Fortune of Fear Read online

  Faht Bey’s hand pushing against my back propelled me into the scene.

  “What’s this?” I said.

  A stream of vituperation sprayed at me from all sides. Only with difficulty could I piece together what had happened.

  Dr. Crobe had lifted the detention cell key off the guard. Sometime during the night he had crept out of the cell where he should have been studying English. An assassin pilot had awakened at the cut of a guard bayonet and had the bleeding slash to prove it.

  Good Gods, Dr. Crobe sure did not have very good sense, to attack an assassin pilot!

  Ploddingly, plugging away, I kept asking them if Crobe had volunteered any slightest explanation for this breach of good manners. Perhaps if I could get to the bottom of this, it could be handled.

  No one at ground level had the necessary information. In fact, they were making such a din, I doubt they understood my line of interrogation.

  There was only one thing for it, I realized in a spurt of genius: ask Dr. Crobe.

  I got a small bullhorn and focused it on him. “Why were you cutting on an assassin pilot?” I shouted up at him.

  He had hold of the beam box itself now. He looked down with his wild, zealot eyes. His voice, coming from way up there on the wall, was pretty thin.

  “I was just studying English!” he shouted down in his clumsy Voltarian. “I was only doing what you told me to do, Officer Gris.”

  That caused more smoke and profanity down where I was. Hastily, I yelled back, “I didn’t tell you to cut anybody’s throat!”

  “You gave me texts on psychology and psychiatry as part of my reading assignment! They say man has a reptile brain in the lower middle of his skull. That was news to me, and I was only trying to find out! Why all this furor over somebody just trying to do his homework?”

  Well, he had a point. The assassin pilots and the Antimancos didn’t see it that way.

  “You gave him some books that told him to do that?” snarled an assassin pilot.

  I thought it prudent to change the subject. “If we can get him down from there, he can show you it is just a clinical matter.”

  They surged at me. I got my back to the wall and a blastick out. “Look,” I said, “why don’t you go someplace and have a conference and cool off. I’ll get him down and we can discuss it like gentlemen.”

  They looked at the 800-kilovolt blastick. They looked up at Crobe.

  “Later,” said the assassin pilot.

  They left, snarling considerably, leaving me and Faht Bey.

  I yelled up at Crobe, “You can come down now.”

  “I can’t. I am certain I will fall,” he yelled back.

  “We’ll rig a safety net!” I yelled. “Hold on.”

  The hangar crew had been very inconspicuous during the argument. Faht Bey dug them out from behind things and made them get a net. They stretched it out below Crobe.

  “You can jump now,” I yelled up at him.

  “My hands won’t let go!” he yelled back.

  I told Faht Bey and the hangar crew to wait right there. I went up the tunnel to my gun case. I selected out a needle stun rifle and came back.

  Faht Bey took one look at it. “Don’t shoot up there! You could hit that electronic-beam support box he’s holding on to.”

  I told him icily, “You are questioning my marksmanship. I can hit a songbird at half a mile with this. How can I miss Crobe at fifty feet?”

  I put the stun rifle on its lowest setting. The hangar crew around the safety net covered up their heads. Faht Bey ran all the way to the office and peeked back out.

  Kneeling, I braced the weapon.

  I took perfectly accurate aim. Right on Crobe’s right hand as it clutched the box.

  I fired!

  CRASH!

  The box exploded!

  Down came Crobe!

  Down came ten tons of rock!

  Smoke and dust spiraled in the gloom.

  Faht Bey hit the clanging general emergency alarm button.

  DEAFENING!

  From all over the base people came streaming in to man the guns.

  Faht Bey quickly redirected them into an emergency damage and rescue operation.

  They began to dig the hangar crew out.

  Crobe they found in the bottom of the net where he had landed safely, only to be at once bombarded by rock following him down.

  Apparently the beam box had shorted and the beams had ceased to support the walls they proofed against the numerous earthquakes of the area, and slabs of rock had sheered away from old faults.

  These people were making a lot of to-do about nothing. The hangar walls were intact except for a few pockmark holes a yard or less in diameter. No equipment had been damaged unless you counted one safety net. There wasn’t even anybody dead—only a fractured skull or two, and Prahd could patch those up.

  But everybody passing me was giving me a most undeserved glare.

  I had found what was wrong. The power pack in the needle stun rifle had not been recharged for two years and, low-powered, had missed his hand and shot low. My marksmanship was not in question. But nobody would stop long enough to hear the explanation.

  They were very unappreciative. After all, I had gotten Crobe down. Not even Bugs Bunny could have done it any better.

  PART THIRTY-NINE

  Chapter 3

  I had retired to my room after it became plain, by certain remarks, that I was in the way. They had to get the wounded to the hospital and the beam box repaired quick in case there was an earthquake, and the floor was pretty messy. After all, they were professionals and I was above all such menial work.

  Thus it was that just while I was enjoying a delicious dinner of cerkez tavugu—which is boiled chicken, Circassian style, with a sauce of crushed walnuts and red pepper—served by a somewhat beat-up but very obsequious staff, Faht Bey had the effrontery to buzz me again.

  “They’re ready for your conference,” he said.

  “Some other time,” I said.

  “Then my vote is that we feed your Dr. Crobe to a disintegrator bin.”

  “Wait, wait,” I said. I thought very rapidly. I was well aware of the havoc Crobe could wreak: he was a very valuable asset in any Apparatus operation. Heller was very sneaky and he might recover or get lucky and then my neck would be out. Reluctantly, I said, “I will be right down.”

  The conference in the crew’s quarters was attended by very grim faces. I walked in, blastick in my palm, taking no chances. I didn’t sit down. It was not that I was invited to. It was simply very plain that the best place for a back was against a wall.

  They had Dr. Crobe. Somewhat bandaged—most likely by himself—he was crouched on the floor, and there were three guards with three guns pointing at his head.

  “I vote death,” said the first assassin pilot who had been cut.

  “Seconded,” said the second assassin pilot.

  “That settles it,” said Captain Stabb. “The verdict is hanged by the teeth until he falls in a pot of boiling electronic fire.”

  “Hold it,” I said. “I haven’t heard the evidence or voted.”

  “Do you wish to enter a plea for responsibility?” said Faht Bey.

  These fellows were going a bit too fast for me. The green glowplate didn’t lend any cheer to the scene. I thought fast. Faht Bey had brought up an out for me but it was a tricky one. By Voltarian law, anyone who is knuckleheaded enough to take full responsibility for a prisoner, even when condemned, could have him. That was how the Apparatus could collect “executed” criminals. There was only one little hooker. If the person then, thereafter, committed any crime, the one who had taken responsibility—the claimant—could also be charged with that crime and if execution occurred could be executed with the criminal.

  “It is quite certain,” said the assassin pilot who had been cut and who seemed to be acting as the master of the conference, “that said Dr. Crobe will commit some other crime against base personnel, no matter how slight.
In that event, the claimant can legally be executed. Therefore the conference entertains the plea. All those voting for it, raise your right index finger. The fingers have it. You are the claimant, Officer Gris. Conference adjourned.”

  “Wait!” I said.

  They had all walked out, including the guards.

  It was a frame-up!

  Oh, what cunning (bleepards) they were! The probability of Dr. Crobe doing something else was an absolute certainty. I knew the man! What a murderous revenge that assassin pilot had taken. This could get me killed very dead in the most legal possible way. And right when I was in triumph everywhere. Low blow.

  Crobe crouched there eyeing me with his glittery black eyes, probably wondering what to turn me into. I hoped it wasn’t a spider. I dislike spiders.

  I thought. Crobe crouched.

  I remembered the expression on the assassin pilot’s face when he glanced at me in leaving.

  I saw a safety line in a coil, hanging above a bunk.

  INSPIRATION!

  I got the safety line. I wrapped it round and round Crobe’s ankles. I wrapped it round and round his legs. I wrapped it round and round his body, pinning his arms to his sides. I wrapped it round and round his neck and head. I tied it with a triple knot and fused the ends. Not even a ghost could get out of that.

  Speedily, I raced to my room.

  From my safe I took fifty thousand Turkish lira, amounting to about five hundred US dollars.

  I raced back. I found the construction superintendent.

  “I want to make a deal,” I said. I showed him the money.

  His eyes bugged, as I knew they would.

  “You are going to build me a cell the like of which nobody ever heard of, and when you do, you get this.”

  He made a grab. I was too quick for him. “When done and when tested,” I said.

  “A few thousand on account,” he said.

  I peeled off ten thousand lira. I gave them to him. “The rest when you execute the plan.”

  He took the bills. “Where’s the plan?”

  A small detail I had overlooked. So we sat down near the cocooned Crobe and I drew the plan.

  You can get carried away with these things. Once I began to draw I didn’t really know when to stop. I kept thinking of other ways he could get out.

  But finally we had it and, if I say so myself, it was a masterpiece.

  At the very end of the detention corridor there was a big cell which had never been used. It was all the way back. Across the corridor, before you got to it, I would place a sheet of blastproof steel, heavily embedded in the stone of the walls. It would have a bulletproof viewport in it. The door through it would be openable only by combination lock.

  Beyond that would be the normal cell bars and their door.

  Between these two impenetrable barricades I would place a beam alarm system, so that if anybody got in it would ring and clang all over the place.

  Now, there was a chance that Crobe might get persuasive to a guard, as he had already done. So I would leave no way whatever to communicate through these barriers. This required a new ventilation hole be drilled straight up to the air to come out, masked behind a rock, on the mountainside.

  The possibility existed that Crobe might try to climb up it, so it would have spikes to gouge anyone who made such an attempt. And furthermore, it would have explosive charges in it, that would blow anyone to bits if they attempted to crawl up it. I would also put saw rays across the outside and inside entrances. In that way, Crobe could communicate to nobody in the cell block, would have air but couldn’t get out.

  Now for food. I designed a device which went through a maze with fifteen turnings. When you put something on a tray, it would float way up on antigravity pulses and then slide on antigravity rollers through all those turnings. More—it would have fifteen sealed doors that any tray would have to go through. Each door would have a living-presence detector on it and if anything live tried to squeeze through, the door would remain shut.

  So far so good.

  The light in the place would not hook up to any part of the base. Independent units, powered by the sun at the air-shaft entrance, would be the only power.

  Now for the cell itself. It was pretty large, as it was designed to hold about fifteen prisoners. So these stone ledges would have to go. Crobe would have to be forced to study, so in their place I would put tables and shelves for books.

  Crobe’s sanitation was awful so I designed sprayers and a drain so the whole area could be washed down simply by tripping a remote button, only the bookshelves shutting automatically.

  As long as I was designing, I also put in a toilet and running water, though I suspected Crobe would never touch it. However, he could not complain to the Voltar sanitation department that he had been left without facilities.

  I then put in a bed. And that was the masterpiece. If Crobe got too active and went raging around, the next time he lay down, clamps would shut and hold him in bed until somebody could come in and gas him.

  It was a true masterpiece, as I have said. I looked at it proudly.

  “It’s going to take about a week to build,” said the construction superintendent.

  I blinked. What was I going to do with Crobe for a week?

  I could not bring myself to change a single line of the plan. “Four days,” I said.

  “Four days and an additional ten thousand lira,” he said.

  I groaned. No, I couldn’t possibly change this plan. It was too good. Well, who cared. I could always draw more lira.

  “Go ahead,” I said. “Only start at once.”

  I dragged Crobe into one of the many unoccupied cells. I pushed him onto a ledge. I laid my weapons handy.

  And, amidst the buzzing of drills and the clang of metal in the cell block, for the next four days I stayed right there and guarded Crobe.

  Oh, the arduousness of duty in the Apparatus!

  All he did for four whole days was lie in his lashings and glare.

  PART THIRTY-NINE

  Chapter 4

  Oh, was I glad when at last I could pay the construction superintendent his remaining money for a completed job. I almost parted with the lira with joy.

  Four days of glares had gotten me down.

  Getting four guards to stand with blastrifles pointed at the still-cocooned Dr. Crobe’s head, I worked rapidly.

  I got a huge case of spacecraft emergency rations—who knew how long he would be in there mucking about—and threw it into the middle of the cell floor.

  Reviewing his language equipment, I made sure it was adequate to teach even an idiot English. I put it on the cell table.

  Then, as I had before, I realized there still might be inadequate incentive for him to learn the language. He had exhibited interest in the first two texts. Accordingly, I unearthed whatever I could spare on the subjects of psychology and psychiatry. It was pretty juicy stuff. It included Governmental Psychology, all about man being a lousy, stinking, (bleeping) animal that was so depraved and writhing with unconscious passions he was totally incapable of rational thought and had to be policed with clubs at every turn; Irrational Psychiatry, all about how to cure people by killing them; Psychology of Women, or How to Trick Your Wife and Mistress into Getting into the Bed of Your Best Friend; Child Psychology, all about the techniques of turning children into perverts; The Psychiatrist on the Couch, giving seventy-seven unusual ways to engage in sex with animals; Dr. Kutzman’s famous text, Psychiatric Neurosurgery, all about how to end every possible brain function; and Psychiatric Stew, which authoritatively told one what to do with people when they have been turned into vegetables by the latest techniques approved by the Food and Drug Administration. I included lots of other even more vital texts, all standard and accepted material of the professions. They could not fail to entice Crobe into reading English like mad.

  I checked the cell carefully. There was no possible way to get out or to get in and there was no way anyone outside it could spe
ak with anyone in it, and vice versa.

  I went back, and with the guards standing ready, I burned the knot apart with a small disintegrator and began to unwind the safety line off his head. I got down to his mouth.

  Crobe said, “I’ll have the law on you for this!”

  I was utterly amazed! Here I had saved his life. I had even become a claimant for him and put my own life at risk.

  Then I understood: Crobe might be a doctor but he didn’t know anything about law. He did not know, for instance, that I could now kill him without his thereafter being able to sue me. Further, if he knew so little about law, he didn’t know ranks or how important I was. I recognized that I had better get a book and show him before I unwrapped anything else.

  There was a crew library near to hand. I went in. I looked. There was a long shelf utterly covered with dust. Nobody had looked at these books for decades. I blew and when I was through coughing I read the titles.

  It was all one series of volumes! More than forty of them, very thick. The title of the set was Voltar Confederacy Combined Compendium Complete, including Space Codes, Penal Codes, Domestic Codes, Royal Proclamations, Royal Orders, Royal Procedures, Royal Precedence, Royal Successions Complete with Tables and Biographies, Court Customs, Court History, Royal Land Grants, Rights of Aristocracy, Planetary Districts of One Hundred and Ten Planets, Local Laws, Local Customs, Aristocratic Privileges and Various Other Matters. Impressive!

  I realized it would scare Crobe half to death. I promptly put the whole set on a cart and wheeled it to the new cell and stuffed it into the shelves. Why engage in chitchat? Let him find his own reasons he was being so ungrateful!

  I went back to get Crobe. He was glaring so hard, I decided not to take a chance of completing the unwrap there. I dumped him on a cart and rolled it into the cell.

  I said, “You will get out of here when you know English and decide to obey my orders!”

  I picked up the loose end of the safety line and gave it a hefty yank.

  He spun like a top!

  Right across the floor.

  His body even hummed, it was turning so fast.

  I kicked the cart out of the cell.

  I locked up the cell door.

  I slammed the new armor-steel corridor door.