Mission: Earth "The Enemy Within" (18 page)

I was much relieved. I had certainly handled that mutiny in an expert way.

But Fate was not being kind, even so. I had no more than entered the tunnel which led back to my office than I was suddenly stopped by Faht Bey.

"There's something I better report," he said. I thought, oh Gods, I knew I shouldn't have come into this place.

"We're having to step up our heroin production," said Faht Bey.

"Why? You're already running at top speed!"

"I know," said Faht Bey. "I hate to have to tell you this but there's a twenty-five pound bag unaccounted for."

"So?" I said. (Bleep) these bookkeeping details.

"The security guard says it has been stolen by someone."

"Oh, somebody just miscounted!"

"No," said Faht Bey. "It has never happened before and this is the third time in the past five days. Somebody is stealing heroin supplies and in quantity! And it's happening right here inside the base."

"Well, step up production," I said impatiently. My Gods, I was in no mood for more problems.

"Just so you know," he said, fastening a peculiar eye on me. "We'll step up production."

So I had also solved that.

That would teach me to move around the hangar! You had to be armed with more than a blastick! Too bad you just couldn't throw a grenade at all these problems you met! All this thinking on top of all this grief was making my head ache.

Now that Heller knew there was a plot against his life, I had to keep a very close eye on him. He might come over to the base and try to kill me.

But, as usual, the things he did didn't make much sense.

In the ensuing days after he returned from Connecticut, Heller devoted a lot of time to studying. He was covering the mimeographed class lectures of his courses to date. He studied in his office at the Empire State Building; he probably even studied in his suite—but who could tell what he did in his suite, thanks to the interference. But what worried me most was his studying in the lobby of the Gracious Palms.

On an evening, he would sit half-masked from the lobby by palm fronds but still in sight of the front door. Why he chose such a place to study, only Heller knew, for he was constantly interrupted.

He was affecting a black, silk-collared tuxedo in the lobby. The shirt had puffs of lace on the front of it and the silk cuffs were held in place with diamonds. How he got them, I don't know, maybe he had them built, but he was wearing black, patent-leather baseball spikes!

He'd get started on a lecture on differential equations or some such silliness and he'd get no farther than a page when some diplomat or another would wander over and he'd get up and shake hands and pass the time of day. The UN was apparently just starting session and there were lots of customers, all of different shades and hues.

They didn't say anything intelligent and for a bit I thought they must be talking in code. Things like "How are you, old boy?" from the diplomats and things like "Just ripping," from Heller. Unintelligible. And some diplomat, with a lift of his eyebrows, would say, "Getting any yourself?" and Heller would say, "The important people have the priorities." And they'd laugh in a sort of knowing way. Incomprehensible.

But one thing was clearly understood. He was too (bleeped) popular!

There was always a painting going on in the far corner of the lobby. Always a crowd around the artist, the girl standing, half-clothed, provocatively. I wanted to get some better looks myself and Heller never even glanced in that direction! You can't get much detail in peripheral vision.

About the only time I'd get a good look at the girl—and they were real stunners of every imaginable hue—was when one would leave the lobby. And then she had a robe on as the painting would be ended for the night. They'd stop by Heller before they got into the elevator and say, "It's going well, pretty boy. I got South Africa to say yes." Or something equally nonsensical. It was confusing. In the first place, the program called for a whore of the week and it had evidently been shifted to whore of the night! It was almost enough to give one jet lag. But he was obviously up to something, even though you couldn't keep up with him.

But it was probably better that I didn't get many looks at these girls. My own bed was empty, and although she would go out each day in her car, I saw nothing of Utanc. She had obviously erased my suffering self from her life. I did hear that the little boy was better but neither of those boys left Utanc's room.

But for all his hobnobbing with diplomats and nosing in his lecture mimeographs and texts, Heller, (bleep) him, still found time to run around.

For three whole mornings he went through the silliest routine I have ever seen.

He would take a regular cab and ride somewhere. And after a bit Bang-Bang would drive up to where Heller had alighted and come over to him and say, "Nothing." That was all.

Heller would get on a subway and ride to some station and get off. After a while, Bang-Bang would come up to him and say, "Nothing." Then Heller would walk slowly past this building or that, stopping to look in shop windows. And then Bang-Bang would come up and say, "Nothing."

I finally worked it out that they were practicing some stupid G-2 idea of tailing. But Heller was always in his red baseball cap, easy to spot. He took no evasive actions. It was either G-2 or just some silly way of exercising.

After three days Heller quit doing that. Maybe he got tired of walking and riding. Maybe he was just seeing New York. Who could follow his inane actions?

Almost two weeks had gone by with this routine of study and lobby when he made a sudden shift.

He got up early one morning. He took a train to Newark and walked into the Jiffy-Spiffy Garage. Mike Mutazione pulled his head out of an engine and they staged an effusive greeting and then chattered of this and that including a persuasive pitch by Mike to get Heller to join the Catholic Church, and Heller's defense, "How do you know my soul hasn't already been saved?" Mike didn't seem to have any textbook answer to that so they got down to business.

Heller wanted a garage to rent. And Mike told him sure, they had several nearby where they stored "hots" until they got their "faces lifted," and Mike himself drove Heller around and they looked at them and Heller chose one that could be very securely locked. And he rented it.

Then they went back to the garage and there, over to one side, was Heller's old Cadillac. It was making some progress but apparently the new engine was still being modified "for 190 miles per hour." But Heller was not interested in the new engine. He wanted the old engine that had been taken out and was sitting on some blocks.

Heller did Mike a little sketch in his disgustingly precise and rapid way. He wanted the old engine and a radiator mounted on a trailer. He wanted a gas tank mounted on the trailer. And he wanted a brake drum put around the old engine's crankshaft connection.

It baffled me. Why did anyone want an engine sitting on a trailer that wouldn't run the trailer?

Mike said, "Hell, that's easy. We got a trailer right over here that some (bleeped) fool stole. How can you change and sell a baggage trailer? You can have it. I got a couple guys idle. We can fix your rig this afternoon."

So Heller gave him some money and told him to finish it and move it into the rented garage. Crazy. He not only was making a rig that wouldn't run itself, he was also just putting it in a private garage! No wonder this Mike wanted to convert him to something. He was too insane the way he was.

Heller went out shopping after getting a couple addresses and he bought a huge tank of oxygen and a huge tank of hydrogen gas and had them delivered to the garage.

He went back to New York and went on with his usual routine that day, but the next morning, bright and early, he headed for Newark, carrying a huge bag of tools and whatever.

Heller went to the garage. There was the trailer and there were the oxygen and hydrogen bottles. He put on some white mechanic's coveralls and got to work.

He left the garage doors open. He put a spring balance on the brake drum behind the engine. He started the engine up and began to measure the spring-balance readings as he revved the engine up faster and faster. The roar and vibration and smoke was awful!

Playing. You can always count on Fleet people to play with machinery!

Then, using gloves to keep his fingers from scorching, he took the carburetor off the engine.

Then he connected regulators and hoses to the oxygen and hydrogen tanks.

He made a brass fitting that covered the place the carburetor had been and made two nipples into it and connected the hoses to it.

It was a pretty crude rig.

He even put on a gas mask to work with it.

He started up the engine!

It ran!

Then he began to fiddle with amounts from one tank to the other and began to put pressure on the brake. He kept writing down readings from the tank regulator gauges and the brake spring balance.

Using some kind of a gauge, he started sampling whatever was coming out of the exhaust pipe of the engine. He got the gauge meter to read zero by adjusting the two valves of the hydrogen and oxygen tanks while the gauge on the spring balance on the brake measured maximum.

It was late by that time. He dismantled everything, took off his mechanic's coveralls and left.

He also left me with another puzzle. What was that all about?

But I could tell one thing. He was happy. As he walked down the street to get on the train to New York, he was whistling. Some new trick he had learned.

He was making too much progress on something too fast! I knew he was doing it just to spite me, to mock me for having had to forego killing him.

I felt awful.

Just when I was feeling that nothing could get any worse, the Blixo arrived. It utterly dispersed my existing confusion. It was eight o'clock in the evening, Turkish time. I had been trying to figure out what to do to avoid another sleepless night in my lonely bed when the warning panel in my secret office began to flash:

SHIP ARRIVAL

It could only be the Blixo. A sudden thought, "My gold!" began to lift my spirits. Then a sag. I had promised Captain Bolz a bottle of Scotch on arrival. He was an officer who remembered these things clearly. The bottle of Scotch I had gotten had been stolen. He might hang on to my gold!

I made a sudden, urgent telephone call to the taxi driver. "For Gods' sakes, bring me a bottle of Scotch quick!"

"It sounds bad!" he said.

"It is bad!" I said.

I hung up. I went tearing around trying to find a uniform. At the moment the panel flashed, I didn't have any clothes on. It would not do to go aboard that way. He might think I was so lacking in authority he could hold on to my gold. It would buy an awful lot of Scotch—six million dollars worth! I knew Captain Bolz.

I could find a uniform tunic but no pants. Then when I found the pants, I had mislaid the tunic. I found my cap underneath the mattress. I couldn't find my rank locket anywhere.

The place looked like a hurricane had struck it. But I managed to get pants, tunic, boots and cap assembled and on. Maybe he wouldn't notice the lack of a rank locket.

I heard the taxi coming. I went into my bedroom. The driver rushed in and thrust a bottle at me: Haige and Haige. Counterfeit Scotch. Made by Arabs. They can't spell.

"This is bad Scotch," I said.

"It's a bad situation," he said.

It would have to do. I got him out of there with a fistful of lira.

I went tearing down the tunnel from my secret room to the hangar.

They hadn't dollied the Blixo into position yet. I waited.

Finally, they got all two hundred and fifty skinny, battered feet of her off to the side of the landing pad and plunked a wobbly, far-too-tall landing ladder up to her airlock. They got another one. It didn't fit either. The Blixo spacers put their own landing gangway out. I got aboard.

Captain Bolz was in his cabin getting into a sloppy-looking civilian suit, ready to have a night on the town. He was buttoning a ragged shirt across his hairy chest. I handed him the Scotch. He let go of the shirt. He chomped his teeth down on the cap and tore it off. He had a long, long drink. He shuddered and went a trifle popeyed.

"Gods!" he spluttered. "Gods, but that's good." He took another swallow. He said, "Well, Gris, how are you?"

I reached into my pocket and got the key to the storeroom where I had locked in my gold.

"Your passengers arrived in great shape. Somebody named Gunsalmo Silva was in deepsleep so he wasn't heard from. Prahd Bittlestiffender, he just stayed in his cabin the whole way, studying like fury. That little (bleepard)—what's his name, Too-Too?—I had to put him in irons: it wasn't him, it was the crew, they kept trying to get at him to sleep with. So, it's all in order. So, if you'll just stamp a few papers, they're yours and so's the cargo."

I promptly got out my identoplate and began to stamp. Shortly, I noticed my wrist was getting tired so I looked at what I was stamping. The last half of the pack was blank gate passes so he could land contraband on Voltar. I stamped them.

He grinned. "We understand each other," he said. "Now if you'll let my mates do the unloading, I'm on my way. Have some Scotch. No? Then here I go and the Gods help Turkey." He was gone.

He must have shouted at his spacers as he left for here was a mate to help me. We opened the locker. And there it was! Nine beautiful cases. Eighteen fifty-troy-pound bars of gold! Allowing for difference of gravity-Earth being only about five-sixths as massive—this was only seven hundred and fifty pounds of gold. At twelve troy ounces to the pound that was nine thousand ounces. Gold at the moment was selling at seven hundred dollars an ounce. So I was looking at six million, three hundred thousand dollars worth of gold! Shows you that crime pays after all.