s no cause for panic!”
Jenkins caught his breath, leaning over the instrument.
“Here are the facts,” the buttervoiced announcer went on. “The five commissioners, representing the four major planets, formally deny the vicious rumors which have been circulated tonight by members of the outlawed Free Space Party. Lies—stupid lies!”
Jenkins felt a cold prickling along his spine.
“You can relax,” the suave announcer cooed, “because there is no hostile fleet, from Mars or any other planet, operating in the space of the Mandate. There is no truth to reports of sabotage in the Pallasport terraforming unit and the bases of the High Space Guard. There has been no fighting on Obania. And there’s certainly no danger, the commissioners all agree, of seetee war.”
Jenkins turned numb and breathless and ill.
“The commissioners wish to be most emphatic about that,” the oily voice insisted. “Long research, conducted by various planets, has only established the impracticability of utilizing the contraterrene drift for military purposes. So we can all relax!”
The announcer chuckled cheerfully.
“Forget the rumors,” urged the sugared voice. “They are only intended to divide and disrupt the government. They won’t succeed. The High Space Guard has already been ordered to arrest all suspected sympathizers with the Free Space Party.
“That illicit organization has always opposed the Mandate and foolishly demanded freedom for the asteroids. Its agents have been implicated in many acts of violence. The government is now sternly resolved to stamp it out forever.
“So there’s no reason for any alarm, ladies and gentlemen. Ignore the rumors you may hear—and keep your photophones tuned to Mandate Light, for the latest authentic news and the best in recreation. We now resume the interrupted dance music of Stony Joe Stone and his Rock Rats, with the selection—”
Jenkins snapped off the instrument and stumbled dazedly to the wide windows. The announcer’s voice had seemed too sweet and sure. Only a desperate crisis, he thought, could have got the commissioners out of bed at this time of day to issue such a statement.
Seetee shock had already struck the Mandate!
Perhaps it could be cured with power from the Brand transmitter, but his own time was running out. He opened a window and stepped out on the costly lawn and filled his lungs with the Tor’s crisp air. Stretching his lean body, he turned his hands in the white starlight and swallowed carefully.
The dark seed in him hadn’t sprouted yet. He still felt good. His flesh was strong and firm. There was no rawness in his throat—not yet. But his last few days were running like sand through his fingers, and still he could discover no reasonable means of getting back to Freedonia with eighty tons of condulloy.
The tiny spaceport lay above the dark lawn, the slender nose of the Adonis standing tall against the misty splendor of the Magellenic Clouds. He scouted toward it innocently, strolling silently under the shadow of the golden eaves, until a soft voice stopped him.
“Please, señor!” Turning with a nervous start, he discovered the lean servant, Amador, close behind him. “Please don’t risk your life.” The dark man smiled apologetically. “The good patron would be offended if we allowed you to be killed.”
“Killed?” whispered Jenkins. “How?”
“The loss of those tools and weapons and Lazarene’s know-how is just like a seetee shock to all the planets,” he said desperately. “They don’t feel it yet, but death is in them. The seeds of contraterrene war are planted.”
Brand murmured easily: “An ingenious analogy, Nicky.”
“Those raiders fired a seetee shot at Freedonia.” Jenkins drove grimly on. “That means they aren’t interested in the real, creative power of seetee. What they want is control of the thorium and uranium reserves.”
His uncle nodded, smiling.
“An excellent political analysis, Nicky.”
“But the Brand transmitter can prevent war for those fissionable elements,” Jenkins insisted. “With free power everywhere, war for power can’t exist.”
“Quote,” Brand murmured sardonically. “From my own book, I believe.”
“It was true when you wrote it.” Jenkins tried to lower his voice. “It’s still true. We must finish the Freedonia plant, before that unknown enemy is ready to strike.” Calmly, Brand sipped his drink. “I’m afraid that might be difficult.”
“Our installations weren’t damaged by the shot,” Jenkins assured him. “I know the whole rock is poisoned with radio-isotopes, but the machines are intact and the fuel bins are full. All we need is the condulloy that Mr. Drake ordered, to complete the transmitter.”
Smiling regretfully, Brand shook his lean, impressive head.
“I promised Drake that metal,” he agreed. “But condulloy costs two millions a ton, and we must buy it slowly. The market can’t absorb—”
Staring hard at the candid, ruddy face of Brand, Jenkins broke in abruptly. “I understand you have already bought three hundred tons of condulloy for Freedonia.” Brand’s lean jaw sagged, and his gray eyes narrowed.
“How do you know that?”
Jenkins shook his head.
“You win, Nicky.” Brand chuckled cheerfully. “I believe you do have the makings of a financial engineer, after all.” He rose lazily. “Would you like to see the metal?” Jenkins nodded, watchfully.
Tall in the magnificence of gold-and-purple dress pajamas, Brand moved deliberately to the mahogany bar. Swinging it away from the wall, he revealed a hidden doorway. Jenkins followed him down the narrow steps beyond.
The aluminum segments of a paragravity loading tube were coiled like a monstrous serpent in the rock-hewn tunnel below. Brand knelt, beyond it, to work a combination lock. He swung open a heavy steel door, and stepped back dramatically. Jenkins peered wonderingly into a wide steel vault, piled high with silver-gray ingots.
Trembling, Jenkins, turned to Brand.
“If you had this metal, he demanded savagely, “why didn’t you keep your promise?”
“I’ll tell you,” Brand murmured. “Come on back to the den.”
He locked the massive door again. Shaken with a bitter amazement, Jenkins followed him back past the retracted loading tube to the pleasant room above. He swung the bar back over the doorway, and carefully mixed himself another drink.
Jenkins waited, in a sick daze of apprehension.
“Cheer up, Nicky.” Brand took an easy-chair. “Better have a drink,” he advised sardonically. “Because you’re going to need one.”
Grimly, Jenkins shook his head. “I like you, Nicky,” Brand went on. “I feel you’ve earned my trust. That’s why I’m going to tell you the truth about Seetee, Inc.”
“What about Seetee?”
“You’re an excellent spatial engineer,” Brand said, “but you don’t seem to know the principles of financial and political engineering. You don’t appear to understand that our firm is a rather paradoxical enterprise. While it is chartered and licensed to do contraterrene research, the first condition of its-existence is the continued failure of all such experiments.”
Jenkins stiffened to a bleak astonishment.
“Old Jim Drake would never understand that,” Brand continued, “though I tried to tell him. He insisted on going ahead as if he actually intended to complete the transmitter and deluge the planets with free power.”
“He did,” Jenkins whispered. “Why not?”
Smiling tolerantly, Brand finished his drink.
“Because the Fifth Freedom would ruin Seetee, as surely as it would Interplanet.”
“Then what’s the purpose of the corporation?”
“Now we’re getting places, Nicky.” Brand nodded his dark, distinguished head, approvingly. “All you need is an engineer’s understanding of the economic and political forces acting in the Mandate, and you’ll see the necessary answers as clearly as I do.”
Jenkins shook his head stubbornly.
“We might begin a generation ago, with the Spatial War.” Brand lighted a fat blond cigar. “History says the Allied Planets won. History, as usual, is wrong.”
“But the planets got their freedom.”
“No more than Interplanet had already granted them,” Brand retorted. “They were all still dependent on power metals from the terrene drift, and Interplanet played on their own jealousies to make them accept the Mandate for the asteroids—to referee the cold war that Interplanet is slowly winning.”
“But free power would stop that war.”
“It might.” Brand nodded tolerantly. “Except that no major planet is willing to accept the economic and political impacts of contraterrene power—nobody with a stake in the status quo wants that kind of seetee shock!”
Jenkins winced from that phrase. “But seetee weapons are in a different category,” he broke in bitterly. “Every planet has been pouring out money to get them, and one planet bought Lazarene—”
“You’re jumping ahead of our story,” Brand reproved him gently. “Four years ago, when I came to the Mandate in search of a profitable promotion, that was the situation I found—deadlock!”
Brand exhaled pale smoke.
“None of the planets was winning that cold war, or making any progress with seetee research. The engineers were killing themselves before they learned any secrets for the spies to steal. Drake—the only man with any real know-how—was on trial for illicit experiment.” Brand chuckled infectiously. “What a situation!”
Jenkins stiffened bitterly.
“Made to order for a bit of expert financial and political engineering.” Brand gestured expansively. “Those stupid bureaucrats were about to jail the only man able to work the drift. I saw the opportunity, and Gast helped make the arrangements.”
“I—” Jenkins swallowed hard. “I don’t get this!”
“Just a bit of engineering,” murmured Brand. “Intelligent analysis and logical use of existing forces. All the planets wanted seetee knowhow. Old Drake had it. So I founded Seetee, Inc.”
“You don’t mean—” Jenkins shook his head unbelievingly. “You didn’t sell Drake’s seetee technology.”
Brand nodded urbanely.
“But not in any very useful form,” he explained. “I processed Drake’s confidential progress reports to remove any really valuable hints, and then disposed of them through Adam Gast to the various commissioners—always arranging to let each man feel, for a price, that he was getting something unique.”
Jenkins stumbled to his feet, lean hands knotting into quivering fists. He wanted to smash the red, hollowcheeked, sardonic face of the big man in the chair, but Brand merely grinned.
“I know exactly how you feel, Nicky,” he said sympathetically, “because I went through the same thing myself, twenty years ago. The trouble is what they teach you in school.”
Jenkins let his fists relax, still breathing hard.
“They make everything seem so easy,” Brand went on. “They teach you astrogation and nucleonics and paragravitics and everything else in spatial engineering. You think you can make all the planets over into scientific wonderlands. But you’re wrong, Nicky.”
Brand’s red, rawboned face, for an instant, seemed sadly wistful.
“Because they don’t teach you practical politics or real economics. The technical problems are easy, but they don’t teach you human nature. And that’s the real barrier to the sort of wonderland that young engineers dream about, Nicky. The blind ignorance and crushing stupidity and clutching greed and sheer cowardice of human beings!”
Brand gestured largely with the dead cigar.
“That’s the field before you, Nicky. You must learn to analyze those human forces, as I do, and exploit them efficiently. You’ll find that field far more profitable than ordinary spatial engineering!”
Jenkins gulped.
“Look at my own career,” Brand urged him smoothly, “As a young fool, idealistic as you are, I proposed an honest effort to establish the Fifth Freedom. All I got was my name on a black list. But now, founding Seetee for any other purpose, I’ve become a billionaire.”
Jenkins clenched his fists again, to try to stop his voice from quivering.
“So the whole firm is a fraud?”
“I don’t like the word,” Brand protested amiably. “And it doesn’t really fit. When you steal a billion dollars, it becomes very respectable high finance. Our investors appear to believe that we’ll soon be selling power to all the planets, even though common sense ought to tell them that any real success would break the corporation.”
Jenkins sat down again. He caught his breath and tried to think. Staring unbelievingly at the lean, lazy stranger in the other chair, he tried in vain to understand him.
“I’m not that bad, Nicky,” Brand protested softly. “The most respectable men in the Mandate are our partners in this scheme. The first block of Seetee shares was bought by the branch manager of Interplanet—”
“Tell me this!” Jenkins broke in harshly. “If you didn’t ever mean to build the transmitter, why have you bought that condulloy?”
“For emergencies.” Brand grinned innocently. “It’s a convenient form of wealth, compact, portable, anonymous.”
Jenkins swayed, biting his lip. “Something else,” he rasped. “If you were selling us Out, which planet would be the highest bidder? Whose man is Lazarene?”
“Please, Nicky!” Brand’s rugged, honest-seeming face looked hurt. “Even if the cruel realities of life bruise your tender idealism, you ought at least to credit me with too much intelligence to sell seetee weapons to any power.”
“Somebody bought, them,” Jenkins rapped flatly. “Somebody is about to open a seetee war. Whatever you’re done—can’t you see that the only way to stop it is to start the Brand transmitter?”
“You’re naive, Nicky.” Brand sighed regretfully. “I’m afraid you haven’t been listening. The raid on Freedonia is likely to precipitate a grave interplanetary crisis, I admit. But the practical answer is no romantic experiment with any high-sounding Fifth Freedom. The real answer, soundly based in political and economic engineering, is our merger plan.”
Jenkins blinked from speechless outrage.
“Don’t you see the balance of forces, Nicky? And don’t you understand that the mere threat of seetee war enormously increases the potential value of our shares?” Brand looked at his watch. “Now you really must excuse me—Gast will be waiting.”
“But you can’t—” Jenkins staggered weakly upright, lean arms lifted in a shocked gesture. “You can’t waste time cooking up another crooked scheme, while the peace of the planets is hanging in the balance. Let me have your yacht and eighty tons of that condulloy—”
Brand was chuckling softly.
“You’re out of your head, Nicky: No wonder, I suppose, after all you’ve been through. Ask Amador for a sleeping pill if you need it.” Brand was at the door. “Good night, Nicky. I think you’ll feel better in the morning.”
XI.
The world had fallen apart.
Even the stern verdict of Dr. Worringer had not shattered Jenkins utterly. The bright code of the spatial engineers had maintained his purpose and his courage, even when he knew that he was dying.
Now, however, the blandly sardonic words of his famous uncle had leveled everything. That fine tradition was smeared and trampled. If Martin Brand, the greatest of all. the spatial engineers, could calmly confess such monstrous frauds—what was the use of anything?
Jenkins didn’t need a sleeping pill. His purpose was turned to hollow mockery and his hope was broken. He staggered back to the empty splendor of the teak-paneled bedroom, and meekly let the swarthy servant waiting help untie the knotted sash, already reeling with sleep.
He woke early. The sun was gone again, and the towering ranges beyond his windows loomed gray and immense in cold starlight. The mansion was very quiet. He sat up in the huge bed, remembering that he had an urgent job to do.
It took him a moment to be sure that Worringer’s sentence was anything more than an evil dream, because the mechanism of his body had reacted while he slept, against fatigue and despair. The seed of death was planted in him, but still he felt quite well.
Hope and purpose, too, had somehow knitted back again. Sitting on the edge of the bed in the dark, he began to think of ways to remove eighty tons of condulloy from his uncle’s secret vault to poisoned Freedonia.
That appeared remotely possible until he padded silently to open his door and peer down the wide hall toward his uncle’s den. A dark man sat at a little table there, polishing silver with his hands but sweeping the hall with black, narrowed eyes. That guard saw Jenkins, and stiffened silently.
Jenkins closed the door.
Martin Brand was evidently well prepared to defend his precious hoard. These swarthy men were doubtless loyal, and Brand was armed and armored with his influence and his great wealth. His genial suavity, Jenkins sensed, concealed a ruthless resolution.
Restlessly, Jenkins dressed. The time was nearly six, but still the mansion was quiet. He wondered how long such peace could last, since the raid on Freedonia; and a pang of sharp unease made him turn on the little photophone receiver by his bed, twisting the knobs that moved the mirrors and tuning prisms on the roof above, hunting a news broadcast.
He got the petulant drone of a recorded voice on Jupiter Light, reading statistics to prove the accomplishment of the newest ten-year plan on Ganymede in six years, and indignantly denying capitalistic charges that slave labor had been used in the Ionian thorium mines.
He got Luna Light, and a singing commercial urging listeners to take a trip on the Seetee ship, to buy a suite on Easy Street—Twisting the knob impatiently, he caught a blare of dance music, which ceased abruptly.
“Ladies and gentlemen, we interrupt this broadcast to bring you an important official announcement.” The. speaker sounded too silkily suave. “This is Mandate Light, the voice of the asteroids, serving your government. And there’s no cause for panic!”
Jenkins caught his breath, leaning over the instrument.
“Here are the facts,” the buttervoiced announcer went on. “The five commissioners, representing the four major planets, formally deny the vicious rumors which have been circulated tonight by members of the outlawed Free Space Party. Lies—stupid lies!”
Jenkins felt a cold prickling along his spine.
“You can relax,” the suave announcer cooed, “because there is no hostile fleet, from Mars or any other planet, operating in the space of the Mandate. There is no truth to reports of sabotage in the Pallasport terraforming unit and the bases of the High Space Guard. There has been no fighting on Obania. And there’s certainly no danger, the commissioners all agree, of seetee war.”
Jenkins turned numb and breathless and ill.
“The commissioners wish to be most emphatic about that,” the oily voice insisted. “Long research, conducted by various planets, has only established the impracticability of utilizing the contraterrene drift for military purposes. So we can all relax!”
The announcer chuckled cheerfully.
“Forget the rumors,” urged the sugared voice. “They are only intended to divide and disrupt the government. They won’t succeed. The High Space Guard has already been ordered to arrest all suspected sympathizers with the Free Space Party.
“That illicit organization has always opposed the Mandate and foolishly demanded freedom for the asteroids. Its agents have been implicated in many acts of violence. The government is now sternly resolved to stamp it out forever.
“So there’s no reason for any alarm, ladies and gentlemen. Ignore the rumors you may hear—and keep your photophones tuned to Mandate Light, for the latest authentic news and the best in recreation. We now resume the interrupted dance music of Stony Joe Stone and his Rock Rats, with the selection—”
Jenkins snapped off the instrument and stumbled dazedly to the wide windows. The announcer’s voice had seemed too sweet and sure. Only a desperate crisis, he thought, could have got the commissioners out of bed at this time of day to issue such a statement.
Seetee shock had already struck the Mandate!
Perhaps it could be cured with power from the Brand transmitter, but his own time was running out. He opened a window and stepped out on the costly lawn and filled his lungs with the Tor’s crisp air. Stretching his lean body, he turned his hands in the white starlight and swallowed carefully.
The dark seed in him hadn’t sprouted yet. He still felt good. His flesh was strong and firm. There was no rawness in his throat—not yet. But his last few days were running like sand through his fingers, and still he could discover no reasonable means of getting back to Freedonia with eighty tons of condulloy.
The tiny spaceport lay above the dark lawn, the slender nose of the Adonis standing tall against the misty splendor of the Magellenic Clouds. He scouted toward it innocently, strolling silently under the shadow of the golden eaves, until a soft voice stopped him.
“Please, señor!” Turning with a nervous start, he discovered the lean servant, Amador, close behind him. “Please don’t risk your life.” The dark man smiled apologetically. “The good patron would be offended if we allowed you to be killed.”
“Killed?” whispered Jenkins. “How?”
