The room beyond turned out to be a small office with one occupant - a rough-looking chap, reclining in a chair with his feet up on a desk. Ching introduced me to Karl Voorman and said that he would be handling the piloting duties on our little excursion.
Voorman shook my hand and nodded, without a hint of pleasantness. Ching began discussing arrangements with him, giving me a chance to scurtinize the pilot.
He wore a full beard, which was jet-black. Together with his dark, sunken eyes, it gave him a distinctly sinister look. His voice was low and sullen, and when he spoke, it was almost begrudgingly. I got the impression that he was a man of action and preferred to avoid talking whenever possible. It was trait I’d always admired and was number three on the list of characteristics I looked for in a woman. Unfortunately, in all my past relationships, I’d rarely gotten past the first two characteristics.
Ching and Voorman bartered briefly, then came to an agreement. Ching insisted that there be no questions asked and offered the pilot a handsome payoff for his silence. Five minutes later, we left the hangar and walked to a midsized shuttle-cruiser, parked just outside. It was the kind of spacecraft used by successful smugglers - very fast and maneuverable. I guessed that Voorman ran a lucrative operation.
The shuttle was no vacation cruise ship, but it was sufficiently equipped for the thirty-hour flight. We strapped in for takeoff and, forty-five minutes later, were officially off-planet. I’d only been on two spaceflights in my life, and the experience was still a novelty to me. Maybe that was why I didn’t feel particularly tired, even though it was almost 5 A.M.
Despite the moderate turbulence associated with breaking free of Earth’s gravitational pull, Ching’s henchmen were nodding off, snug behind their safety harnesses. Ching was awake and seemed somewhat jittery. I yawned and glanced at my new watch. I
wondered if Ching might have some idea as to its significance. There was nothing to lose by checking. I removed the watch from my wrist and handed it over. “What do you think about this watch?”
Ching looked it over without a hint of recognition, then gave it back to me. “Looks nice.”
Since it obviously didn’t mean anything to her, I decided to spare her the details. A few moments later, we broke free of the exposure six hundred miles up, and the ride smoothed out. Ching pulled out a large knapsack. Luckily, she’d shown considerably more foresight than I had, bringing along plenty of ready-to-eat foodstuffs. Her knapsack, however, contained an even more valuable treasure: two bottles of Black Bush Irish whiskey. She produced a bottle and held it up. “Got a use for this?”
I smiled warmly. Ching had just advanced from the “Casual Ally” category straight into
“Friends Of Tex.”
“I can think of a couple.”
She opened the bottle, took a long draught, and handed it to me. “I hate these space flights. They always make me sick. All I can do is get drunk and try to sleep.”
I nodded sympathetically. “I understand completely. I have the same reaction to women.” I raised the bottle to my parched lips. “Nothing personal.”
I drank deeply and felt the tingling warmth run down my gullet and into my empty stomach. This wasn’t the official PI breakfast - that, of course, was a cigarette and coffee. This was more like the PI brunch. I took another mouthful, then passed the bottle back. Then I got out my pack of Luckies and offered one to Ching, who declined. As I lit up, I caught sight of a no smoking sticker. The cigarette tasted extra good.
As I exhaled, Lou snorted and jolted upright. “We there yet?”
Ching spoke like a protective parent. “Not yet, Lou. Go back to sleep.”
Lou nodded wearily and almost immediately began to snore.
Ching passed the whiskey over and turned to look out a window. I studied her for several minutes. I wasn’t quite sure what to think of Ms. Ching. When I’d been tracking down the statuette, I’d gotten the impression that everyone was scared to death of her.
Now that I was sitting across from her, she didn’t seem particularly dangerous. She was just a regular, living, breathing person with an upset stomach. It confirmed my theory that mystique was always more powerful that reality. I cleared my throat to get her attention. “Tell me something, Ms. Ching. Why is everybody so scared of you?”
Ching smiled and motioned for me to pass the Black Bush.
“Because that’s the way I like it. I’ve put a good deal of effort into developing a reputation. I rarely deal face to face with my clients. The less people know about me, the better it is for business.”
“You ever killed anyone?”
The woman laughed. “Of course. Bluffing only takes you so far. There isn’t a lot of integrity in my line of work. If someone crosses you and gets away with it, everyone else will think they can do it, too.”
“You plan on killing me?”
Ching shrugged and took a sip of whiskey. “I haven’t decided yet. We’ll have to see how things go. Right now, I’d say it’s sixty-forty in your favor.”
“If you don’t mind me asking, what is it you do, specifically?”
Ching yawned and capped the bottle. “Why do you want to know?”
I dropped my cigarette butt onto the floor and stepped on it. “I’m thinking about getting into another line of work. Yours seems to pay pretty well.”
Ching leaned back into her seat. “I’m sort of a commodities dealer. I use my connections to find rare and valuable items, buy them, then sell them to the highest bidder.”
“How’d you get involved with the statuette?”
Ching smiled drowsily. “The statuette has a long history behind it. No one really knows how old it is, but it’s one of the most ancient artifacts in the world. I’d heard about it years ago, that it had disappeared during the 1940s. Most of those in the know assumed that it had been added to the Nazis’ extensive collection of art and occult objects. Then it suddenly turned up it some Viennese attic. The man who found it donated it to a museum in Vienna. Immediately, a race was on to see who could steal it first. Private collectors began to ante up astronomical offers for it. Naturally, it was something I felt I should get in on.
“Security at the museum was very tight, but an accomplished acquaintance of mine managed to get past it and snatch the statuette. Knowing that he was sitting on a fortune, he contacted me and asked me to make inquiries. I compiled a list of potential buyers and collected bids, the highest of which was in the high nine figures. I was about to carry out the deal when I was contacted by the head of CAPRICORN. How he knew about me and the statuette, I don’t know, but he filled me in on its history and the cult that wanted it.
“It seemed too fantastic for me to believe at first, but then I did some checking around.
Everything I learned seemed to back up what the man from CAPRICORN had told me. I decided to hold onto the statuette and see what happened. As time passed, I began to sense that the cult was getting desperate to find its talisman. Apparently, they were under some sort of time constraint…something to do with one of their prophecies. It seems they had a preset date for when their plan was to be carried out. I never found out the exact date, but I knew it had to be soon.”
Ching rubbed her eyes. I was trying not to feel guilty.
“Do you think the cult would’ve gone through with its plans without the statuette?”
Ching’s eyes were closed. “I don’t know. Probably.”
She began to breathe deeply. I let her sleep, feeling a little less responsible. Then I got out my seat and grabbed the bottle of whiskey. After taking a few sips, I lit another cigarette and looked out into the great vacuum.
This whole scenario reminded me of my religious beliefs, or lack thereof. I’d never really thought much about God, or life after death, but occasionally I’d ask myself, what if? I now found myself wondering the same thing about the cult. It didn’t seem plausible to me that some group would actually have the power to take over the world, but what if they did? And if so, what chanc
e did Ching and I have of stopping them?
Here we were, flying toward the moon with no plan, no idea of what we would find. I leaned back in my seat and closed my eyes. For all I knew, the fate of the world rested on the shoulders of an out-of-work PI, a fence, and two thugs. I drifted into an uneasy sleep.
When I woke, Ching and her henchmen were breaking their fast with some kind of brightly colored snack cake. I opted for the PI brunch. We still had another twenty hours to go. The time passed slowly, but it gave me a chance to find some redemptive qualities in Lou and Felipe. Ching’s henchmen weren’t the brightest guys I’d ever met, but Lou, the one who’d smacked me around, turned out to be a talker and kept me entertained unintentionally with a steady stream of malapropisms, mixed metaphors, and
unbelivably creative profanity. Felipe, the more cerebral of the two, actually came up with the occasional four-syllable word, and almost floored me when he whipped out a cribbage board and a deck of cards.
Cribbage, of course, was the greatest two-played game ever invented. My mom had taught me to play right after teaching me how to go pee-pee by myself. Since Ching didn’t play and had no desire to, and Lou had yet to master Go Fish, Felipe was as happy to find a fellow player as I was.
Voorman didn’t join us once throughout the flight. Instead, he sat in the cockpit and read. Ching spent most of the time staring out a window, interrupting her meditations intermittently to clean one of the many firearms she’d brought along. I didn’t ask how she’d gotten them through the spaceport security. Lou kept himself amused with a Robet E. Howard paperback and a bag of pork rinds. Every few seconds, he’d silently sound out a word, then shake his head. At one point, I timed the length between page turns.
Eight minutes.
Felipe and I, meanwhile, played a couple games of cribbage, feeling each other out tentatively, he like a mediocre boxer, me like a python with a cornered gerbil. Felipe cut a few lucky cards and eked out a victory in the second game, after which he suggested that we play for money. I casually suggested a dime a point - a quarter past the skunk line - and my unsuspecting opponent agreed. Calculating the length of the flight and the number of games we could get in, I figured I could pocket about four hundred bucks.
I owed Felipe a little more than two hundred dollars when Voorman emerged from the cockpit. He took a seat by Ching and removed a cigar from his mouth. “We’re about an hour out. I figured we should discuss what you want to do when we arrive.”
Ching filled Vorrman in briefly on what we knew about GRS and asked if he had any idea what they would be doing on the moon. Voorman thought it over for a moment.
“I’ve heard that there’s some kind of research facility up here. I don’t know where it is, but you can probably find the way there through the operation center. I’ll get you in, but what you do after that is your problem. I just agreed to get you there.”
Ching nodded. “Once we get in, how many people will we have to get past?”
Voorman shrugged. “The complex is pretty much fully automated. There aren’t more than a dozen people running the whole place.”
Voorman pulled out a piece of paper and unfolded it. I moved to get a better look and saw what appeared to be a diagrammed layout of the complex. From what I could tell, it was comprised of six or seven domed biospheres, all connected by some type of subway system. Voorman pointed to one of the domes. “This is the op-center. We’ll land here.
I’ve made deliveries before and shouldn’t have any trouble getting in. After we land, I’m staying in the shuttle, and you’ll have eight hours. I need to leave after that. If you’re not back by then, I’ll leave you behind. We clear on that?”
Ching said she understood, and Voorman returned to the cockpit, leaving the diagram for us to examine. We crowded around while Ching formulated a strategy. We would all be armed to the teeth and would hopefully catch the people in the op-center by surprise.
After subduing any resistance, we would split up and search the complex. Ching had brought along communication devices and rebreathers, which would allow us to leave the biospheres if it became necessary. Then she passed out the equipment, and we waited anxiously to land.
Looking out the window, I could see the moon getting larger by the minute. A short while later, I heard Voorman’s voice through the partially open cockpit door. He was repeatedly asking for permission to land, but there seemed to be no response. After several minutes, he poked his head through the door. “For some reason, they’re not answering. Looks like I’ll have to set the shuttle down outside the op-center.”
Ching looked at me, a concerned expression on her face. “I’m not sure if this is good news or not.”
Twenty minutes later, the shuttle came to rest and powered down. Ordinarily, Ching informed me, we would have landed in an air lock. But since no one was responding in the op-center, we had to touch down on the moon’s surface and would have to walk.
Through the window, I saw a massive structure that resembled a metal bowl turned upside down. To the right, I could see two others in the distance. We bundled ourselves into space suits, strapped on our rebreathers, and checked to make sure they were working correctly. Voorman came in and opened the hatch for us. We climbed single-file out of the shuttle and down the ladder.
For the first time, I stepped onto the dusty surface of the moon. Immediately, I felt the effects of minimal gravity. I turned and bounced along after Ching in the direction of the op-center. We reached the dome and began to move clockwise around the perimeter. A minute later, we came to a sealed door built into the curved surface. Ching tried the door, but it didn’t open. She motioned for us to stand back, then leveled a large gun at it, and pulled the trigger.
The blast left a hole the size of a basketball where the door handle had been. Lou stepped up and reached inside. With a mighty tug, the door swung open, and we followed the big man into the dome.
We found ourselves in a short tunnel, with a door at the other end. Ching pushed past Lou, walked up to the control panel on the wall beside the door, and pushed a button.
With a hydraulic hiss, the door slid open, and we rushed through, weapons ready to fire.
The room was empty. The four of us looked at each other, partly relieved, partly confused. Ching turned and closed the door behind us, then loosened her rebreather and signaled that it was safe to remove the apparatus. Slowly, we relaxed and began to look around. The space was large and circular, like the dome over it. Computer consoles lined the perimeter, and several computer stations dotted the center of the room.
We fanned out, and I walked to the nearest console. Most of the equipment was running, with monitors displaying everything from camera views to data readouts. The first section I checked was labeled Maximum Security Zone 10. Several dozen cameras were trained on an area that resembled a prison camp. None of them showed any movement whatsoever. Wherever this maximum security area was, it appeared to be completely abandoned.
I circled around, pausing every few feet to inspect computer screens. There were inventory displays, prisoner records, and a good deal of indecipherable data. One bit of information caught my eye. It was a listing of zone populations and seemed to show that, as of November 22, there were four hundred and eighteen occupants in Maximum Security Zone 10. What happened to the prisoners?
As I continued my examination, I saw several other banks of camera monitors, all of which showed deserted areas like the one I’d already seen. From what I could gather, the entire complex was abandoned. My investigation was interrupted by Ching, who called me over to where she was standing.
She found a computer display of the complex’s layout. Most of the areas were color-coded, and we were able to identify sections of minimum, medium, and maximum
security. The op-center was also clearly marked, but there were three sections without a description. Ching and I agreed that we should explore those areas first. According to the layout, there four transport tubes, one at each primary compass point. We
looked around the room and saw four corresponding exits. Ching would explore one area, I’d take another, and Lou and Felipe would go cover the other two.
I walked to one of the doors and examined the control panel beside it, which was not unlike and elavator panel. One of the buttons looked especially important, so I pressed it. A yellow light flashed on and began to blink. Thirty seconds later, the light changed to a solid green, and the door slid open. Beyond was a small compartment with two rows of facing seats and windows all around. I buckled myself into one of the seats near the door, then pressed a button to the left of the door. It slid shut, and the compartment began to move.
Through the windows, I saw the moon’s landscape flying by. I looked in the direction I was moving and saw a long, clear tunnel. The compartment seemed to be moving along a monorail. A few moments later, it began to slow down, then came to a rest against a door identical to the one back at the op-center. I pressed the button by the door, and it slid open.
Suddenly, all the oxygen seemed to leave my lungs, and I groped for my rebreather.
Apparently, this section had been shut down. Once my rebreather was in place and I’d regained my composure, I stood up and entered a narrow hallway that looked like it ran all the way around the dome’s perimeter. A door directly in front of me proved to be locked, so I turned right and started walking.
Doors were built into the inside walls every twenty feet or so, but they were all locked.
It wasn’t until I’d gone at least halfway around that I found one left ajar. I pushed on it, but it didn’t want to move. Then I lowered my shoulder and pushed hard. The door moved inward, and I heard the sound of something sliding on the floor. When the opening was wide enough to pass through, I squeezed in and took a look at what had been blocking the door.
Aaron Conners - Tex Murphy 02 Page 19
