Trojan Orbit

by Mack Reynolds

  “Oh. Oh, yes, of course,” Moore said, taking the glass his underling proffered.

  Pete sipped at his. It was easily, smoothly, the best whiskey he had ever tasted.

  Moore said, “Well, now, as I understand it, my old friend John Wilson has sent you up in pursuit of a more than ordinarily wily fugitive from justice. I must say, you don’t fit the usual picture one has of a dedicated and highly experienced sleuth, if you’ll pardon my saying so.”

  Pete Kapitz had heard much the same before. He said now, “Possibly that’s one of my attributes.” He grinned. “Who’d ever suspect that I was a cop?”

  The other chuckled. “Throws them off guard, eh?”

  Then, “But frankly, I am somewhat surprised that John would go to the expense involved in sending a man to Lagrange Five simply to apprehend a single fugitive.” The IABI agent nodded seriously to that end, after taking another swallow of the superlative Scotch, went into his well-rehearsed story. “It’s more than just putting the arm on Rocks Weil himself. It’s a matter of image and prestige. Rocks usually operates abroad but he’s known to be an American citizen. If we still had the ‘ten most wanted’ system, he’d undoubtedly be Public Enemy Number One. It’s a black eye for the bureau that he’s never taken a fall. In fact, so far as we know, he’s never been arrested on even a minor charge. It’s bad business allowing him to continue to operate. It gives other would-be grifters the idea that they, too, could pull off romps equivalent to his. So we’re going all out to make an example of him.”

  Moore nodded wisely. “I suppose that makes considerable sense. You said Rocks Weil. Up here we don’t keep up with the latest police affairs too well, but it seems to me that I’ve heard of him—a jewel thief, isn’t he?”

  “That’s right,” Pete told him. “Undoubtedly the most competent of this century.”

  The other grimaced in thought. “But wasn’t he reported shot, somewhere in France, not too long ago?”

  “We think that was a case of mistaken identity. You see, for one thing, we’re not sure of his appearance. That crook shot in Nice might have been somebody quite different.”

  “But if you’re not sure of his appearance, how in the world do you expect to apprehend him, Mr. Kapitz?”

  “Call me Pete, everybody does.” The IABI man opened his small attaché case. “I’ve got old partial prints, probably his, and three photos, one of which might be of him.” He brought them forth and placed them on the desk before the Security head.

  Moore looked down. “And please call me Al. We’re very informal here at Lagrange Five,” he said. And then, “But these are obviously three different men.”

  Pete nodded and said, in self-deprecation, “Yes. But if I can locate anyone up here that looks like any of those three, and find a match for the partial fingerprints, we’re in business.”

  The other sighed. “But just what led you to suspect that this Rocks Weil fellow is in space? A colonist must be highly qualified to be taken on, you know. And the qualifications of a jewel thief are hardly the ones we need.”

  Pete grinned wryly at that. “We’ve got our methods,” he said. “And they’ve led to a strong suspicion that Rocks made it to Island One, or perhaps the moon base. For one thing, just shortly before I left we got word that Pavel Meer, the Penman, was killed down in Mexico, where he had evidently set up shop.”

  “Penman?” Moore said.

  “Pavel was probably the top forger and counterfeiter of our time; he even cast fake latex finger masks to pass a print check. For the past five years or so he’s been on the run, sought by every police force that makes any difference, including Common Europe’s Interpol. He went to ground in an artists’ colony in Mexico and kept a low profile, passing himself off as a second-rate artist. When he was killed, the Mexican police found equipment in his house that indicated he had the capability to forge documents that would get a man, or woman for that matter, into Lagrange Five as a colonist or construction worker on contract.”

  The Security head’s eyebrows went up; he looked at Mark Donald and then back to his visitor. “Good grief, now you mean to tell me that other fugitive criminals might be hiding here in Island One?”

  “That’s right,” Pete told him. “We were able to follow a man we suspected might be Rocks, with the assistance of Interpol, as far as Mexico. He disappeared there, probably heading north by hoverbus and other public transportation of the type that wouldn’t necessitate reservations and hence create any records in the data banks. We suspect that he might have been heading for Pavel Meer with the intention of getting papers to hide out here in Lagrange Five.”

  “Holy smog,” Donald said. “What do you think, Chief?”

  The Security Commissioner shook his head. “We’d better put some people on it, soonest. Offhand, I can’t think of anything they might do. Certainly there isn’t anything worth stealing, and, even if there was, they’d have no way of getting their loot back Earthside. But if there are any such, I’d feel happier if we rounded them up.”

  “Righto, Chief,” his underling said.

  Al Moore turned back to Pete. “So, where would you like to begin?”

  “I suppose the first thing would be to go through your files of colonists and contract workers, especially those who’ve been Earthside recently, and see if I can match up any of these photos. I assume that whatever kind of records you keep on your people include portrait shots.”

  “Certainly, and our data banks are right here in the hotel.” Moore chuckled. “In fact, practically everything that makes any difference is right here in the L5 Hilton. Some of our visitors, very big mucky-mucks from Earthside, never leave the hotel. They can see all they want of the island through the windows. You might keep that in mind, Pete. We’ve got everything you might wish right here. If you want to interrogate any of the colonists, we can have the boys round them up and bring them in. No need for you to go out. If you do leave the hotel, be sure the lieutenant here is along.”

  “Wait a minute,” Pete said. “I don’t need a nursemaid. The way I work…”

  Al Moore held up a hand and smiled ruefully. “Pete, you don’t think we’d run the chance of anything happening to you, do you? Suppose you ran into this Rocks Weil and he took a dim view of the fact. Do you think that anybody with that Public Enemy Number One label on him would just give up? And what would happen to us if John Wilson got news that one of his top operatives had been killed in Island One? He’d send up so many men the place would be swamped. And what would our investors think, down Earthside, when they found out that some of the world’s top criminals were hiding at Lagrange Five? No sir, I don’t believe that there are any such fugitives here, but I’m not taking the chance. Everywhere you go, the lieutenant goes.”

  Pete Kapitz sighed resignation.

  The Security head looked at his desk chronometer and said, “I’ve got an appointment. Mark, you see that Mr. Kapitz is fixed up—in all ways, of course.” He turned his eyes back to the IABI man. “There’s going to be a party tonight in honor of Prince Abou ben Abel. Doctor Ryan and everybody else of importance in Island One will be there. You’re invited, of course.” His smile was inverted. “I doubt if your Rocks Weil will make it, but it’ll be a chance for you to become acquainted and get the feeling of the place.”

  “Wizard,” Pete said, coming to his feet. “Thanks for the cooperation, Al. I ought to be able to check this out in short order and be back on my way Earthside, with or without friend Rocks, in a few days.”

  Al Moore got up and shook hands. “See you at the party, Pete. Good luck.”

  On the way back to his room, Pete looked over at his companion and said, “Mr. Moore doesn’t exactly look like a cop.”

  The other shrugged in amusement. “He’s not…exactly. I don’t know how we got the name Security hung on us. Actually, Al’s basic job is more like that of an expediter. Keeping all the strings together—kind of a traffic director.” He hesitated, then added, “There’s a lot of angles to bu
ilding one of these islands.”

  Back at the room, Pete found that his bag had been delivered. He put it on the bed with the idea of unpacking the few belongings he’d been allowed to bring, but the Security man looked at his wrist chronometer and said, “It’s lunch time. You must be hungry after the kind of food you get on the way up here. Why don’t you leave your unpacking until later?”

  “Okay with me,” Pete told him, straightening up. “Lead the way. I haven’t the vaguest idea where the dining room is.” He took his attaché case along with him again.

  The main dining room of the L5 Hilton wasn’t quite as austere as the lobby, but nearly so. There weren’t any tablecloths, for instance, which made sense, of course. They would have to have been lobbed up from Earth at God only knew what expense. Evidently, the lunch hour wasn’t as yet well underway. There were only a dozen or so other diners. About half wore space dungarees; the rest were in Earthside dress of invariably the best quality. Pete supposed that made sense. It was the same as the guzzle. If you were going to go to the expense of shipping it up, you might as well start with the best available.

  To his mild surprise, the dining room was not automated. Instead, there were neatly uniformed waitresses, each of them a potential runner-up for Miss Universe. He snorted inwardly in amusement. He supposed the same thing applied here, too. If you were going to go to the expense of lobbing it up, you might as well start with the best available.

  Their waitress turned out to be Irene, and Irene was stunning enough that Pete couldn’t keep his eyes from her, both face and figure. His companion did the ordering, knowing the ropes, and was obviously amused at Pete’s bewitchment with the girl.

  He said, when she was gone, “You like Irene? I’ll fix it up for you, if you’d like.”

  Pete was again surprised. He said, “Is there any place to take a girl on a date? Come to think of it, I suppose there must be. Movie theaters and so forth, dance halls. You can’t have ten thousand people and no entertainment.”

  The other waved a hand negatively. “No use going to those colonist joints. The best is right here in the hotel. Pretty damn good nightclub, a cocktail lounge, a sizable bar. Movie theater, too, for that matter. Like the Chief said, there’s no reason to leave the hotel at all.”

  The surprise continued. The meat course was the best lamb, by far, that the IABI man had ever laid lip upon. It was so much a better rack of lamb than he had ever eaten before that he couldn’t believe it.

  He said to Mark Donald, after washing the first mouthful down with a swallow of excellent French rose that came chilled in a long-necked bottle, “I thought you didn’t have anything but rabbit and chicken up here.” Donald laughed in deprecation. “The Imperator of Basra sent it as a special present to Doc Ryan. Whole carcasses of it.”

  Pete eyed him. “The Imperator? Hell, he’s in oil. When Island One and the islands that followed really get into production with those SPS’s microwaving power down to Earth, the Iraqis will be up the creek with no means of propulsion.”

  Donald laughed lightly again. “Wizard. But he’s also got the space dream. Absolutely around the bend about it. From what I’ve heard, he’s stuck a couple of billion-odd dollars into Lagrange Five Corporation stock. Hedging his bets, I suppose. The oil can’t last forever anyway. He might as well get in on where the real action is going to be.”

  Pete took on some more of the superlative lamb. It wasn’t just the lamb. The vegetables and the salad were equally superb.

  He said, “These vegetables you grow up here are really in there.”

  “Eh?” the other said vaguely. Then, “Oh, yeah. We grow a lot of our vegetables hydroponically.”

  “Not all?”

  “Well, no,” the other admitted. “Not as yet. We even have to send up some dehydrated.”

  Pete said, “What you say about the Imperator and all the stock he’s bought gives me heart. I’ve got a few thousand in LFC common myself.”

  The other nodded to that. “I suppose just about everybody Earthside has.”

  Pete said, “How’d you get into this, Mark? I mean, what’s your background for being a Security lieutenant?”

  The other frowned slightly before saying, “I took my doctorate in the social sciences at New Kingston. Anthropology.”

  Pete regarded him, taken aback. “Doctorate? At New Kingston, eh? The first university to edge into the Ivy League in a century. It’s Doctor Solomon Ryan’s school too, isn’t it?”

  “That’s right. Try some of this wine. The Rothschild people sent it up from their own vineyards. Yeah, Doc Ryan and his colleagues first dreamed up the whole Lagrange Five Project at New Kingston. The Alma Mater still doesn’t get quite as many of the government and foundation grants as, say, Yale and Harvard, but we’re coming up fast.”

  Pete said, still murmuring pleasure at his dish, “Anthropology, eh? That was a favorite of mine when I was a kid. But there’s damn little future in it. Teaching is about all you can do on graduation. I dropped out when I got a chance to get into IABI. I used to specialize on the Aztecs and the other pre-Colombian Mexicans. Did you ever get into Lewis Henry Morgan’s Ancient Society, or his shorter work, Montezuma’s Dinner?”

  “Who?” the Security man said.

  Pete looked at the other, frowning. “Morgan. The Father of American Ethnology.”

  “Oh, him. Well, not much. Father of American Ethnology. Kind of old hat these days, isn’t he?”

  “I wouldn’t say so,” Pete said stiffly. “His comparisons of Aztec society to the gens system of Ancient Rome are revolutionary. Besides…”

  The Security man said, “About this afternoon. Would you like to take a crack at the data banks and see if you can locate your man from those photographs?”

  Pete put down his fork and sighed in repletion. “I suppose so. The sooner, the better. If that lead falls flat, damned if I know where to start, otherwise.”

  After a fantastic pastry dessert and a black cherry liqueur, Pete was feeling no pain as they took off for the data rooms.

  The offices could have been in the IABI building in Greater Washington: that was Pete Kapitz’s first reaction. Room after room of files and humming business machines, a dozen or so young men and women, all in white smocks, working over them, not bothering to look up as Donald and his charge passed through.

  They wound up in a small office equipped with the usual in scanners, boosters, a voco-typer, several screens, all clustered at one metallic desk-.

  “Here you are,” the Security man told him. “Ask for anything you want in this screen here.”

  Pete sat himself at the desk, put his attaché case before him. He sighed, “I suppose this’ll take me the rest of the day, and probably into at least tomorrow.”

  Mark Donald nodded at that. “Look,” he said, “you won’t be leaving the hotel. Suppose I go do some things that have accumulated. I’ll meet you in the dining room at eight-thirty. Then later we can go to the party. It should be quite a fling. The Prince has brought up everything except some of his mopsies, or his boys, or whatever he’s into.”

  “Wizard,” Pete said, opening his case and bringing forth the three photos he had showed Al Moore earlier.

  “See you then,” Donald said and left.

  Pete Kapitz looked after him for a moment and then down at the photos. They were fakes. The Inter-American Bureau of Investigation had no photos in its archives of Rocks Weil, nor any other clues to his identity. Nor did he, Peter Kapitz, have any belief whatsoever that the international jewel thief was in Island One. In fact, for all he knew, it had been Weil who had been shot by the French in Nice. If it hadn’t been for that romp in London that looked so much like a Rocks Weil job, Pete would have been inclined to write the other off for all time. But it was as good a cover as he could think of. Obviously, both Mark Donald and his superior, Commissioner Moore, had swallowed the story.

  For half an hour, he went through the motions of checking out the dossiers of the space colonists. Th
en he decided the hell with it. He might as well go out on the town and find what he could find. He still thought that Roy Thomas, the President’s brain-trust, had holes in his head when it came to the Lagrange Five Project. But an assignment was an assignment and he’d been promised a bonus. He’d pry into anything up here that looked as though it could use some prying into. Personally, he still had the space dream and thus far he’d seen precious little to chill it.

  He put the photos back into the attaché case and came to his feet preparatory to leaving.

  * * * *

  On the top floor of the L5 Hilton, Mark Donald reentered the office of the Commissioner of Security. Sergeant Joe Evola had just come in before him and was standing before Al Moore’s desk.

  “Sit down, boys,” Al told them. He looked them over. “Wizard,” he said. “You got anything to report on the trip up, Joe?”

  The taciturn Security man shook his head. “Not really, Al. It was standard routine. I sat around with this Kapitz and the little group he hung out with as often as possible.”

  “Who were they?” Donald said, taking out a notepad and stylo.

  “That writer guy, Bruce Carter. A new contract man, some electrician named Rick Venner, and that soft-headed mopsy Mary Beth Houston, the secretary of the Friends of Lagrange Five. Then there were a couple of others that’d come and go, sit in for a hand of cards or something.”

  “What’d they say about the project?” Al Moore said, his eyes narrow.

  “Standard stuff. The broad evidently thinks Lagrange Five shit doesn’t stink. Carter asks questions and listens, but doesn’t say much on his own.”

  “And Kapitz?”

  “He’s not as hot for it as the girl, nobody could be; but he’s obviously pretty keen about space colonies himself.”

  “He is, eh?” Moore mused. “Could be a bluff. He looked at Donald. “Where’s the bastard now?”

  “I left him in the data rooms, supposedly checking out Rocks Weil.”

  Moore nodded. “Now he thinks you’re out of his way, he’ll probably take off on his own, snooping.” He turned his eyes to Joe Evola. “Keep on him. We want to see if he makes a contact. The sonofabitch must have somebody up here. If the KGB has an operative in the island, there’s no reason to believe the IABI hasn’t.”