Queen of Zamba, page 2
part #1 of Viagens Series
Then he took Alexandra Garshin Fallon out to dinner again, saying: "Last date, chum."
"So soon?"
"Yep; I'd rather wait till a later ship, but I'm only the third engineer of my soul; Joe Batruni's the captain. I drop you right after we sheathe our fangs and go home to pack."
"Let me come around to help you."
"No. Sorry." He smiled to counteract her hurt look. "I can't, you know; might give away trade secrets."
"Oh," she said.
He knew that wasn't the real reason. The reason was that he was falling in love with her, and he was not sure he could keep his mind on packing if—
Just as well he was going, he thought. The idea wormed into his mind that it would be so easy to fail to find Fallon and his light-o'-love, and then come back and have Alexandra to himself— No! While he didn't consider himself a Galahad of purity, he still had his code. And although he had witnessed most of the delinquencies of mankind in the course of his career, and had partaken of some of them, he was still a bit of a fanatic on the subject of wife-stealing. With reason.
He laid out on his bed one Webley & Scott six-millimeter twenty-shot automatic pistol, one blackjack, one set of brass knuckles, one pair of handcuffs, one pocket camera, one WF standard police fingerprint recording apparatus, one pencil flashlight, one two-way pocket radio set, one portable wire-recorder set, one armor vest, one infrared scanning and receiving apparatus—pocket size—one set of capsules containing various gases and explosives, which would accomplish anything from putting an audience to sleep to blowing a safe, one box of knockout drops, a pick-lock, a supply of cigars, a notebook, and pills: vitamin, mineral, longevity, headache, constipation, cold—and ammunition for all this equipment: HV cartridges, camera film, notebook fillers, and so on. The most valuable of the equipment he stowed in his pockets until his suit began to look lumpy. The rest he packed.
Alexandra came out to Waddon to see him off, saying: "I wish I were going with you."
He supposed she did not know she was turning the knife in the wound, so he smiled amiably. "Almost wish you were, too. Wouldn't do, of course. But I'll think of you. If you get tired of waiting around for Tony and me, you can always go in trance or—" He meant—ditch Fallon and go her way, but thought better of saying so.
"Speck in my eye." She dabbed at the optic with a handkerchief a little larger than a postage stamp. "Gone now."
"Look here, could I have that handkerchief?"
"What for?"
"Why—uh—just to take along." He grinned to hide his embarrassment. "In spring, when woods are getting green, I'll try and tell you what I mean. In summer, when the days are long, perhaps you'll understand the song."
"Why Victor, you're sentimental!"
"Uh-huh, but speak it not in Gath. It would ruin my professional reputation." They shook hands formally, Hasselborg finding it hard to keep up his pose of guileless geniality. "Good-by, Alexandra."
The Barcelona plane whizzed down the catapult strip and off the field in a cloud of smoke.
-
Chapter II
While Hasselborg pondered the case on his way to Barcelona, it occurred to him that the fugitive pair might have resorted to some human version of the old shell game, like arranging with another pair of passengers to switch identities after they got to Pluto and then returning to Earth or one of the other inner planets under their assumed names. They might get away with such a dodge, because their prints would not be checked once they had left Barcelona. Having no wish to spend years chasing them through the Galaxy as if they were a pair of rather unholy grails, he looked up the investigating firm of Montejo and Durruti in Barcelona and arranged for them to cover all incoming spaceships until further notice.
Then he sent a last-minute post card to Alexandra—not exactly a professional thing to do, he told himself, but he might be dead before he returned—and boarded the Coronado for Pluto.
There were nine passengers besides Victor Hasselborg, who found himself bunking with one Chuen Liao-dz. They were all squeezed into the little honeycomb of passenger compartments in the nose, below the control compartments and above the cargo and the vast mass of fuel and machinery that occupied nine-tenths of the craft.
After an ineffective effort to unpack his belongings at the same time that Chuen unpacked his—without disclosing the professional equipment—Hasselborg said: "Look here, chum, suppose I lie on the bunk while you unpack; then we trade off?"
"Thank you," said Chuen, a short, thick, dish-faced man with coarse black hair turning gray. "You turn crank on the end of your bunk, and the end comes up like a hospital bed. What's your line, Mr. Hasselborg?"
"Insurance investigator. What's yours?"
"Ah—I'm economic official to the Chinese government. A very dull person, I assure you. First trip?"
"Uh-huh."
"Then—ah—I suppose you know your instructions for takeoff?"
"Sure. Lie down when I hear the warning bell, et cetera."
"That's right. You'll find exercise compartment down the passageway to the right. Better sign up for one hour out of every twenty-four, subjective time. It'll keep you from going mad from boredom."
That proved no overstatement. With every cubic centimeter accounted for, there were no ports to look out of and no deck space for strolling. Even the minute passenger list ate in two shifts in the tiny compartment that served as lounge the rest of the time for whichever half of the passengers had been lucky enough to preempt the available seats.
When the ship had risen above the plane of the ecliptic and had cut its acceleration back to 1.25 G, Hasselborg played cards, pulled on weights in the exercise room—just big enough to let him do so without barking his knuckles—and pried into the lives of his fellow passengers. Some proved garrulous and transparent; others opaque and taciturn. He found his roommate, oddly enough, to be loquacious and opaque at the same time. When Chuen was asked what official business he was on, he would reply, vaguely:
"Ah—just looking into possibilities of high-grade imports and exports. No, nothing definite; I shall have to decide on the ground. Only goods of highest quality for a given mass can be handled, you know—"
Hasselborg decided, more in fun than in earnest, that Chuen was really a plain-clothes agent either of China or of the W.F. If such were the case, however, it would do no good to say: "See here, old man, aren't you a cop?" One of the more dismal facts about the profession was that you had to spend so much time playing dumb.
-
This monotonous half-life, bounded by bare bulkheads and punctuated by bells that reminded the sluggish appetite that the time had come for another meal, continued for days until the warning bell told him they were nearing Pluto. Hours later the pressure of deceleration let up and the loud-speaker in the wall said: "Passageiros sai, por favor!"
Suitcase in hand, Hasselborg followed Chuen down the inclosed ramp that had been attached to the ship's side. As usual there was nothing to see; space travel was no game for a claustrophobe. The ramp moved slightly with the weight of the people walking down it.
An air lock shut behind him, and a young man sat at a desk checking off names on a register. Hasselborg handed over his passport, saying:
"Tenha a bondade, senhor, to let me speak to the head passenger fiscal."
Then, while the inspector went through his bag, Hasselborg identified himself to the head passenger agent, a Brazzy like most of the Viagens people. Hasselborg reflected that, public and internationally-owned corporation though the Viagens was supposed to be, with all jobs strictly civil service, somehow the citizens of the world's leading power always got a disproportionate share of them.
The agent politely insisted on speaking English to Hasselborg, who, not to be outdone, insisted on speaking the Brazilo-Portuguese of the spaceways to the agent. Hasselborg, giving up the contest first, asked:
"I believe two passengers named Fallon and Batruni came in on the Juruá, didn't they?"
"Let me think—I can check the register. Was not the Batruni that beautiful girl with the dark hair?"
Hasselborg showed a photograph to the agent, who said: "Ah, yes, that is her. O Glória-Pátri, such a woman! What did you wish with her?"
Hasselborg grinned. "Not what you're thinking, Senhor Jorge. Is she still here?"
"No."
"Thought not. Where'd she go?"
The agent looked wary. "Perhaps if you could tell me of the circumstances—"
Hasselborg cleared his throat. "Well, Miss Batruni has a father who's anxious to get her back, and Mr. Fallon has a wife who's perhaps less anxious but who is still interested in knowing where he went. And obviously they didn't come all the way out here just to admire the view of the Solar System. Follow me?"
"But—but Miss Batruni is of age; she can go where she likes."
"That's not the point. If she can go where she likes, I can also follow her. Where'd she go?"
"I prefer not to tell you."
"You'll have to, chum. It's public information, and I can raise a stink—"
The agent sighed. "I suppose you can. But it goes against all the traditions of romance. Will you promise me that when you find them you will not spoil this so-beautiful intrigue?"
"I won't promise anything of the sort. I won't put gyves on the girl's wrists and drag her back to Earth at gun point, if that's what you mean. Now, where—"
"They went to Krishna," said the agent.
Hasselborg whistled. As he remembered it, of all the hundreds of known inhabited planets, Krishna had natives the most like human beings. That was to Hasselborg's disadvantage, since the elopers could take off from the landing station without oxygen masks or other special equipment and lose themselves among the natives.
Aloud he said: "Obrigado. When does the next ship leave for Krishna?"
The agent glanced at the compound clock on the bulkhead. "In two hours fourteen minutes."
"And when's the next after that?"
Senhor Jorge glanced at the blackboard. "Forty-six days."
"And when does it arrive at Krishna?"
"You mean the ship-time or the Solar-System time?"
Hasselborg shook his head. "I always get confused on that one. Both, let's say."
"Ship-time—that is, subjective time—you arrive in twenty-nine days. Solar-System or objective time, one thousand four hundred ninety-seven days."
"Then Fallon and Miss Batruni will have arrived—how many days ahead of me?"
"Krishna time, about a hundred days."
"Yipe! You mean they take off sixteen days ahead of me; I take twenty-nine days following them; and I arrive a hundred days after they do? But you can't do that!"
"I am sorry, but with the Fitzgerald effect you can. You see they went in the Maranhāo, one of the new mail-ships with tub acceleration."
Hasselborg shuddered. "Some day somebody's going to make a round trip on one of your ships and arrive back home before he left."
Meanwhile he thought: to invade an unfamiliar planet required more preparation than he could manage in a couple of hours. On the other hand, he could imagine Batruni's reaction if he arrived back on Earth to spend a month boning up. The magnate would resemble not merely an elephant but a bull elephant in must. Still, for such a fee a chance was worth taking. He asked:
"Is there a bunk available on the one that's leaving now?"
"I will see." The agent buzzed the clerk in the next compartment and held a brief nasal conversation with him. "Yes," he said, "there are two."
"If you'll visa me, I'll take one of them. Have you got a library with information on Krishna?"
Senhor Jorge shrugged. "Not a very good one. We have the Astronaut's Guide and an encyclopedia on microfilm. Some of the men have their own books, but it would take time to round them up. You wish to see what we have?"
"Lead on. I'd also like a look at the register of the Maranhāo, to compare signatures." The real reason was that he wouldn't put it past this superannuated Cupid to give him a bum steer in order to protect the so-beautiful intrigue.
However, the register checked with the agent's statements. Moreover, the library was not very informative. Hasselborg learned that the surface gravity on Krishna was 0.92 G, the atmospheric pressure 1.34 A. the partial pressure of O2 1.10 times that of Earth—with a high partial pressure of helium. The people were endoskeletal, bisexual, oviparous, bipedal organisms enough like human beings so that one could pass himself off as the other with a little skillful disguise. In fact there had even been marriages between persons of the two species, although without issue. They had a pre-mechanical culture characterized by such archaisms as war, national sovereignty, epidemics, hereditary status, and private ownership of natural resources. The planet itself was a little larger than Earth but with a lower density and a higher proportion of land to water, so that the total Krishnan land area was nearly three times that of the Earth.
Senhor Jorge opened the door. "You had better come, Mr. Hasselborg; you have only twenty minutes. Here is your passport."
"Just a minute," said Hasselborg, looking up from the viewer and reaching for his pen. He dashed off three short letters to be photographed down and go back to Earth by the next ship: one to Montejo and Durruti calling them off their job, and one each to Yussuf Batruni and Alexandra Fallon stating briefly whither he was going and why.
When he boarded the ship, he found that space was even more limited than on the first lap of the trip. He had as roommates not only Chuen Liao-dz but also a middle-aged lady from Boston who found the idea most repugnant. He thought, if I were Fallon, now, she'd really have something to worry about.
-
They arrived.
In contrast to Pluto, the ramp was open to the mild, moist air of Krishna. Great masses of clouds swept in stately procession across the greenish sky, often cutting off the big yellow sun. Even the vegetation was mostly green, with flecks of other hues. Walking down the ramp, Hasselborg could see, stretching like a gray string across the rolling plain, the high wall that marked the boundary of Novorecife.
The next contrast to Pluto was less pleasant. An official person in a fancy uniform said:
"Faça o favor, passengers going on to Ganesha and Vishnu, into this room. Those stopping off at Krishna in here, please. Now, line up, please. Place your baggage on the floor, open, please."
Hasselborg noticed what looked like a full-length X-ray fluoroscope at one side of the room. More uniforms appeared and began going through the baggage and clothes with microscopic care, while others herded the passengers one by one into the space between the X-ray machine and the fluoroscope to look at their insides. Some of the passengers made heavy weather, especially the lady from Boston, who was plainly unused to Viagens ways.
However, the guard assigned to Hasselborg's pile had barely begun his job when he jumped up as if he had been jabbed from behind with a sharp instrument. "Alô! What is this?" He had turned over the top layer of clothes and come upon the professional equipment.
Two guards rushed Hasselborg down the hall, while two others followed, one carrying his baggage. They ushered him into an office in which a fat man sat at a desk, and all four talked so fast that Hasselborg, despite a fair command of the language, could hardly follow. One of the guards went through Hasselborg's pockets, making excited noises as he came upon the pistol, the camera, and other items.
The fat man, whose name according to the sign on his desk was Cristôvāo Abreu, Security Officer, leaned back in his swivel chair and said: "What are you trying to get away with, senhor?"
Hasselborg said loudly: "Not a thing, Senhor Cristôvāo. What am I supposed to do, click my heels together and salute? What are you trying to get away with? Why are your men hauling me around in this undignified condition? Why do you treat incoming passengers like a bunch of steers arriving at the abattoir? What—"
"Quiet yourself, my friend. Don't bluster at me; it will not excuse your crime."
"What crime?"
"You should know."
"Sorry, chum, but I don't. My papers are in order, and I'm on legitimate—"
"It is not that, but this!" The fat man indicated the wire recorder and other apparatus as if they had been the parts of a dismembered corpse.
"What's wrong with them?"
"Don't you know they're contraband?"
"Māo do Deus! Of course I didn't know. Why are they?"
"Don't you know that the Interplanetary Council has forbidden bringing machinery or inventions into Krishna? Don't tell me anybody can be so ignorant!"
