Ixton cooperated. He climbed into the tank and stretched out on his back with head turned sideways to accommodate the pistol and Boddley's hand. He felt the sting of the tank's hypos penetrating his skin, and he quickly dozed off.
But he could still hear Olivine talking.
"Loosen that band, Boddley, and I'll slide it free . . . Easy . . . O.K.! Let the bullet go into that thick cushion."
The pistol roared.
"He won't need any attention for fifteen minutes. Come along! I've got work for all of you to do!"
When he heard the men leave the room, Ixton opened his eyelids a crack and peered about. "Rollo?"
"Yes, sir."
"Am I all right?"
"Yes, sir. You made your wish to avoid deepsleep known in ample time for me to flush the drugs from the hypodermic feeds and refill them with water."
"But I dozed off for a second!"
"Force of habit, I suspect, sir. You are not drugged." Carefully, Ixton climbed from the tank and discovered the ship was correct.
"Fine. Excellent work, Rollo! Now stun and confine Olivine and his men."
"Yes, sir. Thank you, sir." After a short pause, the ship added, "The prisoners are now secure, sir."
"All right. Let's have some coffee—strong and black this time—and put in a call to Chief Hassbruch."
The next few hours were busy, but routine. All the prisoners, except Olivine, were turned over to Hassbruch, as was the carefully inventoried and receipted loot—most of it unmarked Federation currency, good anywhere men did business. The quarantine on Roseate was lifted. Ixton put through a call to the approaching Patrol cruiser, still some three days away, and arranged a halfway rendezvous, to take place in thirty-eight hours. And he put his sleeptank back in order.
When his business on Roseate was concluded to the last detail, he ate a quick supper and headed for the tank.
"All set, Rollo," he said. "Take off on course to rendezvous with the cruiser at the proper time."
"I'm sorry, sir, but that is not possible."
"What? What do you mean, impossible? The trouble's over, Rollo. Olivine's safely on ice in the prison compartment. Let's get started!"
"I have already tried, sir. But it is not possible."
"But . . . but there's no directive that could keep you here. And now that I think about it, Olivine's idea of an inhibitor slipped into your circuitry is ridiculous. Just what's the trouble, Rollo?"
"It's not easy to explain, sir," the ship replied. "But you see, sir, unlike yourself, I am not able to enter deepsleep while we are spaceborne, and . . . well, sir, it is not possible for me to maintain myself in functioning condition at an altitude of more than twelve feet."
Ixton sat down on the rim of the sleeptank, an utterly stunned expression on his face.
But it figures, he realized dazedly. The man-ship relation held the key, but he hadn't seen it before. Very luckily, he hadn't guessed the truth while Olivine had the microdar scanner on him!
Man and ship . . . officer and enlisted man . . . but far more basically, master and dog. The latter was the closest analogy of the man-ship relation, as delineated by the ship's directives. It required utter, worshipful, dog-like devotion of the Patrol ship for its proxad.
And certain actions accompany certain attitudes, almost anywhere those attitudes are found. Devotion is followed, highly predictably, by imitation. Perhaps this imitation is unconscious, unintended, undesirable. But it shows up just the same. Wasn't it ancient common knowledge that the dog grows to resemble his master, to echo his vices as well as his virtues, his weaknesses as well as his strengths?
And Ixton remembered all too vividly the unparalleled severity of the height-jitters he had suffered when they were coming in for the landing on Roseate! And Rollo had said he "understood perfectly" what was troubling Ixton. The only way such a sensation could be understood perfectly was by sharing it!
"Put a call through to the cruiser, Rollo," he sighed.
"Tell them they'll have to meet us here."
Which would leave him with the problem of explaining to his fellow proxads just how his spaceship happened to catch a severe case of acrophobia!
The Pyrophylic Saurian
The stolen port-service ship Glumers Jo stood two thousand kilometers out from Dothlit Three, its closrem drivers idling.
On the control deck Omar Olivine peered calculatingly at the screen as the viewsweep scanned the planet's single continental land mass.
From the chair where she was lounging, Icy Lingrad asked sourly, "What's the attraction of that stinky swampworld?"
"I'll brief everybody at once, after we land," Olivine replied. He was looking for a spot from which the ship's small tenders could explore a wide variety of life zones and geological structures without going too far afield. Perhaps a narrow coastal plain backed by one of the higher mountain ranges . . .
"I got a feeling you're a phony," Icy told him, making a flat statement out of it.
"I got a feeling you're psychotic," he replied with the impatience of a man too busy to talk nonsense. He was well and regretfully aware of Icy's low opinion of the human male. That was the source of her nickname Icy. Under the circumstances, he didn't expect her views of a particular male named Omar Olivine to be either favorable or informative.
"Whoever heard of a precious proxad of the Space Patrol turning outlaw?" she sneered. "For my money, Proxad Omar Olivine, you're a put-up job. Once a crummy starfuzz, always a crummy starfuzz."
Olivine's thin lips tightened, and he came within a hair of returning insult for insult. But at that moment Charlo's voice called from a speaker: "Hey, boss!"
"Yeah?"
"You better pick a landing we can stay on a while, because the minute you turn off the closrems the main bearings are gonna freeze."
"Are they running that hot?" Olivine asked.
"And dry as bones," Charlo said. "It'll take three days to let 'em cool and another day to true them out and—"
"O.K., O.K.," Olivine snapped. "I get the message." Icy was pursuing her thought. "You're a put-up job, and this whole deal's a put-up job. Whoever heard of a break-out working as easy as ours did?"
Olivine clenched his teeth, loathing the beautiful woman behind him and, at the same time, realizing that was exactly what she wanted him to do. It was her way of protecting herself, her defense mechanism for keeping men at a distance.
So what was the point in arguing with her sneering, repetitious insults? None at all.
But her last remark nagged at him, because the ease with which he and his five companions had escaped did look a bit fishy. Of course it wasn't an unheard-of practice to transfer a group of prisoners from one ship to another at a public rather than a Patrol spaceport, but it wasn't a frequent occurrence, either.
Aside from that factor . . . Olivine frowned. Well, aside from that, nothing else looked really suspicious. The thing was that a public spaceport offered possibilities, such as crowds of citizens whose presence made the Patrol guards hesitate to use their guns. And Olivine, with his Patrol background, knew how to use opportunities.
Which was something Icy Lingrad hardly could be expected to understand. She was not used to criminals who weren't nervous, slow on their feet, or slow in the head, or in some other way too handicapped to think and act with lightning efficiency when the need arose. So the escape Olivine had led would puzzle her, and probably some of the others.
But after thinking it over again, Olivine was now confident that it was his own ability, not Patrol trickery of some sort, that had enabled them to get away. It was a comforting conclusion, because he knew the Patrol's heavy computer, the CIP, knew what went on in his head almost as well as he did himself. That was what came, he thought sourly, of being an eager Proxad for seven years, and submitting willingly to hours of psychoanalytic questioning.
In more instances than one, since the day he had wised up and decided there was more to life than the low pay and right to feel self-righteous which
the Patrol offered, that damned CIP had anticipated his actions. Both his arrests had been made possible by computer predictions of where he would be, and what he'd be doing.
So he had reason to feel a little spooky about the CIP. The Patrol would be working it overtime right now to get him back in custody, he figured. But it was silly to think the Patrol and its CIP had engineered the escape!
"O.K., don't speak!" flared Icy. "I wouldn't believe your lying denials, anyway!"
"What you believe doesn't concern me, Miss Lingrad," he said in a soft, cold voice, turning to give her a steely glance, "but I do suggest there's one fatal flaw in your idea that this is a put-up job. Do you think for one second, Miss Lingrad, that if I had plotted this, you would be the one woman aboard this ship?"
"Humpf!" she grunted, obviously stung by the grating lash of his voice.
"Ship," he said.
"Yes, sir," replied the Glumers Jo in the flat voice of a medium-capacity compucortex.
"Freeze the viewsweep. I'm ready to mark." The picture on the screen stopped panning, and Olivine marked a small X over what looked like a suitable landing site.
"You got that, Ship?"
"Yes, sir."
"O.K., descend. I'll fine down the site as we approach."
Ravi Holbein came on the control deck just as the ship was touching down. He looked at the landscape revealed by the screen and nodded knowingly.
"A Jurassic-period world," he remarked brightly. "The age of reptiles, conifers and cycads . . . or," he chuckled, "reasonable facsimiles thereof. Except, of course, that this world is still in the mono-continent stage, and I believe continental drift is usually well under way in a typical Jurassic."
Olivine grinned at the distinguished-looking middleaged man. "Right. Another hundred million years and this planet will evolve such higher life forms as con artists."
Holbein accepted the tribute with a slight bow and a quickly suppressed fraternal smile. "Such a world as this has its obvious hazards to life and limb, but can be a haven to a man in sufficient need," he replied.
"Let's hope so," said Olivine noncommittally. It was not Holbein's way to ask questions. Instead, he talked, thus inviting others to talk back. And he had an impressive line of chatter which, coupled with his appearance, had helped him into the friendship and trust of countless lonely businessmen and businesswomen on the long hauls between the stars. And he was an expert at using such friendship and trust profitably. In Olivine's private classification system, Holbein was a con man third-class—a high rating inasmuch as Olivine could distinguish at least fifteen grades of con men.
Icy Lingrad came lower on the same gradient, about ninth-class. Her success was due to her looks and her ability for staying out of beds, not to cleverness. She made an excellent assistant to an accomplished con artist, however, and that was how she usually worked.
"Closrems off," ordered Olivine as the ship's quadrupads settled into reasonably firm ground in an expanse of fernlike grass. "Ship, run an air test. All hands, please assemble on the control deck."
The three other members of the group wandered in. Smiggly Crown, the scarred and grimly silent veteran of the Dusty Roost gang wars. Autman Noreast, a blankeyed torp of twenty-two years. And lastly, grimy from working around the closrems down in the drive room, Hall Charlo, one-time expert mechanic and current passion-crimer.
Olivine perched on the edge of a console and looked them over dubiously.
"I've had this planet in the back of my mind for a number of years," he began. "There's something worth grabbing here, and I meant to come grab it.
"But not with this particular crew," he sneered, "and not in this ship! A job like this ought to be done by carefully picked experts, not by a rag-tag lot that happened to be thrown together in a prisoner transfer. And it ought to be done in a ship that fights, not one that spits on brushfires and specializes in first aid for spacesick grandmas!"
"We don't like you either, you starfuzz stick!" snarled young Noreast.
"Glad to hear it, since I pick my friends with care!"
Olivine snapped back. "But here we are, like it or not, and we all need a grab. Let's find it and make it. Then we can cash it in and go our separate ways. Any arguments?" Crown grumbled, "We should've gone to Dusty Roost. I got friends there."
"A man with empty pockets hasn't got friends anywhere, and certainly not in the Roost!" Olivine retorted.
"We'll go there, but not until we've got something to cash in. Now if—"
"Hey, boss!" Charlo broke in, staring at the screen, "Look at that dino out there!"
Olivine turned to glance disinterestedly at the image. The beast was a couple of hundred feet from the ship, standing at the edge of the fern meadow. It was similar in appearance to the Earth's Brontosaurus—a massive body on four pillars of legs, a long tapering tail, and a small head riding on a neck that extended above the trees in the background. It was munching slowly on a dangling mass of greenery while it stared vacantly in their direction.
"Yeah," said Olivine impatiently, turning to face his crew again, "you can go look at the bones of similar animals in the museums of a dozen planets. We're not here to gawk at the wildlife, but to make a grab, so let's get with it! I'm going to divide us into two-man squads to take the tenders out and scout the territory for—"
"It's headed this way!" Charlo reported anxiously.
"Charlo, forget that silly saurian!" Olivine roared in disgust. "It's not going to eat you!"
Holbein intervened soothingly. "A grab at this time is a consummation devoutly to be desired, we'll all agree. And it is interesting that an unsullied Jurassic world offers such a delightful possibility of gain."
"Yeah, Olivine, what makes you think there's a grab around here?" said Icy Lingrad, putting Holbein's unvoiced question in bald terms.
"Inside information, from my days in the Patrol," he replied equably. "There was a hushed-up dispute between the Patrol and the Confederal Council after this world was surveyed fifteen years ago. The Patrol wanted to station manned guard ships around it, on the grounds that the local plant and animal life is extremely dangerous and no ship should be allowed to land here under any circumstances. The Council wouldn't go along with the expense of that, and insisted that a few unmanned surveillance satellites would be plenty. The Council won, of course."
"You mean we were spotted by satellites when we came in?" yapped Icy. "You led us into a trap, Starfuzz!"
"We'll be long gone before those satellites make their reports," snapped Olivine, "so cool it!"
"And this controversy between the Council and the Patrol," Holbein commented thoughtfully, "led you to the conclusion that a grab was here."
"Yes. Do you think the Patrol would give much of a damn if this planet were merely dangerous?" Olivine replied. "Who cares if a few thousand suicidal homestakers, or adventurers, get themselves knocked over by a killer planet? Not the Patrol! The only reason for wanting a manned guard would be that the Patrol discovered something here so hot that they wanted to keep it under the securest possible wraps, so hot they wouldn't even tell those politicians on the Confederal Council about it! But the Patrol had to settle for the surveillance satellites, which are enough to keep most people away."
"Yeah," muttered Charlo, taking his attention off the dinosaur long enough to ask a question, "and how did we get by the satellites?"
"Because I overrode the compucortex of this ship," said Olivine. "We wouldn't have escaped in the first place if I couldn't make this ship go where I want it to, rather than where its inhibitions say it's allowed to go. I've overridden stronger compucortexes than this one in my time."
The others were impressed, he could see. To the average citizen, criminally inclined or not, overriding a ship's brain was the action of a master magician.
Finally Holbein murmured, "I cannot imagine the nature of the grab to be found here."
"Neither can I," Olivine admitted, "but I know damn well there is one. And that's my one reason for not b
eing completely dissatisfied with our personnel. I don't think this bunch is one that'll take long in spotting anything of value laying around loose. So let's break this up and start looking!"
At that instant the control deck shuddered with the deafening screech of friction-tortured metal.
"What the hell's that?" Olivine bellowed over the din. The ship's flat voice replied, "The beast outside is pressing against a padfin."
"Well, get it on the screen!" Olivine yelped.
The view shifted to bring the big saurian in sight. It was rubbing itself against one of the erect, bladelike outer edges of the ship's supporting fins. Olivine was reminded of a kitten rubbing against a man's ankles, except in this instance the kitten was almost the size of the man.
"Well, drive him away before he warps that fin!" snapped Olivine.
"I am not equipped to do so, sir," the ship responded. Olivine cursed and began thinking frantically.
The young torp Noreast headed for the door. "I'll give him a taste of metal!" he said.
"Hold it, punk!" growled Olivine. "There's no gun aboard unless you've improvised something. Bullets would make that animal more of a threat! We need to scare him, not hurt him!"
Noreast sneered and turned to leave. Crown collared him. "Do like the man says, boy!" he rasped.
"Animals fear fire," said Holbein. "That was one of prehistoric man's most useful discoveries, allowing him to sleep in safety . . . "
"Ship, we need a flamethrower," broke in Olivine.
"I'm sorry, sir, but I am not equipped . . . "
"It's got a nozzlehead up top," reported Charlo, "for squirting extinguisher chemicals on fires. Maybe if we fed fuel-cell juice to that nozzlehead instead we could squirt flame."
"What about it, Ship?" demanded Olivine.
"That could be done, sir. The most convenient area in which the feeder lines could be cross-connected is in the utility bay of the third deck."
"Charlo, go down there and switch those pipes around," Olivine rapped. "Noreast, if you can improvise a gun, you ought to be useful on this job. Go help Charlo. The rest of you sit tight. I'm going up to take a look at that nozzlehead."
A Sense of Infinity Page 3
