by H. B. Fyfe
“Yes,” murmured Mayne. “Let’s see…one parallel would be the ancient Terran Hermes, wouldn’t it?”
“Something like that,” agreed Haruhiku. “I’m a little vague on the subject, sir. At least, he isn’t one of the bloodthirsty ones.”
“That helps,” sighed Mayne, “but not enough.”
He got a message blank from the pilot. With some labor, he composed a request to Terran headquarters on Rigel IX for authorization to spend two million credits on good-will preparations for the Terran-Kappan treaty conference.
It almost sounds diplomatic, he told himself before having the message sent.
The waiting period that followed was more to be blamed upon headquarters pussyfooting than upon the subspace transmission. When an answer finally came, it required a further exchange of messages.
Mayne’s last communique might have been boiled down to, “But I need it!”
The last reply granted provisional permission to spend the sum mentioned; but gleaming between the lines like the sweep of a revolving beacon was a strong intimation that Mayne had better not hope to charge the item to “good will.” The budget just was not made that way, the hint concluded.
“It’s due to get dark soon, isn’t it?” he asked Haruhiku, crumpling the final message into a side pocket. “I don’t believe I’ll resume the talks till morning. Maybe my head will function again by then.”
* * * *
In the morning, one of the scout’s crew again took the pilot and Mayne to the meeting by helicopter. Mayne spent part of the trip mulling over a message Haruhiku had received. The spaceship Diamond Belt could be expected to arrive in orbit about the planet later the same day, bearing special envoy J. P. McDonald. The captain, having been informed of Haruhiku’s presence, requested landing advice.
“I told him what I know,” said the pilot. “We can give him a beam down, of course, unless you think we should send him somewhere else.”
“Well…let’s see how this goes,” said Mayne. “They seem to be waiting for us down there.”
They landed to find Voorhis, Melin, and the native officialdom gathered at the hut facing the new “temple.” After exchanging greetings, they sat down at the table as they had the day before.
“All right, gentlemen,” said Mayne to the two Terrans. “You win. The government is going to have to put something in the pot. I want to make it as little as possible, so let us have no more nonsense about the true value of ship or cargo as they stand.”
They looked startled at his tone. Mayne went on before they could recover.
“The object I have in mind, if it seems at all possible, is to put Captain Voorhis back in business without costing Mr. Melin his job. Now, let’s put our heads together on that problem and worry about justifying ourselves later.”
The most difficult part was to convince Voorhis to surrender his dream of fantastic profits; but sometime before Mayne got hoarse, the captain was made to see that he could not have his cake and eat it, too.
Melin agreed that he might pay the paper value of the Gemsbok if he could pay likewise for the cargo, in which case he would admit a loss. After all, a spaceship anchored by a temple might reasonably be termed unspaceworthy. He would take over the cargo and cut his losses by allowing the government to buy it at two million.
“You wanna come with me next trip?” invited Voorhis when he heard this. “If that’s how you cut loose, we’ll make a fortune!”
“Well, there it is,” said Mayne, straightening up to ease his aching back. He must have been leaning tensely over the table longer than he had thought. “The captain gets two and a half million, Mr. Melin gets off with paying only half a million, and you’ve stuck me for the rest.”
“Congratulations, Judge!” said Melin. “You now own a ship and cargo which I presume you will present to the Kappans.”
“How can he?” demanded Voorhis. “They figure they own it already.”
“We’ll worry about that later,” said Mayne.
“You will!” Voorhis guffawed. “I hope you get some credit out of it.”
Haruhiku interrupted to inform Mayne that the Kappans, who had been interested if bewildered listeners, had invited the Terrans to a small feast.
“I translated enough to let them understand there would be no attempt to disturb their temple building,” he explained. “They now feel they owe us hospitality.”
“Good, that’s something,” said Mayne.
“I’ll tell you what else will be something,” grunted Voorhis. “The food!”
The assemblage repaired to the Kappan village. The Terrans—though it took some doing—survived the feast.
Mayne thought it best not to inquire into the nature of the dishes served. Eemakh was evidently determined to display his village’s finest hospitality, so the Terrans even tried the Kappan beer. Mayne absorbed enough to get used to it.
Or did it absorb me? he wondered. Igrillik’s beginning to look almost human!
Eventually, carts were brought, and they rode bumpily out to admire progress made on the temple. A fresh breeze helped Mayne to remember that it was now late afternoon and he had yet to settle one matter with Eemakh.
When they arrived at the site, crewmen from the Gemsbok saw fit to take Voorhis in charge and carry him into their hut. Mayne sank down at the table outside, watching Melin grope to a place beside him. He noticed that Haruhiku’s helicopter pilot handed him a message as soon as the lieutenant alighted.
“That will be from the Diamond Belt,” Mayne guessed.
He eyed Melin with some amusement. The insurance man stared very quietly at the board beneath his elbows. His complexion held a tint of green. Even Eemakh, plodding ponderously up, lowered himself to a bench with a sigh. The high priest seemed less affected by the celebration, and Mayne was proud when Haruhiku walked over with his normal bland alertness.
“They’re getting near?” he asked.
“Doing braking circles,” reported the pilot. “I sent an order for the scout to give them a beam. There may still be time to send them somewhere else—”
“One more try here first,” Mayne decided. “Tell Eemakh we want to straighten out some confusion about Meeg and the cargo.”
* * * *
Haruhiku permitted himself a small shrug and translated. Eemakh aroused himself to a show of interest, while Igrillik turned a suspicious orange stare upon Mayne. The latter strove to frame in his mind an argument that would strike them as logical.
“Tell him,” he instructed, “that we believe this Meeg was known on Terra, but by another name. Then describe the mythical Hermes and see what he says.”
Haruhiku began a conversation that lasted several minutes. Igrillik, as an authority, obviously felt moved to deliver a lengthy opinion. At last, the pilot turned to Mayne.
“They say we are to be congratulated,” he reported.
“Is that all?”
“Well, they do seem a bit more friendly. I was going to try drawing a picture of that famous statue, with the winged heels and hat, but it would never match their own conception. Igrillik asks if you claim belief in Meeg.”
“Avoid that,” said Mayne. “Now—do they know about ship communications?”
“They are aware that it is done,” said Haruhiku. “After all, they just saw me send a message to the scout over the helicopter screen.”
“Good! Point out to them that the Gemsbok also has such equipment.”
Haruhiku engaged in another long talk. The Kappans began to show signs of uneasiness at the end. They remained silent.
“And that therefore,” added Mayne, “the Terran who served this machine should rank in their eyes as a servant of Meeg just as much as Igrillik. The cargo in the ship was no more his than a message belongs to the messenger bearing it.”
The pilot put this into Kappan, with gestures.
<
br /> “And furthermore,” said Mayne, before it could be suggested that the owner might be Meeg, “what I have arranged here with Melin and Voorhis is that the cargo now belongs to all of the Terran people.”
Eemakh began to scowl, an impressive contortion on a broad, olive Kappan visage. Mayne hurried on.
“This being the case, the Kappans have absolutely no right to deny us the privilege of contributing all these goods to the glory of their temple!”
“Oh, boy!” grunted Haruhiku. He rattled off the translation.
Mayne watched it hit home. Igrillik leaned over to peer at him unbelievingly. Eemakh seemed to have difficulty in focusing his glowing eyes on the Terran.
There were, of course, requests for clarification. Mayne left the repetitions to the pilot.
In the end, Eemakh arose and embraced him, a startling action that left Mayne feeling introspectively of his ribs. Igrillik called out something to the bodyguard attending the chief, causing Mayne to repress a shudder at the flashing display of big Kappan teeth. He assumed that a smile was a humanoid constant.
Haruhiku’s pilot approached with a new message.
“Now they have to land near here, in half an hour or less,” said the spacer.
“There’s just one more thing,” Mayne told him. “Voorhis is satisfied, Melin—look, he’s gone to sleep on the table!—is relieved, the Kappans are friendly, and J. P. McDonald will be happy when he lands. Now I have to get myself off the hook for two million!”
He turned to the Gemsbok crewmen loitering before the hut.
“Who was the communications man?” he demanded.
A lean, freckled youth with a big nose admitted to the distinction. Mayne draped an arm about his shoulders and told him he was back in business.
“Say to them,” he instructed Haruhiku, “that if they are to learn how to use the equipment Meeg has provided for their temple, they must not delay one minute in taking our friend here into the ship…uh…make that ‘temple.’ He will show them how a spaceship is called down from the skies.”
Haruhiku gave him a straight-faced glance that was a masked guffaw. He translated, and orders began to be shouted back and forth among the Kappans, all the way to the top-most level of the construction. The lieutenant called his pilot.
“I’ll have him flash the scout an order to monitor the Gemsbok and transfer landing control as soon as they hear her on the air,” he explained.
Mayne nodded. He clutched the arm of the Gemsbok operator, who was being urged away by Igrillik and a group of warrior escorts.
“Just one thing, son,” he shouted over the babble. “Forget about the ship’s call sign. You go on the air calling yourself Kappa Orionis Central Control.”
“Kappa Orionis Central…?” repeated the youth distrustfully.
“You’ve got it,” said Mayne, and shoved him on his way. He turned to Haruhiku. “The last thing to do is to send the helicopter for some paint. I don’t care if it isn’t dry when the Diamond Belt touches down—I want a sign over the door of this hut!”
“A sign?”
“Make it read ‘Spaceport Number 1.’ Two million is cheap enough for buying a spaceport already in operation. There won’t be any trouble, since the Kappans promised the land.”
Everyone seemed to be running somewhere. Mayne wiped his face with a handkerchief and sat down beside Melin, who looked comfortable enough with his head on the table.
From inside the hut, Mayne could hear snores that must have Voorhis as a source; the rest of the Gemsbok crewmen had followed the crowd to the control tower that was also a temple. After a while, Haruhiku returned and sat down across from Melin.
“Magnificent, Judge!” he said. “We might even get away with it.”
“Of course we will,” said Mayne, gazing at Melin and listening to Voorhis. “After all, Hermes was the god of thieves, too!”
SATELLITE SYSTEM
Having released the netting of his bunk, George Tremont floated himself out. He ran his tongue around his mouth and grimaced.
“Wonder how long I slept…feels like too long,” he muttered. “Well, they would have called me.”
The “cabin” was a ninety-degree wedge of a cylinder hardly eight feet high. From one end of its outer arc across to the other was just over ten feet, so that it had been necessary to bevel two corners of the hinged, three-by-seven bunk to clear the sides of the wedge. Lockers flattened the arc behind the bunk.
Tremont maneuvered himself into a vertical position in the eighteen inches between the bunk and a flat surface that cut off the point of the wedge. He stretched out an arm to remove towel and razor from one of the lockers, then carefully folded the bunk upward and hooked it securely in place.
With room to turn now, he swung around and slid open a double door in the flat surface, revealing a shaft three feet square whose center was also the theoretical intersection of his cabin walls. Tremont pulled himself into the shaft. From “up” forward, light leaked through a partly open hatch, and he could hear a murmur of voices as he jackknifed in the opposite direction.
“At least two of them are up there,” he grunted.
He wondered which of the other three cabins was occupied, meanwhile pulling himself along by the ladder rungs welded to one corner of the shaft. He reached a slightly wider section aft, which boasted entrances to two air locks, a spacesuit locker, a galley, and a head. He entered the last, noting the murmur of air-conditioning machinery on the other side of the bulkhead.
Tremont hooked a foot under a toehold to maintain his position facing a mirror. He plugged in his razor, turned on the exhauster in the slot below the mirror to keep the clippings out of his eyes, and began to shave. As the beard disappeared, he considered the deals he had come to Centauri to put through.
“A funny business!” he told his image. “Dealing in ideas! Can you really sell a man’s thoughts?”
Beginning to work around his chin, he decided that it actually was practical. Ideas, in fact, were almost the only kind of import worth bringing from Sol to Alpha Centauri. Large-scale shipments of necessities were handled by the Federated Governments. To carry even precious or power metals to Earth or to return with any type of manufactured luxury was simply too expensive in money, fuel, effort, and time.
On the other hand, traveling back every five years to buy up plans and licenses for the latest inventions or processes—that was profitable enough to provide a good living for many a man in Tremont’s business. All he needed were a number of reliable contacts and a good knowledge of the needs of the three planets and four satellites colonized in the Centaurian system.
Only three days earlier, Tremont had returned from his most recent trip to the old star, landing from the great interstellar ship on the outer moon of Centauri VII. There he leased this small rocket—the Annabel, registered more officially as the AC7-4-525—for his local traveling. It would be another five days before he reached the inhabited moons of Centauri VI.
He stopped next in the galley for a quick breakfast out of tubes, regretting the greater convenience of the starship, then returned the towel and razor to his cabin. He decided that his slightly rumpled shirt and slacks of utilitarian gray would do for another day. About thirty-eight, an inch or two less than six feet and muscularly slim, Tremont had an air of habitual neatness. His dark hair, thinning at the temples, was clipped short and brushed straight back. There were smile wrinkles at the corners of his blue eyes and grooving his lean cheeks.
He closed the cabin doors and pulled himself forward to enter the control room through the partly open hatch. The forward bulkhead offered no more head room than did his own cabin, but there seemed to be more breathing space because this chamber was not quartered. Deck space, however, was at such a premium because of the controls, acceleration couches, and astrogating equipment that the hatch was the largest clear area.
Two
men and a girl turned startled eyes upon Tremont as he rose into their view. One of the men, about forty-five but sporting a youngish manner to match his blond crewcut and tanned features, glanced quickly at his wrist watch.
“Am I too early?” demanded Tremont with sudden coldness. “What are you doing with my case there?”
The girl, in her early twenties and carefully pretty with her long black hair neatly netted for space, snatched back a small hand from the steel strongbox that was shaped to fit into an attaché case. The second man, under thirty but thick-waisted in a gray tee-shirt, said in the next breath, “Take him!”
Too late, Tremont saw that the speaker had already braced a foot against the far bulkhead. Then the broad face with its crooked blob of a nose above a ridiculous little mustache shot across the chamber at him. Desperately, Tremont groped for a hold that would help him either to avoid the charge or to pull himself back into the shaft, but he was caught half in and half out.
He met the rush with a fist, but the tangle of bodies immediately became confusing beyond belief as the other pair joined in.
Something cracked across the back of his head, much too hard to have been accidental.
When Tremont began to function again, it took him only a few seconds to realize that life had been going on without him for some little time.
For one thing, the heavy man’s nosebleed had stopped, and he was tenderly combing blood from his mustache with a fingertip.
For another, they had managed to stuff Tremont into a spacesuit and haul him down the shaft to the air lock. Someone had noosed the thumbs of the gauntlets together and tied the cord to the harness supporting the air tanks.
Tremont twisted his head around to eye the three of them without speaking. He was trying to decide where he had made his mistake.
Bill Braigh, the elderly youth with the crewcut? Ralph Peters, the pilot who had come with the ship? Dorothy Stauber, the trim brunette who had made the trip from Earth on the same starship as Tremont? He could not make up his mind without more to go on.
