The Currents of Space (27 page)

Terens went on, in calmer tones, “Anyway, that’s my part. When they come, I line up with the rest. I don’t know who they are. I don’t speak to them.”

“Was there any such inspection the week before the City Doctor was killed? I suppose you know what week that happened.”

“I think I heard about it in the newscasts. I don’t think there was any Squire’s Inspection at that time. I can’t swear to it.”

“Whom does your land belong to?”

Terens pulled the corners of his mouth back. “To the Squire of Fife.”

Steen spoke up, breaking into the give-and-take with rather surprising suddenness. “Oh, look here. Really! You’re playing into Fife’s hands with this kind of questioning, Dr. Junz. Don’t you see you won’t get anywhere? Really! Do you suppose if Fife were interested in keeping tabs on that creature there that he would go to all the trouble of making trips to Florina to look at him? What are patrollers for? Really!”

Junz looked flustered. “In a case like this, with a world’s economy and maybe its physical safety resting on the contents of one man’s mind, it’s natural that the psycho-prober would not care to leave the guardianship to patrollers.”

Fife intervened. “Even after he had wiped out that mind, to all intents?”

Abel pushed out his lower lip and frowned. He saw his latest gamble sliding into Fife’s hands with all the rest.

Junz tried again, hesitantly. “Was there any particular patroller or group of patrollers that was always underfoot?”

“I’d never know. They’re just uniforms to me.”

Junz turned to Valona with the effect of a sudden pounce. A moment before she had gone a sickly white and her eyes had become wide and stary. Junz had not missed that.

He said, “What about you, girl?”

But she only shook her head, wordlessly.

Abel thought heavily, There’s nothing more to do. It’s all over.

But Valona was on her feet trembling. She said in a husky whisper, “I want to say something.”

Junz said, “Go ahead, girl. What is it?”

Valona talked breathlessly and with fright obvious in every line of her countenance and every nervous twitch of her fingers. She said, “I’m just a country girl. Please don’t be angry with me. It’s just that it seems that things can only be one way. Was my Rik so very important? I mean, the way you said?”

Junz said gently, “I think he was very, very important. I think he still is.”

“Then it must be like you said. Whoever it was who had put him on Florina wouldn’t have dared take his eye away for even a minute hardly. Would he? I mean, suppose Rik was beaten by the mill superintendent or was stoned by the children or got sick and died. He wouldn’t be left helpless in the fields, would he, where he might die before anyone found him? They wouldn’t suppose that it would just be
luck
that would keep him safe.” She was speaking with an intense fluency now.

“Go on,” said Junz, watching her.

“Because there was one person who did watch Rik from the start. He found him in the fields, fixed it so I would take care of him, kept him out of trouble and knew about him every day. He even knew all about the doctor, because I told him. It was he! It was he!”

With her voice at screaming intensity, her finger pointed rigidly at Myrlyn Terens, Townman.

And this time even Fife’s superhuman calm broke and his arms stiffened on his desk, lifting his massive body a full inch off his seat, as his head swiveled quickly toward the Townman.

It was as though vocal paralysis had gripped them all. Even Rik, with disbelief in his eyes, could only stare woodenly, first at Valona, then at Terens.

Then came Steen’s high-pitched laugh and the silence was broken.

Steen said, “I believe it Really! I said so all along. I said the native was in Fife’s pay. That shows you the kind of man Fife is. He’d pay a native to——”

“That’s an infernal lie.”

It wasn’t Fife who spoke, but the Townman. He was on his feet, eyes glistening with passion.

Abel, who of them all seemed the least moved, said, “What is?”

Terens stared at him a moment, not comprehending, then said chokingly, “What the Squire said. I am in the pay of no Sarkite.”

“And what the girl said? Is that a lie too?”

Terens wet his dry lips with the tip of his tongue. “No, that’s true. I am the psycho-prober.” He hurried on. “Don’t look at me like that, Lona. I didn’t mean to hurt him. I didn’t intend any of what happened.” He sat down again.

Fife said, “This is a sort of device. I don’t know exactly what you’re planning, Abel, but it’s impossible on the face of it that
this criminal could have included this particular crime in his repertoire. It’s definite that only a Great Squire could have had the necessary knowledge and facilities. Or are you anxious to take your man Steen off the hook by arranging for a false confession?”

Terens, hands tightly clasped, leaned forward in his seat. “I don’t take Trantorian money, either.”

Fife ignored him.

Junz was the last to come to himself. For minutes, he could not adjust to the fact that the Townman was not really in the same room with him, that he was somewhere else on the embassy grounds, that he could see him only in image form, no more real actually than was Fife, who was twenty miles away. He wanted to go to the Townman, grip him by the shoulder, speak to him alone, but he couldn’t. He said, “There’s no point in arguing before we hear the man. Let’s have the details. If he
is
the psycho-prober, we need the details badly. If he isn’t, the details he’ll try to give us will prove it.”

“If you want to know what happened,” cried Terens, “I’ll tell you. Holding it back won’t do me any good any longer. It’s Sark or Trantor after all, so to Space with it. This will at least give me a chance to get one or two things into the open.”

He pointed at Fife in scorn. “There’s a Great Squire. Only a Great Squire, says this Great Squire, can have the knowledge or the facilities to do what the psycho-prober did. He believes it, too. But what does he know? What do any of the Sarkites know?

“They don’t run the government. Florinians do! The Florinian Civil Service does. They get the papers, they make the papers, they file the papers. And it’s the papers that run Sark. Sure, most of us are too beaten even to whimper, but do you know what we could do if we wanted to, even under the noses of our damned Squires? Well, you see what I’ve done.

“I was temporarily traffic manager at the spaceport a year ago. Part of my training. It’s in the records. You’ll have to dig a little to find it because the listed traffic manager is a Sarkite. He had the title but I did the actual work. My name would be found in the
special section headed Native Personnel. No Sarkite would have dirtied his eyes looking there.

“When the local I.S.B. sent the Spatio-analyst’s message to the port with a suggestion that we meet the ship with an ambulance, I got the message. I passed on what was safe. This matter of the destruction of Florina was not passed on.

“I arranged to meet the Spatio-analyst at a small suburban port. I could do that easily. All the wires and strings that ran Sark were at my fingertips. I was in the Civil Service, remember. A Great Squire who wanted to do what I did, couldn’t, unless he ordered some Florinian to do it for him. I could do it without anyone’s help. So much for knowledge and facility.

“I met the Spatio-analyst, kept him away from both Sark and the I.S.B. I squeezed as much information out of him as I could and set about using that information for Florina and against Sark.”

Words were forced out of Fife. “You sent those first letters?”

“I sent those first letters, Great Squire,” said Terens calmly. “I thought I could force control of enough of the kyrt lands into my own hands to make a deal with Trantor on my terms and drive you off the planet.”

“You were mad.”

“Maybe. Anyway, it didn’t work. I had told the Spatio-analyst I was the Squire of Fife. I had to, because he knew that Fife was the biggest man on the planet and as long as he thought I was Fife, he was willing to talk openly. It made me laugh to realize that he thought Fife was anxious to do whatever was best for Florina.

“Unfortunately, he was more impatient than I was. He insisted that every day lost was a calamity, while I knew that my dealings with Sark heeded time more than anything else. I found it difficult to control him and eventually had to use a psychic probe. I could get one. I had seen it used in hospitals. I knew something about it. Unfortunately, not enough.

“I set the probe to wipe out the anxiety from the surface layers of his mind. That’s a simple operation. I still don’t know
what happened. I think the anxiety must have run deeper, very deep, and the probe automatically followed it, digging out most of the conscious mind along with it. I was left with a mindless thing on my hands. . . . I’m sorry, Rik.”

Rik, who had been listening intently, said sadly, “You shouldn’t have interfered with me, Townman, but I know how you must have felt.”

“Yes,” said Terens, “you’ve lived on the planet. You know about patrollers and Squires and the difference between Lower City and Upper City.”

He took up the current of his story again. “So there I was with the Spatio-analyst completely helpless. I couldn’t let him be found by anyone who might trace his identity. I couldn’t kill him. I felt sure his memory would return and I would still need his knowledge, to say nothing of the fact that killing him would forfeit the good will of Trantor and the I.S.B., which I would eventually need. Besides, in those days, I was incapable of killing.

“I arranged to be transferred to Florina as Townman and I took the Spatio-analyst with me on forged papers. I arranged to have him found, I picked Valona to take care of him. There was no danger thereafter except for that one time with the doctor. Then I had to enter the power plants of Upper City. That was not impossible. The engineers were Sarkites but the janitors were Florinian. On Sark I learned enough about power mechanics to know how to short a power line. It took me three days to find the proper time for it. After that, I could murder easily. I never knew, though, that the doctor kept duplicate records in both halves of his office. I wish I had.”

Terens could see Fife’s chronometer from where he sat. “Then, one hundred hours ago—it seems like a hundred years—Rik began remembering again. Now you have the whole story.”

“No,” said Junz, “we have not. What are the details of the Spatio-analyst’s story of planetary destruction?”

“Do you think I understood the details of what he had to say? It was some sort of—pardon me, Rik—madness.”

“It wasn’t,” blazed Rik. “It couldn’t have been.”

“The Spatio-analyst had a ship,” said Junz. “Where is it?”

“On the scrap heap long ago,” said Terens. “An order scrapping it was sent out. My superior signed it. A Sarkite never reads papers, of course. It was scrapped without question.”

“And Rik’s papers? You said he showed you papers!”

“Surrender that man to us,” said Fife suddenly, “and we’ll find out what he knows.”

“No,” said Junz. “His first crime was against the I.S.B. He kidnaped and damaged the mind of a Spatio-analyst. He belongs to us.”

Abel said, “Junz is correct.”

Terens said, “Now look here. I don’t say a word without safeguards. I know where Rik’s papers are. They’re where no Sarkite or Trantorian will ever find them. If you want them you’ll have to agree that I’m a political refugee. Whatever I did was out of patriotism, out of a regard for the needs of my planet. A Sarkite or a Trantorian may claim to be patriotic; why not a Florinian as well?”

“The Ambassador,” said Junz, “has said you will be given over to the I.S.B. I assure you that you will not be turned over to Sark. For your treatment of the Spatio-analyst, you will be tried. I cannot guarantee the result, but if you cooperate with us now, it will count in your favor.”

Terens looked searchingly at Junz. Then he said, “I’ll take my chance with you, Doctor. . . . According to the Spatio-analyst, Florina’s sun is in the pre-nova stage.”

“What!” The exclamation or its equivalent came from all but Valona.

“It’s about to explode and go boom,” said Terens sardonically. “And when that happens all of Florina will go poof, like a mouthful of tobacco smoke.”

Abel said, “I’m no Spatio-analyst but I have heard that there is no way of predicting when a star will explode.”

“That’s true. Until now, anyway. Did Rik explain what made him think so?” asked Junz.

“I suppose his papers will show that. All I can remember is about the carbon current.”

“What?”

“He kept saying, ‘The carbon current of space. The carbon current of space.’ That, and the words ‘catalytic effect.’ There it is.”

Steen giggled. Fife frowned. Junz stared.

Then Junz muttered, “Pardon me. I’ll be right back.” He stepped out of the limits of the receptor cube and vanished.

He was back in fifteen minutes.

Junz looked about in bewilderment when he returned. Only Abel and Fife were present.

He said, “Where——”

Abel broke in instantly. “We have been waiting for you, Dr. Junz. The Spatio-analyst and the girl are on their way to the Embassy. The conference is ended.”

“Ended! Great Galaxy, we have only begun. I’ve got to explain the possibilities of nova formation.”

Abel shifted uneasily in his seat. “It is not necessary to do that, Doctor.”

“It is very necessary. It is essential. Give me five minutes.”

“Let him speak,” said Fife. He was smiling.

Junz said, “Take it from the beginning. In the earliest recorded scientific writings of Galactic civilization it was already known that stars obtained their energy from nuclear transformations in their interiors. It was also known that, given what we know about conditions in stellar interiors, two types, and only two types, of nuclear transformations can possibly yield the necessary energy. Both involve the conversion of hydrogen to helium. The first transformation is direct: two hydrogens and two neutrons combine to form one helium nucleus. The second is indirect, with several steps. It ends up with hydrogen becoming helium, but in the intermediate steps, carbon nuclei take part. These carbon nuclei are not used up but are re-formed as the reactions proceed, so that a trifling amount of carbon can be used over and over again, serving to convert a great deal of hydrogen
to helium. The carbon acts as a catalyst, in other words. All this has been known back to the days of prehistory, back to the time when the human race was restricted to a single planet, if there ever was such a time.”