Nadine was gone, too. So were the Chickladorians.
He rushed up to the lobby, only to encounter again the difficulty that had stopped him short before. He could not make himself understood! He didn’t know three words of Upper Plateau, and nobody he could find knew even one word of English, Spanish, Spaceal, or any other language at his command.
He took an elevator down to the street level and flagged a cruising cab. He handed the driver the largest Tomingan bill he had; then, pointing straight ahead and making furious pushing motions, he made it plain that he knew where he wanted to go, and wanted to get there in a hurry. The hacker, stimulated by more cash than he had seen for a week, drove wherever Cloud pointed; and broke—or at least bent—most of Mingia’s speed-laws in his eagerness to oblige.
Cloud’s destination, of course, was the space-port; but when he got to the Vortex Blaster I, Jim wasn’t there any more. None of his crew was aboard, either. The lifeboats were all in place, but the flitter was gone. So were both suits of armor—and the semi-portables—and the spare DeLameters—and both needles—even his space-hatchet!
He went up to the control room and glanced over the board. Everything was on zero except one meter, which was grazing the red. All four semis and both needles were running wide open—pulling every watt they could possibly draw!
Angry as he was, Cloud did not think of cutting the circuit. If he had thought of it he wouldn’t have done it. He didn’t know exactly what his officers were doing, of course, but he could do a shrewd job of guessing. If he had known what they were up to he wouldn’t have permitted it, but it was too late to do anything about it now. With those terrific weapons in operation they might get back alive—without them, they certainly would not. What a land-office business those semis were doing!
They were.
Tommie and her brother, wearing Cloud’s two suits of armor, were each carrying a semi-portable; wielding it, if not as easily as an Earthly gunner wields a sub-machine-gun, much more effectively. They were burning down a thick steel door. Well behind them, the third semi was bathing the whole front of the building in a blinding glare of radiance. In back, the fourth was doing the same to the rear wall. On the sides, the two needlebeams were darting from window to window, burning to a crisp any gangster gunner daring to show his head to aim.
For the Tomingans had not been nearly as optimistic as had Cloud, and they had made complete preparation for reprisal in case Number One should make good his threat. The Manarkan had been willing to cooperate. Thlaskin, ditto. Vesta had been quiveringly eager. Maluleme had gone along. They had not mutinied—they simply did not tell Cloud a thing about what they were going to do.
Number One had not been in his headquarters, of course, when that thousand-pound bomb let go. He thought himself safe—but he wasn’t. Nadine the telepath knew exactly where he was and exactly what he was doing. Vesta the linguist poured the information along, via the flitter’s broadcaster, to the receivers of hundreds of ground-cars and copters far below. Thlaskin the Master Pilot kept the flitter close enough to the fleeing Number One so that Nadine could read him—fully, she thought—but far enough away to avoid detection. Thus, wherever he went, Number One was pursued relentlessly, and his merciless pursuers closed in faster and faster.
Number One’s flight, however, was not aimless. He knew that a snooper was on him, and had enough power of mind to shield a few highly important thoughts. He wasn’t really THE Big Shot. He had called Yellow Castle, though, and they had told him that he could come in in one hour—the army would be ready. But did he have an hour, or not?
He did; just barely. The saps were snapping at his heels when he switched to a jet job and took off in a screaming straight line for the Castle.
Vesta wanted to ram him, to drop a life-boat on him, to wreck him in any way possible; but Thlaskin refused. Captain Cloud would be mad enough at what they’d done already—any such rough stuff as that would be altogether too damn much! And, since the rebels’ jets were still on the ground. Number One had reached sanctuary unharmed.
Yellow Castle, however, was not as impregnable as the gangsters had supposed. They had armor, true, but it was not at all like Cloud’s. They had weapons, true, but nothing even faintly resembling the frightful semi-portable projectors of the Galactic Patrol—nothing even remotely approaching the Patrol’s beam-fed needle beams.
Thus the Tomingans, Tommie and Jim, stood in armor of proof scarcely an arm’s length from Yellow Castle’s heavy steel door and burned it down into a brooklet of molten metal. Then on in; blasting down everything that resisted and, finally, everything that moved. Nor did any gangster escape. Those who managed to avoid the armored pair were blasted by one of the other semis or speared by one of the needles.
Yellow Castle, already furiously ablaze, was left to burn. Jim, after giving instructions as to how his lieutenants were to dispose of such small fry as might be left alive in the city proper, helped his sister load the Blaster’s weapons and armor into a ground-car. They drove out into the middle of a great open field. The flitter landed: Cloud’s borrowed equipment was hauled aboard. Tommie and Jim followed it.
“If you were really smart, I think you’d flit right now,” Vesta said to Tommie. “Captain Cloud isn’t going to like this a little bit.”
“I know it. I’m not smart. This was worth anything he cares to do about it. Besides, I want to thank him myself and tell him goodbye in person.”
The flitter took off and returned to her mother-ship. Tommie and Thlaskin put her away, then the peculiarly-assorted six went up to the control room and faced the quietly seething Tellurian.
Not boldly—only Tommie and Nadine were really at ease. Jim was defiant. Thlaskin was nervous and apprehensive; Maluleme was just plain scared. So was Vesta—her tail drooped to the floor; she seemed to have shrunk to four-fifths her normal size; her usual free-swinging, buoyant gait had changed almost to a slink.
Cloud stared at Nadine—chill, stern, aloof; an up-to-date Joan of Arc or a veritable destroying angel—nodded at her to synchronize with his mind. She did so, and her mind bore out everything implied by her attitude and expression. She was outraged to her innermost fiber by the conditions she had just helped to correct.
“You were the prime operator in this thing,” he thought, flatly. “With your knowledge of law and your supposed respect for it, how could you take it into your own hands? Become part of a law-breaking mob?”
“It was necessary. Law in Mingia was shackled—completely inoperative. We freed it.”
“By murder?”
“It was not murder. The lives of all who were killed were already forfeit. The corrupt judges, officials, and police officers will be dealt with by Mingian law, now again operative. Of all your crew, only Tommie could by any chance have been taken or recognized. If our coup had failed, she and Jim would have been shot without trial. Since we succeeded, however, Tommie was not recognized, being in your armor, and Jim is now Mingia’s hero. He is also the new Commissioner of Police. Hence, aside from breaking local laws—which, as I have explained, do not count—we are guilty only of unauthorized use of Patrol equipment.”
“Huh? How about interfering in planetary affairs, the worst in the book? And revealing Stage Ten stuff to a Stage Eight planet?”
“You are wrong on both counts,” Nadine informed him. “We were on shore leave—that fact is in the log. We volunteered, purely as individuals, for one day of service in the Underground. This procedure, while of course forbidden to armed personnel of the Patrol, is perfectly legal to its civilian employees. A special ruling would have to be made to cover this particular incident, and no ex post facto penalties could be imposed.”
“That’s quibbling if I ever heard any, but you’re probably right—legally—at that. But how do you wiggle out of the ‘revealing’ charge?”
“In the specific meaning of the word, as defined by the highest courts, nothing was revealed. Weapons and armor were seen, of course: but they have been s
een on Tominga before. Nothing new was learned; hence there was no revealment. And as for Jim’s leaving the ship against your orders, you had no right to issue such orders in the first place.”
Still seething, but on a considerably lower level. Cloud pondered. It wasn’t murder—nobody would or could call it that. “Extermination” would be more like it—or “justifiable germicide.” She was probably right on the rest of it, too. Even though he was, by virtue of being the captain of the Vortex Blaster I, an officer of the Patrol—strictly speaking a commander, not a captain—there wasn’t a thing in the world he could do about it.
Nadine had been keeping Vesta posted; and the latter, recovering miraculously her wonted spirit and with tail again aloft, was passing the good news along to the others.
“Don’t get too cocky, sister!” Tommie advised her sharply. “Not yet, anyway.”
“Huh?” Vesta’s tail dropped to half-mast. “Why not?”
“You just said she pleaded guilty for all of us to unauthorized use of Patrol equipment. For what we really did that’s certainly a featherweight plea—if I ever get into a real jam I certainly want her for my lawyer—but he can make it plenty tough for us if he wants to.”
“I got a question to ask, boss,” Thlaskin put in, before Cloud said anything. “You got a license to be sore as hell, no argument about that, but I ask you—are you sore mostly because we took the stuff or because we didn’t let you in on it? We couldn’t do that, boss, and you know why.”
Cloud did know why. The pilot had put his finger right on the sore spot, and the Blaster was honest enough to admit it.
“That’s it, I guess.” He grinned wryly.
Tommie, who had been whispering to Vesta, asked: “You got back here while we were still sucking juice, didn’t you?”
“Yes, and as Nadine will undoubtedly point out if I don’t, that fact makes me an accomplice for not pulling the switches on you. So, already being an accessory during and after the fact, I may as well go the route. If any of us gets hauled up, we all do.”
“No fear of that,” Tommie assured him. “One thing Tomingans are good at is keeping their mouths shut. Maluleme and Vesta will spill everything they know, and brag about it, sooner or later,” the Vegian did not relish translating this passage, but she did so, and accurately, nevertheless, “but that won’t do any harm. It’s you that’s in the driver’s seat. You could’ve nailed us all to the cross if you liked, and I for one didn’t expect to get off easy.
Thanks. I’ll remember this. So will everybody else who knows. You’re washing me out, of course?”
“Not unless you want to stay here on Tominga. You’re a good engineer, and I can’t picture this as happening again, can you?”
“Hardly. I like this better than stationary work. Thanks again, chief. My brother wants to thank you, too.”
After the sincerely grateful and appreciative Tomingan had gone, Cloud said:
“Vesta and Maluleme—if Tommie was right about you two having to talk, make a note of this. Don’t do it as long as you’re members of this crew. If you do, I’ll fire you the second I find out about it. Now everybody—as far as I’m concerned none of this ever happened. We came here to blow out vortices and that’s all we did. We’ll go back to the hotel, get a few hours of sleep, and…”
The long-range communicator, silent for weeks, came suddenly to life in English.
“Calling space-ship Vortex Blaster One, Commander Neal Cloud. Acknowledge, please. Calling space-ship Vortex Blaster One…”
“Space-ship Vortex Blaster One acknowledging.” The detector-coupled projector had swung into exact alignment. “Commander Cloud speaking.”
“Space-ship YB216P9, of First Continent, Tominga, relaying message from Philip Strong of Tellus. Will you accept message?”
“Will accept message. Ready.”
“Begin message. Report in person as soon as convenient. Answer expected. End message. Signed Philip Strong. Repeat, please. We will relay reply.”
Cloud repeated. Then: “Reply. To Philip Strong, Vortex Control Laboratory, Tellus. Begin message. Remess. Will leave Manarka fourteenth Sol for Tellus. End of message. Signed Neal Cloud. Repeat, please.”
That done, he turned to his crew. “Now we’ll have to go to work!”
With Vesta to translate, two days sufficed to rid Tominga of her loose atomic vortices; and no one so much as suspected that the Patrol ship or any of its crew had had anything to do with the upheaval in Mingia.
The trip to Manarka, a two-day flit, was uneventful. So was the extinguishment of Manarka’s vortices.
When the job was done, Nadine’s mind and Cloud’s met briefly.
No direct reference was made to the unpleasantness on Tominga, nor to their somewhat variant ideas concerning it. Nadine wanted to stay on. She liked the job and she liked Cloud. He was somewhat impractical and visionary, a bit too idealistic in his outlook at times: but a strong and able man and a top-bracket commander, nevertheless.
And the Manarkan, in Cloud’s mind, was not only a top-bracket medico, but also a very handy hand to have around.
On the fourteenth of Sol, then, the good ship Vortex Blaster I took off for Tellus, with Cloud wondering more than a little as to what was in the wind. He wasn’t the type to be unduly perturbed about being called up on the carpet per se; but Phil didn’t go in for mystery much—he explained things… He couldn’t possibly know anything about that Mingian business so soon…and he was going to tell him all about it anyway…
There was plenty of Laboratory business that shouldn’t be relayed all over space, and this was undoubtedly some of it. Whatever it was, it’d have to keep until he got to Tellus, anyway, so he’d forget it until then.
But he didn’t.
Chapter X
JANOWICK
BACK ON TELLUS, Cloud took a fast ’copter to the Vortex Control Laboratory, still wondering what it was all about.
“Go right in, Dr. Cloud,” Strong’s secretary told him, even before he stopped at her desk. “He’s been gnawing his nails ever since you landed.”
Cloud went in. The Lensman was not alone; a woman who had been seated beside the desk was now standing, studying him eagerly.
“Hi, Phil,” the Blaster said. “Why all the haste, and why so cryptic? I’ve been wondering if you found where I hid the body—and which body it was.”
“Hi, Storm. Nothing like that!” Strong laughed. “Doctor Janowick, Doctor Cloud—or rather, Joan, this is Storm. You know all about him that anybody does.”
They shook hands, Cloud wondering all the more, and as he wondered he studied the woman, just as she was studying him.
Janowick? Janowick! He’d never heard of any female Janowick, so she couldn’t be anybody much in nucleonics. Not exactly fat, but definitely on the plump side. About a hundred and thirty five pounds, he guessed; and about five feet two. About his own age—no, a bit younger, thirty-some, probably. Brown hair, with a few white ones showing; wide-spaced gray eyes—slightly myopic, by the looks of her pixeyish, you-be-damned spectacles. Smart and keen—all in all, a prime number.
“This is why I pulled you in, Storm,” the Lensman went on. “As you know, we’ve been combing all Civilization, trying to find somebody—anybody—with enough of the right qualities. She’s it. Head of the Department of Semantics at the Galactic Institute for Advanced Study. Doctor of Semantics, Ph.D. in cybernetics, D.Sc. in symbolic logic, and so on for half the alphabet. She is also a very good sell-made telepath, and the only self-made perceiver I ever heard of. She’s very good at that, too—she can out-range a Rigellian. And besides all that, she’s a Past Grand Master at chess.”
“Past Grand Master? Oh, I see—I don’t suppose it would be quite de rigueur for a top-bracket telepath to win all the Grand Masters’ championships. Also, in view of the perception business, I imagine all this is more than somewhat hush-hush?”
“Very much so. A few Lensmen and now you are all who are in on it. It’ll have to stay top
secret until we find out whether an ordinary mind can be developed into one like yours, or whether her brain, like yours, is something out of the ordinary.”
“Yes, it’d be very bad to have billions of people screaming for a treatment that can’t be given.”
“Check. But to get back to Joan. She’s done some almost unbelievable work and we think she’ll do. You know what we’re after, of course.”
“All I’m afraid of is that you haven’t looked far enough,” the woman said, shaking her head dubiously. “You know, though, what an appalling job it was bound to be. I’ll do whatever I can.”
She did not state the problem, either. They all knew, too well, what it was. As matters then stood, the life of one man—Neal Cloud—was all that stood between Civilization and loose atomic vortices; and it was starkly unthinkable that the Galactic Patrol would leave, for a second longer than was absolutely necessary, that situation unremedied.
“I see.” Cloud broke the short silence. “Assuming that you haven’t been sitting still doing nothing while I’ve been gone, brief me.”
“Smart boy!” Strong applauded. “The first thing Joan did was to figure out that a nine-second prediction was out of the question for any computer, digital or analogue, possible to build with today’s knowledge. Asked us what we could do to cut the time and how far we could cut it. With your little bombing flitter you have to have about nine seconds because you have to build up your speed to the required initial velocity of the bomb. That could be done away with, of course, by firing the bomb out of a Q-gun or something…”
“But you’d have to have a special ship, much bigger than a flitter!” Cloud protested. “And special guns…and the special pointers for those guns—or for the ship, if the guns were fixed-aligned—would be veree unsimple, believe me!”
“How right you are, Buster! Other things, too, that you haven’t thought of yet, such as automatic compensation for air conditions and so on. Very much worth while, however, and all done—we’ve had a lot of people on this project. But to cut this short, the necessary ship turned out to be a scout cruiser; the minimum safe distance—assuming worst possible conditions and heaviest possible screening—is thirty two hundred meters…”
The Vortex Blaster Page 11
