by Hank Davis
“Any time anything big enough to have that apparatus on board leaves the Depot now, we clear it by shortcode before the lock closes,” she’d said. “You don’t know what message to send. You can’t get it from me, and you can’t get it from Wergard. The next truck or shuttle that leaves won’t get cleared. And it will get stopped almost as soon as it’s outside.”
That was it—the basic lie! If they’d been willing to take the chance, they could have established in five minutes that it was a lie.
“You’re bluffing,” Volcheme had said, icily hating her. “The bluff won’t stop us from leaving when we’re ready to go. We won’t have to run any risks. We’ll simply go out with the shuttle to check your story before we load the thing on.”
“Then why don’t you do it? Why wait?” She’d laughed, a little high, a little feverish, with the drugs cooking in her—her own and the stuff Galester had given her in an attempt to counteract the quizproof effect. She’d told them it wasn’t going to work; and now, almost two hours later, they knew it wasn’t going to work.
They couldn’t make her feel physical pain, they couldn’t intimidate her, they couldn’t touch her mind. They’d tried all that in the first fifteen minutes when she came into the office, escorted by Decrain and Tornull, and told Volcheme bluntly what the situation was, what he had to do. They could, of course, as they suggested, kill her, maim her, disfigure her. Danestar shrugged it off. They could, but she didn’t have to mention the price tag it would saddle them with. Volcheme was all too aware of it.
The threats soon stopped. Volcheme either was in a trap, or he wasn’t. If the Kyth Agency had him boxed in here, he would have to accept Danestar’s offer, leave with his group and without the specimen. He could see her point—they had an airtight case against Dr. Hishkan and his accomplices now. The specimen, whatever its nature, was a very valuable one; if it had to be recaptured in a running fight with the shuttle, it might be damaged or destroyed. That was the extent of the agency’s responsibility to the U-League. They had no interest in Volcheme.
The smuggler was being given an out, as Danestar had indicated. But he’d had the biggest, most profitable transaction of his career set up, and he was being told he couldn’t go through with it. He didn’t know whether Danestar was lying or not, and he was savage with indeðcision. If the Depot was being watched—Volcheme didn’t much doubt that part of the story—sending the shuttle out to check around and come back could arouse the suspicions of the observers enough to make them halt it when it emerged the second time. That, in fact, might be precisely what Danestar wanted him to do.
He was forced to conclude he couldn’t take the chance. To wait for the scheduled arrival of the supplies truck was the smaller risk. Volcheme didn’t like waiting, either. Wergard hadn’t been found; and he didn’t know what other tricks the Kyth agents could have prepared. But, at any rate, the truck was the answer to part of his problem. It would be let in, unloaded routinely, allowed to depart, its men unaware that anything out of the ordinary was going on in the Depot. They would watch then to see if the truck was stopped outside and searched. If that happened, Volcheme would be obliged to agree to Danestar’s proposal.
If it didn’t happen, he would know she’d been lying on one point; but that would not be the end of his difficulties. Until Wergard was captured or killed, he still couldn’t leave with the specimen. The Kyth agents knew enough about him to make the success of the enterprise depend on whether he could silence both of them permðanently. If it was possible, he would do it. With stakes as high as they were, Volcheme was not inclined to be squeamish. But that would put an interstellar organization of experienced man-hunters on an unrelenting search for the murderers of two of its members. . . .
Whatever the outcome, Volcheme wasn’t going to be happy. What had looked like the haul of a lifetime, sweetly clean and simple, would wind up either in failure or as a dangerously messy partial success. Galester and Decrain, seeing the same prospects, shared their chief’s feelings. And while nobody mentioned that the situation looked even less promising for Dr. Hishkan and Tornull, those two had at least begun to suspect that if the smugglers succeeded in escaping with the specimen, they would not want to leave informed witnesses behind.
When the voice of an attendant in the control ðbuilding near the lock entry finally announced from the wall screen communicator that the supplies truck had arrived and was about to be let into the Depot, Danestar therefore was the most composed of the group. Even Decrain, who had been detailed to keep his attention on her at all times, stood staring with the others at the screen where Dr. Hishkan was switching on a view of the interior lock area.
Danestar made a mental note of Decrain’s momentary lapse of alertness, though it could make no difference to her at present. The only thing she needed to do, or could do, now was wait. Her gaze shifted to the table where assorted instruments Galester had taken out of the alien signaling device still stood. At the other side of the table was the gadgetry Decrain had brought here from her room, a toy-sized shortcode transmitter among it. Volcheme had wanted to be sure nobody would send out messages while the lock was open.
And neither she nor Wergard would be sending any messages. But automatically, as the lock switches were thrown, the duplicate transmitter concealed in the wall of her room would start flicking its coded alert out of the Depot, repeating it over and over until the lock closed.
And twenty or thirty minutes later, when the supplies truck slid back out through the lock and lifted into the air, it would be challenged and stopped.
Then Volcheme would give up, buy his pass to liberty on her terms. There was nothing else he could do.
It wasn’t the kind of stunt she’d care to repeat too often—her nerves were still quivering with unresolved tensions. But she’d carried it off without letting matters get to a point where Wergard might have had to help her out with some of his fast-action gunplay. Danestar told herself to relax, that nothing at all was likely to go wrong now.
Her gaze slipped over to Volcheme and the others, silently watching the wall screen, which was filled with the dead, light-drinking black of the energy barrier, except at the far left where the edge of the control building blocked the barrier from view. A great glowing circle, marking the opened lock in the barrier, was centered on the screen. As Danestar looked at it, it was turning a brilliant white.
Some seconds passed. Then a big airtruck glided out of the whiteness and settled to the ground. The lock faded behind it, became reabsorbed by the dull black of the barrier. Several men climbed unhurriedly out of the truck, began walking over to the control building.
Danestar started upright in her chair, went rigid.
A wave of ghostly purple fire had lifted suddenly out of the ground about the truck, about the walking men, enclosing them.
There was a general gasp from the watching group in Hishkan’s office. Then, before anyone moved or spoke, a voice roared from the communicator:
“Control office, attention! Radiation attack! Close internal barrier fields at once! Close all internal Depot barrier fields at once!”
Volcheme, whatever else might be said of him, was a man of action. Perhaps, after two hours of growing frustration, he was ready to welcome action. Apparently, a radiation weapon of unidentified type had been used inside the Depot. Why it had been turned on the men who had got off the supplies truck was unexplained. But it had consumed them completely in an instant, though the truck itself appeared undamaged.
Coming on top of the tensions already seething in the office, the shock of such an attack might have brought on complete confusion. But Volcheme immediately was snapping out very practical orders. The four smugglers detailed to help find Corvin Wergard were working through the Depot’s underground passage system within a few hundred yards of the main building. They joined the group in the office minutes later. The last of Volcheme’s men was stationed in the control section. He confirmed that the defensive force fields enclosing the individual
sections of the Depot inside the main barrier had been activated. Something occurred to Volcheme then. “Who gave that order?”
“Wergard did,” said Danestar.
They stared at her. “That was Wergard,” Tornull agreed. “I didn’t realize it, but that was his voice.”
Volcheme asked Danestar. “Do you know where he is?”
She shook her head. She didn’t know, as a matter of fact. Wergard might have been watching the lock from any one of half a hundred screens in the Depot. He could have been in one of the structures adjacent to the control building . . . too close to that weird fiery phenomenon for comfort. Radiation attack? What had he really made of it? Probably, Danestar thought, the same fantastic thing she’d made of it. His reaction, the general warning shouted into the communications system, implied that; very likely had been intended to imply it to her. She was badly frightened, very much aware of it, trying to decide how to handle the incredibly bad turn the situation might have taken.
Volcheme, having hurried Tornull off to make sure the space shuttle, which had been left beside the building’s landing dock, was within the section’s barrier field, was asking Galester and Dr. Hishkan, “Have you decided what happened out there?”
Galester shrugged. “It appears to be a selective antipersonnel weapon. The truck presumably was enclosed by the charge because there was somebody still on it. But it shows no sign of damage, while the clothing the men outside were wearing disappeared with them. It’s possible the weapon is stationed outside the Depot and fired the charge through the open lock. But my opinion is that it’s being operated from some concealed point within the Depot.”
Volcheme looked at Hishkan. “Well? Could it have been something that was among your specimens here? Something Miss Gems and Wergard discovered and that Wergard put to use just now?”
The scientist gave Danestar a startled glance.
Danestar said evenly, “Forget that notion, Volcheme. It doesn’t make sense.”
“Doesn’t it? What else makes sense?” the smuggler demanded. “You’ve been here two weeks. You’re clever people, as you’ve demonstrated. Clever enough to recognize a really big deal when Hishkan shoved it ðunder your noses. Clever enough to try to frighten competitors away. You know what I think, Miss Gems? I think that when I showed up here today, it loused up the private plans you and Wergard had for Hishðkan’s specimen.”
“We do have plans for it,” said Danestar. “It goes to the Federation. And now you’d better help us see it gets there.”
Volcheme almost laughed. “I should?”
Danestar said, “You asked what else makes sense. There’s one thing that does. You might have thought of it. That U-League specimen didn’t just happen to be drifting around in the Pit where it was found. Somebody made it and put it there!”
She had the full attention of everyone in the office now, went on quickly. It was a space-signaling device which could tell human scientists a nearly complete story of how its unknown designers were able to move about freely in the dust cloud and how they communicated within it. And recently Dr. Hishkan had twice broadcast the information that human beings had the space instrument. The static bursts he’d produced had been recorded a great deal farther away from Mezmiali than the Pit.
Volcheme interrupted with angry incredulity. “So you’re suggesting aliens from the Pit have come here for it!”
“I’m suggesting just that,” Danestar said. “And Dr. Hishkan, at least, must be aware that a ship which ðvanished in the Pit a few years ago reported it was being attacked with what appeared to be radiation weapons.”
“That’s true! That’s true!” Dr. Hishkan’s face was white.
“I think,” Danestar told them, “that when that airtruck came into the Depot, something came in with it the truckers didn’t know was there. Something that had a radiation weapon of a kind we don’t know about. Volcheme, if you people have a single functioning brain cell left between you, you’ll tell the control building right now to put out a call for help! We’re going to need it. We want the heaviest Navy ships near Mezmiali to get down here to handle this, and—”
“Volcheme!” a voice cut in urgently from the screen communicator.
The smuggler’s head turned. “Go ahead, Yee!” His voice was harsh with impatience.
“The U-League group that’s been hunting for this Wergard fellow doesn’t answer!” Yee announced. He was the man Volcheme had stationed in the control building. “Seven men—two wearing communicators. We’ve been trying to contact them for eight minutes. Looks like they might have got wiped out somewhere in the Depot the same way as the truck crew!”
There was an uneasy stir among the men in the office. Volcheme said sharply, “Don’t jump to conclusions! Have the operators keep calling them. They may have some reason for staying quiet at the moment. The others have checked in?”
“Yes,” said Yee. “Everyone else who isn’t in the control building is sitting tight behind defense screens somewhere.”
“They’ve been told to stay where they are and report anything they observe?”
“Yes. But nobody’s reported anything yet.”
“Let me know as soon as someone does. And, Yee, make very sure everyone in the control building is aware that until this matter is settled, the control building takes orders only from me.”
“They’re real aware of that, Volcheme,” said Yee.
The smuggler turned back to the group in the office. “Of course, we’re not going to be stupid enough to take Miss Gems’s advice!” he said. If he felt any uncertainty, it didn’t show in his voice or face. “Somebody has pulled a surprise trick with some radiation device and killed a number of people. But we’re on guard now, and we’re very far from helpless! Decrain will stay here to make sure Miss Gems does not attempt to interfere in any way. The rest of us will act as a group.”
He indicated the men who had been searching for Wergard. “There are four high-powered energy rifles on the shuttle. You four will handle them. Galester, Dr. Hishkan, Tornull, and I will have handguns. Dr. Hishkan tells me that the radiation suits used for dangerous inspection work in the Depot are stored on the ground level of this building.
“Remember, this device is an antipersonnel weapon. We’ll be in the suits, which will block its effect on us at least temporarily; we’ll be armed, and we’ll be in the shuttle. There’s a barrier exit at the building loading dock, through which we can get the shuttle out into the Depot. Scanscreens are being used in the control building to locate the device or its operator. When they’re found—”
The communicator clicked. Wergard’s voice said, “Volcheme, this is Wergard. Better listen!”
Volcheme’s head swung around. “What do you want?” It was almost a snarl.
“If you’d like a look at that antipersonnel weapon,” Wergard’s voice told him drily, “switch your screen to Section Thirty-six. You may change your mind about chasing it around in the shuttle.”
A few seconds later, the wall screen flickered and cleared. For an instant, they all stared in silence.
Like a sheet of living purple fire, the thing flowed with eerie swiftness along the surface of one of the Depot’s side streets toward a looming warehouse. Its size, Danestar thought, was the immediately startling factor—it spread across the full width of the street and was a hundred and fifty, perhaps two hundred, yards long. As it reached the warehouse, the big building’s defense field flared into activity. Instantly, the fiery apparition veered sideways, whipped around the corner of the street and was gone from sight.
Shifting views of the Depot flicked through the screen as Dr. Hishkan hurriedly manipulated the controls. He glanced around, eyes wide and excited. “I’ve lost it! It appears to be nowhere in the area.”
“I wouldn’t worry,” Volcheme said grimly. “It will show up again.” He asked Galester, “What did you make of that? What is it?”
Galester said, “It’s identical, of course, with what we saw engulfing the truck a
nd the men at the lock. We saw only one section of it there. It emerged partly above the surface of the Depot and withdrew into it again. As to what it is . . . ” He shrugged. “I know of nothing to compare it to precisely!” He hesitated again, went on. “My impression was that it was moving purposefully—directing itself. Conceivably an energy weapon could control a mobile charge in such a manner that it would present that appearance.”
Dr. Hishkan added, “Whatever this is, Volcheme, I believe it would be very unwise to attempt to oppose it with standard weapons!”
The smuggler gave him a tight grin. “Since there’s no immediate need to make the attempt, we’ll postpone it, at any rate, Doctor. To me, the significant part of what we just saw was that the thing avoided contact with the defense field of that building . . . or was turned away from it, if it’s the mobile guided charge Galester was talking about. In either case, our enemy can’t reach us until we decide what we’re dealing with and how we should deal with it.”
Danestar said sharply, “Volcheme, don’t be a fool—don’t count on that! The ships that disappeared in the Pit carried defense fields, too.”
Volcheme gave her a venomous glance but didn’t answer. Dr. Hishkan said thoughtfully, “What Miss Gems says is technically true. But even if we are being subjected to a similar attack, this is a very different situation! This complex was once a fort designed to defend a quarter of the continent against the heaviest of spaceborne weapons. And while the interior fields do not compare with the external barrier in strength, they are still far denser than anything that would or could be carried by even the largest exploration ships. I believe we can depend on the field about this building to protect us while we consider means to extricate ourselves from the situation.” He added, “I feel far more optimistic now! When we have determined the nature of the attacking entity, we should find a method of combating it available to us in the Depot. There is no need to appeal to the authorities for help, as Miss Gems suggested, and thereby have our personal plans exposed to them—which was, of course, what she intended!”
