by Zach Hughes
"All right," she said.
"I'll find a place to stay. I'll need your addressand number."
She wrote on a note pad, tore off the sheet,handed it to him. Zede Control plugged intoSkimmer's
computer, and the old man gave a warning."Here we go down," Pat said. "When can I seeyou?"
"Call me tomorrow." It was morning, Zede City time.
"Why not tonight?"
"I'll have to report in," she said. "Bring thebrass up to date on my tour of Taratwo."
"Tomorrow morning, first thing," he said.
"You'll have business, too, getting your money."
"Yep. Look,Skimmer needs an overhaul. I've beenthinking of combining the two cabins. Make onebig,
luxurious cabin. Good place for a honeymoon."
She smiled. "I think it would be."
"Any place in the known galaxy you've alwayswanted to go?"
"Selbelle III, the planet of artists."
"Selbelle III it is," he said. "Do you think a weekwill be too long to wait to get married?"
She laughed. "You can't getSkimmer overhauledin a week."
They had talked. She didn't want to give up hercareer. He had no objections. He thought it mightbe fun to dabble in filmmaking. The proceeds ofthe sale of the diamond, which he'd tagged in hismind with the name Murphy's Stone, would makethem very, very wealthy. They could produce theirown films, on any civilized planet, starring CorinneHowe, or Corinne Tower if she thought itbest to keep her own professional name.
"TakeSkimmer back to Xanthos. Get her alldolled up and clear up the old man's memorychambers. I have some loose ends to take care ofhere. Call me whenSkimmer's ready."
"I'll call every night."
"At interstellar blink rates?"
"Well."
She kissed him, hard, as the ship settled downonto the assigned pad at Zede City Space Port. "Pat,I'll be waiting," she whispered. "One thing . . ."
"When you say one thing I get nervous."
"Don't call me while you're here. Not just yet.I'm going to have to break my contract withZedefilms. I don't need any complications. I'll bethinking of you. I'll be ready to go with you whenSkimmer'sready."
He stood in the airlock and watched her walkaway, carrying her small bag. She walked withbrisk, purposeful, and yet very graceful strides,and there were two "businessmen" in tailored suits waiting for her at the gate. A third "businessman"walked to theSkimmer and asked permission tocome aboard. He gave Pat the interbank notice thatthe balance of Pat's commission had been transferred to his account.
"I understand you had some trouble with theTaratwo navy," the businessman said.
"Glad you mentioned that," Pat said. "I wastold that there'd be no rough stuff, that Corinnewas making a legal exit from the planet."
"The dictator fell in love with her," the mansaid. He shrugged. "Power-mad. We owe you a debt, Captain Howe, for getting our star safelyhome. If you'll take a closer look at that transfer you'll see."
A healthy bonus had been added. Hell, it was allover now, the hassle out there on that earthquaketortured planet. And in a month or six weeks, he'dbe coming back to Zede II to pick up a bride.
He spent the night in a spacers' hotel, luxuriating in a full-sized shower, good Zedeian food anddrink, and a huge circular bed in which he feltalmost lost but decidedly comfortable. For onebrief moment he was tempted to find company.All he had to do was dial the desk. But in a monthor six weeks he'd have all the company he needed—Corinne.
He kept his promise. He didn't call. He liftedship just after dawn and was soon back on Xanthos, traveling quickly down well-populated blink routes.Skimmerwas moved to a pad in the repair yards.Pat offloaded the gems, being especially carefulwith Murphy's leather bag. He locked the diamond,still in the leather bag, in his office safe, made anexcursion to the gem markets, and came back withhis bank account well fortified, for the price ofemeralds was up. It was time to show Murphy's Stone to a few selected people, but before he made the first call he opened the safe and took out Murphy's bag. His mind was telling him that the diamond couldn't be as large as he remembered it.
He put the bag on his desk, opened it, pulledaway the soiled velvet wrap, and froze in place.Where there should have been a huge, gleaminguncut diamond there was foil wrapping. He beganto jerk and tear at the foil and uncovered a mass ofsmall metal tools and parts obviously taken fromSkimmersstores. The metal, just over three pounds' worth, was encased in storage gel molded to matchthe shape of Murphy's Stone.
He was on the communicator within seconds. Ittook a few minutes to get through to Zede II. Hegave the Zede City operator Corinne's number,wondering what time it was on Zede II.
"I'm sorry, sir, the number you have given me isnot an operating number."
"Check again," he said.
There was not and had never been such a number in Zede City. The address she'd given him wasthat of a ground-car salesroom in Zede City's business section. He was a bit more than irate, for his anger was feeding on fear of loss, on a sense ofbetrayal, on a growing sadness to think that he'dlost her without even knowing why. He reachedthe number of the businessmen who had hiredhim to go out to Taratwo immediately and recognized the voice of the spokesman who had come toXanthos to hire him.
"Ah, Captain Howe. We've been expecting yourcall."
"I want to be put in touch with Corinne Tower,"he said.
"That is impossible now and it will be in anyconceivable future."
"Dammit," he began.
"Captain Howe," the smooth Zedeian voice said, "you were paid well to perform an errand. You didvery well. You came briefly into possession of anobject to which you have no claim. Nor do youhave any claim on Corinne Tower. Take your profit,Captain, and go about your business. If we everneed your services again, you can be sure we'll paywell, but, as the old saying goes, don't call us,we'll call you. And please, to save us all problems,do not try to contact Corinne Tower."
"I'll have to hear that from her," Pat said. "Youmay hold a film contract on her, but you don'tcontrol her private life."
"That, too, has been anticipated," the Zedeian said. "Listen."
"Pat," Corinne's voice said, full and throaty. "I'msorry it had to be this way. I told you I could nothave complications in my life. Don't try to call me or come to see me. As for a certain object, you'llrealize that you never had any right to it. That'sall. Thank you for an eventful journey home."
"Is that clear enough for you, Captain Howe?"the Zedeian asked.
"I was promised half the value of that object,"Pat said, not really caring about the money, or thediamond. He felt as if he'd been slugged in thebelly by a giant. He hurt. He wanted to throw thecommunicator out the window.
"Come now," the Zedeian laughed. "Grow up,Captain Howe." Pat hung up. "Ah, Corinne," he said. He'd go to Zede II and find her. She'd have totell him to his face. He was reaching for the communicator
to call the space port's passenger service when it sang out a summons to him. "Captain Audrey Patricia Howe?" "Don't call me Audrey Patricia," he growled,recognizing Jeanny Thompson's voice. "I'm using your title and full name because thisis an official call," Jeanny said. "You're in trouble,Pat." "What's up?" he asked. He wasn't concentrating. The reaction was setting in. Hell, he'd beencrazy to
think that the most beautiful woman inthe world could fall for him. "Pat, a very grim-faced officer from Xanthos Central is in my office at this moment. He has a copyof the route and travel tapes from yourSkimmerwith him." "Why?" Pat asked. It was routine for the computer to feed the travel information to Xanthos Central Control at the end of a trip. "Did the old man goof up?" Pat asked. "It's no computer goof, Pat," Jeanny said. "Youknow that it's against regulations to tamper withthe
automatic computer log which records theroutes traveled. Of course you do. So why the hell did you erase a portion of the tape, and very clumsily at that?" Gulp. "You're kidding." "Pat, you'd better get over here right away. Youknow this is a license-lifting offense. Wha
t the hellwere
you thinking about?"
"Why did Central come to you?" Pat asked, stalling for time as he tried to sort out his confused thoughts. He knew that he hadn't erased the routetape. "Because X&A is the enforcement agency, chum.It's up to us to see that dumbos who erase theroute
tape never take a ship into space again." "My God, Jeanny," he said. "You'd better get over here right away." "Yeah, sure. Look, I'd like to go by the ship,check this out myself." "You do that. But be in my office no later thanthree hours from now." "Yes, ma'am," Pat said. Maybe it was just the computer. The old manhad been ailing, cranky. He'd have a talk with that
gentleman, get to the bottom of it. But as he hurried out of his office a feeling of deep, agonizing depression hit him. What was the use? His worldhad been compressed into the twin green eyes of agirl.
So what if X&A grounded him? What did itmatter?
FOUR
A smart little flux-drive runabout with X&A marking sat directly in front of the pad on whichSkimmer squatted, her hull showing the dullness of a longtime in space, the thousand-parsec syndrome, itwas called. When Pat left his vehicle and walkedonto the pad a uniformed security guard blockedhis way to Skimmer's hatch.
"Sorry, friend," the security guard said. "Thiscrate has been impounded by X&A."
Jeanny Thompson's pert face appeared in theopen hatch. "It's all right, guard. Please let thegentleman
pass."
"You've already seized the ship?" Pat asked, as he followed Jeanny ontoSkimmer's bridge.
"No, final seizure will take court action. Meanwhile, we're just making sure that no one comesaboard
and destroys evidence."
"Jeanny, you know I didn't erase the tape," hesaid.
She turned to face him. "Someone did."
Corinne. He had been ill for days. Had she triedto use the computer? There were, of course, safeguards against erasing the trip log. It would takean intimate knowledge of computers or some accident against which the odds were astronomical totamper with that separate chamber in the old man'sstorage areas where the trip information was re corded.
"Well?" Jeanny demanded.
"Jeanny, let me talk to the old man for a fewminutes."
"I'm on your side," Jeanny said, "but I'm notabout to put myself in a sling, Pat. I'm going to belooking
over your shoulder. I see you trying totamper and I call the guard."
"OK, OK," he said testily, seating himself at theold man's console. He punched up the trip tapeand checked coordinates with his own handwrit ten log.
"Holy—" Jeanny said unbelievingly, as the fourrandom blinks outbound from Taratwo showed onthe star map which the computer was laying outon the screen. "What in the holy hell were youdoing, Pat? Four random blinks?"
"I had two hostile light cruisers with all thelatest armament on my tail," Pat said. "There's nolaw against random blinks."
"There should be a law against stupidity," shesaid.
The map built smoothly to record the coursechanges Pat had made on flux and on the blinkSkimmer had made to get back onto an establishedblink route.
"Coming up," Jeanny said.
You had to be watching closely. The map showedthe next blink down the range toward UP space,but there was, before that blink, just a tiny glitch,a sort of instantaneous glimmer on the screen. Patbacked up
the tape and ran it again.
"That's where the delete button was pushed," Jeanny said.
"Jeanny, if I'd wanted to erase a portion of thetape I wouldn't have left such obvious tracks."
"That's why I'm here. That's why I haven't turnedthe case over to the action section."
"That I appreciate," Pat said. "Look, honey, Ineed a little time. I know this old bird here. Iknow him like
a friend, inside out. I need to have along, long talk with him."
"I just can't allow you to be alone on board,"Jeanny said, "and I have work to do back at theoffice."
"Come on, Jeanny."
She shook her head. "Pat, dammit, if you get meinto trouble—"
"You know better than that."
"All right, look. I can hold up notifying actionsection until tomorrow afternoon at the latest. Idon't think you're going to find anything morethan our techs found, but I'm willing to give youthe chance. On one condition. I want to knowwhat the hell you were up to out there and who itis you suspect might have tampered with yourcomputer."
"Later," he said. He didn't think he could talkabout Corinne without displaying emotion. Jeannyknew him too well. He didn't want to have toadmit to her that he had been suckered in by abunch of city slickers from Zede II and made tolook like a complete fool by a redheaded film star.
"Now," Jeanny said.
"I had a passenger. That was my main gig goingto Taratwo, to pick up a woman—"
"Ah," Jeanny said.
"—and take her back to Zede II. What they didn'ttell me was that the Man, Brenden, didn't wantthe woman to leave his comfortable bed." Andeven as he said it a fist closed over his heart. But after what she'd done, what else could he believe?One lie almost guaranteed others. And she'd notonly stolen Murphy's Stone, she'd fooled aroundwith the computer while he was ill.
"Do you think she erased the tape?"
"That's not the only possibility," Pat said. "There'sthis. The ship went nowhere except the places which are recorded on tape. Once the computer locatedour position, I blinked onto the route and then wewent straight down the route to Zede II. The computer had been cranky. Maybe that glitch there, which indicates that the delete button was pushedafter going through half a dozen fail-safe's is acomputer glitch. If so, maybe I can reproduce it."
"What are the other possibilities?" Jeanny asked.
"I was off the ship for a night on Zede II," he said. "Zede City Port is a big one, with all themodern equipment. Someone might have used somepretty sophisticated gear to bypass my securitysystem, get on board, get into the computer."
"Why?"
"Why? I don't know. It's just a possibility."
"I still think the best bet is the passenger," Jeannysaid.
"I don't think she had enough computer trainingto be able to do it," Pat said. "She'd have had todo it by oral order, and the old man was, and is,cranky, fancying himself to be hard of hearing."
"So you think you'd have heard her talking, evenif you were asleep at the time?"
"Yeah," Pat said. Now why didn't he just tellJeanny that he'd come down with the mindheatfever? He'd been out for days. Corinne had hadplenty of time to carry on lengthy conversationswith the old man.
"OK, Audrey," she said, and he didn't even bother to tell her not to call him Audrey. "You have about twenty-four hours."
He had the servo make coffee, pulled himself upto the computer console, settled in. First he told the old man to run a comprehensive check of allfunctions during the time period beginning withthe first blink after the ship was lost in space.There was a mass of material, because the computer monitored all functions of all the ship's sys tems. He couldn't afford to skip over any of it, noteven the inventory of stores in the nutrition servos. An unskilled computer operator might justhave had to hunt and seek for a successful way toget the old man to erase, or at least push thedelete button on the trip log.
Nothing is ever wasted, he felt, after he'd spentfour hours checking the boring, seemingly endlesscatalog of ship's functions, because that minuteexamination told him just how wellSkimmer functioned. He was proud of her. As for the computer,those automatic functions were carried out assmoothly as if the machine had been fresh off theassembly line.
The fact was that the ship could not have goneanywhere not recorded on the tape because he'dbeen lost in delirium and fever for seven and a halfdays. When he tabulated the time he was shocked.As he remembered it—and he couldn't be sure of his memory, when he'd asked Corinne how longhe'd been
out he was still pretty weak—she'd toldhim that he'd been ill five days.
That was when he fir
st began to think that maybethe ship had been moved and that maybe the tapehad been erased. She'd said five days. The computer showed a seven-and-a-half-day period of nutrition-servo operation between the first blinkonto the route and the next leap down the route toward Zede II.
"All right, old man, let's check that," he said,typing orders rapidly. He was looking at the engine-room log now, beginning with the first blink afterbeing lost. Nothing to it. Smooth as silk, the record of charges and discharges in the generator appeared. But just for kicks he decided to comparetime—that missing seven and a half days—betweenthe nutrition-servo record and the engine-room record. He opposed the two sets of information.
It came out wrong.
It came out very, very wrong.
The measure of elapsed time on the engine-roomrecord between the first blink onto the route and the next was exactly zero. In short, the recordshowed that the two blinks had been made withno elapsed time between. On the engine-room tape someone had done a very skillful job of alteration, taking out seven and a half days of routine monitoringsby the computer.
Or were they seven and a half days of routine?
"Old man," he said, "you're not going to likethis, but it's necessary." He flipped to oral mode."Someone has been messing around in your innards," he said to the computer. "It would be nice if you could just tell me who."
"I'm sorry, you'll have to speak more distinctly,"the computer said.
"Now, look, buddy," Pat said, "I know you'retired. You've got ionized contamination in yourmemory chambers, and you have to work harderto get a job done in some areas, but this is vital. IfI don't find out what happened out there they'regoing to take the ship and you'll probably be carvedup for scrap."
A computer had no emotion. He had not askedfor a response and there was none. He was talkingto himself as much as to the old man.
"Do you have any record of someone other thanthe captain using your facilities?" he asked. It wasa stab in the dark. The computer was not programmed to make such a distinction.
"There are no such records," the old man said.
