Disaster Read online

  My reaction at the time was a strange sort of numbness. I had planned, plotted and dreamed of Heller’s death for months and I should have been elated. But I wasn’t, for some reason.

  I also felt no joy when I watched Ahmed drop the poison-gas bomb down the air chute to the Countess Krak’s cell.

  My personal feelings did not deter me from my duty, however, when Agent Raht told me there were diamonds at the roadhouse. I had ordered Raht to kill Heller, and all the bungling idiot could do was whine about losing blood and bother me with radioed pleas for help. Typical riffraff. But when he said he had found a bag of diamonds, duty called.

  So it was a definite pleasure to take Tug One from Afyon with Captain Stabb and his crew of Antimancos. The ship—Heller had named it the Prince Caucalsia—had been sitting dormant while Heller was in the United States. I figured it was only fitting that I visit his corpse in the very ship that he used to bring us to Earth. After all, that was when my troubles started.

  I told the assassin pilots that they didn’t have to worry—we weren’t trying to escape the planet. (I never figured out who started that idea, but it is the sort of thing Lombar Hisst, as the head of the Apparatus, would have done.)

  And speaking of assassins, it was a relief not to have to worry any more about the one that Lombar had assigned to kill me if I fouled up.

  My plan was simple. We would go to Connecticut and pick up the diamonds, flash on down to Florida and wipe out Heller’s antipollution plant, zip up to Detroit and bomb the Chryster plant where he was building the new carburetors, then come back to New York and blow up the Empire State Building. I could then tell Rockecenter that I had succeeded—that Heller was no longer a threat to his petroleum monopoly.

  Then with one last load of Lombar’s opium, I would return victorious to Voltar and become the head of the Apparatus.

  And so it was as I kissed my dear Utanc goodbye.

  PART SIXTY-TWO

  Chapter 1

  We crossed the world to Connecticut smoothly in the dark.

  The Antimanco pirate crew were in high spirits. Captain Stabb egged them on: a Royal officer was quite a score. They regarded me as a hero and swatted me on the back.

  “There ought to be more like you, Gris,” said Captain Stabb as we stood behind the pilots in the hurtling craft. “Just because we once stole a Fleet vessel and went pirating, them (bleeped)* Royal officers done us in—us, some of the best subofficers they ever had. They tried us and sentenced us to death and if it weren’t for the likes of you and Lombar Hisst stealing us out of prison, we’d be dead today. Oh, don’t think we’re not grateful, Officer Gris. When we pick up these diamonds, we’ll rob the planet blind for you! Torture, rape and sudden death, that’s our motto.”

  ________

  * 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

  He made me a little bit nervous with his black, beady eyes and pointed head. I fingered the star I had on a chain. Each point of it was designated for one member of this crew. Pushed one direction, a point produced an electric shock in the fellow; pushed the other way it threw him into a hypnotic trance. The top point controlled Captain Stabb. I had not had to use it yet on any of them, but as he poured his evil breath upon me I was glad I had it. He made me a trifle nervous, even though I conceded his compliments were all too well deserved by me.

  Tug One, that Heller had named Prince Caucalsia, ran smoothly despite her long idleness. I wished I could get back into her posh quarters, laid out for an admiral of the tug force. They were full of gold and silver fittings, vases and the like, and some of the switches even had precious stones on them. But those doors and even her cargo hatches would only work to Heller’s voice tones. Of course, we had found a way to get down into the hold through her engine room but I supposed that was empty now.

  Actually, Tug One made me nervous. She was built for runs between galaxies and had the engines used for that. Pushing such a small ship, these gigantic Will-be Was time-converter engines thrust her at a clip 10.5 times faster than any other vessels ever built. And Tug Two had exploded in midspace, lost with all her crew, because of accumulated charge gathered in crossing lines of force too fast, it was said.

  We weren’t running on Will-be Was now, thank Gods. We were far below the speed of light, running on auxiliaries. Even so, she was crossing latitudes like a picket fence going by.

  We were pacing the shadow line of nightfall as it went from east to west and even had to restrain ourselves not to overshoot it. It would be barely end of twilight when we hit Connecticut. It would be dark except for the last thin slice of the waning moon.

  Ahead of us, through the forward screens, I eyeballed the glow that was New York, slightly to our port.

  “Bridgeport over there,” said a pilot. “That’s Norwalk dead ahead. Our navigation is dead on.” He laughed. “Can I spit in the Royal officer’s face if the corpse is still there?”

  “Spit away,” I said. But I still hadn’t felt the joy I should have over Heller being dead.

  “Aren’t we awfully low?” I said.

  “Their radar can’t touch us,” said Captain Stabb. “Absorbo-coat. We could fly in at thirty thousand and we’re at seventy.”

  The pilot was braking. The antiacceleration and gravity coils in the ship worked so smoothly I didn’t even realize it until I saw the lights in the scenery below slowing down.

  We dropped lower: forty, twenty, ten, five thousand feet.

  An engineer startled me by opening the doors of the airlock. Captain Stabb answered my startled stare. “Your radio waves can’t get through this hull. Call up your man and see if it’s all clear.”

  “Agent Raht,” I said into the radio.

  “Oh, thank Gods you’ve come!” Raht’s voice sounded weak. “I fell at the bottom of the steps. I’ve lost so much blood I can’t move.”

  “The hells with your blood,” I said. “Is the area all clear or do we blueflash?”

  “Oh, please don’t blueflash! I might never again regain consciousness! There’s nobody around. Land quickly and save my life.”

  Stabb had heard it. He made a hand signal to the pilot. Tug One dropped rapidly.

  The image of the old gangster roadhouse was dim on our screens. The maples and evergreen trees around it were giving off more reflection.

  They put the ship down in the flat place about a hundred yards from the front door.

  It was very dark. Crickets were making an eerie sound. A bullfrog made a snoring noise in the creek. Fireflies were winking here and there. The smell of Connecticut countryside swept in through the airlock.

  Captain Stabb reached over an Antimanco pilot’s shoulder and twiddled a knob of a screen. A fragmentary infrared view of the porch showed up.

  Raht seemed to be lying at the foot of the steps, face down. He apparently had passed out. A partially seen mass was on the porch itself. Raht had evidently not had the strength to move Heller’s body.

  “Busting novas, look at that!” cried Captain Stabb. He was pointing eagerly at a sack on the porch. Diamonds had cascaded from it. A glittering spread even in infrared light!

  “Jeeb!” barked Stabb to an engineer, “get over there and pick those up!”

  The engineer threw a b
lastrifle over his shoulder. He leaped out of the airlock and we heard his footsteps recede.

  I moved over to the airlock. The tug was lying, of course, on its belly and it was only a step to the ground. But I sure wasn’t going out there.

  My eyes adjusted from the dim red glow inside the tug. There was quite a bit of light, actually: the glow of distant cities against the sky and the glimmer from the sliver of a moon.

  I watched Jeeb, rifle ready, approach the foot of the porch.

  The fireflies winked. The frog croaked again. An eerie scene though. I wondered if it were true that the bodies of dozens of Prohibition gangsters were buried in this terrain. Gods deliver us from their ghosts!

  PART SIXTY-TWO

  Chapter 2

  Jeeb was bending over the object at the foot of the steps. I could see him clearly.

  Suddenly he straightened up and started to shout back at the tug. “This isn’t . . .”

  A sharp hissing crack!

  Jeeb fell apart!

  The whole middle of his body was gone!

  I hastily withdrew back into the tug.

  “A SNIPER!” screamed Stabb. “There he is! There he is! After him!”

  He was pointing at the screen. The infrared had a picture of a man with a rifle at the end of the roadhouse.

  The second engineer sprang out of the door. He had his blastrifle ready at the hip. He raced off to one side, mauling the sight controls. I knew what he was doing. He was setting it to infrared.

  He ran sideways about twenty-five yards.

  He leaped behind a shrub. He leveled his weapon and fired. A blastrifle does not flash as it shoots, but splashes of deadly energy laced into the target.

  Then Stabb was pointing at the screen, trying to shout. On the screen there had appeared THREE MORE INFRARED TARGETS!

  The second engineer blazed away.

  TWO MORE TARGETS!

  Suddenly the second engineer let out a piercing scream.

  He leaped into the air.

  HIS WHOLE HEAD BLEW OFF!

  “Quick, (bleep) it!” cried Stabb to the two pilots. “Grab weapons and set them to body heat and wipe that area flat!”

  The two pilots hurtled out of the door, slapping at the tops of their weapons.

  They spaced out to the right and left.

  They dropped into cover.

  Stabb had slid into the pilot seat. He was twisting scope dials. He had it on body heat.

  A target to the right of the roadhouse.

  The pilot furthest from us fired.

  A heat target to the left. The furthest pilot fired again.

  A heat target much further to the left.

  The pilot began to fire on automatic.

  Suddenly he let out a shriek.

  He leaped into the air.

  The whole hip area vanished!

  The other pilot was firing hysterically.

  Heat target after heat target was popping up all over the field.

  Frantically he tried to zero in on them.

  Abruptly he screamed and leaped up into the air.

  His head and torso disintegrated!

  “LET’S GET OUT OF HERE!” cried Stabb.

  He was in the local-pilot seat.

  I leaped to the star-pilot seat.

  Stabb was pulling levers and pushing buttons.

  NOTHING HAPPENED!

  We were earthbound!

  The tug controls wouldn’t operate!

  Stabb’s eyes glazed.

  Then he stood up. He looked at me. “You led us into a trap, Officer Gris!” he snarled. “And I’ll be dead in minutes. But I’ve got just one more job to do.” He was reaching to his belt and withdrawing a knife and from the way he looked at me, I knew what he intended. He was going to kill me!

  I grabbed at my control star. I pressed the top prong, that should have given him an electric shock.

  NOTHING HAPPENED!

  I hit the center and pressed the top again. It should have thrown him into a trance.

  NOTHING HAPPENED!

  “Lombar Hisst,” said Captain Stabb, “gave me orders that if you fouled up I was to kill you out of hand.”

  THE UNKNOWN ASSASSIN HAD BEEN CAPTAIN STABB!

  He raised the blade to plunge it into my chest.

  The expression on his face froze.

  He suddenly folded up over a pilot seat, a long Knife Section knife protruding from his back!

  Someone had thrown it through the airlock!

  PART SIXTY-TWO

  Chapter 3

  Footsteps.

  Somebody was coming.

  I was trying to get at my gun.

  “Just sit there quietly, Gris. I can see in there but you can’t see me.”

  HELLER’S VOICE!

  His ghost!

  Oh, Gods. I began to shake with every bone.

  “Unfasten that gun belt and throw it out the door.”

  Moaning, I did just that.

  “Put your hands high in the air.”

  I did that quickly. I was facing front. I did not dare turn and look. I did not know what seeing a ghost would do to my psyche.

  A light footstep behind me.

  Suddenly a piece of line went around my wrists. They were snapped down. Coils of line went around my body and I was wrapped to the pilot seat and tied.

  More footsteps. In the pilot viewports I could see the reflection of the ghost going back through the passageways, kicking open doors, ready to fire if anyone else was there.

  Another voice. “So you were trying to get me killed, just like you did my partner, Terb.”

  RAHT!

  I looked sideways. There he was in solid flesh, his mustache bristling out on either side below his nose. He was holding a gun on me!

  “Traitor!” I rasped.

  “Oh, no, Gris. You’re the traitor. When you lured that beautiful woman to her death, you turned my stomach. And ordering me to murder a Royal officer! You must be crazy!”

  “Then he’s not dead? He’s not a ghost?”

  Raht gave a nasty, squeaky laugh. “He’s no ghost. He’s a REAL officer, the kind you never could be. When he left for Italy, I followed him. I knew he was out of range of the bugs you had on him and I told him what had been going on. He showed me his orders. From the Grand Council, too.

  “So I came back here ahead of him, gave the old blind woman a note that her niece read to her, and came on through and set this all up like we planned.”

  “You mean he actually trusted you out there with a rifle?”

  “I didn’t have any rifle. Those were just flash charges we set up. I called, he came out. I ignited one by the door. Then another one by a bush. Then he fired and I ignited a third, all by remote. I simply shut off the visio switch on the activator-receiver. And your viewer went blind. Then he threw down a piece of iron so you’d think his gun had fallen and he stamped his foot so it sounded like a body and I cut off the audio switch.”

  “You mean, you turncoat, that you also set up this battle?”

  “No, no. He did that when he knew that you were deaf and blind. He put infrared illusions all around and body heat simulators, all remote. We controlled them from way over in the woods. We were nowhere near you! Oh, he’s a real officer, he is—a joy to work with one for a change. Nothing like the trash you are. Terb has been avenged!”

  I was still confused. “Why did those men leap up in the air with a shriek?”

  “Oh, that was his secret weapon. It found and clawed each man in turn. A remote-controlled, radio-directed cat.”

  Heller’s voice behind me: “Get up there, Mister Calico. Sit on his chest and if he moves or speaks, hit him.”

  The cat sprang up into the spaceship. It sailed onto my chest. It sat there glaring malignly at me.

  I opened my mouth to speak.

  The cat raked my face with savage claws.