Revenge of the Catspaw

by Helena Puumala

  **

  Neither Captain Mallory nor the rest of the crew of Lydia saw any reason why the Agent ought to worry about the Neotsarians in Paxic Prime City. They knew of no instances of The Organization Hounds showing up there.

  “Continuing your journey should be a matter of catching another freighter like this one, one which also carries passengers,” Luce, the Ship Mechanic, said. “Mind you, once you're booked on a ship, anyone, anywhere, if he's curious enough, can find out your destination.”

  “So, wait until we're in Port to book,” Mallory suggested. “If possible, though it may not be, leave buying passage until the last minute. That way the nasties chasing you won't know where to go wait for you until you're actually on your way. Thus, their forces will have to be more spread out, and whatever welcome they're planning for you should be a bit less concentrated than it might be otherwise.”

  It was not bad advice, Coryn thought. He did study the freighter schedules, however, and decided on the most sensible next leg, though he did not finalize any plan. There were a couple of options open to him, he determined, and decided to leave the decision as to which one he'd take as late as possible.

  The freighter was due to arrive at the Port of Paxic Prime City the following evening (ship time). He hoped that the crew were correct in the assumption that the Hounds would present no danger to him on Paxic IV soil.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Coryn and Milo disembarked from the freighter together.

  They followed the XER Authority who, in his purple dress robes looked out of place among the casually dressed workers of the Passenger Arrivals. That, apparently, did not bother him in the least, and the stocky young woman behind the counter obviously knew him, and passed him through with scant ceremony.

  It seemed to be a quiet time at the Customs, and the woman took more interest in the Musician and the Agent. When Milo asked about possible opportunities for a travelling troubadour, she named two bars which hired casual entertainers, and explained how anyone who wanted to could busk on the City Centre Square which was a short walk from the Port.

  “I might have to try the Square this afternoon—it is afternoon, here, isn't it—since I'm pretty well down to my last coins,” Milo said. “It was lucky for me that Captain Mallory let me have passage in return for my music and songs. Otherwise, I don't know how I'd have been able to get off Space Station XER.”

  “The Captain and the crew were probably pleased to have you,” the woman said. “Those freighter runs can be pretty dull, I understand, and they rarely have many passengers, especially on this trip to and from XER.”

  She smirked at the retreating XER Authority's back as she spoke.

  Her eyes danced as she took Coryn's ident-disc, and slipped it into the scanner.

  “Looks like you're a galactic traveller,” she said, as she studied her screen. “Planning to stay long in Paxic Prime City?”

  It was a routine question. So why did Coryn suddenly feel uneasy? He must be getting paranoid, he thought, and swallowed his discomfort.

  “Only until the freighter Yolanda's Yacht leaves for Atlantis,” he replied. “About four hours, Standard, from now, I believe.”

  “You're not booked, yet, I see. Want me to do it? I can do it easily enough,” the worker replied, solicitously, as she handed back his disc. “I have your info here, for now; it won't erase itself for about ten minutes. And Yolanda's Yacht fills up quickly.”

  “Sure, why not? Thanks.” There were no customers behind them, which gave the clerk the opportunity to be helpful. “That allows me to accompany Milo to his gig on the Square, and maybe treat him to lunch and a glass of wine.”

  He and Milo headed out. They completely failed to notice the tall, well-dressed man who detached himself from a group at the side of the room, and materialized in front of the female clerk, while she completed the agreed-on booking. She looked at him questioningly as he raised his brows at her.

  “Yes?” she asked, erasing her screen

  Whatever he wanted, the last customer's business was none of his.

  “That blond man you just served?” the tall fellow asked. “He's a diplomat of some kind, I believe. Did he say where he was going? I need to get in touch with him, sooner the better. Coryn Leigh is his name, if I'm not mistaken? Is he staying in the City very long? And do you know where he's heading from here?”

  The clerk gave him a cold stare.

  “Why don't you go and find him on the City Centre Square?” she said shortly. “If you really want to talk to him, and aren't just trolling for information because you want to sell him something, or for some other reason. I can't tell you anything about his travel plans.”

  The tall man did not bother to thank her, but turned towards the outer door, where two other men—they would have been accounted big bruisers in many other places, but not on Paxic IV—were now waiting for him. The three hurried out together, while the clerk shook her head.

  She harrumphed, turned off her console, and left for her break. There was no accounting for some people. The Coryn Leigh guy, though, had been nice—besides being easy on the eyes. What the hell was the tall jerk's connection to him, anyway?

  **

  Seated in an open air cafe bordering the City Centre Square, next to the busking circle which Milo had been able to appropriate for a couple of hours, Coryn marvelled at the beauty of the capital city of Paxic IV. Or, at least the particular portion of it that he had seen, so far. He had expected the Prime City of a mining world to be a dirty, sooty, sad place, filled with ugly buildings, and down-cast people. What he had found was utterly not that. Possibly, already a long time ago, the residents of Paxic Prime City had spent a good portion of the planets' mining earnings in beautifying their capital. Large trees lined the boulevards, along with flowering shrubs—roses among them—and beds of well-tended herbaceous blooms. The buildings along the streets, and around the Square were well-maintained, if not new. Coryn was fond of the look of well-maintained age, however, and liked what he was seeing.

  The solid, hefty citizens looked like they were proud of their home town, and content with their lives. It was summer, and people were spending time outdoors, enjoying the sunshine which to Coryn's inexpert eye did not seem all that different from the light he had known during his one brief visit to Old Earth, when he had gone there to research Sarah's family background. The gravity had exerted a heavy pull on him, however, when he had walked with Milo to the Square, and he had been glad to sit down at the small table he now was occupying.

  “Yeah, our gravity pulls on us a little more than the Standard,” the waiter who had served him his wine, had concurred when Coryn had asked about it. “It's not much really; if you stayed around for a while, you'd soon stop feeling the drag. The body adjusts. I believe that our globe isn't really any bigger than the Old Earth which we take as the Standard—we're slightly smaller, if anything. It's the ores that are our riches that make the difference, and, naturally, we don't wish them away.”

  After Milo had done his busking, while Coryn had nursed a couple of glasses of wine, and then had switched to water, the musician joined him for the meal that Coryn had promised him. It was past mid-afternoon by then; Coryn knew that he would have to walk back to the Space Port to catch Yolanda's Yacht after paying the bill.

  “Yolanda's Yacht,” Milo chuckled. “I suppose that the freighter's name must be a joke of some kind. Wonder who Yolanda was?”

  “Maybe someone aboard it will tell me,” Coryn said. “Once I've boarded it, that is.”

  They said their good-byes outside the cafe; Coryn suggested that Milo swing by Kordea on his travels.

  “Even if I'm not there, I'm sure you'll be able to wangle yourself an invite to stay at The Liaison Office Official Residence,” he said. “There's always extra room there, and the servants love having guests; it gives them something to do. They were always complaining that life at the Residence is way too easy for the house help.”

  He swung his bag on his b
ack, and headed in the direction of the Space Port. The distance was not long, although he noticed the weight of the world as soon as he was in motion again.

  Perhaps it was the extra gravity, or the couple of glasses of wine he had consumed, or merely that the husky, friendly natives made him feel safe among them, but he had allowed his usual wariness to dull by the time the attack came, and so was totally taken by surprise.

  The attackers had been hiding on the street side of some boulevard shrubs. The first thing they did, after surrounding him, was to shove a gag into his mouth, to keep him from screaming for help, and the second thing was to blindfold him with a hood. All the while strong arms held him down. He fought, of course he did, like a madman, and had the pleasure of hearing at least one attacker pseudo-curse him.

  “Gerdy, the drug—we gotta put him out!” he heard someone snarl.

  He stopped struggling with his left arm, and slid the hand into the pocket which held an emergency beacon. He pressed it, knowing that it might not do him any good on Paxic IV; he had not researched the policing methods of the world. He heard another string of pseudo-curses before he blacked out—the sudden relaxation of one of his arms had unbalanced an attacker who had toppled in the heavier than normal gravity.

  “Get the frigging flyer!” one of the men snapped to another, as their quarry fell unconscious. “And empty out his pockets in case he has an emergency thingy.

  “We gotta get out of here, fast!”

  There were six of them, breathing hard and scurrying about; one running off to an adjoining alley where they had stashed a flyer. They had been lucky with the site: big blocks of buildings, a sidewalk, and a shrubby boulevard screening it from the street. It was a quiet time of the day, shortly before the late afternoon crowds would be descending upon the square—assuming that such crowds existed on this ridiculous world. The leader of the pack had taken a chance; a more imaginative man than most of his fellows, he had realized that he and his group had to act boldly if they wanted to succeed in grabbing the “gol-darned Agent” who seemed to be able to evade The Organization operatives like nobody's business. But they had him now! All they had to do was get off this ridiculous mining world without being stopped!

  They had a fast little Scout Ship stashed away outside the City! They had been able to sneak it on to the planet, in spite of the satellite surveillance that the local government had apparently invested in, and therefore they ought to be able to get away, too. Even if the couple of lumbering guardian ships gave chase, once the little ship was in the upper atmosphere they could not hope to detain it, thanks to its speed and manoeuvrability!

  **

  “There's an off-world tourist in trouble of some kind on a street leading towards the Space Port from the Square,” reported the young man monitoring the screens at Paxic Prime City Law Enforcement Centre.

  “What the Hell?” snapped his supervisor, coming over to take a look. “Are the thieves and muggers getting bold enough that they're attacking a tourist in the middle of the city in the middle of the afternoon, or is this some stupid drunken fight between off-worlders and some idiot local kids who think that they're tough if they can beat up some guy half their size?”

  Janis hated that sort of a thing. It ruined the reputation of the Prime City, and she well knew that the City Officials were keen on keeping the town's peaceable profile intact. People had worked long and hard to gain it—much of the Galaxy still thought of Paxic IV as an awful, ugly mining planet full of tough characters who were quick to pick fights, and join brawls. Paxic Prime City had been nothing like that for decades, although the planet still had its rough spots where the least attractive of the strip-mined pits were. Paxic Prime City was where the Space Port was, and where the manufacturing sector which made use of the metals was located; it was a civilized place, delighted to invite outsiders in to take a look at it's amenities, and to enjoy some good times.

  “It looks like only one person,” Leon said. “Completely still now, though he—or she—was in motion when the caller first flared. That doesn't strike me as good.”

  “Shit,” said Janis. “I hope we're not dealing with a dead body. That's all we need, is some local thug killing a visitor. Worse, if the visitor is a woman.

  “See if you can't isolate personal specs from the feed, Leon. I'll call a flit to rush there—we'll have flyers ready to back it up, if that's necessary.”

  Leon went to work, feeling uneasy. The person, who now seemed to be entirely motionless had to be someone important since most people did not carry emergency locators, or if they did, they were local stuff, sold at the Port to Nervous Nellies.

  Janis pulled out the schedules for departing Space Ships on to her screen. The traveller seemed to have been headed for the Port, having left the City Centre Square, a very common visitor destination. Perhaps someone who had been between ships—someone who was important enough to carry his own emergency locator with him.

  The next ship scheduled to leave was the freighter Yolanda's Yacht, taking machine parts to Atlantis. The passenger roster was full, which was to be expected. Paxic IV had a fair bit of commerce with Atlantis; enough that a passenger liner shuttled between the two worlds, too. However, there was only the one, and the round trip took more than a week, so the freighters supplemented its service.

  Janis skimmed over the passenger list. None of the names meant much to her, and the ones that did were all local names—businessmen going to the central part of the inhabited Galaxy. She glanced at Leon; how long was it going to take him to get information? She knew, though, that she had to be patient. Leon was very competent, but there were plenty of different brands of emergency locators; no-one had thought to standardize the models across the Confederation.

  Leon had just turned his eyes in her direction, looking triumphant, when Janis' communicator announced a call. At the same time the emergency signal shifted violently, as if someone had picked up a loose locator.

  Janis was on it immediately.

  “What's up?” she asked.

  “Kerry (whatever—meaningless to non-natives), here. We're too late. Looks like a kidnapping; Sandy stepped over to talk to two kids who claim that they saw the incident. All I've got here are the contents of the kidnappee's pockets—the bad guys must have realized that he'd be carrying a locator.”

  Janis swore.

  “Kidnapping! Was this a rich guy, I wonder, someone who would bring a nice ransom? I loathe stuff like this!”

  “No idea,” said Kerry. “Not made of money by the looks of what's left behind, though this locator is nice. Can I turn it off?”

  Janis looked at Leon who nodded.

  “Go ahead. Leon got the person's data from the feed, and he's dying to spill. So collect the stuff, and the info from the kids, and come back. Meanwhile Leon and I will figure out our next step.”

  She turned to her underling.

  “So who is it who was kidnapped?” she asked. “Some foreign industrialist who some thugs want to turn into a pile of coins? Damn, can't we keep that kind of a criminal from ruining our reputation? I thought we had done with the fools!”

  Leon shook his head, a quizzical smile on his young face.

  “This is something else; makes no sense to me,” he said. “The guy's name is Coryn Leigh; he's an Agent of something that's simply called The Agency, and a diplomat, besides. The Kordean-Confederation Liaison Officer.”

  He read the last bit from his screen.

  “What?”

  Janis stared at him, wide-eyed.

  “Did you say The Agency?”

  At Leon's nod she turned to her screen again. Sure enough, there was a Coryn Leigh booked on Yolanda's Yacht. And a moment's further search found the freighter which had dropped Agent Leigh off, only hours ago, coming, from all places, the Space Station XER.

  “This is even worse than I could have imagined, Leon,” she said, pale-faced. “Have you never heard of The Agency?”

  Leon shook his head.

  “
A spy organization of some kind?” was his guess.

  “More than that,” said his superior. “You must have heard of The Organization?”

  “Sure. The nuts that wanted to turn the inhabited Galaxy into an Empire where rich and the powerful get to run everything, and the rest of the people do exactly what they're told to. I remember that from school—history classes.”

  “Yeah, well, more or less like that.” Janis had turned to scroll the Terran Public Records to see what she could find out about this Agent, Coryn Leigh. “They've been getting uppity again, someone mentioned. Found some crazy source of power which they expect to be able to use to squash us all under a giant boot, like bugs.”

  **

  When the two Officers returned with the flit they brought the boy and the girl who had witnessed the kidnapping with them.

  “We thought that you ought to hear their story yourself,” said Sandy, the female half of the officer duo.

  She nodded to the kids, a couple of sturdy specimens of Paxic IV humanity, whom Janis judged to be of early elementary school age.

  “Con and Jen, tell the boss lady what you two saw.”

  “We were playing a make-believe game in this old doorway of one of the big buildings on Portward Street,” began the boy.

  “The door doesn't open anymore,” the girl explained. “And bushes have grown in front of it, since nobody ever uses it. But there's some space behind the bushes, and we like to hide there, and pretend that we're being chased by bad guys.”

  “So nobody knew that you were there,” commented Janis.

  “That's so,” agreed the boy, Con. “We were being very quiet, when suddenly all these men showed up—a whole bunch of them, and they looked like off-worlders. You know, smaller, skinnier than our grownups, though they were still pretty big guys.”