The Invaders Plan (40 page)

The rest of the squad gave a jump and cheer and then dispersed. All just as before!

Snelz wandered over to the old gravity chair and sat down. I approached him.

He was lighting a puffstick. "Bit of wind on the desert today. Have a puffstick?" he added as an afterthought.

"I think you owe me more than that," I said threateningly.

"Oh?" He felt in his tunic side pocket and pulled out a five-credit note. "I thought I gave it to you a couple days ago. Well, here it is." He probably owed me more than that. But realizing he didn't even know I'd been gone sort of took the heart out of me. I put the five-credit note in my pocket and walked slowly away.

I had five credits. It made me brave enough to go "home." I mounted the side steps, avoiding the broken boards. I heard somebody walking in the hall. It was dark. As quietly as I could I slid along the wall to my room. I knew my way. I had done it very often. I am a master at silent approach.

There were no bars on my door. I slid it open. A low glowplate was burning in there and by its light I saw, standing not three feet from me, Meeley.

She looked like she was going to go through my pockets. I hastily flipped out the five-credit note and handed it over.

She did not even say thank you. She did not even say I still owed her money for last year. She said, "I wish you would sweep that floor up occasionally! The stench is awful!" And she walked away.

Later I lay in the broken bed, staring into the dark. I had been gone three weeks. I could have been dead for all they knew. And not once this whole day had anybody said, "Where have you been?"

But if I thought I would continue to be unnoticed and that things would just go on forever in this way, I was
very
mistaken. I did not have any forecast at all that, today, Heller's crazy, irresponsible actions would pull the pin and accidentally begin the landslide of events which were to lead us all into catastrophe.

I awoke, well before dawn, ravenously hungry. I became panic-stricken at the thought of starving and thirsting myself to a point where I would have another Manco Devil's dream: my poverty had prevented me from eating the entire previous day. I didn't want to be interviewed again for a job as handler of the King of the underworld.

Accordingly, I piled out and dressed and, down in the side courtyard, booted my driver awake and bade him fly at once, like mad, dark though it still might be, to my office.

My hope was to get there before Bawtch and raid the clerks' supply of hot jolt! It was a cunning plan: I had it all sketched out, complete with the excuse that I had to use the master console. I even embellished the plan with a fancy tale that I had worked like a slave all night, but I didn't think Bawtch would buy that so I deleted it.

In the office, I turned on a low light and worked with a ring of magnetic frequency plates, picking the lock of their jolt cupboard. I am very well trained as a lock picker, the tradecraft name for it, and in hardly any time at all I not only had a canister of hot jolt but also a thin, dry, bun crust somebody had abandoned.

I drank it very quickly, scalding my mouth, and rushed over to the master console, trying not to break my teeth on the bun crust. So far, so good: I had beaten everybody else to the office, I had not been observed. My superb training was standing me in good stead.

I sat down at the console. In my planning, I had neglected to decide what I was going to ask it. Bawtch had removed his identoplate so I had to use my own. I put it in and the console lit up and then it almost went off again while I tried to think of something to punch in to it. It was terribly early to do any thinking, hot jolt or no hot jolt!

Then I remembered Heller's remark of yesterday and I quickly punched in, Blito-P3, all cultural, ethnological survey appendages, all surveys prior to one hundred years ago. The screens seemed undecided. Then they blinked and the master said, SORree. The material requested has been deleted from the data banks.

What's this? I thought. I could understand a delete of recent material but not prior to a hundred years. Heller had specifically requested such material. I had to give him
something
that would show I was working these days. I punched in, Correction: All such material up to twenty years ago. The computer said, SORree. Deleted.

It provoked me. One can get pretty cross with computers, especially early in the morning. I got incautious. I punched in, Correction: All such material from present time all the way back.

365 The computer said, SORree. Comparing question to the identoplate of the interrogator, you know very well it isn't available. Very deleted.

(Bleep)! That really put me up against it. There was nothing I could show Heller that demonstrated my helpfulness. Aha! I punched in, Please give me copies of the deletions. This sort of caused the screen to fog up. Then it said, How can you give a nothing to show a nothing is? (Bleep) computers. They are so illogical. Can't think. I furrowed my own brow. Then I had it.

Please give me the number and identity of the person who ordered those deletions.

The computer thought it over. And then, amazingly, it gave it!

Lombar Hisst.

There was his name, designation and identoplate facsimile! Imagine the great Lombar Hisst leaving his name in the machine!

Hastily, I punched
"Deliver copy."
And the paper promptly rolled out. It was a certified copy and it said, All cultural, ethnological, political and related material regarding Blito-P3, was ordered perpetually and additively deleted from the data banks on below date now twenty-five years past, by Lombar Hisst, Chief Executive of the Coordinated Information Apparatus, Exterior Division, Voltarian Confederation. Said identoplate facsimile hereby affixed below.

I finally had something that would prove to Heller that I
did
work and was around. I folded the copy up and put it in my pocket.

I was in the act of shutting off the machine when I heard voices coming from a side office.

"But I don't want to go!" It was Too-Too's voice.

"You poor thing, I know how you feel." It was Bawtch's voice. "But that brute is quite capable of carrying out the most insane actions." I couldn't imagine who he was referring to.

There was the sound of blubbering.

"Now hold still." It was Bawtch again. "Blow your nose into this handkerchief. You're getting your face powder all smeared and gummed up." The sound of blowing.

"Here," came Bawtch's voice, "is a packet of trash information. The same material will go to Hisst by regular routing. But you take this packet – here, I'll put it in this secrecy-case – straight to Lord Endow's office. Don't show it to the receptionist or secretary. Insist that you present it to Lord Endow himself, in private. They will search you for weapons – don't flinch – and then pass you in. Lord Endow will open the secrecy-case. He will see at once that it is trash and he will ask you why. And you will say you saw him riding in the last parade and were stricken with love." Blubbering. More blowing. Finally Too-Too said, "But I hear he is too big!"

"Yes, I know, you poor thing. Here is some grease. Now run along before that unspeakable (bleepard) thinks up something even worse!" I was frankly shocked. Bawtch could get imprisoned for referring to a Lord as an "unspeakable (bleepard)." But there was a good side to this. Bawtch was pushing the project right along. I got up. I was even thinking of telling him I was glad he had had a change of heart when I heard a violent howl of cursing.

Honestly, it was worse than a spacer pirate! And it finished with, ". . . will call Internal Investigations to find out what happened to this jolt bar!" Ulp. I had forgotten to shut it. I wondered if this was the time to use the escape route. But I was fortified by the hot jolt and the crust and I braved it out. I walked past the open bar. "How about a canister of jolt?" I said.

He just stood there, glaring at me. I walked on out. I think he suspected.

I woke up my driver again and directed him to fly to the Apparatus hangar. I was on my way, without knowing it, to keep a very grim appointment with the wood Gods of awful fates.

Time had run out on me. Completely.

At the hangar, everything was in a bustle.

We had arrived just as the contractors were coming on the job for the day and there were work crews, work crews, work crews. They were in the differently colored cover suit uniforms of their companies and as they scrambled and rushed about they made a scene of spattered hues and industry, quite foreign to an Apparatus hangar.

I did not see Heller. The day half-platoon was on duty, so Krak had gone.

After I got bumped and jostled a few ways and just after a rushing dolly with a load almost knocked me flat, I withdrew over to the side. I found a pile of old Apparatus debris and sat down, sort of fortified against this rush and clamor. It was absolutely exhausting to watch.

There was a contractor crew inside the main engine room, apparently fastening the spare time-converter in place and their foreman kept popping out, swearing at the lack of room for it in there.

Heller showed up. He had apparently been on the communications switchboard in the office. He looked very calm and efficient. He had his red racing cap on the back of his head and was stuffing a list in his pocket. I was about to go over to him to give him the deletion notice when he spotted the agitated foreman and trotted over to him.

"It wasn't meant to be carried in there!" the foreman wailed. "There's no place else on the ship for that big a spare but it sure won't go in there."

"I think if we move the booster panel about two feet," said Heller, "we can squeeze it in. Get those Will-be Was specialists over there to follow us. Shifting a booster panel can be tricky, but we can do it."

"Tricky!" said the foreman. "You get one wire wrong and it ain't tricky. It's bang! Oh well, it's your neck, Officer Heller." And he rushed off to get the Will-be Was foreman.

It depressed me. Not content with having dangerous engines, we now were going to unstabilize one of the panels! I slumped down.

The engine contractor crews converged on the main drive room and they banged and cursed and showered sparks in there. And after an hour or so there was a concerted cheer. Heller came out with the two foremen and they were all laughing. Whatever they had done had been a success.

Another crew was given a signal and they clambered up on the hull and began to replace the plates that had been removed to gain access to the main drive room. They looked like tiny dolls up there.
Tug One
was not big but a forty-foot fall can make a bad squash when one hits. I looked away. I don't like heights.

It looked awfully busy. From cover suit colors there must be eighteen contractor crews working on that ship. But Heller wasn't fooling me. He was just stalling. I knew you could overhaul a spaceship on and on and on. You could even undo today what was done yesterday! Heller, I decided, had no slightest intention of ever leaving on the mission. Why should he? He had beautiful quarters even though the area was under refit. He had Krak. Why should he go anywhere?

And then I saw something that unsettled me. A Fleet lorry came roaring up outside the hangar and about six Fleet spacers piled out. They had a near fight with the hangar guards but Heller appeared and calmed it down.

The spacers picked up the box. It was long and quite heavy. With a loose-kneed trot they carried it through the tug's airlock and into the ship. After a while they came out. One of the hangar Apparatus foremen jeered at them and the lead spacer detoured about two feet and knocked the foreman flat!

Amidst a bunch of shouts of "drunks!" and "bluejackets!" – which is what the Apparatus calls the Fleet, a bluejacket being a kind of insect – there was a near second riot.

Heller got it untangled and the spacers went off and Heller picked up the Apparatus foreman who was saying, "I didn't mean you, Officer Heller," and things calmed down again.

But I was
very
interested in that box! I sidled very inconspicuously into the tug. The flight deck was a bit torn up – they seemed to be installing gravity simulator coils in the walls – and a lot of control wires were unhooked. But I had no interest in that.

The floor plates of the passageway were unlocked and up, displaying the shallow underhold below and on the bottomside of the main drives. I quickly lowered myself down.

There were six such boxes. They had letters on them,
Box A, Box B,
and so on. They were heavily fastened. And I could not lift a corner of one by myself. What the Devils did he have here? What menace did
this
pose to a mission that must fail?

I couldn't make it out. Afraid to be caught down there, I scrambled back up.

I ran straight into Heller! He was kneeling there on the passageway crossbars, looking at me curiously. I thought, well, here's where I blew it.

Heller reached down and gave me a hand and in a moment I was standing again in the passageway, teetering because all there was to stand on was the cross-supports of the missing plates. I waited for his blast.

Heller looked at me searchingly. It didn't make it any easier for me that he seemed to be having no trouble standing on the thin threads of nothing whereas I was sure I'd slip and fall back into the hold and break a leg.

"Soltan," he said in a soft voice, "I've got the feeling you've been avoiding me lately." Avoiding you, I thought. You unobservant idiot! I haven't even been here for three weeks!

Heller looked a little sad. "When you ran off that night, I must have said or done something that offended you. If so, I'm very sorry for it." He saw I was having trouble standing on the thin braces and he guided me over to more solid footing. "Soltan, whether we like it or not, we're pitched in together on this mission. I personally want to make a go of it." That really flustered me. That was the one thing he wasn't supposed to do! I did not like the way this conversation was trending. He must not suspect how this mission would be sabotaged.