by Ipomoea
"Envious eyes are cast upon us. We are a prize that Earth would like to grab, and squeeze dry. I have said that I believe your father fell prey to Earth machinations. That may not be true, but what is true is that we must act together now in case someone sees an opportunity to divide us. You are wise to call a conference. We will talk more about it at that time. But now, let us discuss something different, something less harrowing. Mr. Orbert, you were interested in my daughter's stone, the fire-ball?"
"That's right," Joe agreed. "I thought it was a sun-stone. I still think so, although I've never seen one cut cabochon"
"Ah! You know something of gem-stones, then? Wait here a moment."
Eklund rose and went striding out. Corinne dipped into her loincloth again, got out the chain, passed it over her head, and arranged the glowing red fire-ball so that it lay between her out-thrust breasts. She sat up artlessly, putting back her shoulders and exhibiting the fire-glow of the stone against her honey-tanned skin. As if, Sam thought with pounding pulses, she needed anything to draw attention to her abundant curves. He was almost glad when her father returned, to offer a distraction and produce a carved wooden casket, which he opened with a small flourish.
"What of these, Mr. Orbert?" he demanded, with a mischievous smile, and lifted out a tray that was full of glowing spheres in all colors and hues. Passing that tray to Joe, he removed another to pass to Sam; by the look of the box there were more layers. Joe studied the array carefully.
"I am no expert," he confessed. "I know a little, but not enough to be able to identify this material.,,
"Your candor does you credit, nor does it surprise me that you cannot name the mineral. So far as I know, it is as yet unnamed. It is an odd but quite common crystalline deposit found in several places, on Ophir. It is, I believe, a magnesium-titanium compound. Worthless, except for show. My friend Lemkov—you know of Lemkov?—gave me a quantity of it, when I asked him to find something for me to play with. A hobby of mine. But they will not cut. The cleavage-lines are irregular. All I could do was turn them into spheres, as you see. Perhaps I will pierce some, sometime, for a necldace. But not, I assure you, sun-stones. My dear sir, think of the value if they werel The color deceived you, perhaps?"
"That's possible." Joe touched one or two, handed back the tray. "Thank you for putting me right, sir."
"It is nothing. Allow me to present you with one—of the red ones? And you, Hutten. Pleasel My friends are good enough to say that they can bring good fortune."
"I can certainly use some of that." Sam shrugged and chose one of the fiery spheres, seeing Joe do the same.
"Now we have something in common." Corinne smiled, arching herself, and Sam nodded, unable to trust his voice for a moment. Then he stirred.
"That's it, then. I'm sorry to dash off, sir, but the sooner I get around to the others—you know what I mean?"
"Of course. You have much to do and a sad errand. But
please feel that you are welcome here at any time. Any time." As they moved out onto the veranda again. Corinne took his arm possessively.
"You must come back, very soon. And stay longer. It will not be dull, if you are here."
"The next time you come," Eklund declared, "we will talk of other things. Are you, for instance, interested in cosmology?"
"I know very little about it, I'm afraid."
"A pity. I would like your reaction to a theory of mine that accounts for many of the mysteries of this planetary system."
"Oh?" Sam frowned, and waited out of politeness, while Corinne clung to his hand and snuggled close to him. "I had no idea there was all that much mystery about it. Do you mean about Zera, and the mineral deposits?"
"And other things. As you say, Zera is bleak and frozen, yet it is rich in the fossilized remains of tropical vegetation. This planet, now, should be tropical, and is not. It has no native fauna larger than a small rabbit-like creature. And Ophir, so rich in oxides and rare earths, is much too hot and too near the primary ever to have formed such deposits. A whole mass of contradictions."
"Doesn't that just prove that our cosmology theories are faulty?"
"Possibly, but there is an easier way than casting aside the whole of physics, my boy. If we assume just one thing— my belief that this entire system is the result of intelligent manipulation. That it has been deliberately rearranged by some alien intelligence!"
"Good Lord! That's quite an assumption. Do you have any evidence to support it?"
"Only what can be seen all around. When you see something that could not possibly have happened by itself, what other explanation is possible?"
Corinne had readied the horses. Sam was glad to scramble up and get away. He'd have to have been stone-dead not to respond to the exultant loveliness of the goddess who rode by his side, or to fail to tingle at the clasp of her hand as she bade him a last goodbye and insisted that he come again, soon. But it was with a sigh of relief that he settled alongside Joe in the plane and heard the engine roar up to speed.
When they were safely airborne and headed back for Verdan, Sam let out a long sigh of relief, again.
"It probably doesn't affect you in the same way," he said to Joe, "but that's the first time in my life I ever felt crowded by just one man! Talk about larger than life!"
"An unusual pair," Joe admitted. "And a really intriguing theory that Mr. Eklund put forward."
"Alien intelligences? You're not serious?"
"It has the undoubted merit of explaining all the anomalies of this planetary system in one package. None of the other theories do."
"Theory is no good without proof. Or evidence, anyway. And what about those sun-stones now? You must have been wrong."
"That is possible, of course, but I would rather shelve the matter until I can do some tests. There is an adequate laboratory facility on the Venner Three."
"You don't give up easily, do you?"
"That's not the question, here. There are discrepancies. Whether the gems are sun-stones or not, the way they have been cut is intriguing. Mr. Eklund said he couldn't cut the mineral he mentioned, but had to turn it One doesn't turn this kind of thing. Neither the stone that Miss Corinne wore, nor Brandt's, nor those he had in the box, certainly not the one he very kindly gave me—were turned. That much is certain."
"I don't see how you could keep still long enough to notice, the way she was putting it on. There's a girl would drive a man mad!"
"She has a great deal of personal magnetism," Joe allowed, and Sam snorted. He was still feeling scorched by the memory.
"It must be different for you," he growled, and immediately felt ashamed of himself, but if Joe was offended he made no sign.
As they set down in Verdan's spaceport it was only a short step to the Venner Three. On Joe's suggestion, it seemed the best place to be. In the control room Joe asked for a telephone link and a number.
"I'm calling the Verdan office of Interplanetary Security in case Mr. Venner has any information for us," he explained.
"An office? I didn't know ISB had an office here!"
"We have offices on all the major planets where there are colonies. The operators are merely observers, with nc authority. ISB has no power to intervene in internal affairs Hello!"
The face that grew on the screen was dark with Latin-American contours, announced itself as Jose" Ramirez anc then abruptly gave way to the familiar countenance of Or bert Venner, complete with cigar.
"Joe. What's new?"
"Very little, sir. We have contacted Brandt and Eklund, are about to lift off for Zera. Will you speak to Mr. Hutten?'1
"Sure. Put him on. Hutten, any more attacks, threats, anything like that? Anything you think I ought to know about?"
"As Joe told you, very little. Brandt is fairly normal, Eklund is eccentric—maybe more than that—and both of them seem to have the solid conviction that there's an interstellar plot hatching, for Earth to take over this system. Apparently a lot of other people think so too."
"They c
ould be right, but that's no- concern of ours, You're getting the conference idea across?"
"No trouble there. It's the obvious thing to do in any case, isn't it? Only one slight alteration. Eklund has suggested we hold it at his place, and I see nothing wrong with that."
"All right. On our side we have a crumb or two." Venner edged to one side to make room for Louise, who smiled and nodded greeting. "So far as I can find, that damned plant grows only in a few places, all on your father's home fields. The seeds are extracted in processing. Probably cheaper that way. I believe some of them are shipped to Eklund, and Louise will be going after that lead. Me, I'm going to snoop around -the processing end a bit. We will leave reports here from time to time, just in case we're not here when you get back, and you do the same, huh? Have a good trip."
The screen darkened, but Sam sat staring at it for quite some time, struck by the dramatic contrast between Louise and Corinne. Dark hair, dark eyes, and the screen had shown enough to remind him of her ample shape—an attractive woman for all her flippant surface-mannerisms. But compared with Corinne she seemed crude somehow.
"Something troubling you?" Joe asked.
"Eh? No, it's nothing. How long to Zera?"
"A little over eighteen hours, and almost all of it on automatic. You had better catch up on some sleep."
"You have a good idea there." Sam sighed, realizing suddenly just how weary he was. "Will you be all right on your own?"
"I think so. Will you let me have that sun-stone Mr. Ek-lund gave you, please. I won't damage it."
"Going to do your tests, eh? All right, here." The smooth sphere felt strangely warm, and unexpectedly heavy in his i hand. Holding it he had a sudden and extremely vivid memory-picture of Eklund, lordly and majestic, with Corinne by his side, bewitchingly beautiful. The picture made him shiver. He passed the fire-stone to Joe gladly.
"I'll turn in," he said. "Just in case I don't wake, call me before we get down, won't you?"
Much to his own relief, Sam slept well. He had half-expected and wholly dreaded nightmares, but when he woke he had no memory of any. It grieved him, still, to think of his father ending his life in delirium, but what else was there to think?
Joe was up in the control room watching the image of the gray storm-planet down there. The ship was an hour away from planetfall and arrowing in on the spaceport beacon. Sam took a look at the screens and shivered at the signs of sleet and snow.
"Hostile sort of place," he muttered. "Damned if I'd care to live there. How do they stand it?"
"Almost all the domestic establishments are below the surface," Joe explained. "An artificial environment which cannot be so very different from the way things are on Earth. But it makes Mr. Eklund's point. It is difficult to see how this planet can ever have had lush tropical vegetation."
"I won't buy aliens," Sam objected; "not just like that And there have been no traces found that I've heard of."
There was silence for a while as Joe made fractional adjustments, then Sam brought up the subject that was haunting him.
"Voices," he said. "When a man hears voices out of nowhere, that's a sure sign of insanity, isn't it?"
"Not necessarily," Joe corrected, instantly but calmly. "That was the traditional belief. Much more is known, now, about the anatomy of the brain. Mechanical stimulus of certain areas, for instance the temporal lobe region, produce a playback' effect. The person hears, or sees, or both, some scene from his own past as if it were being repeated. Optical flicker-patterns can produce similar effects. So can certain chemical substances."
"Drugs, you mean?"
'That word is used loosely, always pejoratively * "Sorry," Sam mumbled. "I ought to know better. But you're saying that certain chemical changes in the brain can cause the subject to actually Tiear' and 'see' things that aren't there?"
"It has been done. There's not too much data on it. YouTJ understand, that is the kind of experiment that is very difficult to do, for all sorts of reasons. Similar effects can also be produced by certain rather irregular radio frequencies, but again, nothing very definite is known, as to fine detail."
"You seem to know a lot about it."
"Only because I have a special interest in the subject. As a matter of fact quite a lot of material has come up as the result of experiment and observation on Ipomoea addicts. Some of them claim to hear voices, not that such evidence is one hundred percent reliable, but it is interesting."
Sam thought about it grimly. "Do you triink it's possible that my father was being doped in some way?"
"I have no opinion on that. There were no postmortem signs. All I wish to suggest is that it does not necessarily follow that he was deranged, just because he had visions and heard voices."
"I see. Well, that's something to be thankful for, I suppose. But now we have to look at the possibility that somehow somebody either doped him, or got at him with some kind of radio-wave—and drove him to death. That's how to kill a man inside a locked room, all right. The classical crime-story twist. That's fine for fiction, but this is real. Give it to me straight. Is that sort of expert know-how available? Can it be done?"
"I don't know," Joe admitted. "Certainly not within the state of the art as known to me, but I would need an expert second opinion before being certain."
"Where do you reckon to get that?"
"I don't know," Joe repeated, "but there are plenty of technical experts down there, and many more on Ophir. I can ask around. I can do that while you are talking to the businessmen you've come to see."
Sam watched him caress his controls and ease Venner Three in to a perfect lock-on to the beacon control down there. The ship began to slide down through Zera's galeharried atmosphere. He felt a twinge of envy. He couldn't imagine, at all, what it felt like not to have a personal ego-sense. He wasn't even sure what the term meant. But it had to include, by way of a bonus, complete freedom from personal problems. There could be problems in plenty, but they would all be academic. No gnawing worries. No fear, for instance, of being killed. No sense of sorrow at personal loss. And none of the corrosive futility of yearning for some kind of personal revenge without any clue where to turn to gratify it. It must be a blessing to be free of all that.
The envy, the bitterness, the futility, stayed with Sam as they were met and hustled through arctic weather to a drift entrance and into the extensive underground warrens of Zera City. Around the spaceport, screamed at by the perpetual gales, were the gaunt angles of rigs and refineries, crackers and converters, plant of all kinds, making the scene look like some casual glimpse into a corner of Scandinavian hell, but once underground everything was snug and opulent. Crude and tasteless in spots, as is any place where wealth and hard work clash, but comfortable for everyone. There were women here, and children. Homes, theaters, leisure areas, shopping centers, even hard-struggling gardens and grass, enough to make a man marvel at the irrepressible spirit of man against nature. But Sam had small time for it all. He wanted to meet Mullens and Armario and get it over with.
They were a contrasting pair. Mullens was long, lean, taut-nerved and intense, whereas Armario, a small and dark explosion of a man, was all vivid affability and smiles, muted now because the ether-waves had already brought the news to them of Rex Hutten's passing. "We are sorry for you," he said forthrightly. "And for us, too. In this business a man does not expect to live forever. It is a hard life. But to be killed, that's different. We are vulnerable. All rich men are vulnerable. Always there are those who envy, who want to take, to rob, steal, cheat. But killing 1"
"We don't know he was killed, Eddie." Mullens restrained his more voluble partner. "Hutten didn't say that. All the same, as long as it's a possibility we have to watch it. There's plenty would like to see the Ceti System taken over by Earth. Right now we're independent, free agents. Pretty soon we'll be in a position to cut loose altogether, and talk to Earth on a basis of cultural equality. They won't like that."
Sam resigned himself to hearing a rehash of the sa
me old story. He was able to listen and nod at the appropriate moments, and at the same time pursue a train of thought all his own. Somebody had spread the propaganda very thoroughly, and, at this stage, it was pointless to try to determine who. Brandt, Eklund, and now these two all sounded as if they had arrived at their belief by rational means. To them it was an obvious thing. And that meant that they had been nursing the notion so long that they would not now recall, even if they wanted to, who had first suggested it to them. Whoever it was, he had done his work well.
On the other hand, Sam mused, the second part of his father's fateful message had contained the impression that someone was calling the people of this system to rise and start to create the New World. And that sounded very much like Eklund. Only Sam couldn't imagine his father being sold on that kind of oratory any more than he himself had been. Eklund had a tremendous personality; true, but he was a nut, a fanatic obsessed with the glories of the past. Sam had met many like him, people who firmly believed in the "good old days" and that everything since the Renaissance was a decline. And that loopy theory about alien intelligences!
But there was one curious thing. Mullens, nerve-tight and abrupt, had a trick of rattling something in his pocket, and once, in a gesture, he produced a red sphere, together with a couple of ball bearings. Sam was intrigued, and thought immediately of Captain Queeg. Then he noticed that Armario had one too, mounted into a gold stickpin to hold his shirt-neck neat. For good luck, Eklund had said, and if wealth was anything to go by, these men were lucky enough. All at once he wanted to get away. He was sick of wealth and of the hazards in its train, wealth that could make men and women burrow in holes under the surface of a strange planet like so many worms. Never before had he really appreciated just how powerful the lure of wealth was. He was infinitely glad when Joe reappeared and offered him an excuse to depart.
