Planet in Peril

by John Christopher

  Charles looked at him in complete astonishment. He saw what Dinkuhl might be driving at, but it was a conception so fantastic as to be hardly within the bounds of sane speculation.

  He said reasonably: “You forget something, Hiram. Ledbetter was my Manager at Detroit.”

  Dinkuhl nodded. “For your work in the lab here—you said you were going to ask Ledbetter for your old assistant from Saginaw. Did you ever do that?” Charles nodded. “And—”

  “He wasn't available. Reasonable enough. Ledbetter told me they have a couple of good youngsters they're bringing over from Europe.”

  “So, apart from Ledbetter, there aren't any UC people here you can recognize?”

  “It isn't likely there would be. They're mostly Contact Section, after all.”

  Dinkuhl wrinkled the top of his head. “Let that go. Where would you say we were before Ledbetter and the boys launched their Men of the Mounties rescue stunt?” Whatever harebrained notion Dinkuhl had got hold of, the sensible way of treating it, Charles recognized, was to meet his points logically and sensibly. He said:

  “In one of Interplanetary's spaceships—freighter, type seven, by your reckoning—in the Toledo pits.”

  Dinkuhl grinned. “Quite some Contact Section, as Ledbetter said. Breaking and entering the Toledo pits at a time when Interplanetary had their most treasured possession stowed away on a freighter there. But that wasn't what roused my suspicions. I told you when I first met you in that phoney messroom that we should keep quiet about everything that mattered. One of the things that mattered was that that freighter was wrong in small details. Minor things. They had pop-out tables, but they'd missed the pop-up ash-trays; I had to stub my cigarette on the TV control panel. And the corridors hadn't taken the battering all round that they get from use in free fall—the track was all worn on the floor. Something else, too. I’ll come to that.

  “Anyway, the thing to do was to string them along, whoever they might be, and wait for something else to happen. In due course, it did. United Chemicals to the rescue. Virtue triumphant.”

  Charles said: “It strikes me as crazy. I hope you don't mind my saying that. Why should UC—or whoever you think it is masquerading as UC—do something as complicated as that? And what about the offer Interplanetary made me? I might have accepted it—what then?”

  “That puzzled me a little,” Dinkuhl admitted. “I wondered how they would fake the take-off, and the space flight, and the lunar conditions. Not impossible, but very very tricky. But there was no real need for them to do so. Had you taken the offer, there was nothing to stop them changing their minds and keeping you on an Earth base; it's easy enough to think of adequate reasons. You were never meant to take the offer, of course: it was put simply to soften you up psychologically, to ensure you were properly grateful for being rescued. Even if you had taken the offer, the rescue might still have taken place, for much the same reason.

  “As for the complications, the people who pulled this job are not inartistic. They have you summed up as loyal to your managerial, and unlikely to be genuinely at ease under terms of constraint to any other. At the same time, you had shown signs of initiative and some rebelliousness, so if they put on the UC cloak at the beginning and clapped you in custody for your own good, you might very well be awkward about it. Their solution was good: have you captured by—as you thought-interplanetary, and then rescued by—as it seemed— United Chemicals. Up goes loyalty and gratitude; down goes rebelliousness.”

  Thinking he saw a flaw, Charles said:

  “The fact that the spaceship was a fake may show that it wasn’t Interplanetary who had us at first, but it doesn’t mean it wasn’t UC—”

  He broke off. Dinkuhl said: “It does, though, doesn’t it? When I woke up and saw Ledbetter, I wondered. When I heard him talk about rescuing us from Interplanetary, I knew the play was still going on. If it had been a genuine business, he would have mentioned the name of the real villains.”

  “But what if the whole scheme you’ve outlined was planned by UC—for the reasons you gave, which would apply almost as well in that case as in the other?” ^ours,” Dinkuhl said, “was a simple-minded managerial, as managerials go. But in any case, I happen to know we are not now being run by UC. Come back to that. You didn’t feel quite easy in your own mind, when you first woke up in The Cottage, did you?”

  Charles said: “It didn’t amount to much. As I recall, it was you that put me at ease again.”

  “I’m rather pleased with the way I’ve handled this.” Dinkuhl smiled. “I have my vanity, difficult as it may be to observe it. But luck has run my way, too. The fact that I made such a business of warning you, on the spaceship, that the walls had eyes and ears, told in my favor when I carefully didn’t warn you after Ledbetter and the boys picked us up. I played everything for the audience when I was talking to you. The safest man is the man who thinks he can see through things—so I let them see I thought I could. Like that spaceship being a seven freighter. This is the major league. No fooling.” Charles said slowly: “It’s hard to believe that.”

  "If it were easy to believe it, they would have slipped up. And they don’t slip up on atmospheres—they’ve had plenty of training in them.”

  There was a moment’s silence. Then Charles said:

  "If they’re not UC, who are they?”

  Dinkuhl flicked the stub of Ids cigarette up into the gloomy branches of the firs.

  "Who,” he asked, "would be likely to have a mock-up of a spaceship? That was the big question. If not Interplanetary—who?”

  “Go on. It doesn’t mean anything to me.”

  "It did to me. Something else confirmed it—a certain land of track, marking the surface both in the corridors and the messroom. I knew what caused that track. TV camera cables. It was a mock-up Telecom had built for shooting spaceship interiors for the space opera serials. I made my final check after we landed here. Remember I told Ledbetter I wanted to send a message through to my assistant on KF—technical advice? Ledbetter said yes without hesitating. He would have hesitated all right if he had been UC, because UC don’t have anyone who knows enough about TV operational jargon to be sure I wasn’t passing a message outside. Telecom do.”

  “Telecom,” Charles said. "Well, I’m damned.”

  Dinkuhl grinned. “We both are. You’ll soon see. It would take Telecom to have the kind of spy equipment this house has, too, incidentally.”

  Anger was beginning to replace confusion in Charles’ mind. He said tightly to Dinkuhl:

  “What are we going to do?”

  Dinkuhl looked at him. “You’re the H-bomb. The way I see it, you can do one of three things. You can go back and get on with the job for your new employers.

  I see it, you can do one of three things. You can go back and refuse to get on with the job. I don’t advise that. Ledbetter has plenty on the ball, and he’s playing for big stakes, remember.”

  The confusion returned. Charles said:

  “Ledbetter toes UC. How does he come to be working for Telecom. I just don’t get it.”

  “Sancta simplicitas,” Dinkuhl commented. “You wouldn’t get it. I know a little about Ledbetter. He had a tough start—a background that would have been damn bad even in previous centuries. Both parents drunkards and fighting. He was a bright lad. He fought his way up to the top. But the top goes right up to the sky for that kind of climber. And managerial loyalty is only skin-deep, if that. No, George isn’t the kind of playmate I recommend for you.”

  “The third thing. What was that?”

  Dinkuhl eyed him steadily. “Escape.”

  Charles looked around. Through the trees the barrier fence was visible, rising to perhaps ten feet.

  He said: “Easy. Which way do we do it? I throw you over first, and then you throw me over?”

  Dinkuhl smiled. He consulted his wrist-watch again. “The time approacheth. Leave it to your Uncle Hiram.” “I’d prefer to have some idea of what you propose.” Dinkuhl took his arm. �
�We’re going to borrow a gyro. There isn’t time to explain everything right now. Down to the sentry-box. We’ve got a friend in the camp, though he doesn’t know it yet.” Dinkuhl had begun to walk down the wooded slope toward the gate, and Charles, automatically responding to the pressure on his arm, walked with him. “I told you—I never forget a face.” Charles could see the gate now, and the upright figure of the guard inside his plaspex bubble. Dinkuhl went on talking, in a slow drawl that might be concealing nervousness.

  “I’ve had enough time thinking about this. It should go O.K. I thought maybe it would be rushing things to try it this morning, but my principle is that it’s always safer to act at once, unless you can act sooner. If not now, we would have had to leave it till tomorrow afternoon. That’s when our friend is on guard again.”

  They were approaching the sentry-box. Charles could see the tall immobile figure through the plaspex; he looked a very ordinary character, in UC uniform, with the UC badges. His eyes were fixed coldly on them as they approached.

  “That was another thing,” Dinkuhl said. “When I saw him before, he was wearing a Telecom badge. Though since his activities on that occasion would properly be classed as subversive, that wasn’t conclusive in any way.”

  Dinkuhl tapped on the plaspex. The guard unseamed his sentry-box and came out toward them; he had his Klaberg at the ready and was wearing the nose filter against astarate—presumably the Klaberg was fitted with an astarate release.

  He said, his voice midway between deference and challenge:

  “Anything I can do for you?”

  Dinkuhl looked at him for a moment. When he spoke it was with the full resonance of voice that he could muster up when he wanted to. He said:

  “Brother, are you damned?”

  The guard only looked surprised for a moment. When he spoke it was in a liturgical tone of voice matching Dinkuhl’s own:

  “Damned to Hell. Brethren, are ye damned?”

  “Damned to Hell.” Dinkuhl jerked his head toward Charles. “In this brother’s mind, the Lord has planted power and a sword. He must be free to serve the Lord whose Finger lights the sky to destruction.”

  The guard inclined his head. ‘To the Damned all gates are open.”

  Dinkuhl looked at the gate—a little wistfully, Charles thought. It was a temptation simply to get out and trust to luck after that. Dinkuhl said slowly:

  “We need a gyro, brother. Your relief will be along inside five minutes. I wouldn’t fit in your uniform, but this brother will. I want you to let him take it. We will tie you up. The Will of the Lord, brother.”

  The guard nodded. Without hesitation he stripped his equipment and his outer garments from him. In the sentry-box there was the usual plastic exudator. Dinkuhl adjusted the nozzle to quarter-inch orifice, and at a touch the plastic rope ribboned out. Carefully and deftly he tied it round the unresisting guard. Charles watched him while he was himself putting the uniform and accoutrements on.

  Dinkuhl said: "You get the sticky job, brother Charles. The Lord didn’t see fit to provide me with the figure for it. Club him with the Klaberg if he’s wearing his nose filter. In fact, it will be safer to do that, anyway. There doesn’t seem to be a spare filter here, and you would have an even stickier job carrying me if I passed out. Hit him hard, for God’s sake. I’ll be crouched in the box and I’ll come a-running if you get into trouble, but it’s always better to make sure at the start, if you can.”

  Charles felt tense; it was not an altogether unpleasant feeling. The prospect of doing something violent soothed that part of his mind which had been most outraged by Dinkuhl’s explanation of the double trickery that had been practiced on him.

  Dinkuhl completed the tying up, and propped the guard in one comer of his box. He pointed toward the distant house. A gyro was lifting from the roof.

  "There’s your quarry. I’m getting inside. Don’t forget —hit him hard.”

  "Don’t worry,” Charles said.

  He stood just outside the box, Klaberg held loosely, waiting for the gyro. It arrowed down through the wintry air, rotors flapping idly, and perched on the road perhaps ten yards away from him. The left-hand door slid open, and a figure dressed as he was dressed jumped down. It was a relief to observe that he was only of middle height.

  He walked up to Charles. He said curiously:

  “You’re not Herriot.'’

  Charles made an attempt at disguising his voice. He had his hood close round his face and was not seriously worried about his features being recognized.

  He said: “Herriot went sick. Didn't they tell you?” “Where you from?”

  Charles ignored the question. He stooped down toward the base of the sentry-box, and poked at it with his Klaberg.

  “You know the condition this was in? Somebody should have reported it before now.”

  He straightened up himself as the new man bent down to see what he was talking about. Behind the ear, he thought to himself. He didn't aim well enough, and the butt of the Klaberg landed at the base of the man's neck. He rolled over and lay slack.

  Dinkuhl emerged from the sentry-box.

  “Charlie,” he remarked, “you're a man of action. I could not have done any better myself.”

  The man lay still. With rising nausea, Charles contemplated the possibility that he might have done the job too effectively.

  He said: “I hope I haven't finished him off.”

  Dinkuhl knelt down. He said: “Fetch me a hank of rope. No, he'll live to explain to George what a sucker he’s been. Should make it less tough for Brother in there. For suckers the only safety is in numbers.”

  When he had been adequately roped, the guard was pushed into the box with his companion. Dinkuhl led the way to the gyro. He clambered up through the open door and Charles followed him. Dinkuhl took the controls.

  “Time,” he observed, “is on anyone's side but ours. This is where we move.”

  The gyro climbed steeply, and headed north.

  VI

  The rolling countryside of Vermont was spread two thousand feet beneath them. They were heading north.

  Charles asked: “Montpelier?”

  “Thereabouts.”

  But Montpelier came into view below and their course held. Dinkuhl was apparently in one of his moods of concentration; it was abundantly clear that he had his plans and did not want to discuss them. Charles assumed that he had changed the immediate objective to, possibly, Quebec, perhaps because their escape had gone so well so far. Quebec would give more scope for losing traces.

  Montpelier was three or four miles behind them when the gyro started to come down. The country was bleak and empty here, and Charles' first thought was that the gyro might have developed a fault. But Dinkuhl was directing the descent. They landed in one of Agriculture's vast potato fields. At Dinkuhl's gesture, Charles jumped clear; his feet sank into the moist crumbling earth.

  Dinkuhl came out on to the gyro's running-board, but did not immediately drop from it. He was apparently adjusting the controls. The gyro began to rise again, and Dinkuhl fell, landing on hands and feet. The gyro's door was still open as it disappeared on a continuation of its northerly line of flight.

  Dinkuhl wiped his hands on the back of his trousers. He looked after the retreating gyro, and said happily:

  “They gave us too much time. I don’t mind confessing a certain relief.”

  “We were clear, anyway, weren’t we?”

  “That was Telecom we left. They have resources some other managerials don’t. Their gyros can all be tracked from their control points.” He laughed. “They can follow that now. Maybe they’ll bring it down before it reaches the Hudson. But they will. They’ll intercept from Montreal and Quebec/ He looked around expansively. “Were clear, Charlie boy. I never really thought we’d make it.”

  Charles looked around himself. It was a field of a hundred acres or bigger. Beyond the distant wire fences there seemed to be other similar fields. The sky was low and trailing strands
of dark cloud. It was the first time in his life he had been isolated in the country without a gyro or some similar form of transport, and the experience was a depressing one.

  “Clear,” he echoed. “Clear to do what?”

  “To walk back to Montpelier.” Dinkuhl grinned. “A healthy and invigorating exercise.”

  “And after that?”

  “Gyro-taxi to Detroit. Then we’ll see. Meanwhile, the invigorating walk.”

  Taking a southerly line, they trudged painfully across the ploughed field. They were nearing the first fence when Dinkuhl pointed to the sky. Two gyros were flying north. They stood and watched them until they were out of sight again. Then they climbed through the fence; another fence, perhaps a quarter of a mile away, gave onto a road. They headed for it with renewed energy.

  In Detroit, Dinkuhl got in touch with Awkright of Genetics Div. Over Dinkuhl’s shoulder, Charles saw the interior of the office to which he had been taken by Dinkuhl as the first step in his private commitment. Awkright’s broad freckled face came into focus as Dinkuhl adjusted the controls.

  Awkright said: “Hiram! So they let you loose?”

  “Call me Houdini,” Dinkuhl said. “Can you pick us up—Fourth and Eisenhower? We don’t want to stay on public view any longer than we have to.”

  “Be right around.” Awkright grinned. “Someone’s been looking for you. For Charlie, anyway.”

  Awkright appeared in a few minutes in Dinkuhl’s ramshackle auto; the smell of petrol went ahead of it as well as behind. Dinkuhl and Charles climbed in. Charles said: “A good way of traveling incognito, this.” Awkright laughed. “I borrowed this while you were away, Hiram. Hope you didn’t mind. You mean someone’s still after you? I thought you were with UC.” “That was Telecom we just got away from,” Dinkuhl remarked. “Where are you heading—not my place? They’re likely to be dropping in again with false beards and astarate phials.”

  “My place,” Awkright said. “I told you—Charlie already has a visitor.”