Travelers of Space - [Adventures in Science Fiction 03]

by Edited by Martin Greenburg

  The Fegashite twittered shrilly. One of the assistant slickers translated.

  “He says you promised to overlook it in return for his cooperation.”

  “Perhaps I shall,” murmured Fuller. “It depends upon how useful he may be.”

  He turned to Ramsay.

  “One of the local patrol ships caught this worm negotiating with your friends.”

  “When?” demanded Ramsay.

  “Oh, I use the term loosely. I mean their main ship, just inside Luna. The patrol picked him up after he left their orbit. They sent this weasel down to me when they found traces of the leading Fegashite export.”

  “Dysenine?”

  “What else? And my neck hairs tell me your Kosorians have it by now. Did you see anything odd at the warehouse?”

  Ramsay told his suspicions of the cans ostensibly owned by the crew. The Fegashite, apparently understanding a good deal of Terran, twittered to Fuller’s assistant.

  “He says he sold it to them in plastic bags,” translated the man. “In powder form, you know, that light stuff.”

  “Yes, I know,” agreed Ramsay.

  “I imagine you do,” said Fuller. “Were those cans light enough?”

  “Yes,” said Ramsay, with bitter simplicity.

  “Well,” said Fuller, “I shall just have to get the Bureau on the job.”

  They returned to the B.S.T. man’s own office, where, at his request, Ramsay put through a telecall to the Kosorians. He located them in the aircar supplied by the hotel and arranged an appointment with Fuller upon their return.

  That gentleman dismissed him for the rest of the day, seeming confident of his ability to make himself understood in Kosorian.

  “At least on the fundamentals,” he muttered viciously as Ramsay left.

  ~ * ~

  Some time later, Ramsay’s dinner was interrupted by a call from the Bureau. Judging from the background on the visor, Fuller was in his own office.

  “We came to an understanding,” he informed Ramsay. “They had a little deal with a Terran who shall remain nameless—to you. Some of my colleagues will be so happy to lay hands on him that I offered your octopi chums their expected profit if they would let us deliver the goods.”

  “They admit what it is?” asked the spaceman.

  “They appear to be without a sense of shame. The B.S.T. will, of course, arrange for the Narcotics Department to confiscate the dysenine immediately, so no harm will be done. I demanded only one condition from the Kosorians, and they promised to bring the small amount of dysenine they held out to my office tonight.”

  “Have them watched,” recommended Ramsay.

  Fuller clucked reprovingly.

  “My dear boy!” he exclaimed.

  “Will they stay long?” asked Ramsay, to change the subject.

  “The Bureau has already transferred their credit to Luna, where a cargo was got together for them. They are loading now from Luna, at the same time we are clearing up the details of their cargo here.”

  “That’s nice,” said Ramsay.

  “Quite. Drop in to see me tomorrow morning.”

  Ramsay agreed, cut off, and began to plan an evening. The next morning, but not too early, he entered Fuller’s office. Taking a chair at the other’s languid gesture, he noticed that the B.S.T. man did not seem as alertly self-possessed as usual.

  “Trouble?” asked Ramsay, crossing his long legs.

  A slight frown creased Fuller’s brow.

  “I am not sure,” he said.

  Ramsay waited for further revelation.

  “What I should say, I suppose, is that I cannot quite remember.”

  “Can’t remember what?” asked Ramsay.

  Fuller threw him a disgusted glare. He opened his mouth for what Ramsay expected to be a cutting answer, but the chime of his desk visor sounded.

  “Fuller here,” he answered. “Astro Department? Well . . . not exactly alone—”

  He glanced thoughtfully at Ramsay.

  The spaceman raised one eyebrow and gestured toward the door, but the other shook his head.

  “Does it concern my Kosorian case?” he asked the visor.

  There was an instant of silence, then Ramsay heard a murmur from the instrument. A pretty slick arrangement, he thought, the screen turned away from visitors and the sound directionalized as well.

  Fuller made a wry face. Without a word, he nodded to the unseen caller and flipped the switch.

  “Now I remember,” he told Ramsay grimly.

  “What is it?”

  “Yesterday,” said Fuller, slumping forward dejectedly, “in the evening, after I called you, our three friends returned.”

  “To give up the dysenine they still had?”

  “That is what I thought. They began to lead up to it in that flattering fashion of theirs. I forget which one went so far as to put his ‘arm’ around my shoulder, but after that things seemed different.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “It is very difficult to visualize. I must have been instructed to forget, but I think it felt a little like hypnosis. I seemed to understand their speech better, but I do not remember having a single original thought after that.”

  “They must have slipped you a touch of dysenine,” said Ramsay. “Did you lose track of time? Were all your other senses very alert, especially about physical movements?”

  “Yes,” said Fuller. “Perhaps those are the associations which help me to remember, now that something has reminded me. To be as brief as possible:

  “Somehow, I began to feel that it would be a good thing to show them the astro-intelligence section. I think that was after they expressed interest in that wall map outside. It was after hours, but my badge got us past what I had always considered the perfect mechanical watchman device.”

  “What kind of a place is it?” asked Ramsay.

  “The secret file room is where we wound up, I think. I feel that we were in there only a few seconds, but that may be the effect of the drug. I have a picture in mind of one of those snakes holding a length of film.”

  “You mean they keep the files on microfilm?”

  “Yes, and that must be what made me remember just now. That call was a general alert, the routine procedure when something important is mislaid. They are missing a sixteen millimeter film strip, which holds complete data, especially location, about a whole group of little-known star systems.”

  “Something—profitable?”

  “Unimaginably.”

  “Do they know about the Kosorians, in the other section?”

  “Not yet, apparently,” groaned Fuller. “As soon as they learn, I shall be on a curve for the Edge.”

  There were a few silent minutes while they thought it over.

  “Probably,” said Ramsay, “they didn’t expect you ever to catch on. Dysenine effects aren’t quite as complete on Terrans as on most people.” “I wonder,” mused Fuller with a wicked expression creeping across his features, “what is effective on Kosorians.”

  “I don’t know,” said Ramsay. “They never told me.”

  Fuller reached out to turn on his visor.

  “We’ll soon find out,” he promised.

  ~ * ~

  In the next half hour, Ramsay was treated to a glimpse of the resources behind a B.S.T. representative. Fuller consulted with and gave assignments to chemists, mathematicians, local police, psychologists, news broadcasters, transportation experts, biologists—Ramsay lost track. The Bureau seemed to have contacts in any given organization. Occasionally, questions were asked, but never any beginning with “why.”

  “That might do it,” sighed Fuller finally, leaning back and smoothing his blond mustache with one finger. “As soon as the chemists come through, our friends will get their emergency notice—I suppose it will be ‘one of our devastating Terran hurricanes,’ or some such thing. At least, it will require them to clear out for their safety.”

  “Taking their secrets with them?”

&nb
sp; “Attempting to, I trust,” answered Fuller complacently. “We shall be unsuspecting and completely co-operative. You will be sent to escort them to their assigned rocket and to cut all red tape concerning their departure.”

  “How will that get your microfilm back?”

  “I hope that you will be able to go to the hotel with something really potent in your pocket. When you damp their jets with that, we shall have a battalion in there to search every scrap they intend to take with them. Before they realize what curve they are on, they will be in space.”

  “Sounds good,” said Ramsay, “but I hope you don’t underestimate them.”

  “I hardly dare think of that,” said Fuller.

  Just then, his visor announced a caller.

  At Fuller’s response, a man in a laboratory smock scurried into the office. He left the door open behind him, using both hands to cup a small, fragile object.

  “Meyers, Chem,” he introduced himself tersely. “O’Brien says this may work.”

  “What is it?” asked Fuller.

  “We looked up everything there is about all life forms like what you described. O’Brien picked out four or five of the most sure-shot freezers the Bureau knows. Then we blended them into a solution and sealed a small quantity in this vial. Break that, and you’ll have a gas immediately.”

  He nearly drooled with pride. Ramsay was still hoping it was really that good when he reached the hotel about an hour later. He had a room number to call when he was ready for Fuller’s crew. To avoid attention even in the oxygen wing, they were all to be non-Terran.

  He let Jack take the aircar up to the parking roof, after warning him to expect anything. Then he went inside and headed for the elevator. Four scaly Centaurians crowded into the car ahead of him, however, and favored him with a quartet of chilly, reptilian stares.

  “Must know who I came to see,” reflected Ramsay, deciding that he preferred the stairs.

  It was only one flight up. He reached the door quickly enough, but paused outside to ease the little vial in his breast pocket Then he pressed the button which would announce his presence with a musical note and an image on an interior screen.

  The door opened in a moment, and he was greeted by Evash. The Kosorian gestured hospitably with one tentacle, and Ramsay stepped in.

  He stepped into the tentacle, which neatly completed the welcoming gesture by whipping two turns around his neck. Another steely grip encircled his waist and he was jerked off his feet. He heard the door slam behind him. Then he felt a sharp prick at the nape of his neck. Evash held him in midair for . . . for—Ramsay could not tell how long.

  He discovered himself standing again. He was slightly off balance to the left, supported by a Kosorian tentacle. With weird slowness, two other Kosorians progressed into his field of view. Feeling that he was making a poor showing, the spaceman tried to straighten up. He was immediately aware that he had overdone it and was falling to his right. He felt the muscles in his right foot, ankle, and leg straining to correct but realized they would be too slow. Every other muscle in his body Struggled to move left. He regretted that he did not have better control over a particular set in the left small of his back.

  Then Evash wrapped a tentacle around the Terran’s head and supplied the missing ounce of balance. Simultaneously, the surrounding action speeded up drastically.

  “Whatllwedowithm?” hissed Evash.

  The other two answered. Ramsay tried to decide whether they took turns or talked together. He seemed to get the first word or so of every sentence. This code was too fast for him, he thought

  “Came . . . coincidence—”

  “Feel untruth—”

  “Search—”

  “Convenient . . . use . . . ship—”

  “Aircar—”

  “Chauffeur . . . easy—”

  “Perfect . . . go—”

  “Downstairs ... go downstairs . . . go . . . with ... us . . . downstairs . . . go . . . with . . . us—”

  Ramsay found himself walking through the door in a web of tentacles. With every step, he was amazed anew that he succeeded in performing the complicated maneuver of moving forward a leg to catch himself as he started to fall.

  “Act . . . normal . . . act . . . normal . . . act normal—”

  ~ * ~

  Ramsay noticed that he was plunging furiously down the stairs. The thick carpet at the bottom rushed up at him like the surface of Stegath II the time he had crashed a landing rocket He almost screamed as a bolt of fear flickered throughout his nervous system.

  “Hold back!” he told himself, but the tentacles seemed to shove him along.

  In the small of his back, a pore oozed a drop of sweat. Then two on his forehead, and several in his armpits. He was drowning in his own perspiration and heading for a smash at the foot of the stairs.

  “Gotta adjust,” he thought frantically.

  He had been thinking that for hours, but now there was something more important he must do. A voice from somewhere was telling him—

  Halfway to the door, he realized he had spoken to the desk clerk, as someone had suggested. A second later, they were outside. Ramsay cursed silently and furiously to try to snap himself out of it. They were getting away and no one seemed to notice anything wrong. Where were all of Fuller’s agents?

  “Called your aircar at the desk,” Evash explained to him. “Pick us up here.”

  The Kosorian spoke more slowly. No, Ramsay had adjusted again. Everything was slow. He seemed aware of each individual muscle in his body. Staring ahead, he saw the shadow of the descending aircar, and took about a year to think things over while it reached them.

  This is the blast off, he thought. I’ll tip Jack off somehow. They won’t get any farther.

  They had taken him with commendable neatness. A dysenine needle in the neck. He was theirs. Not a move without suggestion. But he must! Who was to offer him suggestions except the Kosorians? He was lucky to be able to think at all. Probably they had been afraid of killing him, not realizing that Terrans could stand more than most beings thought at first glance.

  He must concentrate on letting Jack know. Not too openly, lest his captors notice. Just plainly enough to show something was wrong.

  The aircar settled lightly in front of them. As suggested, Ramsay drawled through the explanation that he himself would pilot their guests to the rocket, to spare red tape. The chauffeur need not bother. He watched Jack’s features radiate surprise, disbelief, thought, acceptance, suspicion. The man had blinked.

  The Kosorians began to creep into the aircar. Ramsay estimated the odds for six different courses of action on Jack’s part, ranging from taking the day off to reporting immediately to Fuller that something was wrong. For himself, he knew he was perfectly capable of dashing inside to the desk, calling the B.S.T., dictating a complete report, and rushing back in time to close the door after the last Kosorian.

  But somewhere between the decision and the physical action lay a cold, dead, inert vacuum. Instead, he got in.

  “Take us up!” suggested Evash.

  Ramsay took the aircar up, yearning all the while for enough control to squeeze the vial in his pocket. He wanted almost as badly to look down and see what Jack was doing. Instead he stared directly at the instrument panel.

  “Not so fast,” advised Evash.

  Ramsay slowed the machine until it seemed to him that they must plummet out of the sky. He counted the revolutions of the overhead rotor from its shadow on the hood, wishing he had the drive to look up at it.

  Tom, my boy, he told himself, no use kidding yourself. You can’t break out of this. You’ll have to use it against them—like judo, where you use the other guy’s strength.

  The Kosorians had him head south, toward the warehouse where the rocket was waiting. He only had a few minutes.

  It had to be soon. Some way to avoid doing exactly as they told him. Deliberately misunderstand—no, he must not think that, even if he meant it. Keep it at the back of his mi
nd. Way back. Do exactly as they said, and maybe make up his mind in the middle of doing it.

  He must plan . . . something . . . but convince himself that he was not planning rebellion. Must forget that word. Keep his real intentions submerged. Do what they said.

  “What is our Terran thinking?” inquired Evash.

  “I must do as you wish,” answered Ramsay promptly.

  “Very good,” approved Evash. “Down toward the warehouse.”