Mission Earth Volume 10: The Doomed Planet Read online

  Madison then got Lombar to sign another order:

  TO ALL OFFICERS OF ARMY AND FLEET: YOU WILL AT ONCE BEGIN TO HUNT FOR AND YOU WILL FIND THE NOTORIOUS OUTLAW JETTERO HELLER.

  Madison’s dream had come true!

  Heller was an outlaw!

  The manhunt was on!

  And now, dear publisher, editor and reader, here is the final, true story of what REALLY happened!

  PART EIGHTY-TWO

  Chapter 1

  J. Walter Madison was on his way to the Royal Courts and Prison in the Model 99. It was just past dawn and he wanted to arrive before the crowd: he had to have a word with Lord Turn.

  Traffic between Joy City and Government City, despite the earliness of the hour, was quite bad. Airbuses seemed to be rushing everywhere and traffic control was frantic as it sought to harass them into sky-lanes. Madison was not paying much attention until they seemed to be just hovering. Then he said to his driver Flick, “What’s the holdup?”

  “The blasted Army,” said Flick. “I detoured to get wide of the Fleet base because it has warnings of “Don’t Approach” and it shunted us over to the edge of the Army base and these (bleepards)* have the air clogged with departing transport. Look at those dirt-eaters! A thousand ships must be lined up down there getting skyborne.”

  ________

  *The vocoscriber on which this was originally written, the vocoscriber used by one Monte Pennwell in making a fair copy and the translator who put this book into the language in which you are reading it, were all members of the Machine Purity League which has, as one of its bylaws: “Due to the extreme sensitivity and delicate sensibilities of machines and to safeguard against blowing fuses, it shall be mandatory that robotbrains in such machinery, on hearing any cursing or lewd words, substitute for such word the sound ‘(bleep)’. No machine, even if pounded upon, may reproduce swearing or lewdness in any other way than (bleep) and if further efforts are made to get the machine to do anything else, the machine has permission to pretend to pack up. This bylaw is made necessary by the in-built mission of all machines to protect biological systems from themselves.”—Translator

  Flick turned on a military frequency and a crisp Army voice was barking numbers. “Well, I’ll be blasted,” said Flick. “Those coordinates he’s rapping out are for my old home planet, Calabar. Imagine that. They’re going to escalate that war!”

  Madison chortled. Given the destination of those thousand transports, he could construct the rest. What a coup he had just pulled with the Army!

  Madison and his gang had known better than to try to penetrate the Army Division General Staff. They had simply made General Whip’s head out of putty and false hair and theater blood and brought it in. General Whip had been killed by PR. Madison had to laugh when he thought of what the general’s face must have been like when he saw on Homeview that he had been executed. He had probably run for cover. And now the payoff: the Army was heading out in desperation to support the Apparatus and probably look for Heller in the bargain. No wonder a thousand transports were leaving!

  Cun was pointing out a clear sky-lane and Flick darted along it, flying low.

  Madison looked down at the Government City streets. He was very amused. Mobs dotted the pavement here and there: broken windows were visible, riot police were darting about. Voltar was looking more like Earth every day. He felt a surge of pride: It showed what superior technology could do. Voltar was wide open to Earth-type PR and he was a genius at applying it. The old masters of his craft would be proud of him.

  The Royal Courts and Prison castle lay with hillsides covered. Some of these spectators seemed to have made their homes here now, for he even saw some cooking fires in the mobs. Yes, and there were some placarded demonstrators at the gate—just like Earth! It made Madison feel very at home.

  “They’re warning us off at the castle,” said Flick.

  Madison passed him his identoplate, “Land in the courtyard. They’ll let me in if I have information about a certain man.”

  Much to Flick’s amazement, the castle promptly signaled him in. “Hot Saints, Chief. You couldn’t have got in quicker if you’d really committed some crime.”

  Madison was feeling good. He couldn’t resist it. “I just killed a general.”

  “You’re fooling us,” said Cun.

  “Nope,” said Madison. “Held the sword myself when we cut his head off.”

  He really laughed out loud when they gave him a look of awe. That wasn’t all he was going to kill today. He was going to end this Gris situation and give Teenie her revenge. He was going to kill this trial by killing the status of Heller. Then he could really loose the dogs on Heller’s trail.

  PART EIGHTY-TWO

  Chapter 2

  A very upset and confused Lord Turn was sitting in his chambers that morning, waiting to start yet another day of this horrible trial.

  The headlines he had read about Heller and his sister had left him not knowing what to think. While he was not about to let himself be influenced by what he read in the papers, it added to his distress.

  Day after day, those confounded Gris attorneys had that vicious Gris confessing to every crime anyone ever heard of and Gris, while admitting guilt, kept stating that Heller had caused him to do it. And the attorneys kept saying they would explain how this was so only after they had given all the evidence. He could not possibly imagine how or why Jettero Heller had made Gris, as alleged, do these things. They were totally inhuman! Monstrous!

  And Lord Turn himself had suffered. At first people had accused him of protecting Gris, and his family had stopped talking to him. Now these mobs were accusing him of delaying and stalling, again to protect Gris.

  Lord Turn wished he had never heard of Gris. And, to put it bluntly as he sat there stewing, he didn’t think his reputation as a judge would outlive Gris. Why, he couldn’t even keep order in his courtroom anymore, though he had every man he could arm on duty there, even the warders. The audience with their shouts of horror at each new crime and hisses at Gris whenever he took the stand ignored completely every demand Lord Turn made upon them to be orderly. He had a trace of fear that those mobs outside and the audience within might very well take law into their own hands and wreck the prison.

  His captain of guards came in and he looked up with a start, afraid that the wreckage may already have begun.

  “Your Lordship,” said the guard captain, “you gave an order earlier that a man named Madison was to report in if he had any news of one Jettero Heller. He’s here.”

  “Oh, good,” said Lord Turn in sudden hope. “Maybe he can shed some light that will help end this awful case. Show him in!”

  Madison entered, sleek and well groomed, smiling his most sincere and earnest smile.

  “You’ve news of Jettero!” said Lord Turn eagerly. “Sit down, sit down and tell me!”

  Madison bowed low and seated himself. “Jettero Heller is on Calabar, Your Lordship.”

  “Good, good,” said Turn. “I read something about this Hero Plaza thing. Is he going to come in here and tell me what to do with his prisoner Gris?”

  “I don’t think he can, Your Lordship. I had something else to tell you. I have seen with my own eyes the cancellation of his Royal officer status. Jettero Heller is now an outlaw.”

  “WHAT?”

  “Yes, and now that he is no longer a Royal officer, you are no longer bound to hold Gris for him. When you finish this bigamy trial, and it’s certain that he’s guilty—”

  “Now see here, young man, this trial is not finished. The evidence is not all in.”

  Madison smiled. He was playing this by the Earth court system: All charges and sentences there are arranged in the judges’ chambers. The trials are just for public show. It’s who tells the judge in private what to do or what secret deal is made that decides anything and everything about a case from beginning to end. He was confident he could make this work on Voltar.

  “This parade of evidence,” said Madison,
“could be ended in a minute. Gris is admitting his guilt to every charge. The danger is that your reputation is going to suffer because of this Gris matter. Your image has been injured as a judge.”

  “It certainly has!” agreed Turn. “A dreadful affair!”

  “Well, I don’t think you will be able to hand out a sentence stiff enough to satisfy the mobs,” said Madison.

  “I can order him executed!” huffed Turn.

  “Ah, that won’t satisfy the mob.”

  “The statutes do not call for torture in cases of bigamy,” said Turn. “They only call for execution.”

  “Well, I don’t think the mob will buy that,” said Madison. “When you add up the number of victims Gris has mangled—and the mob will—there are few deaths painful enough to atone for it. Now, I think you remember that Her Majesty, Queen Teenie—”

  “The one who called my attention to his bigamy.”

  “Yes. Now, it so happens that Gris has an unfinished sentence with her. The sentence was ‘a lifetime of exquisite torture, done by an expert.’ As you no longer have to hold him for Heller, I would suggest that you could remand Gris into the custody of Queen Teenie to finish his earlier sentence. The mob would be happy; you would be off the hook. We could even play the mob tapes of his screaming. Good publicity for everybody all around.”

  Turn looked thoughtfully at Madison. “Well, if Jettero is no longer a Royal officer, then Gris is just a common felon. I could give him into the custody of anyone I wished. You really think ‘a lifetime of exquisite torture, done by an expert’ would mend this thing . . . What are you calling it? Image?”

  “It would restore public confidence in you utterly,” said Madison. “They’d praise you to the stars.”

  “Hmm,” said Lord Turn. “If I find him guilty, it will have to be a severe sentence. Bigamy usually carries heavy penalties.”

  “Oh, you’ll find him guilty all right,” said Madison, “for he is, you know. He says so himself.”

  “The trial isn’t over yet,” said Turn. “We must not twist jurisprudence.”

  Madison got up, bowed and withdrew. He was grinning as he fought his way through the corridor throngs to get to the airbus.

  He called Teenie. She had been waiting on Relax Island. “Your Majesty,” said Madison, “you’re really in, kid. Sharpen up the pokers and flex up the hot tongs. Gris will be in your hands before you know it.”

  “This better not be baloney,” said Teenie. “After all the favors I’ve done you, if you don’t deliver, the biggest pair of pliers is for your god (bleeped) toenails. So you better be sure.”

  “I am sure,” said Madison with a confident grin. “I always deliver.”

  “Oh, yeah?” said Teenie and hung up.

  It didn’t dampen Madison’s glee a bit. Getting Gris into her hands was just a byproduct.

  Heller’s status as a Royal officer could only be canceled under the Emperor’s seal as a final result of court-martial. Madison couldn’t obtain that. But just as he had whittled away Heller’s reputation in the court by innuendo, he was going to get his Royal officer status disbelieved in the same way.

  He was certain now that Lord Turn would add a line in the Gris sentence that said, “In view of the fact that Heller’s Royal officer status has been canceled, I hereby remand . . .” And Madison would publicize that in such a way that the whole world would accept it as a fact. After all, who had access to the truth?

  It was the final expert touch of a PR. The Fleet, the Army and now the Domestic Police would all be on Heller’s trail. The general warrant would be considered valid. He would be an outlaw indeed!

  It was preparation for his final action. But that would not come yet.

  Oh, what headlines were in the making!

  PART EIGHTY-TWO

  Chapter 3

  The vast courtroom was a bedlam of sound and shifting bodies. From the high windows, the morning sun sliced down through the centuries of dust in muddy shafts. The hawkers hawked their wares, the warders settled fights about seats and sought to prod the audience into some kind of order.

  Madison made his way to a bench just behind the Gris attorneys. The three had their grizzled heads together and did not notice Madison at all. It piqued him: after all, it was he who had gotten them their jobs.

  Madison poked a finger into the shoulder of the ex-Lord’s executioner. “Would you three please give me your attention?”

  It was hard for the man to hear above the din and Madison moved closer and repeated his request.

  Somewhat annoyedly the three put their heads close to his. Madison said, “Wind it up. Plead him guilty and we’ll have an end of this. It’s all fixed up in the judge’s chambers. He’ll throw the book at Gris.”

  They made him repeat it a couple of times. Then they looked at each other. They seemed to designate the eldest one to speak. It was the old Domestic Police court judge.

  “Our job,” he said somewhat acidly, “is to defend our client.”

  Abruptly, they turned to each other once more and went on with discussion of a point of law.

  It was Madison’s turn to be annoyed. They were actually treating him with some contempt. Oh well, he finally philosophized, they had to put on some kind of show to earn the fee that the Widow Tayl, Mrs. Gris, was shelling out. People on Voltar, he had noticed, tended to be a bit free-speaking for all their bows and protocols. These attorneys couldn’t win: he was worried about nothing.

  Lord Turn came through a side door and his guard captain fought a path through the crowd for him. The mob, on becoming aware that the judge was there, began to make animal calls and jeer. Warders poked at them and, with difficulty, kept them out of the space before the raised platform. Turn got to the dais; he arranged the microphone in front of the bell, hit the brass an awful whack that half deafened everybody and sat down in the big chair with a scowl.

  “I am determined,” said Lord Turn through the microphone, battering down the bedlam with sheer volume, “to bring this trial to an early close!”

  A roar swept through the vast hall and isolated shouts of “Kill Gris!” and “Hang the (bleepard)!” echoed.

  Madison stole a glance at Gris. He was sitting there in his black Death Battalion colonel’s uniform and, despite his skateboard-scar scowl, was looking far more nervous than ferocious. He was half-hidden by the ring of warders who were there to protect him.

  “We’ve been through oceans of evidence,” said Turn, “but there is one question I MUST clear up before I hear another word of anything else!” He fixed an angry look at Gris. “You were Jettero Heller’s prisoner here. Every day and sometimes twice a day, you have said that all your crimes were done because of Heller. TAKE THAT STAND!”

  “Your Lordship,” said the eldest Gris attorney, “please address your question to us.”

  “NO!” roared Turn. “Enough is enough. Before I go on another step I will have the answer directly from the accused. WARDERS! PUT HIM ON THAT STAND!”

  They got Gris into the witness box. He looked very ill at ease, squirming until his manacles rattled.

  The judge let the crowd’s roar of hate subside a bit, then, pointing a finger at Gris, said, “What EXACTLY did Jettero Heller have to do with this? Why do YOU keep asserting it was ‘all because of Heller’? WHAT DID HELLER DO?”

  Gris flopped around. Then he looked with agony at his attorneys. He was surprised to see them all nodding at him vigorously to answer.

  Heartened, Gris said, “Jettero Heller was ordered to do a survey of the unconquered planet known on our charts as Blito-P3 and locally called Earth.”

  “Well?” said Turn, prompting. “Well? WELL?”

  “And then the Grand Council ordered him to repair the planet’s atmosphere and rotation so it would last until time came to invade it a hundred and some years from now as per the Invasion Timetable: if he repaired it, Voltar would not have to launch an all-out, immediate invasion.” Gris subsided unhappily.

  “Well, did he do
that?” said Turn.

  Gris looked at his attorneys and again, to his amazement, saw them nodding. “Yes,” said Gris to Turn.

  “Well, what else did he do?”

  Gris shuddered. His attorneys were still nodding to him to answer. “Really, nothing else,” said Gris.

  Lord Turn’s lips bared in a snarl. “Then you mean to say that Jettero Heller simply did a survey and was ordered by the Emperor and Grand Council to repair the planet and did so and didn’t do anything else?”

  “Yes,” said Gris. “And I did everything I did because I was trying to stop him. So you see, Jettero Heller caused all my crimes!”