Arthur C Clarke's Venus Prime Omnibus

by Paul Preuss

The pressure lock to the hall was still open; it’s a busy lock during office hours and it operates on a slow cycle. I saw no movement inside the building, so I went toward it.

  At that moment the alarm sounded.

  I almost turned and ran rather than be caught there, but I feared disaster. I ran to the end of the short corridor, into the central dome. You have a good idea of what I found, I think: those horrible bright spotlights on Morland, where he lay in his blood. And the bare cushion where the Martian plaque had rested only moments before.

  Then more alarms went off, and I felt pressure loss—someone had opened an outside lock. I sealed up and ran through the dome, down the apse…

  I almost slipped in Dare Chin’s blood. A glance told me he was beyond help. Ahead of me the door of the outer lock was closing. I ran toward it.

  I stumbled again. My own gun was lying on the floor inside the door.

  If I were to have any hope of catching the killer, I could not hesitate another second. But if I failed to catch him … leaving my own gun at the scene of the double murder…

  I bent to pick up the pistol. Meanwhile the pressure door sealed. I punched the keys and waited the necessary seconds until it recycled and opened.

  I fled into the night. Now I was the fugitive.

  Had the orange man seen me following him? I didn’t know then, and I don’t know now. Did the orange man know who I was? I didn’t know then, but now I fear the answer is yes. Did the orange man know I had recovered the weapon that incriminated me? I didn’t know—I didn’t even know if he knew the gun was mine.

  But it was the orange man I feared then, and him I fear now.

  I cautiously made my way back to the hotel. I put the pistol where you found it, took off my pressure suit, and later had what I hoped seemed like a relaxed nightcap in the lounge. It was a terrible alibi, no alibi at all. I could easily have been placed at the scene of the crime. But paradoxically I was not worried about that, for I had had time to consider that the taking of the Martian plaque was much too important to be left to the local patrollers or even the local Space Board detachment. Someone would be sent from Earth Central.

  It was that person I wanted to see, and anything that pointed the finger at me—the lack of an alibi, for example—would get me to that person sooner.

  Two weeks passed, filled with the bumbling inquiries of the locals. They searched this office, but never suspected this hiding place you have found so easily. I did my best to appear guilty.

  If you had arrested me the day you arrived, I could have told you all this before. I wouldn’t be taking the precaution of making this recording.

  Now the precaution is necessary. You have been gone for days. If I don’t speak to you within the next few hours, I fear it will be too late. I saw the orange man again today, caught a fleeting glimpse of him in a crowd of tourists at the shuttleport terminal.

  One last thing. We have an acquaintance in common, you and I. You know him as your commander, your superior in the Board of Space Control. He is more than that, but I will leave the rest for him to tell, if he chooses. If necessary, I would like to be remembered to him.

  Here ends the recording…

  16

  Sparta pocketed the chip when it popped from the computer. She looked at Prott’s target pistol, still in its hiding hole. Prott’s apt description had confirmed the evidence of her senses, the evidence she had not wanted to accept. The orange man. The fussy, dapper, deadly little orange man.

  And now she could sort out that faint and menacing presence, separate it even from the overwhelming odor of blood in the air. It was his smell, and to Sparta it was primal—as indelible and menacing as the smell of a dire wolf to a caveman.

  Years ago, Sparta, disabled because her working memory had deliberately been destroyed, had been a patient in a sanatorium in Colorado. The orange man had come there to kill her. A doctor had died trying to save her. Three years before that, she had seen the orange man with her father and mother in Manhattan—the last time she could remember having seen either of her parents alive. But her subconscious told her there was more that it had to give up in memory, if only she could free it.

  The orange man. From Prott’s chip she knew what must have happened the night Morland and Chin were killed. Proving it would be more difficult.

  She keyed the phonelink on the desk. “Get me Lieutenant Polanyi. At home, if necessary. Inspector Troy calling, on urgent official business.”

  She walked a sleepy Polanyi and two of the local patrollers around Prott’s office, rehearsing the evidence with them. They bent and peered at the unfortunate hotel manager’s body; thereafter, while one of them photogrammed the dead man from every possible angle, the others stepped carefully around him.

  She showed them the secret compartment with the pistol in it—it took only seconds on the computer terminal to establish that the gun was in fact registered to Prott—but she made no mention of the chip she’d found with it. She had an odd distaste for outright lies; without saying so, she let the lieutenant believe that Prott had conveyed his suspicions to her before their dinner appointment.

  “You believed his story?” Polanyi didn’t bother to hide his skepticism. “Did anyone else see this so-called orange man?”

  “I don’t know yet, Lieutenant,” Sparta said coolly. “I haven’t questioned the bartender in the Phoenix Lounge or any of the other potential witnesses. I should think you and your colleagues are competent to handle that.”

  “If somebody else did the shooting, how did he happen to be in possession of the murder weapon?”

  “That would have come out if he’d kept our dinner appointment, I’m sure. Meanwhile it’s clear that Prott didn’t shoot himself. Not with this gun or any other.”

  The chubby lieutenant conceded the point sourly—by saying nothing.

  “The shuttleport, Lieutenant?” Sparta suggested quietly. “The truck terminals? Wouldn’t it be good to search for a man of that description before he gets away?”

  “We aren’t stupid, Inspector. Every route out of Labyrinth City has been under constant surveillance since the night of the murders. We’ve been particularly vigilant about traffic off the planet. If this so-called orange guy murdered Prott, I guarantee you he’s not getting off Mars.”

  Which would have to satisfy her for the time being. There were moments when all one could do was wait; wait and answer bureaucracy’s questions.

  The bureaucracy had lots of questions. Hours passed before she stumbled exhausted to her bed in the hotel.

  Morning.

  Still half asleep, she groped for the burbling commlink. “Ellen Troy here. Who’s calling?”

  “It’s Blake, Ellen.”

  “Blake? Is this a secure line?”

  “I’m not scrambling, but it doesn’t matter. My cover’s blown so high it must be orbiting the planet.”

  Her voice softened to a whisper. “It’s good to hear you.”

  “Mutual.”

  Blake was standing in a big steel shed, looking out a thick glass window at a raw dirt runway recently bulldozed from the sand and sprayed with polymer hardener. Out on the pad, ground crew in pressure suits were fueling a silver spaceplane, the Kestrel. Its swing-wings were extended and drooping; vapor billowed from the big hoses that pumped liquid hydrogen and oxygen into its booster tanks.

  “When did you get in?” Sparta’s voice came over the field commlink’s tinny speaker.

  “We pulled in about three hours ago in the pitch dark. It’s light now. I’m out at the landing strip trying to cadge a lift out of here. They’ve got Khalid in the clinic for observation, but he’s in pretty good shape. You?”

  “I got back here yesterday. If I’d known it was all right to get in touch with you…”

  “No problem. We heard on the link that you were all right. That was some flying.”

  “I was lucky. How did they find out about you?”

  “Lydia Zeromski sort of talked me into confessing.” He turne
d away from the window and the man who glanced at him curiously from behind the counter of the operations shed. “Apparently I wasn’t the first Mycroft—somebody in the local Space Board used this I.D. before, to play dirty tricks on the PWG.”

  “That’s a violation of Space Board policy.”

  He smiled. “In that case I want to watch you skin somebody’s butt for it. Right now, just get me out of here.”

  “Don’t you like the accommodations?” He could hear the answering smile in her voice.

  “Far be it from me to complain.” He looked around at the steel walls painted hospital green and white, at the torn charts and clipboards of yellow fax sheets hanging from nails. “The camp is a bit low on Taittinger at the moment, otherwise it’s a charming spa, rather like the Gulag Archipelago. Lacking only the scenic Siberian snow.”

  “So what’s keeping you?”

  “I’m sure the roughnecks around here would be delighted to see the last of me, no problem there. And Lydia’s my buddy now—she decided not to leave my bones to the wind—she’ll give me a ride back when she leaves in a couple of days. But there’s nothing out of here until then.”

  “What about the MTP? Aren’t they going to pick up Khalid?”

  “Khalid says he wants to stick around a while—he was headed this way anyway. They’re sending a marsplane for him next week. Marsplanes, after your experience … anyway, I was hoping to hitch a ride on Noble’s executive spaceplane.”

  “You know Noble. Can you reach him?”

  “Unfortunately my old friend’s been out of touch the last few months. I told the guys here at the field the whole truth, that I’m assisting the very important investigations of the very important Inspector Ellen Troy of the Board of Space Control, which even without Jack Noble to vouch for me makes me very important myself, and that I require immediate transportation to Labyrinth City.”

  “What did they tell you?”

  Blake looked at the two hairy characters behind the counter; the female was less friendly looking than the male. “They were, shall we say, amused. Something about the cost of liquid hydrogen. Maybe if you backed me up…”

  “I’ll do that. Right now I need to talk to you about something else. I’m switching to command channel.”

  “I’ll hold my ears.”

  The commlink squeaked and phased back in.

  “Do you read me, Blake?”

  “This must be going through three different satellites…”

  “Do you read me?”

  “You’re phasing, but I can read you—”

  “All right—”

  “What have you got?”

  “—I can’t prove it yet,” she said, “but as far I’m concerned the murders of Morland and Chin are solved. Khalid and Lydia Zeromski had nothing to do with it.”

  “Shrewd, Ellen. That much I had figured out for myself.”

  She ignored his sarcasm. “Dewdney Morland was planning to steal the Martian plaque, with an accomplice. Morland was supposed to be the victim of an anonymous attacker—he was expecting to get drugged, probably. But instead his accomplice killed him.” Sparta briefly recited the contents of Prott’s chip, his identification and pursuit of the orange man. “Prott didn’t mention hearing any shots at all, just the alarm sounding. That’s when he ran into the hall and found Morland’s body, then Chin’s.”

  “You think Chin was dead before Prott heard the alarm?” Blake glanced at the desk, keeping his voice low.

  “Yes, Chin must have gotten suspicious and arrived on the scene before the rendezvous.”

  “You think Morland shot Chin?” Blake whispered.

  “Yes. He was a brand-new sharpshooter. And when the orange man arrived, he had an extra murder on his hands and an unwanted murder weapon to dispose of. Morland must have told him the gun was Prott’s…”

  “Did the guy know that Prott was tailing him?”

  “I don’t know, and it doesn’t matter. He must have told Morland to sit down in front of the plaque’s display case, as if he were still studying it—he probably said he was going to knock him unconscious with Prott’s gun. But when Morland bent over the plaque, he killed him.”

  “He grabbed the plaque—”

  “Which set off the alarm—”

  “And left Prott’s gun by the lock as evidence. Does he know that Prott picked it up a few seconds later?”

  “I don’t think so,” said Sparta. “I think he waited around for a couple of days, hoping Prott would be charged with the murders. When he realized that that part of the scheme had failed—that the local patrollers hadn’t found a murder weapon—it was too late: you and I were already on our way to Mars.”

  “You were on your way to Mars. Nobody knew about me,” Blake said. “And if you’re right, this guy knows who Inspector Ellen Troy really is.”

  “He’s been hiding on Mars ever since.”

  “Waiting for a chance to kill you. He put that pulse bomb in Khalid’s plane.”

  “I’m sure of it. When that failed to kill me, he decided to kill Prott before Prott could say anything to me about him. That time he succeeded.”

  “Not completely. You know who he is now.”

  “But not where he is.”

  “You’d better watch your step until I get back there.”

  He heard her smile. “You mean I need all the help I can get?”

  “I meant…”

  “I know, Blake.”

  “One unanswered question—”

  “What did he do with the plaque?”

  “Right,” said Blake. “What do you think?”

  “It’s probably still on Mars.” Her voice betrayed her doubt. “They claim the off-planet security’s been tight.”

  “At least it’s a good bet it’s on Mars. The guy’s still here over two weeks later; he’d have been long gone if he weren’t still waiting for a chance to get the plaque off the…” Blake’s voice faltered.

  “What is it?” she demanded.

  “Just that… I was just remembering a conversation I overheard in a bar out at the shuttleport,” he whispered. “Some women were talking about the black market, stuff stolen from the storage depots…”

  “What about it?”

  “Somebody stole a bunch of sounding rockets, penetrators. They couldn’t figure out what anyone would want with penetrators.”

  “Solid-fuel rockets?”

  “I don’t know the specs, but if the rockets were big enough—”

  “The escape velocity of Mars is only—”

  “—maybe one of them could have launched that plaque into orbit.”

  “Prott saw the orange man at the spaceport yesterday,” she said. “Get back here as soon as you can. I’ll commandeer Noble’s executive plane.”

  “You make me feel so important.”

  Sparta laughed. “I’ve got to keep you out of trouble. I don’t want you going anywhere without me again.”

  In her hotel room, Sparta broke the commlink and keyed the camp’s airstrip dispatcher on an open channel. With her other hand she was dragging her clothes from the closet and throwing them on the bed.

  “Is this the Noble Water Works camp one dispatcher? Inspector Ellen Troy, Board of Space Patrol. Official business…”

  She made sure Blake would get his ride. She dressed quickly and then called Lieutenant Polanyi.

  “Any progress?”

  The Space Board lieutenant did not look happy to hear from her. “Affirmative. The bartender confirms that there was a man matching the description you gave us—red-haired, of small stature, expensively dressed—in the Phoenix Lounge on the night of the murders. But he wasn’t registered at the hotel or anywhere else that we can determine. No one remembers seeing him before that, and no one’s seen him since.”

  “What about security?”

  “We and the local patrol have had people at the shuttleport and the truck terminals ever since the murders, Inspector, as I explained before. There’s been a satellite alert o
n unscheduled traffic from the surface. Nothing’s left the planet, and nothing’s left Mars Station, since yesterday afternoon.” Polanyi caught himself. “One exception…”

  “What exception?”

  “Well, there’s no possible connection, Inspector. The freighter Doradus launched yesterday morning, but they’re still in Mars space.”

  “Still in Mars space?” The remark triggered a vague memory. “What happened?”

  “They had a premature main engine cutoff during launch. They indicate MECO was due to a computer glitch and they can probably handle it on board. The only thing they have to worry about is bumping Phobos.”

  For an invisibly brief fraction of a second Sparta’s face became a neutral mask. The thing that was tugging at her memory sprang into consciousness—a remark made by Captain Walsh on the Space Board cutter that had carried her and Blake to Mars Station: “…We could have dumped him on Phobos, picked him off on the next orbit… I just thought of it this minute. Phobos looks pretty good on this approach…”

  Polanyi was still talking. “…but they can easily avoid Phobos with steering verniers, and if they can’t fix their glitch right away, another half orbit will take them back to Mars Station…”

  But Sparta wasn’t listening. She interrupted Polanyi’s explanation. “Lieutenant, I need a vessel that can get me into orbit. Right now.”

  “What did you say?”

  “A shuttle, a spaceplane, anything. Whatever’s on the runway. You get it for me. Use authority of eminent domain. I want to strap into it as soon as I get to the spaceport.”

  “Inspector, I…”

  “No time for explanations. This is triple-A priority, Lieutenant Polanyi. A direct order to be confirmed by Earth Central. Do it first and get the confirmation later. Do it now.”

  She keyed off the link and grabbed her pressure suit.

  She knew where the Martian plaque was, and she intended to get to it before Doradus did.

  PART

  5

  HIDE

  AND

  SEEK