Golden Age of Science Fiction Vol X

by Various

  And in another seven hours, if the plans of certain men went through, the Seventh Star Hotel would abruptly wink out of existence.

  * * * * *

  Some fifty or sixty early diners were scattered about the tables on the garden terraces of Phalagon House, the Seventh Star Hotel's most exclusive eatery. One of them had just finished his meal, sat smoking and regarding a spiraling flow of exquisitely indicated female figures across the garden's skyscape with an air of friendly approval. He was a large and muscular young man, deeply tanned, with shoulders of impressive thickness, an aquiline nose, and dark, reflective eyes.

  After a minute or two, he yawned comfortably, put out the cigarette, and pushed his chair back from the table. As he came to his feet, there was a soft bell-note from the table ComWeb. He hesitated, said, "Go ahead."

  "Is intrusion permitted?" the ComWeb inquired.

  "Depends," the guest said. "Who's calling?"

  "The name is Reetal Destone."

  He grinned, appeared pleasantly surprised. "Put the lady through."

  There was a brief silence. Then a woman's voice inquired softly, "Quillan?"

  "Right here, doll! Where--"

  "Seal the ComWeb, Quillan."

  He reached down to the instrument, tapped the seal button, said, "All right. We're private."

  "Probably," the woman's voice said. "But better scramble this, too. I want to be very sure no one's listening."

  Quillan grunted, slid his left hand into an inner coat pocket, briefly fingered a device of the approximate size and shape of a cigarette, drew his hand out again. "Scrambling!" he announced. "Now, what--"

  "Mayday, Quillan," the soft voice said. "Can you come immediately?"

  Quillan's face went expressionless. "Of course. Is it urgent?"

  "I'm in no present danger. But we'd better waste no time."

  "Is it going to take real hardware? I'm carrying a finger gun at the moment."

  "Then go to your rooms and pick up something useful," Reetal said. "This should take real hardware, all right."

  "All right. Then where do I go?"

  "I'll meet you at your door. I know where it is."

  When Quillan arrived, she was standing before the door to his suite, a tall blonde in a sleeveless black and gold sheath; a beautiful body, a warm, lovely, humorous face. The warmth and humor were real, but masked a mind as impersonally efficient as a computer, and a taste for high and dangerous living. When Quillan had last met Reetal Destone, a year and a half before, the taste was being satisfied in industrial espionage. He hadn't heard of her activities since then.

  She smiled thoughtfully at him as he came up. "I'll wait outside," she said. "We're not talking here."

  Quillan nodded, went on into his living room, selected a gun belt and holstered gun from a suitcase, fastened the belt around his waist under the coat, and came out. "Now what?"

  "First a little portal-hopping--"

  He followed her across the corridor and into a tube portal, watched as she tapped out a setting. The exit light flashed a moment later; they stepped out into a vacant lounge elsewhere in the same building, crossed it, entered another portal. After three more shifts, they emerged into a long hall, dimly lit, heavily carpeted. There was no one in sight.

  "Last stop," Reetal said. She glanced up at his face. "We're on the other side of the Star now, in one of the sections they've closed up. I've established a kind of emergency headquarters here. The Star's nearly broke, did you know?"

  "I'd heard of it."

  "That appears to be part of the reason for what's going on."

  Quillan said, "What's going on?"

  Reetal slid her arm through his, said, "Come on. That's my, hm-m-m, unregistered suite over there. Big boy, it's very, very selfish of me, but I was extremely glad to detect your name on the list of newly arrived guests just now! As to what's going on ... the Camelot berths here at midnight, you know."

  Quillan nodded. "I've some business with one of her passengers."

  Reetal bent to unlock the entrance door to the indicated suite. "The way it looks now," she remarked, "the odds are pretty high that you're not going to keep that appointment."

  "Why not?"

  "Because shortly after the Camelot docks and something's been unloaded from her, the Camelot and the Seventh Star Hotel are scheduled to go poof! together. Along with you, me, and some twelve thousand other people. And, so far, I haven't been able to think of a good way to keep it from happening."

  Quillan was silent a moment. "Who's scheduling the poof?" he asked.

  "Some old acquaintances of ours are among them. Come on in. What they're doing comes under the heading of destroying the evidence."

  * * * * *

  She locked the door behind them, said, "Just a moment," went over to the paneled wall, turned down a tiny silver switch. "Room portal," she said, nodding at the wall. "It might come in handy. I keep it turned off most of the time."

  "Why are you turning it on now?" Quillan asked.

  "One of the Star's stewards is working on this with me. He'll be along as soon as he can get away. Now I'll give you the whole thing as briefly as I can. The old acquaintances I mentioned are some boys of the Brotherhood of Beldon. Movaine's here; he's got Marras Cooms and Fluel with him, and around thirty of the Brotherhood's top guns. Nome Lancion's coming in on the Camelot in person tonight to take charge. Obviously, with all that brass on the job, they're after something very big. Just what it is, I don't yet know. I've got one clue, but a rather puzzling one. Tell you about that later. Do you know Velladon?"

  "The commodore here?" Quillan nodded. "I've never met him but I know who he is."

  Reetal said, "He's been manager of the Seventh Star Hotel for the past nine years. He's involved in the Beldon outfit's operation. So is the chief of the Star's private security force--his name's Ryter--and half a dozen other Star executives. They've got plenty of firepower, too; close to half the entire security force, I understand, including all the officers. That would come to nearly seventy men. There's reason to believe the rest of the force was disarmed and murdered by them in the subspace section of the Star about twelve hours ago. They haven't been seen since then.

  "Now, Velladon, aside from his share in whatever they're after, has another reason for wanting to wipe out the Star in an unexplained blowup. There I have definite information. Did you know the Mooley brothers owned the Star?"

  "Yes."

  "I've been working for the Mooleys the past eight months," Reetal said, "checking up on employees at Velladon's level for indications of graft. And it appears the commodore had been robbing them blind here for at least several years."

  "Sort of risky thing to try with the Mooleys, from what I hear," Quillan remarked.

  "Yes. Very. Velladon had reason to be getting a little desperate about that. Two men were planted here a month ago. One of them is Sher Heraga, the steward I told you about. The other man came in as a bookkeeper. Two weeks ago, Heraga got word out that the bookkeeper had disappeared. Velladon and Ryter apparently got wise to what he was trying to do. So the Mooleys sent me here to find out exactly what was going on before they took action. I arrived four days ago."

  She gave a regretful little headshake. "I waited almost a day before contacting Heraga. It seemed advisable to move very cautiously in the matter. But that made it a little too late to do anything. Quillan, for the past three days, the Seventh Star Hotel has been locked up like a bank vault. And except for ourselves, only the people who are in on the plot are aware of it."

  "The message transmitters are inoperative?" he asked.

  Reetal nodded. "The story is that a gravitic storm center in the area has disrupted transmissions completely for the time being."

  "What about incoming ships?"

  "Yours was the only one scheduled before the Camelot arrives. It left again eight hours ago. Nobody here had been let on board. The guests who wanted to apply for outgoing berths were told there were none open, that they'd have to
wait for the Camelot."

  She went over to a desk, unlocked a drawer, took out a sheaf of papers, and handed one of them to Quillan. "That's the layout of the Star," she said. "This five-level building over by the shell is the Executive Block. The Brotherhood and the commodore's men moved in there this morning. The Block is the Star's defense center. It's raid-proofed, contains the control officers and the transmitter and armament rooms. About the standard arrangement. While they hold the Executive Block, they have absolute control of the Star."

  "If it's the defense center, it should be practically impossible to do anything about them there," Quillan agreed. "They could close it up, and dump the air out of the rest of the Star in a minute, if they had to. But there must be ... well, what about the lifeboats in the subspace section--and our pals must have a getaway ship stashed away somewhere?"

  "They have two ships," Reetal said. "A souped-up armed freighter the Brotherhood came in on, and a large armed yacht which seems to be the commodore's personal property. Unfortunately, they're both in subspace locks."

  "Why unfortunately?"

  "Because they've sealed off subspace. Try portaling down there, and you'll find yourself looking at a battle-plastic bulkhead. There's no way of getting either to those ships or to the lifeboats."

  Quillan lifted his eyebrows. "And that hasn't caused any comment? What about the maintenance crews, the warehouse men, the--"

  "All the work crews were hauled out of subspace this morning," Reetal said. "On the quiet, the Star's employees have been told that a gang of raiders was spotted in the warehouse area, and is at present cornered there. Naturally, the matter isn't to be mentioned to the guests, to avoid arousing unnecessary concern. And that explains everything very neatly. The absence of the security men, and why subspace is sealed off. Why the Executive Block is under guard, and can't be entered--and why the technical and office personnel in there don't come out, and don't communicate out. They've been put on emergency status, officially."

  * * * * *

  "Yunk," Quillan said disgustedly after a moment. "This begins to look like a hopeless situation, doll!"

  "True."

  "Let's see now--"

  Reetal interrupted, "There is one portal still open to subspace. That's in the Executive Block, of course, and Heraga reports it's heavily guarded."

  "How does he know?"

  "The Block's getting its meals from Phalagon House. He floated a diner in there a few hours ago."

  "Well," Quillan said, brightening, "perhaps a deft flavoring of poison--"

  Reetal shook her head. "I checked over the hospital stocks. Not a thing there that wouldn't be spotted at once. Unless we can clobber them thoroughly, we can't afford to make them suspicious with a trick like that."

  "Poison would be a bit rough on the office help, too," Quillan conceded. "They wouldn't be in on the deal."

  "No, they're not. They're working under guard."

  "Gas ... no, I suppose not. It would take too long to whip up something that could turn the trick." Quillan glanced at his watch. "If the Camelot docks at midnight, we've around six and a half hours left, doll! And I don't find myself coming up with any brilliant ideas. What have you thought of?"

  Reetal hesitated a moment. "Nothing very brilliant either," she said then. "But there are two things we might try as a last resort."

  "Let's hear them."

  "I know a number of people registered in the Star at present who'd be carrying personal weapons. If they were told the facts, I could probably line up around twenty who'd be willing to make a try to get into the Executive Block, and take over either the control offices or the transmitter room. If we got a warning out to the Camelot, that would break up the plot. Of course, it wouldn't necessarily save the Star."

  "No," Quillan said, "but it's worth trying if we can't think of something better. How would you get them inside?"

  "We could crowd twenty men into one of those diner trucks, and Heraga could take us in."

  "What kind of people are your pals?"

  "A few smugglers and confidence men I've had connections with. Fairly good boys for this sort of thing. Then there's an old millionaire sportsman, with a party of six, waiting to transfer to the Camelot for a safari on Jontarou. Old Philmarron isn't all there, in my opinion, but he's dead game and loves any kind of a ruckus. We can count on him and his friends, if they're not too drunk at the moment. Still ... that's not too many to set against something less than a hundred professional guns, even though some of them must be down on the two ships."

  "No, not enough." Quillan looked thoughtful. "What's the other idea?"

  "Let the cat out of the bag generally. Tell the guests and the employees out here what's going on, and see if somebody can think of something that might be done."

  He shook his head. "What you'd set off with that would be anywhere between a riot and a panic. The boys in the Executive Block would simply give us the breathless treatment. Apparently, they prefer to have everything looking quiet and normal when the Camelot gets here--"

  "But they don't have to play it that way," Reetal agreed. "We might be dead for hours before the liner docks. If they keep the landing lock closed until what they want has been unloaded, nobody on the Camelot would realize what had happened before it was too late."

  * * * * *

  There was a moment's silence. Then Quillan said, "You mentioned you'd picked up a clue to what they're after. What was that?"

  "Well, that's a curious thing," Reetal said. "On the trip out here, a young girl name of Solvey Kinmarten attached herself to me. She didn't want to talk much, but I gathered she was newly married, and that her husband was on board and was neglecting her. She's an appealing little thing, and she seemed so forlorn and upset that I adopted her for the rest of the run. After we arrived, of course, I pretty well forgot about the Kinmartens and their troubles.

  "A few hours ago, Solvey suddenly came bursting into the suite where I'm registered. She was shaking all over. After I calmed her down a bit, she spilled out her story. She and her husband, Brock Kinmarten, are rest wardens. With another man named Eltak, whom Solvey describes as 'some sort of crazy old coot,' they're assigned to escort two deluxe private rest cubicles to a very exclusive sanatorium on Mezmiali. But Brock told Solvey at the beginning of the trip that this was a very unusual assignment, that he didn't want her even to come near the cubicles. That wouldn't have bothered her so much, she says, but on the way here Brock became increasingly irritable and absent-minded. She knew he was worrying about the cubicles, and she began to wonder whether they weren't involved in something illegal. The pay was very high; they're both getting almost twice the regular warden fee for the job. One day, she found an opportunity to do a little investigating.

  "The cubicles are registered respectively to a Lady Pendrake and a Major Pendrake. Lady Pendrake appears to be genuine; the cubicle is unusually large and constructed somewhat differently from the ones with which Solvey was familiar, but it was clear that it had an occupant. However, the life indicator on 'Major Pendrake's cubicle registered zero when she switched it on. If there was something inside it, it wasn't a living human being.

  "That was all she learned at the time, because she was afraid Brock might catch her in the cubicle room. Here in the Star, the cubicles were taken to a suite reserved for Lady Pendrake. The other man, Eltak, stayed in the suite with the cubicles, while the Kinmartens were given other quarters. However, Brock was still acting oddly and spending most of his time in the Pendrake suite. So this morning, Solvey swiped his key to the suite and slipped in when she knew the two men had left it."

  "She'd barely got there when she heard Brock and Eltak at the door again. She ran into the next room, and hid in a closet. Suddenly there was a commotion in the front room, and Solvey realized that men from the Star's security force had arrived and were arresting Brock and Eltak. They hauled both of them away, then floated the cubicles out and on a carrier and took them off too, locking the suite behind them.


  "Solvey was in a complete panic, sure that she and Brock had become involved in some serious breach of the Warden Code. She waited a few minutes, then slipped out of the Pendrake suite, and looked me up to see if I couldn't help them. I had Heraga check, and he reported that the Kinmarten suite was under observation. Evidently, they wanted to pick up the girl, too. So I tucked her away in one of the suites in this section, and gave her something to put her to sleep. She's there now."

  * * * * *

  Quillan said, "And where are the prisoners and the cubicles?"

  "In the Executive Block."

  "How do you know?"

  Reetal smiled briefly. "The Duke of Fluel told me."

  "Huh? The Brotherhood knows you're here?"

  "Relax," Reetal said. "Nobody but Heraga knows I'm working for the Mooleys. I told the Duke I had a big con deal set up when the Camelot came in--I even suggested he might like to get in on it. He laughed, and said he had other plans. But he won't mention to anyone that I'm here."

  "Why not?"

  "Because," Reetal said dryly, "what the Duke is planning to get in on is an hour of tender dalliance. Before the Camelot arrives, necessarily. The cold-blooded little skunk!" She hesitated a moment; when she spoke again, her voice had turned harsh and nasal, wicked amusement sounding through it. "Sort of busy at the moment, sweetheart, but we might find time for a drink or two later on in the evening, eh?"

  Quillan grunted. "You're as good at the voice imitations as ever. How did you find out about the cubicles?"

  "I took a chance and fed him a Moment of Truth."

  "With Fluel," Quillan said thoughtfully, "that was taking a chance!"

  "Believe me, I was aware of it! I've run into card-carrying sadists before, but the Duke's the only one who scares me silly. But it did work. He dropped in for a about a minute and a half, and came out without noticing a thing. Meanwhile, I'd got the answers to a few questions. The bomb with which they're planning to mop up behind them already has been planted up here in the normspace section. Fluel didn't know where; armaments experts took care of it. It's armed now. There's a firing switch on each of their ships, and both switches have to be tripped before the thing goes off. Part of what they're after is in those Pendrake rest cubicles--"