Mission: Earth "Fortune of Fear" (26 page)

Worn by a spy, it was supposed to be able to read through envelopes or enemy code-book covers and into gun breeches to identify the shell type. But Doctor Crobe wasn't using it for that.

By focus, he undressed every stewardess. The letters of emotion spelled:

DISSATISFACTION

I suppose when this unit was designed, it was thought that it would give a spy-master, ten thousand miles away, the opinion of the spy wearing it as to whether the spy thought the enemy invention was good or bad or to what degree. I wondered if it were just stuck on DISSATISFACTION. How could one visually undress stewardesses and not enjoy it? I know the sight of seeing them running up and down the aisles stark naked made it rather hard on me.

But when they changed planes at Istanbul, there was a shift. A fat man was sitting in a seat across the aisle and behind Crobe and the doctor began to examine the fat man's brain, seeing through the skin and bone. It sure was a weird-looking brain on my viewer!

Crobe seemed to have thought of some way to alter it. The letters flashed:

EXHILARATION EXCELLENT

Satisfied that the third bug was working, I went out and had breakfast.

Something else was mildly disturbing me. I had missed my appointment with a woman the previous night-which shows how devoted an Apparatus officer must be to duty-and yet Ahmed the taxi driver had left no message today saying how he had handled it.

I had Musef, who was standing guard, go find Ters and get the data.

Musef came back, "Ters said that Ahmed didn't appear yesterday evening."

"Tell Ters to call and make sure the taxi driver will be here tonight," I said.

"Ters," said Musef, "doesn't think he'll come."

"He didn't say why?"

"You can't get much out of him with that crazy laugh of his," said Musef.

That was true. I tried to call Ahmed on the phone. No answer.

Well, maybe he'd had trouble finding a woman to bring. Yes, that must be it. I'd get on to him later when things were less pressing.

Meal finished, I went back to my secret room and the viewer.

I must not miss any part of Crobe's arrival in New York. Too much depended upon it!

I hitched the two-way-response radio close to me, ready to give the guards coaching if anything went wrong.

If Crobe failed, my own life could be hanging by a thread. Heller must NOT succeed!

It was predawn dark in a February New York.

After a six-hour delay in Paris that pushed my nerves to their limit, Crobe had finally arrived.

I looked at my other two viewers. No visio. Slow breathing. Aha! Both Heller and Krak were sound asleep. Crobe would catch them totally off guard!

His two security escorts got Crobe into an elevator in the Empire State Building. They got out on the right floor. The hall was empty of people and dim. One of them was carrying a big case with operating tools in it. The other one scouted ahead, apparently found the right corridor and door and came back.

They pushed Crobe forward. Then, before they turned the last corner, they got blasticks ready, took the restraint coat off Crobe, and while one stood by, the other took him up to the door with the jet plane on it. He knocked very loudly and then skipped back.

Crobe focused on the jet plane. Then he focused on the inside office, seeing it through the door. He started to walk through it, bounced and recoiled. He probably would not have remained there if his eye had not focused on the cat. It had been asleep on Heller's desk but had awakened now and was looking at the door to see what all the knocking and bumping was about. Crobe had probably never seen a cat before. Through the door, he was studying it. The digital letters said:

MYSTIFICATION

One of my other viewers had flashed at the first knock. I couldn't tell which one it was, Krak's or Heller's, until I looked at the letter on it:
K.
The Countess Krak had awakened.

She turned on a bedside lamp. She looked at an alarm clock: 5:39. She looked at the window and saw snow on the pane and behind it the greenish glow of the predawn city.

She got up, slid into some slippers, got into a red silk bathrobe and glanced at Heller. He was peacefully asleep, facing the wall.

My plans were not going quite right.

She went out of the "thinking room," closed the door behind her, turned on a light in the main office, crossed the snowy rug and opened the door.

Crobe got his attention off the cat. As the door sprang open before him, he stared.

"The Countess Krak!" he said. The digital-type letters said:

SURPRISE FEAR

"Come in," said the Countess, in Voltarian.

He moved forward timidly. She closed the door behind him. She said, "Sssh." She moved Crobe over to the secretary-boudoir room, pushed him in and closed the door.

Crobe stood there, staring at her, eyes fixed on the surface of her face. Anyone who had worked in Spiteos was completely aware that the Countess Krak could kill on sight.

"Now, just what are you supposed to do here, Doctor Crobe?" said the Countess Krak.

On Crobe's screen, the letters flared:

TERROR

It was my fault. I accept all the blame. I had not specifically told him she was in New York. I had only told him what to tell her if he met her. Suddenly I realized that he was probably unaware of the relationship between "the man" he was supposed to handle and the Countess Krak. Would he remember what he was supposed to tell her? Or would he mess up and get himself stamped into the rug?

"I... I... I forget," he said.

"Hmmm," said the Countess Krak. I certainly did not like the sound of that "Hmmm." She knew Crobe's twist for messing up bodies; she had worked making trained acts while he made freaks. She knew very well what he was capable of. She might suspect I had sent him to physically cripple Heller. What she said now would tell all. "What," she said, "did Soltan tell you to do?"

My hair stood up! If Crobe spilled the real data, the Countess Krak would come looking for me and I was a dead man!

Oh, this wasn't going well at all.

Crobe was stammering. My life thread was getting frayed!

It is wonderful what the presence of death can do for the mind. Men have even been known to think.

"I'm supposed to help the man with the spore formula," blurted Crobe. He had remembered.

"Ah," said the Countess Krak. "Well, I am sure your help will be most welcome. Why don't you sit right there?" She pointed to a chair against the wall. "You must be very tired after your long journey."

My two-way-response radio crackled. A guard's voice. "I think he's there all right. We got his bag here. What do we do? Just shove it in the office and come back?"

I said into it, "No, no. You wait right there out of sight. I don't like the way this is going."

"He must have the place bugged," said one guard to the other. "We're supposed to wait."

The Countess Krak was fishing into the upper shelf of the secretary's closet. She was getting down a box. "We'll just refresh you, Doctor Crobe. Relax you so you can get some sleep." She was taking something out of the box.

A hypnohelmet!

I suddenly began to pray. Under that, he might give up the real orders he had. And that would be the end of me.

On Crobe's head went the hypnohelmet. The letters on the screen flared:

DOUBLE TERROR

The click of the helmet switch as it went on. The letters on the screen shifted:

PEACE

Then they shifted again:

HYPNOTIZED

There was no other vision on Crobe's screen.

Krak plugged in the hand microphone. She said, "Just sit there quietly now and wait."

She put the microphone down.

She went out the door, crossed the office, opened the "thinking room" door and closed it behind her.

She knelt on the bed and touched Heller's shoulder gently. "Dear, exactly what kind of spores did you want?"

He sat up suddenly, the way a man used to action does. "Spores? What's this? Is somebody here?"

"No, no, dear. I just got to wondering."

"I'll get up," said Heller.

"No, no, dear. You've been up half the night rebuilding the Porsche for the new carburetor, and in that drafty garage, too. Just scribble down what you want in the way of spores. I always like to keep up with what you are interested in."

She was handing him a big yellow tablet and pen from the bedside table. Heller yawned. He began to write. He filled up the sheet. She took it.

"It's got to be airborne," said Heller, pointing at the sheet. "It should be able to float in the stratosphere. It has to be able to live on those noxious gases and pollution particles and convert them to oxygen and perpetuate itself. Blown around by the winds of the world, it should be able to depollute the atmospheric envelope of the planet. I don't have the cellology formulas to synthesize it. Say, if you're so interested, maybe I ought to get up and explain it further."

"Oh, no, dear. It's the middle of the night. You just lie back there and get your sleep. Don't mind stupid old me puttering about."

He yawned again and lay back. He turned over and went to sleep.

The Countess Krak went out, closed the door, went to the boudoir and closed the door. She put the sheet in Crobe's hand.

"You will now feel a compulsion to develop the spore you are holding the requirements of. You will now develop the formula for synthesizing it."

She pushed a table in front of him. She laid a tablet on it. She pushed a pen into his fingers.

Mutterings from the helmet. Then, "I don't remember." The letters on the screen read:

CONFUSION

The Countess juggled the mike for a moment. Then she spoke into it again. "You are a young student again. You are sitting for your final examination. The test question is how to synthesize the exact spore required by the details on that sheet. If you do not write them down, you will fail the exam and never be permitted to cut up people again."

Cunning Countess Krak! She had appealed to his basic instincts. She had put him at a time when he did know.

Hastily, Doctor Crobe began to write. He filled up half the tablet. The Countess, watching the paper upside down, saw that he was giving the strains that must be interbred.

She slipped out of the room and went to Heller's desk. She found a book on Earth spores. She took it back.

"You will now look up in this book what you have written and see if they are there."

He did, with much thumbing. I knew what his trouble was. She had put him in a time before he knew any English. But the book had pictures and he was using those.

"They are all in the book," he said.

"You will now put down how to mix the cultures to put them in," said the Countess.

Crobe promptly did.

"You will now write everything else one has to know to accomplish this."

Crobe did. He was finished.

The Countess then said to him, "Will this pass the examination?"

"Indisputably," said Crobe.

"Good," said the Countess. "You are finished with that. Now, pay attention. You remember the man you saw in your laboratory in Spiteos. Blond hair, blue eyes. Mancian. If you ever see this man you will become terrified. You will then run and run to be safe from him. You know that if you touch him, tentacles will spring out of your ears and strangle you. One contact with an electric knife or a fingertip upon that man will cause you to cease to breathe. Have you got that?"

"Yes," said the hypnotized Crobe.

"You will now forget everything that has happened here. You will walk out into the office. You will stand by the door to the hall. You will stand there and wait."

She put all the papers in the pocket of her dressing gown. She clicked off the switch.

Crobe got up. He looked at her in a dazed fashion. The letters said:

FEAR

He went out of the room and into the main office and stood by the hall door.

The Countess went into the "thinking room." She touched Heller's shoulder. "Dear," she said, "why not get up and have a cup of coffee with me?"

Heller sat up, wide awake. He looked at her oddly. But he got up and slid into a white terry-cloth robe.

She held open the door and they went into the main office.

There was Crobe.

He saw Heller.

Crobe screamed!

He turned around, threw open the door and ran with all his might!

Heller turned to the Countess. "That was Doctor Crobe," he said. "What's he doing yelling and screaming and running?"

"The spearmint Bavarian Mocha is a new kind," said the Countess Krak.

"What was Crobe doing here?" said Heller. "Why did he run away?"

"Oh, Crobe? Well, he just brought these formulas to give you. He saw no need to stay. He had another appointment."

Heller looked at the open door to the hall. He took the papers from the Countess and glanced over them.

"Dear," he said, "you look like you've been up to something."

"Me?
Jettero," she said.

Doctor Crobe had gone by the guards so fast they had not been able to grab him.

He raced into a stairwell and instead of going down, went up!

The chief guard was on the radio as he ran. "What the blast happened?"

"He saw an enemy!" I cried. "After him, after him! Don't let him escape!"

"He's going down the stairs!" cried the guard.

"He's going UP the stairs!" I disputed. "UP, UP, man!"

Crobe burst out into a hall two floors above. An elevator was open. He dived in.

"He's in elevator number five!" I cried. "He's going down. No, he's going UP!"