Astounding Science Fiction Stories: An Anthology of 350 Scifi Stories Volume 2 (Halcyon Classics)

by Various

  "Where do we sleep?" someone asked.

  * * * * *

  Orkap smiled. "You didn't come out here to sleep. There is only a limited amount of cargo. The jets are swift. You will be paid according to the amount of work you do. Any other questions?"

  "What about food?" a plump young Ophiuchan asked.

  "You will be given energy tablets, as many as you wish. Any other questions? No? Good. I have two additional things to say. First, you are not to examine your cargo under any circumstances, either here, or in transit, or on the spacefield. There are televid pick-up units in each jet, so you will be watched at all times. Second--" Orkap paused and let the silence grow and spread across the dazzling white expanse--"there is a spy among you, wearing the body of an Ophiuchan but in reality--well, I don't have to tell you who he is in reality." Orkap smiled grimly. "There is only one body-changer in the galaxy, but one is quite enough."

  One of the pilots said, a little breathlessly: "Johnny Mayhem!"

  Orkap smiled again. "I am aware of Mayhem's identity," he said, "but I'm not going to do anything about it."

  The pilots waited. The sun glared down balefully. "You see," Orkap told them, "we cannot be altogether sure that the rest of you are here simply to earn your twenty credits a flight. Mayhem has unwittingly become our insurance. Find Mayhem! Find the spy among you! A hundred credits bonus to the man who does!"

  * * * * *

  Pandit looked at Sria, who whistled. The girl said: "If they think we can finish the job without sleep, picking up cargo and flying it to the spaceport and returning for more, then a hundred credits is probably more than any of us will earn. They'll all be looking like hawks for this Mayhem."

  "And," Pandit agreed, "if there's a native spy among them, he'd be afraid to show himself for fear they'll think he's Mayhem. Very clever of the Denebians."

  "... to work at once," Orkap was saying. He wore a blaster on his hip, the only weapon among them. They all trudged behind him through the burning, faceless sands. Soon they reached a depression from which the sand had been cleared, baring the white bedrock of the Empty Places. In the rock a square opening had been cut, shielded on each side from the shifting sands by an up-curving lip. A ramp led down into darkness.

  "You will find your cargo down there. Also enough trundle-sleds to go around," Orkap explained. "The cargo is crated. The crates must remain intact. Is that understood?"

  It was understood.

  Their sudden mutual suspicion a pall worse than the heat, the Ophiuchans descended the ramp. They needed the money or they wouldn't be here. The money meant more to them than anything: this was no time to be far-sighted. Yet one of them was a spy for the Galactic League--Johnny Mayhem.

  One of them, but which?

  Pandit made a quick estimate of the number of crates. They were stacked neatly against one wall, each about four feet by four by four. And from the size of them, a single crate would fill the cargo bay of each of the jets. Pandit made a rough estimate. Two dozen crates, perhaps. In the dim light it was hard to tell. Two dozen crates, six jets, twelve Ophiuchans. Four trips for each jet. A half hour to load, ten minutes to unload, an hour and a half by jet to the spacefield. Three hours and forty minutes, round trip. Say, four hours. Four times four, sixteen. Sixteen hours of steady work for eighty credits. No time for mystery or suspicion. Barely time for mistrust....

  "You, there!" a voice called. "What are you doing?"

  It was one of the other Ophiuchans, quite the biggest of the lot. Pandit had seen him outside and remembered his name. He was Raj Shiva, a tall, muscular, swarthy Ophiuchan, with small, alert, suspicious eyes and a livid scar alongside his jaw.

  "Nothing," Pandit said. "Nothing."

  "No? The others are loading already. I'll be watching you."

  For a hundred credits, Pandit thought furiously, but said nothing. Sria touched his shoulder. "I have one of the trundle-sleds," she said. "Let's get about it."

  "Right," said Pandit.

  Raj Shiva watched them a few moments longer, then drifted away with his own partner. It took Pandit and Sria, sweating copiously in the tremendous heat, a few minutes less than half an hour to load one of the crates aboard their jet. Three of the other ships were already airborne, whining away toward the spacefield.

  Pandit looked at the crate. There were no markings on it anywhere. The wood looked new, but that meant absolutely nothing. In the dry heat of the Empty Places, wood would last a century, a millennium. They could not tell how old it was.

  * * * * *

  "Ready?" Sria Krishna called from the controls.

  Pandit had secured the crate in the cargo bay. "Ready," he responded.

  Moments later acceleration thrust them back in the twin pilot seats.

  Sria leveled the jet at twenty thousand and they sped at eight hundred miles an hour toward the city and the spacefield just beyond it.

  "Do you wonder about it?" Sria asked after a while.

  "About what?"

  "The cargo."

  "We aren't supposed to."

  "I know." Sria laughed. "I'm a woman, you see."

  Pandit grinned at her. "Curiosity," he said. "A woman's trait on any world."

  Sria got up from the pilot chair but Pandit placed his hand on her shoulder and gently shoved her down again. "They have a televid unit aboard," he said, "remember?"

  Sria nodded. The jet sped on.

  They landed at the spacefield. They were the fourth jet down and one of the other three had taken off on the return leg of the flight. A Denebian Pandit had never seen before was supervising the loin-cloth garbed laborers loading the crates aboard a Denebian spaceship. With Sria he delivered their crate on the trundle-sled, returned with the sled to their jet, and took off.

  * * * * *

  Just short of four hours from the time they started they returned to the Empty Places. They had gained a little time and were the second team down. From the jet ahead of them, Raj Shiva led a puny, middle-aged co-pilot.

  Orkap stood in the underground storage room. Looking at his wrist chrono he said to the four Ophiuchans who came down the ramp: "You made fine time." Raj Shiva's puny companion said something, but Raj Shiva grabbed his arm and they began to load a second crate. Pandit and Sria loaded theirs in silence.

  They made their second round trip in four hours exactly. It was completely dark when they returned to the Empty Places. Sria was worried they would overshoot the cargo point, but Pandit brought the little jet down within a few hundred yards of its takeoff point.

  They could see nothing when they shut off the jet's running lights, except for the glow which came from the underground room. They reached it and went down the ramp. Pandit judged that half the crates were gone now. He took a quick tour of the dimly-lit room while Sria got the trundle-sled into position against one of the crates.

  "Nobody here," Pandit said in a whisper. "The Denebian must be sleeping in the sand-sled."

  "Yes," Sria said a little breathlessly.

  "I was thinking--"

  "What?" Sria said. "Don't stop."

  "If we wanted to examine one of the boxes, it would be suicide to open the one we take. But we could open one of them down here, see what it is, take another for ourselves--"

  "You would do this?" Sria asked him. "Why?"

  Pandit shrugged. "I have eyes," he said. "Our gurus did not broadcast the death-wish to outworlders until the Denebians came. Then they started. Have the Denebians sold them on the idea?"

  "I don't know," Sria said.

  "Well, let's assume they have. Why? Why would they do such a thing, Sria?"

  * * * * *

  "Let me get this straight, Pandit. First, you think the gurus actually are making the outworlders kill themselves?"

  "Of course," Pandit said. "It's mental suggestion, on a scale only our gurus are capable of. But don't you see, Sria, they wouldn't do it on their own. The gurus are dirty, careless about their bodies--but terribly arrogant. Left alone, they wouldn't thi
nk the outworlders important enough to be concerned over one way or another. They certainly wouldn't kill them."

  "Go on," Sria urged.

  "All right. The gurus have great knowledge of the mystical, but externally they're naive. Let's suppose someone came along--the Denebians in this case--and found something they wanted very badly on Ophiuchus. These crates here, Sria. What would they do? They'd go to the gurus and convince them--it wouldn't be difficult--that any intercourse with outworlders would be harmful to Ophiuchus, that the outworlders want to colonize and exploit our world, that sort of thing. While the gurus are stewing it over, the Denebians could have prepared this shipment here--whatever it is--for departure. But the gurus, too well convinced by them, could have acted sooner than they expected, making it all but impossible for the small handful of outworlders, the Denebians among them, to go abroad without fear of taking their own lives. Perhaps a few, like Orkap and that other Denebian, are not at all suicide-prone. Perhaps a few can withstand it. As for the rest, it's indoors and away from the mental influence of the gurus, or off Ophiuchus entirely. Which would leave the Denebians with a problem they hadn't thought of." His words made sense.

  "Yes!" cried Sria excitedly. "Now that they have their valuable cargo ready to go, how can they get it off Ophiuchus without help?"

  "We," said Pandit softly, "are that help."

  Sria asked: "What are you going to do about it?"

  "I don't know. I honestly don't. I never had anything against the outworlders. How could I? We're all progeny of outworlders who came here almost five hundred years ago from a place called India on Earth. But the gurus--"

  "--have been deceived. You said so yourself."

  Pandit was sweating, and it was more than the heat which made him sweat. He paced up to the crates, then back again, then to the crates. Suddenly he said, "All right. All right, I'll do it. Someone's got to find out what the Denebians want here."

  And Pandit began to pry at one of the boxes with a knife he carried in his loin cloth. Sria said, "I'll keep watch. You call me when it's opened."

  "Maybe you ought to get out of here. In case anything happens, I don't want to get you involved."

  But Sria went up the ramp and crouched there, waiting, watching. The desert was very quiet, entirely windless, and hot even at night. Stars sprinkled the sky overhead and far off she thought she heard the distant whine of a jet. "Hurry," she called. From below she heard the sound of wood being pried away from wood. She heard, or imagined she heard, the jet coming closer. "Hurry!" she called softly.

  Finally three words drifted up to her. "Come here, Sria." She felt a little relieved. Now that he'd finished.

  * * * * *

  She listened for the jet. Now she heard nothing. She went swiftly down the ramp.

  Pandit stood before one of the crates, perspiring freely. He had pried loose one of the side walls and a smooth metal surface with stenciled lettering on it was exposed.

  He said: "I can't read that. It's a language I never saw before."

  Sria bent closer and looked at the stenciled lettering. A voice, not Pandit's, said:

  "I thought it would be you two.... No, don't move!"

  A big muscular figure silhouetted against the starlight, and a smaller, puny, thin-legged figure. Raj Shiva and his co-pilot.

  "A hundred credits each, Handus," Raj Shiva said as he ran down the ramp. "Can you keep the girl from getting away?"

  Handus rushed down at his heels.

  Pandit met Raj Shiva at the foot of the ramp. Pandit was a big man by Ophiuchan standards, but Raj Shiva was bigger. "Run, Sria!" Pandit cried, and met the giant with his knife.

  Raj Shiva parried the blow with his forearm, then his big hands moved swiftly and the knife clattered to the floor. Sria ran for the ramp, her bare feet padding swiftly against the stone floor. Handus was waiting for her at the foot of the ramp in an awkward crouch. She had a glimpse of Raj Shiva and Pandit straining together, then Handus struck her with his balled fist. It was a puny blow, but Sria staggered back, her jaw numb. Laughing shrilly, Handus leaped at her. She was shoved back, tripped over something, and fell. For a moment all the lights blinked out inside her head.

  Inside--no! Raj Shiva and Pandit stumbled about the room, struck something, there was a loud popping sound, a tinkling, and the lights in the storage room went out.

  "Where is she?" Handus called. "I can't find her!"

  She heard him groping about, heard the others struggling together. She got to her feet and stood perfectly still, waiting for anything. She wished she had a weapon--something--she was only a woman--

  Then a voice whispered: "Hurry, Sria! Hurry!"

  "Pandit?"

  He took her arm in the darkness. She couldn't see him. They went to the crates and wrestled one on their trundle-sled.

  "Not the open one?" Sria gasped.

  "No. No."

  They heard footsteps.... Saw a figure for a moment silhouetted against starlight. Handus was fleeing, probably for help.

  They took their sled out into the night and dragged it across the sand toward their waiting jet. They loaded the crate in the cargo bay. While Pandit was finishing the job in the darkness, Sria sat down at the controls.

  "Ready?" she shouted above the whine of the jets.

  Pandit said that he was. She hardly heard his voice.

  A moment later, she took the small cargo jet up.

  * * * * *

  She heard Pandit moving in the small cabin behind her. She said: "We ought to take it to the League authorities, don't you think?" She had to shout to be heard above the whining roar of the jets.

  "Why?"

  "I was able to read the writing. It's Procyonian, Pandit. Do you know anything about the Procyonians?"

  "Well, a few centuries ago, they were the most warlike people in the galaxy. It was rumored they had a cache of thermonuclear bombs hidden somewhere, after such weapons were outlawed in the twenty-fifth century. The cache was never found, until tonight. We found it, Pandit."

  "But Orkap and--"

  "That's true. It was found by the Denebians first. Don't you see, Pandit? Orkap and the others, private Denebian traders. It wasn't the government. It never is the government these days. But unscrupulous individuals, Pandit, armed with two dozen hydrogen bombs--why, they could take over their own world on threat of imminent destruction, or some outworld plum they had their eye on, or--"

  "I see." Pandit's voice was barely audible above the whine of the jets.

  "It's a job the Galactic League can handle," Sria went on. "Now that it's out in the open--or will be as soon as we get to the spacefield. You've done your work, Pandit, and your people won't forget you for it. As for me, my work here is finished too."

  "Your work?"

  Above the roar of the jet, Sria shouted: "Yes. I am Johnny Mayhem." She smiled in the darkness. Johnny Mayhem, she thought, in a girl's body. Well, he'd been young men and old, weak and strong, sick and healthy, human and alien outworlder--so why not a girl too?

  * * * * *

  All at once Pandit's hand lay heavily on her shoulder. She turned around and in the darkness but with the lights of the instrument board on it saw the gleam of a knife blade. The face beyond the blade, leering from darkness, was not Pandit's. She hadn't actually known it was Pandit. She hadn't seen him. She'd hardly been able to hear his voice.

  It was Raj Shiva.

  "Fly us to Denebian Exports," he said, "or I'll kill you and do it myself."

  "You're making a mistake. Your people belong with the Galactic League, not with a handful of adventurers who--"

  "The Denebians are right," Raj Shiva said fanatically. "My people would be better off left alone."

  "I'm flying this jet to the spaceport--and the League."

  "I'll kill you. I know all about you, Mayhem. You're not a woman, really. You're not even a native. That's a dead body, isn't it? But if I kill it--again--while you're in it, you die to. You'll do what I say!"

  * * * *
*

  This very night, unless something was done about it, the cache of thermonuclear weapons would be space-bound, the first hydrogen bombs loose in the galaxy for almost five hundred years. Wouldn't mankind ever begin to learn? Mayhem-Sria thought wearily. He knew the answer, of course: most men would, but the few who refused could bring destruction to an entire galaxy....

  Moments before, apparent success of a mission. Now, failure. Or death. Or both.

  Sria's hand flashed out suddenly and struck the instrument board. The jet plummeted earthward with a loud whining sound. Sria felt herself shoved back by the tremendous acceleration into the cushions of the pilot chair. She heard a wild exclamation from Raj Shiva, but couldn't turn around to see what had happened. Grim-lipped, she kept the ship hurtling Earthward. She knew it was dangerous and might even prove disastrous. Her body could take so much, then she would black out. But if she didn't maintain the dive until the last possible instant, Raj Shiva would get control of the ship and its vital cargo. She was only a girl, but she was protected by the crash-padding of the pilot chair. Raj Shiva, unprotected, was behind her somewhere....

  Down through the thin upper atmosphere of Ophiuchus IX screamed the small ship, its heat-dial blinking on and off in warning as friction scorched its thin shell. The scream of air became more deep-throated as the atmosphere became thicker....

  Ten thousand feet.

  Eight thousand.

  Six.

  Sria's eyes saw black. Her breath was labored. Needles of pain darted in her skull, plucked at her eyes. She opened her mouth to scream but heard nothing. She felt as if she must be forced clear through the protective cushions of the pilot chair.

  Five thousand feet.

  Four thousand.

  Blackness and peace and a settling lassitude....

  Three thousand feet.

  With hands that would barely function, Sria with supreme effort brought the jet out of its death-dive. She slumped in the pilot chair for a long time, too weak to do anything else.