Planet of Adventure Omnibus (20 page)

“Ha, threats?
In the middle of Dadiche? When all I need do is signal a Blue-”

“It would be
the last signal of your life.”

“What of my
twenty sequins?”

“You’ve
already had fifteen from me, plus your profit. No more of your complaints!
Drive as I tell you or I’ll wring your neck.”

Wheezing,
protesting, casting spiteful glances from the side of his face, Emmink obeyed.

The white
building loomed ahead. The road ran parallel to the front at a distance of
seventy-five yards, with a strip of garden intervening. An access road turned
off from the main avenue, to run in front of the building. To drive along the
access road would have rendered them highly conspicuous, and they continued
along the main avenue in the company of other drays and wagons, and a few small
cars driven by Blue Chasch. Reith gazed anxiously at the facade. Three large
portals broke the front wall. Those to the left and center were shut; the far
right portal was open. As they passed Reith looked in, to see the loom of machinery,
the glow of hot metal, the hull of a platform similar to that which had lifted
the space-boat away from the swamp.

Reith turned
to Emmink. “This building is a factory where airships and spacecraft are built!”

“Yes, of
course,” grunted Emmink.

“I asked you
as much; why did you not tell me?”

“You weren’t
paying for information. I give nothing away.”

“Drive around
the building again.”

“I must
charge you an additional five sequins.”

“Two. And no
complaints, or I’ll rattle your teeth.”

Cursing under
his breath, Emmink swung the dray around the factory. Reith asked, “Have you
ever looked into the center or the left of the building?”

“Oh yes;
several times.”

“What is
there?”

“How much is
the information worth?”

“Not very
much. I’d have to see for myself.”

“A sequin?”

Reith nodded
shortly.

“Sometimes
the other portals are ajar. In the center they construct sections of
spaceships, which are then rolled out and carried away for assembly elsewhere.
In the left they build smaller spaceships, when such are needed. Recently there
has been little work; the Blue Chasch do not like to travel space.”

“Have you
seen them bring spaceships or space-boats here for repair? Several months ago?”

“No. Why do
you ask?”

“The
information will cost you money,” said Reith. Emmink showed great yellow teeth
in a grin of sardonic appreciation and said no more.

They started
along the front a second time. “Slow,” Reith ordered, for Emmink had pushed the
power-arm hard over and the old dray rattled at full speed along the avenue.

Emmink grudgingly
obliged. “If we go too slow they’ll think us curious, and ask us why we peer
and crane our necks.”

Reith looked
along the road adjacent to the building, along which walked a few Blue Chasch,
a somewhat larger number of Chaschmen.

Reith said to
Emmink, “Pull off the road; stop the dray for a minute or two.”

Emmink began
his usual protest, but Reith pulled back the power-lever and the dray wheezed
to a halt. Emmink stared at Reith, speechless with fury.

“Get out; fix
your wheels, or look at your energy cell,” said Reith. “Do something to keep
occupied.” He jumped to the ground, stood looking at the great factory, for
such seemed to be the nature of the building. The portal on the right was
tantalizingly open. So near yet so far ... If only he dared cross the
seventy-five yards to the portal, and look inside!

What then?
Suppose he saw the space-boat. It certainly would not be in operative
condition; chances were good that Blue Chasch technicians had at least
partially disassembled the mechanism. They would be a puzzled group, thought
Reith. The technology, the engineering, the entire rationale of design would
seem strange and unfamiliar. The presence of a human body would only puzzle
them the more. The situation was by no means encouraging. The boat was possibly
within, in a dismantled and non-usable condition. Or it was not. If it should
be there he had not the remotest idea of how to gain possession of it. If it
was not in the building, if only Paul Waunder’s transcom was there, then he
must revise his thinking and make new plans ... But at the moment the first
step was to look inside the factory. It seemed easy. He needed only to walk
seventy-five yards and look ... but he did not dare. If only he were in some
disguise to deceive the Blue Chasch-which could only mean the guise of a
Chaschman. Far-fetched, thought Reith. With his well-marked features, he
resembled a Chaschman not at all.

The
reflections had occupied him a very short time: hardly a minute, but Emmink
clearly was becoming restive. Reith decided to seek his counsel.

“Emmink,”
said Reith, “suppose you wanted to learn if a certain object-for instance, a
small spaceship-was inside that building, how would you go about it?”

Emmink
snorted. “I would consider no such folly. I would resume my place on the dray
and depart while I still had health and sanity.”

“You can
think of no errand to take us into the building?”

“None
whatever. A fantasy!”

“Or close
past that open portal?”

“No, no! Of
course not!”

Reith
longingly considered the building and the open portal. So near and yet so far
... He became furious with himself, at the intolerable circumstances, at the
Blue Chasch, Emmink, the planet Tschai. Seventy-five yards: the work of half a
minute. He said curtly to Emmink: “Wait here.” And he started walking with long
strides across the planted area.

Emmink gave a
hoarse call. “Come here, come back! Are you insane?”

But Reith
only hastened his steps. On the walk beside the building were a few Chaschmen,
apparently laborers, who paid him no heed. Reith gained the walk. The open
portal was ten steps ahead. Three Blue Chasch stepped forth. Reith’s heart
pounded; his palms were damp. The Blue Chasch must smell his sweat; would they
know it for the odor of fear? It seemed as if, engrossed in their own affairs,
they might not notice him. Head bowed, loose-brimmed hat in front of his face,
Reith hurried past. Then, with only twenty feet to the portal, the three swung
around as if activated by the same stimulus. One of the Blue Chasch spoke in a
gobbling mincing voice, the words formed by organs other than vocal chords. “Man!
Where go you?”

Reith halted
and responded with the explanation he had formed as he had crossed from the
main avenue. “I came for scrap metal.”

“What scrap
metal?”

“By the
portal, in a box; so they told me.”

“Ah!-” a
blowing gasping sound, which Reith was unable to interpret. “No scrap metal!”

One of the
others muttered something quietly, and all three emitted a hiss, the Blue
Chasch analogue of human laughter.

“Scrap metal,
so? Not at the factory. There: notice that building yonder? Scrap metal yonder!”

“Thank you!”
called Reith. “I’ll but look.” He went the last few steps to the open portal,
looked into a great space murmurous with machinery, smelling of oil and metal
and ozone. Nearby were platform components in the process of fabrication. Blue
Chasch and Chaschmen alike worked, without obvious caste distinction. Around
the walls, as in any Earthly factory or machine shop, were benches, racks and
bins. In the center were a cylindrical section of what apparently would be a
medium sized spaceship. Beyond, barely visible, was a familiar shape: the
space-boat on which Reith had come down to Tschai.

He could
detect no damage to the hull. If the machinery had been dismantled, no evidence
was apparent. But a good deal of distance intervened between himself and the
boat, and he had time only for a single glimpse. Behind him the three Blue
Chasch stood staring at him, massive blue-scaled heads half-inclined as if
listening. They were, so Reith realized, smelling him. They seemed suddenly
intent, suddenly interested and began to walk slowly back toward him.

One spoke, in
his thick queer voice: “Man! Attention! Return here. There is no scrap metal.”

“You smell of
man-fear,” said another. “You smell of odd substances.”

“A disease,”
replied Reith.

Another
spoke. “You smell like a strangely dressed man we found in a strange spaceship;
there is about you a factitious quality.„

“Why are you
here?” demanded the third of the group. “For whom do you spy?”

“No one; I am
a drayer, and I must return to Pera.”

“Pera is a
hive of spies; time perhaps that we sifted the population.”

“Where is
your dray? You did not arrive on foot?”

Reith started
to move away. “My dray is out on the avenue.” He pointed, then stared in
consternation. Emmink and the dray were no longer to be seen. He called back to
the three Blue Chasch, “My dray! Stolen! Who has taken it!” And with a gesture
of hasty farewell for the puzzled Chasch, he darted off into the planted area
separating the two roads. Behind a hedge of white wool and gray-green plumes he
paused to look back and was by no means reassured. One of the Blue Chasch had
run a few steps after him and was pointing some sort of instrument here and
there through the planting. A second was speaking with great urgency into a
hand microphone. The third had gone to the portal and was peering toward the
space-boat, as if to verify its presence.

“I’ve done it
for sure,” Reith muttered to himself. “I’ve pulled the whole business down
around my ears.” He started to turn away, but paused an instant longer to watch
as a squad of Chaschmen, wearing uniforms of purple and gray, drove up the
factory road on long low slung motorcycles. The Blue Chasch gave terse
instructions, pointing toward the planted area. Reith waited no longer. He ran
to the avenue, and as a dray loaded with empty baskets rolled smartly by, he
sprang out, caught hold of the tailgate, pulled himself up on the bed and
crawled behind a stack of baskets, without arousing the attention of the draymaster.

Behind came
half a dozen motorcycles at great speed. They passed the dray with an angry
whir of electric propulsion. To set up a roadblock? Or to reinforce the guards
at the main gates?

Possibly
both, thought Reith. The venture, as Emmink had predicted, was about to end in
fiasco. Reith doubted that the Blue Chasch would involve him in their infamous
games; they would prefer to extract information from him. And then? At best,
Reith’s freedom of action would be curtailed. At worst-but this bore little
thinking about. The dray was rattling along at a good pace, but Reith knew he
had no chance of passing through the gate. Close to the North Market Reith
dropped to the ground and at once took cover behind a long low structure of
porous white concrete: a warehouse or a storage shed. Finding his view
constricted, he climbed upon a wall, thence to the roof of the shed. He could
see down the main avenue to the gate, and his fears were amply justified: a
number of purple and gray-uniformed security police stood beside the portal
inspecting traffic with great care. If Reith was going to leave the city he
must choose some other route. The river? Conceivably he could wait till night
and float down the river unseen. But Dadiche extended a score or more miles
along the riverbank, with other Blue Chasch villas and gardens beyond.
Additionally, Reith had no knowledge of the creatures inhabiting the river. If
they were as noxious as other forms of Tschai life, he wanted nothing to do
with them.

A faint hum
attracted Reith’s attention. He looked up, startled to see an air-sled, not a
hundred yards distant, sliding quietly by. The passengers were Blue Chasch,
wearing peculiar headgear like enormous moth antennae. Reith was initially sure
that he had been seen; then he was sure that the antennae were some sort of
olfactory amplifiers: equipment being used to track him down.

The air-sled
proceeded without change of course. Reith released his pent breath. His
apprehension apparently had been unfounded. What were the tall antennae?
Ceremonial vestments? Adornments? “I may never know,” Reith told himself. He
searched the sky for other skysleds, but none could be seen. Raising to his
knees, he once again looked all around. Somewhat to the left, behind a screen
of the everpresent adarak trees, was North Market: white concrete parasols,
suspended discs, glass screens; moving figures wearing black, dull blue, dull
red; scales glinting gunmetal blue. The breeze, blowing from the north, carried
a complicated reek of spice; of sour vegetable matter; of meat cooked,
fermented, pickled; of yeasts and mycelium cake.

To the right
were the huts of Chaschmen, scattered through the gardens. Beyond, pressed up
against the wall, was a large building screened by tall black trees. If Reith
could climb to the top of this building he might possibly cross the wall. He
looked at the sky. Dusk was the best time for such a venture, a matter of two
or three hours.

Reith
descended from the roof, and stood a moment thinking. The Blue Chasch, so
sensitive to odors; would they not be able to track him by scent, like
bloodhounds? It was not an unreasonable theory, and if so, he had no time to
spare.