“Entering lower range of outer defense perimeter,” said the tug. “Three hundred and forty-four miles altitude. Speed accelerating to fifty miles a second. No beams on us.”
“We may have made it,” said Heller. “But that doesn’t mean much. We have no place to go.”
The Countess Krak followed him back into the airlock. He was picking up the burdens he had put aboard. ‘Did you get them signed?”
Heller didn’t answer. He made his way to the small medical room. He dropped the bag in the corner and laid the blanket-wrapped body on the table.
The Countess Krak watched noncomprehending. “I said, ‘Did you get them signed?’”
Heller was strapping the body down securely and covering the wasted limbs. “No,” he said.
“Oh,” moaned the Countess Krak.
“Other duties got in the way,” said Heller. He was feeling the aged wrist for a pulse.
“What other possible duties could be more important?” she said.
Heller pointed at the man on the table. “Him. This is His Majesty, Cling the Lofty.”
“WHAT?” she peered more closely. “Oh, good heavens! It IS!” Then she said, “He can still sign them!”
Heller shook his head. “I don’t know,” he said. “I didn’t bring him out for that. Hisst had him a prisoner and he ordered me to rescue him.” He shook his head again. “But I don’t think that that was any use. He looks like he is dying.”
“Oh, NO!” cried the Countess Krak.
“I’m afraid so,” said Heller. “That’s an awfully shallow pulse.”
“Oh, nothing could be worse!” cried the Countess.
“Yes, it could,” said Jet. “There’s no record of his order. And when they wake up back there and find the mountain didn’t blow up and it was just false gamma, they’ll think I kidnapped him.”
“Why? They couldn’t know it was you.”
“Yes, they could and will,” said Heller. “I had a misunderstanding with a patrol in the Emperor’s rooms. I made a very bad mistake, even if nobody alive recognized me. In the scuffle, I dropped my baton. It has my name on it.”
“Oh, Jettero.”
“Yes. I’m an idiot. We’ve committed one of the highest crimes there is against the state. And we have no place to go.”
PART SIXTY-NINE
Chapter 1
Heller called to the tug, “Where are we now?”
“Six hundred miles altitude, accelerating. We had one challenge and then no further interest. Please close your radiation port covers. We’re about to enter the lower edge of the magnetosphere.”
Heller went out and banged the various covers shut. “Any other dangers?” he called.
“We are going to come too close to the moon Niko if we stay on this course.”
“Well, avoid it,” said Heller.
“You better make up our mind where we are going,” said the tug. “At this acceleration, space only knows where we’ll wind up.”
Heller went back into the medical room. The Countess had gotten more blankets. She was covering the Emperor up more thoroughly. “I think he’s just asleep but he seems awfully restless.”
Jet felt the pulse again. “His heart seems to be too faint and too irregular. He needs more help than I can give him.”
He went back to the flight deck. He turned on a radio and clicked over to the police band.
Instantly, it blared out, “. . . shoot on sight. All patrols and stations, alert. A general warrant has been issued for Jettero Heller, Grade Ten, Fleet combat engineer for the attempted murder of Lombar Hisst, Chief of the Apparatus and Minister of State. The officer is armed and desperate. The warrant states to take no chances. Shoot on sight. All patrols and stations alert. A general warrant . . .”
The Countess Krak had heard it. “How could he have known it was you?”
Heller shook his head. “That doesn’t matter now. What does matter is that I have an awfully sick man here and I can’t get him any help. I wouldn’t dare compromise a unit of the Fleet in this.”
The Emperor was very restless, giving sudden spasmodic twitches. He flung his arm out from underneath the covers. Heller stared at it. He took hold of the wrist and turned the inside of the limb to the light.
The Countess Krak gasped. The whole inside of the arm was patterned with scars and punctures.
Heller reached for the other arm and looked at it, finding it in even worse condition.
Jet dropped the arm and grabbed a light. He pried open an eye. He examined it and stood back.
“Heroin!” he said.
“What?”
“I’ve seen this before. Mary Schmeck.”
“Who? A woman?”
“Never mind. The poor thing died. And all for the want of a nickel bag.”
The Countess Krak was puzzled. “What was all this?”
Jet ignored it. “Hisst made the Emperor into a heroin addict,” said Heller. “I don’t know if this is also something else. But he is sliding into withdrawal symptoms and at his age, I don’t think his heart will stand it.”
“Oh, the poor man! Whether he signs anything or not, don’t let him die, Jettero.”
He stood perplexed for a moment and then his face brightened. “Look,” he said, “hold that oxygen mask over his face. I’ll be right back.”
He had had a solution for this. He had brought samples of heroin and opium and amphetamines with him from Earth, but he had turned them over to Crup with other evidence for Bis. But now it occurred to him that Gris had had some drugs that day he came aboard at the original departure from Voltar. He went to that cabin and opened its vaults. His hopes sank. He found nothing.
Thinking maybe that Gris had hidden them elsewhere, he went to the next crew cabin which had been occupied by Captain Stabb. None of the Antimanco cabins had been cleared out. He opened the vault.
PACKAGES!
Amphetamines, morphine and heroin!
Stabb had been hooked!
Quickly he went to the remaining vaults of other members of the Antimanco crew.
They had also been hooked!
Packing bundles of the stuff, he went back to the medical room. “I have it!” he said to Krak. “Now, how in heavens’ name do you fix this stuff?”
“You’re not going to shoot him with that poison?” said the Countess, aghast.
“It’s an awfully strange way to serve the Emperor, but for the moment it’s the only way to stop a slide into a very nasty state indeed. If I DON’T do it, he’ll wake up and have hot and cold flashes, severe leg pains and be liable to overstrain his heart. And after that he’d run a fever and have vomiting spells and probably die.”
He was trying to remember what he had read in the office of the FBI. The one thing that stuck in his memory was that Mary Schmeck would not have died had she had her fix.
He found a metal cup. He put it in a sterilizer. Then he put some water in it and boiled it over a burner. He was not at all sure he was doing this right and it was an awful chance. He did not even know the amount of heroin to use. He opened up a paper pack, verified that that was what it was. He sprinkled some into the hot water and watched the white crystals dissolve.
“Do we know what we’re doing?” said the Countess Krak, for his hesitation and uncertainty were far from usual.
“No,” said Heller. “We only know that if we don’t do it, we may have a dead man on our hands by tomorrow. Get that blood pressure tube and wrap it around his upper arm.”
Heller got a pressure injector out of a drawer and filled its recess with the fluid.
He examined the inside of the arm for veins. There were none that had not collapsed. He signaled the Countess to remove the tube she had tied on. He told her to refasten it around the middle thigh. No veins showed up.
Heller took a deep breath. He simply fired the pressure injector at the inside of the leg.
“All we can do is hope,” he said. “I don’t know what tolerance he has developed. I don’t know if
subcutaneous injection like this will work. I don’t know if I haven’t given him an overdose. Watch him and keep that oxygen going.”
“What a risk!” said the Countess Krak.
“Yes,” said Jet, “but the biggest risk is to do nothing at all.”
They hovered breathlessly.
The Emperor’s restlessness gradually ceased. Was he going into a coma?
Heller felt his pulse. It was very hard to tell but it seemed to be strengthening. The breathing became less tortured and more normal.
Would it turn out to be an overdose?
The man’s eyes opened. He pushed the oxygen mask away. The gaunt and sunken face was not easy to read. It was like looking at a death’s head. He looked at them. He gave a long, shuddering sigh and closed his eyes.
Heller felt his pulse and listened to his breathing. “He’s just asleep. I wish we could get some food into him.”
“If he wakes up, I’ll try,” said the Countess Krak. “He needs a lot more help than this.”
“Indeed, he does,” said Heller, “but if Lombar Hisst has gone this far, he’ll stop at nothing to get him back. And His Majesty was sure that that was certain death. Also, I don’t think there’s a single doctor in the Confederacy who knows how to treat drug addiction. It’s all new ground to them. We can’t land on any planet in the Confederacy. . . .”
Suddenly he and the Countess Krak looked at each other. They both said it at the same time. “PRAHD!”
PART SIXTY-NINE
Chapter 2
They fled for Earth, more than twenty-two light-years away from Voltar.
Tug One, redubbed the Prince Caucalsia, unfettered with a tow and using its Will-be Was main drives, intended for transgalactic travel but being used within one, could put them across the space to Blito-P3 in three days. It was an advantage, Heller knew, that would give them five weeks and three days over any other craft that could make the run. If pursuit occurred—and he had no doubt that Lombar would think of Earth as a possible refuge they might use—it would take any other ship six weeks. He was buying time.
Heller and the Countess Krak stood watch-and-watch over the Emperor. The situation was not good. Cling the Lofty was bordering close to coma and communication with him was difficult.
The danger was not only to Cling’s life: if he did not give evidence that he was there by his own orders, then Heller could be charged with kidnapping him. But all due respect to Heller, he was not thinking of that: his concern was concentrated on trying to save the monarch’s life.
There was something else that was amiss: both Heller and Krak were sure of that. The man could barely swallow and trying to get food and fluid down him was almost impossible. His veins were so collapsed that intravenous feeding was beyond their skill. The Countess Krak sponged the aged body with water and kept the cracked lips wet. She wished she knew of some way to get nutrition into him.
Every three to six hours, when he would begin to thresh about, they would give him another pressure shot of heroin: it seemed that that was all that kept his heart going.
Haggard and worried, they came at last to the point above Afyon, Turkey, and that evening in the dark they slid downward through the mountaintop illusion and into the Earth base.
Faht Bey was there on the hangar floor, worried to see them. They had left only seven days earlier and he had supposed that all would go smoothly on Voltar. But Heller had told him that if there was trouble, Heller would bail him out. This must mean trouble.
Heller opened the airlock and shouted down, “Get me Prahd and get an ambulance and get it fast!”
Faht Bey rushed off and grabbed a phone and called. When he came back they had a ladder to the side of the tug. Heller was coming down it carrying a burden wrapped in a blanket.
“Who is this?” said Faht Bey as Heller reached the ground. “Are we in trouble?”
“Later, later,” said Heller. He carried the burden up the tunnel, Faht Bey running beside him.
“Where’s Gris?” said Faht Bey.
“Dead, so far as I know.”
“Bless heavens!” cried Faht Bey. “I hope it was a nasty death.”
“I think so,” said Heller. “Where’s that ambulance?”
“Coming, coming,” said Faht Bey.
When they got to the workmen’s barracks, the ambulance was already there. So was Prahd. They put Heller’s burden on a stretcher and soon were screaming up the road to the hospital.
“What’s wrong with him?” said Prahd, pulling back the blanket.
“If I knew, I wouldn’t be here,” said Heller. “It’s heroin addiction bordering on coma but he doesn’t seem to recover. I don’t think his heart will stand up to withdrawal. But there’s something else.”
Prahd looked at the sunken face and withered arms. “Dehydration. Extreme.”
“He can’t seem to swallow. His veins are all collapsed. Listen: you’ve got to put him in a totally secure room and let nobody near him.”
“Why?”
“Just do it,” said Heller.
“I’ll put him in the basement out of public view. The guards are all deaf-mutes there. Where’s Gris?”
“He’s evidently dead.”
“Praise Allah, from whom all blessings avalanche,” cried Prahd. “That’s wonderful news. We’re all right, then.”
“Not quite. If this man dies, I’m afraid we’re all in trouble.”
“Who is he?”
“Never mind,” said Heller.
They unloaded at the basement entrance. Nurse Bildirjin came down and with hand signs they got a tub rigged and put the sick man in it.
Prahd started working with meters and then began inserting tubes. The work was fast and furious and Heller stood by.
At length Prahd had done all he immediately could do. He came over to the worried Heller. “He’s a crashed speed freak. Amphetamines.”
“Then I was giving him the wrong drug!” said Heller.
“No, no,” said Prahd. “He was also a heroin addict. By keeping that going you kept him out of its withdrawal, and that would have killed him, as his heart is shot. He was doing an upper-downer routine: feel low, use speed; feel too high, use heroin. You got him here alive.”
“Not very,” said Heller.
“He must have been nearly dead when you found him,” said Prahd. “He was already pretty old and the amphetamine caused premature aging. That stuff can cause years of aging in just a few months. If he had his teeth when he started it, they’re mostly gone now, too. And every gland in his body has been practically atrophied. Who is he?”
Heller didn’t answer. He didn’t want to load Prahd with the shock of it.
But Prahd read something from that. He went back and looked at his blood test and other readings. He fixed his bright green eyes on Heller. “This man is not just a commoner. He’s a member of the nobility, the product of very selective breeding for thousands, tens of thousands of years.”
“Can you bring him around?”
“I don’t know. At the very least his mind will be clouded; his vocabulary will have dropped to a few hundred words. It takes years to recover from amphetamines and he’s already so old it’s doubtful if he can make it.”
“Can you keep him going?”
“I don’t know,” said Prahd.
“Basically,” said Heller, “the reason he is here is humanitarian. He couldn’t be left to be killed. But it’s also important that he be able to talk and write.”
Prahd’s eyes narrowed. He went back and looked at the unconscious old man now suspended in fluid. Something seemed to tug at his memory. Suddenly he lifted the cover of the tub and turned the top of the old man’s shoulder to him. He took a brush, dipped it in a liquid and drew it across the skin.
The symbol of a comet appeared.
Prahd stepped back, eyes wide with shock. “The mark they put on Royal babies!” He stared at Heller. “This is Cling the Lofty, Emperor of Voltar!”
“Yes,” said Heller,
“and unless you can bring him around so that he can provide evidence it was at his orders he was removed from Palace City, we’ll all be executed for hiding a kidnapped Emperor.”
Prahd collapsed upon a bench. He mopped his forehead with his gown tail. “What a way to become the King’s Own Physician!”
Mission Earth Volume 8: Disaster Page 26
