E C Tubb, page 3
"You tricked me! You -- "
"Lied?" Kalif's smile was the twitching of his mask. "No, I have not lied. And I offer you a choice: work with me or go back to your cell."
He could resume his subjective punishment, feel again the agony of tormented flesh, crushed bone, fire and acid and tearing steel, watch as his feet were pulped in cramping boots, and feel the rising flames as he burned at the stake.
Or he could find a man dead three hundred years.
--------
*CHAPTER 4*
POLAR North was more than a garden. Buried deep in the ice sprawled the insulated conglomeration of the heart of Earth Confederation, a town-sized complex which swallowed Varl as an amoeba would engulf a morsel of food.
"Hold the stance!" Selim was a machine of bone, muscle, and iron-like sinew. He was a master of unarmed combat with the trained ability to spatter a drop of sweat beneath his fist while leaving the skin untouched. "Now!"
His left hand lashed out, followed by his right, then the upward jerk of his knee, the sudden batter of his head -- blows Varl warded, dodged, and turned from their targets in unthinking response.
"Good," the instructor commented. "At least as far as it goes. Now I'm going to hurt you."
His face did not change and neither did his eyes. It was merely a job to him, and a matter of extending his reach a little, of not checking his blows so soon. He blinked as he struck nothing but air, then blinked again as Varl came in, hitting, leaving welts on the thick-set, heavily muscled torso.
"Better. This time we'll make it for real."
"No."
"Scared?"
"You could call it that." Varl backed, hands lifted. "I don't like the odds."
Selim nodded, thinking he understood, not guessing that Varl was talking about the relative reward against the invited risk. To fight the instructor, to cripple him, even to kill him -- what would he gain?
"You're smart," the instructor said. "I like that. Don't fight unless you have to but, when you do, go in for the kill. Remember the body is a lot tougher than most people think, but there are vulnerable places.
Aim to hit the eyes, the throat, the groin. Get the kidneys, the ears, the temples. And use everything you've got."
"Will I have to?"
"You might. Those -- " Selim broke off, shrugging. "You'll be told. Now come for me again and don't stop until I say so."
There followed a flurry of moves and countermoves, bare feet slapping the mat, bodies glistening, muscles rippling beneath the skin, the air echoing to meaty impacts. Varl suffered the ritual for the sake of the physical exercise, but, at any time, he could have sent the instructor down. Selim fought by ingrained reflex, weakened, though he did not know it, by the instilled disciplines of the traditional arts. He was a man grown predictable by his use of tested parries, of trusted attacks.
Showered and dressed, Varl moved on to eat in the canteen, then to take his place before a console where he scanned endless images culled from the mass of data stored in the giant computers.
Ludwig Kreutzal. His life, his times -- the frame holding the man. A hero, the Comptroller had said, the answer to the misery plaguing his time. A genius. A man dead three hundred years.
A man he had to find.
Varl watched the shift and blur of transcribed data. Nasir Kalif was no fool -- and he had not asked for Kreutzal to be found alive. And yet ... and yet...
Words flashed on the screen before him: LUDWIG KREUTZAL. BORN 2197. ASSUMED
DEAD 2252.
Assumed!
The computers took nothing for granted -- and no body had ever been found.
Varl leaned back and blanked the screen. The history was something every schoolboy knew, and he would have sworn he possessed every detail. A man went missing and stayed that way for centuries, and so, to a human mind, he had to be dead. What good was a dead genius to anyone? Did Nasir Kalif have reason to suppose the man was still alive?
The screen flashed into life again with words, pictures, and graphs depicting the era which had given birth to the man who had found the key to the stars. The Debacle, when madness had reigned and old forms had been overthrown, was the result of stress induced by crowding. frustration, and the blindness of those in power. Those they had manipulated, rose in anger, the sheep finally turning, the meek rising in fury to inherit the earth.
The screen blurred to mask scenes of burning, hanging, dismemberment -- brutal executions and
bloody massacres that punctuated a time in which civilization itself hung in the balance. Stability was regained when man again looked at the skies and the promise they held: new worlds on which old mistakes could be avoided, new beginnings.
Kreutzal supplied the means.
As a boy, he was studious, with a large head and eyes to match, a weak chin, prominent temples, and the slight build of a traditional aesthete; a lad hopeless at games, friendless, finding comfort only in books. A misfit as all geniuses had to be, he was Prometheus, unrecognized, returned to give mankind the stars.
The screen showed a blur as the machine compressed time, then steadied again to show a man with a large, domed, balding head, and eyes which looked like bruises in the drawn pallor of his face. His chin was masked with a ruff of beard and his body was still nothing but a vehicle for his mind. He was still friendless, still a misfit, still unrecognized.
The year was 2229, the place the Scientific Institute at Stuttgart. At thirty-two, Kreutzal delivered a paper containing the basic formulization of the hyperdrive.
Three years later the hydee was a fact.
Varl killed the screen, rose, and went to draw coffee from a machine. He sipped it while pacing the open area beyond the room in which he had studied. Around him he sensed the throb and bustle of life, the smoothly directed tide of effort which was Polar North. A snug, warm, friendly-seeming place, but he was not deluded. He ate well, wore good clothing, wandered where he pleased, and did not have to sleep alone, but the installation was as much a prison as the one he had left on Voltan.
"Kurt!" Jarl Asner smiled as he halted, one hand lifted in greeting. Tall, big, with skin the color of golden leaves, he had met Varl in the pool; he was an easy companion. "Hard at it?"
Van nodded.
"You look drawn, man. Take time out to relax. How about sitting in on a game tonight? Some of the boys are getting together for poker. The stakes high enough to hurt."
"Maybe."
"Bell me, uh?"
"If I'm coming."
"Good. You do that. We'll have a few bottles and make it a session. Hope you can make it." The arm rose again, this time in farewell. "Well, back to the grind."
The man moved away, smiling, intent on his own business. A casual friend, Varl wondered, or a watchful guard?
The cup yielded in his hand, and he eased the pressure before coffee could spill and soil the floor.
These were the rules of the game, and he had no right to complain. His role was to wait, to take what was going, to gather his strength while he danced to the tune the Comptroller had chosen. Later, when the chance came, he would dance to his own.
Back in his seat, he activated the screen and leaned back to study the face. Kreutzal, not as he appeared gilded by the sculptor's art, but as he had looked when alive: a man bowed, old before his time, his eyes pouched, his cheeks haggard. A man who had yet to taste the heady wine of success. A man about to engage in the biggest gamble any man could take -- using his life for the stake.
Words overlaid the face:
27 SEPTEMBER 2232.
11.16 STANDARD WORLD TIME.
KREUTZAL MAKES FIRST TEST OF HYDEE.
The ship rested behind him, small and frail -- a skin holding air, instruments, and the power to feed the drive. The jewel at its heart, fabricated in metal and crystal, represented the fruit of genius, a concrete summation of a mathematical concept which rested on a paradox which rested in turn on logic unique to Kreutzal. He had built a key to unlock the cage Einstein had illuminated when he demonstrated the limitation of velocity: Nothing could travel faster than light. In the orthodox universe, which said, 'So fast and no faster,' Kreutzal's invention was a rude noise.
The man turned and entered the ship. Varl could sense his strain, though the event had happened
centuries earlier and Varl knew what the result would be. Even so, he leaned forward as the ship rose to hang poised, to shimmer, to vanish.
27 SEPTEMBER 2232.
13.23 STANDARD WORLD TIME.
KREUTZAL'S SUCCESSFUL RETURN
FROM FIRST TEST OF HYDEE.
One hundred and twenty-seven minutes reduced into as many seconds. Varl sucked in air as he stared at the figure that came stumbling from the ship. Kreutzal dropped to his knees, and vomited blood as he toppled forward, near death. He clutched in his hand the object later to be known as the Martian Rose.
Varl cleared the screen and rubbed thoughtfully at his temples. Why had Kreutzal been such a fool as to try and breath atmosphere so thin it was almost a vacuum? The answer he had given later was that, quite simply, he had forgotten certain basic astronomical data in the impact of events. He had activated the hydee and had seen a planet beneath him which he recognized as Mars. He had landed, seen the object he had brought back with him, had gone to collect it, and had made it back just in time -- to return with the incontrovertible proof that his invention worked.
Twenty years later he disappeared.
Varl had learned nothing new of the old story. Had Kreutzal carried an unsuspected streak of idiocy in his makeup? Later adulation had glossed over the incident, making it the calculated act of a hero determined to obtain proof of his success. Certainly it had given him all he could ask for in the way of equipment, supplies, and facilities to expand his discovery. Even as mankind gathered itself for the rush to the new frontiers, Kreutzal was perfecting his drive.
The original shimmer had been due to power leakage; eliminated, there was a gain in performance.
Directional control had been refined -- his luck on the first test had been phenomenal. Jumps had been calibrated and vectors established. As the years passed. Kreutzal had occupied himself with more and more abstruse research.
Varl had reached a dead end. The early days could tell him nothing he did not already know aside from small facets of Kreutzal's character. Kreutzal had been a warped and lonely man who had revealed an area of blindness, a man with more guts than sense who had risked his life on the basis of a conviction
-- a hero, a martyr. After three hundred years, how to be sure?
Varl frowned at the screen, wondering why Kalif had insisted he do the research. Why not just give him the data? And why put him through the physical training?
He reached for buttons and looked at the face in the screen. A female operator, smooth and bland, smiled as she waited for his request.
"Give me an update on the Kreutzal data," Varl said. "I want the summation of all investigations during the past five years."
"One moment." The smile grew brittle as the girl checked. "There is a restrict order on that data."
"I see." Kalif intended he should do things the hard way, and Varl resisted the temptation to give Major Borken as his authority to override the restrict. "Then give me a complete rundown on all journeys made by Kreutzal during the last ten years of his life. I want a total assessment including type of vessel used, crew members, any adaptions or alterations in structure, load-mass index, any special equipment carried -- stuff like that. You understand?"
"Yes, but it will take time."
"Cut corners. I also want a compilation of destinations, times, jump periods -- " He saw her frown.
"Something wrong?"
"It would help if I knew what you were after."
"Honey," Varl said, "I can't tell you that -- but I'll know it when I see it."
--------
*CHAPTER 5*
ASNER had an apartment on an upper level, a suite which he shared with another, now absent. The living room was decorated with murals depicting alien worlds -- strange scenes of exotic mountains, seas,
rolling plains illuminated by multiple suns. The carpeting was soft, the furniture luxurious; the room itself was dominated by the round table in its center.
"Cards?" The dealer was Mark Stanislac, a man with a mottled face and a harassed expression -- an environmental engineer who had drunk too much and lost too heavily. Asner hesitated, studying his hand, and Stanislac scowled. "You going to take all night?"
"One." Asner threw out his discard. "A big one."
"Give me two." Calton, from communications, sat relaxed as a cat. "Both the same."
"You?" Stanislac stared at Varl. "You in or out?"
"Out." Varl threw in his hand and rose to pour himself a drink. The whiskey was too warm, and he added ice and a shot of seltzer from a bottle crusted in twinkling crystals. He felt tense; his mind was still filled with the blur of figures from the computer, a seemingly endless stream of data which had to hold a pattern but one which as yet eluded him.
"Here!" Piers Machen had left the table and was standing beside him, proffering a small, opened box. "Try one of these."
"Ka'sence?"
"From Rigel Four." Machen selected one of the pods and held it between thumb and forefinger.
"Here's health!"
Following the other's example, Varl crushed a pod beneath his nose and a sweetly pungent yet acrid aroma filled his nostrils, clearing his head like a gust of freezing wind. He breathed deeply, savoring the refreshing sting of the vapor, but shook his head as Machen offered another.
"Not for me, thanks. When you due out?"
Machen was a courier carrying taped and recorded data and messages from assembly points to Earth Confederation, a member of the far-flung service which enabled a letter to reach a world in hours when radio would take years. Sniffing another pod, he said, "In ten hours. To the Capellan Sector. Then back here, maybe, or to some other place just as boring. A hell of a life when you think of it. Collect the cargo, deliver it, collect more, and do the same. And to think that when I was a kid I used to dream of the romance of space."
Ritter spoke from the table. "Quit complaining and get back into the game. You want romance, then switch to the passenger trade. Right, Kurt?"
"He could do worse." Varl dropped into his chair. "That or find a few partners and become a free trader."
"And grow a crop of ulcers worrying about expenses and maintenance and penalty clauses."
Machen shook his head. "I've seen the poor bastards and that life's not for me."
"Coward."
"Sure." Machen smiled at Stanislac. "Now come outside and say that again."
"Calm down!" Asner had the deck, and he riffled the cards with a harsh, crackling sound. "We're here to have fun. Me, I side with Piers. A good job, regular pay, certain comfort -- and you can have your dream of vast profits and exotic adventure. You in, Mark?"
"Am I sitting here to hold down the chair? Of course I'm in!"
"Then feed the kitty." Cards spun from his fingers as Asner dealt. "You too, Piers."
"Uh?" Machen blinked. "Sorry." He tossed coins into the pot. "I was thinking of free traders and the trouble they have at times. Like one who landed just before I left Artaskese. That's in the Sirian Region.
Well, this ship came in and the captain was cursing fit to bust. Seems he's headed for Danilovich -- that's a world fifteen light-years from Artaskese. A short jump and yet he finished up well away from his point of aim."
"Lousy navigation." Ritter scowled at his cards. "No mystery. It happens all the time."
"Fifteen lights?"
"Fifty sometimes. I collate the reports and it's fairly common. Navigational error." He fingered his cards. "I'll open for ten."
"Some navigators." Machen sucked in his cheeks. "I'll see your ten and raise you the same."
"Twenty to stay." Asner looked at Varl. "You staying, Kurt? Good. Mark?"
"I fold." Stanislac threw in his hand. "What kind of captain tolerates such bad navigation?"
"Damned few of them." Ritter stared at the small man sitting next to Stanislac. "You staying, John?"
"I'm raising." Calton smiled as he threw coins into the pot. "This is my day. Thirty to stay, JarI."
Anser grunted and threw in his hand. "Discards?"
Varl watched as the cards fell. The game was five-card double-draw, an innovation which yielded strong hands and big pots and made for interesting conflicts, but he felt jaded and had little interest. Even so he stayed. He drew three cards and looked at a hand which needed one card to make a running flush
-- a basically weak hand. Without a five of hearts to fit between the four and six, the hand was worthless.
As Ritter studied his hand, Varl said, "Those reports you collate on the misaligned ships -- has any conclusion been reached?"
"What?" Ritter looked up, scowling. "A hell of a thing to ask at a time like this. Hell, give me two!"
He flung down the discards. "What was that again?" He shook his head as Varl repeated the question. "I told you -- navigational error. What else could it be?"
"Kurt's a captain and knows something about navigation," Asner said dryly. "How bad does a navigator have to be to miss his target by fifty lights?"
"Bad!" Machen flung down his cards. "As bad as this lousy hand."
"What are you going to do?" Stanislac glared at Varl. "Raise, stay, or fold?"
"What's the hurry?" Varl met the angry eyes. "If you're in a sweat, go and grab yourself a shower."
"Or a drink," Asner said quickly. "He's tense," he explained as, scowling, Stanislac rose to follow the suggestion. "He's waiting for his wife, and she's taking her time showing up. Should have arrived two days ago, but as yet she's still missing."
"She's on vacation," Stanislac snapped from where he stood by the bottles. "So she's been delayed
-- that's nothing to worry about."
"No? Not on Apollo, where all the men are built like Greek gods?" Ritter shook his head. "Any man who lets his wife take a vacation there is begging for trouble. That or he wants to change partners. Which was it, Mark? That little kitten in accounting putting on the pressure?"
