"All right," he whispered. "Fifteen minutes." Then he went back to his loud monologue which most certainly could have been heard through the suite's door to the hall.

  Dorn Horsten went over to the window, flung it open and vaulted out.

  Martha winced. "I'll never get used to seeing him do things like that," she said.

  Helen jumped up to the window sill and peered down. "It's only four floors," she said. "Besides, there's a lawn down there. After all, he comes from a high gravity planet. Bye, bye."

  And with that she launched herself after Horsten.

  Martha winced again.

  Down below, the doctor caught his diminuitive partner neatly and they started hurrying their way through the small park that edged the Posada San Francisco on this side. He didn't bother to put her down. Her small legs weren't up to the pace. Instead, she perched on his right shoulder.

  He said, "How in the name of Holy Jumping Zen did Pierre and Martha locate this place? Sheer luck?"

  "Evidently, it couldn't have been easier," Helen told him. "They took a tour of the city, and one of the first things the guide pointed out was the Policia Secreta headquarters. Pete and Martha were suitably impressed and the flunky blabbered out just about everything they wanted, without their more than barely guiding his conversation. They asked why it was necessary to have such a large police, and he told them all about the subversives who had recently been caught. Standing there in the street, he pointed out the window of the room where interrogations were alleged to take place. Then he pointed out a window which was the only one, evidently, that opened onto the room where the vaults in which the archives are kept. Oh, he was most helpful."

  The doctor grunted. He was walking at a rapid pace now, the girl on his shoulder. A passerby would probably have smiled at the pleasant picture they made. However, there were no other pedestrians at this hour. The Falangists supped late and went almost immediately to bed afterwards.

  "I hope we find what we're looking for," he said. "But I doubt it. You brought that supposed toy of yours, didn't you? The rings that actually connect into a set of knuckledusters?"

  "You think I'm stupid, you big lummox? Of course I brought them."

  "No," Dorn Horsten sighed. "I don't think you're stupid. But I'm certainly glad you're the size you are."

  "Why?" she said suspiciously.

  "Because if you were my size, I might ask you to marry me, and the very thought changes my muscles to water."

  "Why, you overgrown oaf."

  "That must be it, up ahead," he said. "No other building would be quite so large and quite so grim looking. Now, let me remember how Martha told me to locate that window."

  They found the spot from which the Lorans had observed the building earlier.

  Helen said, "You think there's a guard there?"

  "Evidently. It's one of the few windows in the building with a light. This whole wing is dark except for it." He sized up the situation. "I hope they didn't repair the window as yet."

  Helen was on the ground now, chubby fists on her hips. "Not in this country. One of the things they brought from Mother Earth most enthusiastically was the do-it-Manana philosophy. I've already noticed that. How in the world did Pete manage to break it, anyway?"

  Horsten was still casing the situation. He said absently, "You know him. He simply waited until nobody else was around, and then, while Martha distracted the guide's attention, he reached down, picked up a half brick or some other stone, and heaved it. Evidently, a few minutes later a couple of Guardia Civil came dashing from the building, but they didn't even bother to question the Lorans. The guide was mystified by their questions. When they pointed out the window, high above, the guide said reasonably that nobody could throw a brick that high, and, anyway, they hadn't seen any young people, or any criminal types loitering in the vicinity."

  Dorn Horsten came to a decision. He said, "I think I can make it up that wall. The gravity of this planet seems to be a mite less than even Mother Earth's and that brickwork will give hand and toe holds. However, I can't go into that window and get down into the room beyond if there's an armed guard there. He'd zap me before I could get to him."

  "Funker," Helen sneered. "Put all the strongarm stuff onto a little girl."

  "All right, all right," he said. "Got any better ideas?"

  "No," she said. And then, "Allez Oop!"

  He swung the miniature gymnast and acrobat around several times before releasing her. She sailed in an impossible flight to the iron bars that sheltered the window. A tiny hand shot out and grasped them.

  There was ample room to squeeze her childish body through. She paused a moment there, turned and made an age-old gesture to the man below, a circle with thumb and forefinger. He lumbered quickly to the wall and started scrambling up, hand over hand. He could see her tiny body swing through and cursed beneath his breath that she had gone on ahead before he arrived on the scene.

  He reached the window and, supporting himself with one hand, tore the iron bars off with the other. He knocked what was left of the glass out of the way and squeezed through, though with some difficulty. He then dropped to the floor below.

  Helen stood there, absently shining the brass knucks on her chubby right hand with the palm of her left. She said, her voice at its most childish treble, "Where've you been so long, you slow moving cloddy?"

  He stared about the room. It was obviously devoted to special records. A sort of file within files arrangement. He looked down at the uniformed man who was stretched out on the floor.

  "What did you do to him," he said.

  "Nothing much," Helen said modestly. "He was some-what startled to see me dropping out of the heavens. He was able to cross himself exactly once before I slugged him."

  Horsten grunted. "What I wanted to know was, will he revive fairly soon?" He squatted next to the Falangist guard and slapped his face back and forth stingingly.

  "Easy," Helen said. "You'll break his jaw."

  The guard's eyes opened and at first expressed disbelief and then suddenly widened into terror. He reached clumsily for his side arm.

  Horsten took it gently from his hand. It was a long-barreled 9mm military pistol of a period so remote that on Earth it would have taken its place in a museum. Horstenjjent the barrel and made a knot in it and handed it back.

  He said to the guard, most gently, "Where are the records of the subversion trial of the Earthling?"

  The other was bug-eyeing the gun.

  Horsten said, "Please, Senar, you would not want me to have to…" He let the sentence dribble away.

  The guard said, "No. No, no. I do not know what you want. But it is impossible."

  "What's impossible?"

  "I do not have the combination"

  Horsten took the gun back again and bent the barrel into a sort of pretzel shape, to the other's horrified fascination.

  "I didn't ask you that, did I?" Horsten said in kindly voice.

  The guard pointed weakly at a large, iron safe. "Those are the top secret files pertaining to attempts to overthrow the government of the Caudillo."

  Horsten came to his feet and looked down at the other contemplatively. Helen had been scouting the room, now she took her place beside him.

  "We should crisp him," the scientist muttered.

  She took a deep breath and held her elbows tightly against her sides, in feminine rejection.

  He looked at her in disgust. "All right, all right, I haven't got the guts either." He bent quickly and seemingly tapped the fallen man across the jawbone almost affectionately. His eyes rolled upward.

  Horsten growled. "Look around for some wire, or rope, anything to tie him with."

  "An old-fashioned telephone over here," she said.

  The doctor went over and ripped it out and returned to tie the guard.

  Moments later, that worthy revived enough, once more, to see his assailants leaving. The man with the 600 pound safe under one arm, the little girl seated on a shoulder.

  She saw his eyes open and waved, "Goo' bye, Mr. Policeman."

  He closed his eyes again and started in on several prayers he had not got around to using since childhood, and then and there swore off drinking anis after dinner.

  XI

  When Derek Lamb landed from the space shuttle craft, at the Stalingrad spaceport, it was to be received by a delegation backed by a forty piece band and a couple of hundred infantrymen at attention. The band was playing The Internationale, but Derek Lamb didn't know that. He had never heard The Internationale before, and for his taste he could wait a long time before he heard it again. In his time, on various words, he had heard blared God Save the King, Deutschland uber Alles, the Star Spangled Banner, and the Marseilles, and, not being a nationalist himself, they'd all sounded on the ridiculous side to him. For Derek Lamb, as all other agents of Section G, you could stick nationalism where it would create the most pain, anatomically speaking.

  The delegation largely seemed thrown from the same mold that had produced Major Kulski, that is, they didn't seem especially impressive intellectually. The major introduced Derek around, and Derek did his best to try and remember the identities, not knowing to what extent he might be running into these people later.

  Introductions over—the band playing the Red Flag, another piece Derek didn't recognize—all filed over to where a bevy of black limousines awaited. The Section G

  man was somewhat surprised to see that the vehicles were wheeled rather than aircushioned. In this field, at least, the Stalinists were behind the more advanced planets technologically.

  The major and he rode in the second limousine, which was chauffeur-driven, an indication to the Section G agent that the roads were not automated. In this day and age, on a supposedly industrialized planet? Derek ran a thoughtful forefinger over his upper front teeth. Very interesting.

  The spaceport was some twenty kilometers out of the city of Stalingrad. Derek kept his eyes open on the way in. By Mother Earth standards and those of the other more advanced worlds, agriculture was primitive, almost completely unautomated, and the fields worked by men and women, personally present. This was getting more ridiculous by the minute. One expected these things to take place on such worlds as Nature and the anarchist planet Kropotkin, where they deliberately foreswore industrialization, but Stalin, with its communist system, supposedly doted on it. He wondered what was expected to be accomplished. They could have imported the needed technics from Mother Earth, or many of the other United Planets worlds.

  They sped through the streets and he noted the sparse-ness of vehicular traffic, the uniform drabness of the houses and other buildings, the colorlessness of the clothing of most of the pedestrians. One hardly got the impression of prosperity. Lack of prosperity on an industrialized world?

  The caravan debouched into a huge square to one side of which was what Derek Lamb assumed to be a large fortress, certainly an anachronism beyond belief.

  What good was a fortress in view of the weapons which prevailed in those parts of United Planets which maintained them at all? He didn't know it, but he was seeing a replica of the Kremlin and Red Square, copied as accurately as possible. They sped around the north of the fortress, to a monstrous iron gate, guarded by a squad of six infantrymen armed with rifles. They sprang to the salute, the gate swung open, and the convoy of cars, going only slightly slower than before, sped up a curving, cobblestoned ramp.

  Inside, the area seemed even larger than it had from without. Derek couldn't know it, but the Kremlin, in the early days of Russia, had been the whole city of Moscow.

  They pulled up before a large, three story building of white granite. Had such a building been on Mother Earth, the Section G man decided, it would have been converted into a museum. Surely it must have been copied architecturally from some edifice of possibly the Sixteenth Century, if not older.

  The major said, "This is the Bolshoi Kremlevski Dvor-ets, the Great Kremlin Palace, in Earth-Basic language. It is our destination. The Chairman of the Presidium resides here and also maintains his offices."

  "Excellent," Derek said.

  They got out of their vehicle and approached the large doors of carved wood. None of the occupants of the other limousines accompanied them. There were two guards, who presented arms at their approach. It would seem that the major was both known and expected. No identification was requested. The doors swung open.

  Inside they were confronted with the most garishly ornate hall Derek Lamb could ever remember having seen. He thought of the atmosphere as Victorian with its crystal chandeliers, its impossibly hideous and uncomfortable chairs, its life-size statuary, its antiquated Socialist Realism school paintings, and its broad staircase of marble.

  They mounted the stairway, turned left down a corridor that was in as bad taste as the hall below.

  They walked perhaps a hundred feet before coming to a massive door of inlaid bronze. Two more guards were stationed here, both of officer rank, both armed with side arms, rather than rifles. They saluted, and this time Major Kulski returned it. One of them hastened to open the door.

  Inside was a reception room, with two desks flanking another bronze door. At the desk were two more junior officers. They looked up at the entrance of the major and his charge.

  Major Kulski said, "Colonel Inspector Ilya Simonov of the planet Lenin, on appointment to see Comrade Alex Vavilov, Chairman of the Presidium of the Central Committee."

  The two officers could have been twins. Both were blond, both blue-eyed, both about six feet, about one hundred and sixty-five, both nattily uniformed, and both very sharp of eye. They were the two most impressive Stalinists that Derek had seen thus far.

  One of them said to the major, "He has been searched, of course?"

  "Yes, on the satellite. With every detection device at our command. Every article in his possession has been gone over and over again. Not a single suspicious item."

  "Very well." The other came to his feet. He looked

  Derek in the face, obviously summing him up. "I am Captain Leonid Leonov, aide to the Chairman. Please follow me, Comrade Colonel." He turned and led the way. Major Kulski began to come along as well, but Captain Leonov said, "Your presence will not be required, Major. You will wait here."

  The major seemed somewhat surprised, but his not to question why, of course. He reversed his engines and took an uncomfortable looking chair. Evidently, an aide to the Chairman, even though only a captain, ranked an ordinary major.

  The room beyond the bronze door was possibly the largest office Derek had ever seen. It was also the most ornate and for his money uncomfortable. A one quarter acre desk sat in its exact center, a smaller desk to one side.

  Behind the larger desk sat a small man who was as near to the exact opposite of what Derek had expected Alex Vavilov, dictator of the planet Stalin, to be as possible. Had he been much shorter, he would have been pushing midget class. He was on the thinnish side, except for his belly which was like a good-sized round watermelon. His face was pinched and suspicious, his eyes were dull and watery. He was the most ridiculous caricature of the chief of a power elite the Section G man could imagine. It was all Derek could do to keep from gaping at him.

  The captain said formally, "Chairman Vavilov, may I present Colonel Inspector Ilya Simonov, of the planet Lenin?"

  The dictator nodded and ran his rheumy, suspicious eyes over Derek, who was standing at attention.

  He said finally, in a thin, unsteady voice which went well with his unprepossessing physical appearance, "Well… well, sit down, uh, confound it. Sit down."

  Derek Lamb took a chair across from the desk and Captain Leonov sat at the smaller desk.

  Vavilov said, "Well… well… what is this confounded secret message from Vladimir Mazurov, my equal number of the planet Lenin? Confound it, I've never even heard of the planet Lenin. Captain, have you ever heard of the planet Lenin?"

  Captain Leonov said smoothly, "Chairman Vavilov, I understand that it is on the far side of the United Planets confederation. Undoubtedly, it has as little communication with other worlds as do we ourselves."

  Derek Lamb looked at the captain. This was a sharp one. He had avoided revealing that he, also, had never heard of Lenin, beyond the false information in Derek's passport.

  Derek said to the Presidium Chairman, "Comrade Vavilov, my words are for your ears alone, according to my orders. At least, at this stage of the game."

  "What… what, confound it? Here you are. Speak… uh, up. Speak up."

  Derek said carefully, "The captain?"

  The captain's eyes smiled.

  Vavilov said, "Nonsense… sheer nonsense. The captain is my aide. There is nothing you can say to me that he cannot hear. This is all confounded nonsense." The Chairman scratched his rounded tummy in irritation.

  Captain Leonov said smoothly, "I am the Chairman's bodyguard as well as his aide, Comrade Colonel Inspector."

  "I see," Derek said. "Very well." He took a deep breath. "Comradely greetings from the Presidium of the Central Committee of Lenin and from Chairman Mazu-rov. As you undoubtedly know, Lenin was settled almost identically as was Stalin. Our institutions are the same as your own admired ones. We strive only to preserve the Revolution."

  Vavilov listened to that impatiently. He said to the captain, "Leonid, some vodka."

  Derek held his peace while Captain Leonid Leonov came to his feet, went over to what seemed a bookcase and touched a button. A section of the bookcase slid away to reveal a very complete bar. He opened the refrigerator, brought forth a well chilled bottle, took up three large shot glasses and returned with them to his superior's desk. He filled the glasses carefully, served his superior first, then Derek, took his own glass and returned to his desk.

  This time, there was no toast. The dictator stiff-wristed the spirits back down his gullet, with an elan beyond his physical appearance. The other two dutifully followed suit.

  "Well… well… go on. What is your message?"

  "Comrade, it consists of two parts. First, as you undoubtedly know, we are not members of United Planets, although you of Stalin have taken that step. Chairman Mazurov seeks your opinion on the desirability of our joining."

 

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14