The 8th Golden Age of Science Fiction MEGAPACK ™: Milton Lesser

by Milton Lesser

  Orkap said, "Go ahead," and the radio voice did so.

  In a shocked voice Orkap admitted: "I've given that Ophiuchan a pilot's job this morning. There can't be any doubt about it."

  "Ah, then you see? You see?"

  "I can fix that. I can—"

  "Orkap, Orkap. You'll do nothing now. Let the spy alone for now. Then, in the Empty Places, you will merely announce to the pilots that there is a spy among them. Don't reveal who it is." He could not believe his ears.

  "But—"

  "They want work. They need work. They'll all be afraid the finger of guilt may point at them. They'll work like dogs for you, and I wouldn't be surprised if they uncovered the spy themselves."

  "Yes," Orkap said. "Yes, I understand."

  "All but one thing, Orkap. There is one thing you don't understand. The spy's identity—"

  "You already told me who the spy was."

  "Yes. But there is another spy. Working for us, in the League building."

  "I never knew," said Orkap.

  "The spy among your pilots is more than appearance indicates. Did you ever hear of Johnny Mayhem?"

  Orkap's heart jumped into his throat. Who in the galaxy hadn't heard of Mayhem? "But," he gasped, "a—"

  "Nevertheless. It is Mayhem."

  Orkap was suddenly afraid, more afraid than he had ever been in his life. The ubiquitous Mayhem.

  * * * *

  The fierce white sun of Ophiuchus IX broiled down on the Empty Places, a featureless desert two-thousand miles across and as lividly white as bleached bone. In all that burning emptiness, the jet cargo craft looked very small and very insignificant, like black midges on the dead white sand.

  Midges among midges, the new pilots walked.

  One said: "But I see no cargo."

  Another: "These outworlders and their mystery...."

  All were sweating, all uncomfortable, but all grateful for the twenty credits a flight they would earn, whatever the cargo turned out to be.

  "What do you think?" Pandit asked Sria.

  "I think I've never been so hot in my life. I feel like I'm being broiled alive."

  "Here comes the Denebian now."

  They had been driven into the Empty Places in a sand sled. The trip had taken two days but because the sled was air-conditioned no one had objected. When they saw the half dozen jets they knew why a sled had taken them into the wilderness. The jets were small cargo-carriers with room for pilot, co-pilot and perhaps a ton of cargo in each. Whatever it was the Denebians wanted exported, it didn't take up much room.

  Orkap of Deneb walked toward them past the first of the jets. He began without preamble: "Your cargo is packed and ready to be moved in an underground vault five hundred yards from here. You will break up into pairs, a pilot and co-pilot for each jet." Sria Krishna and Pandit had already paired themselves together. "You work on your own time, getting the cargo with trundle-sleds, loading it, taking off, delivering it to the Denebian freighter at the spaceport. When you are finished, you collect your pay."

  "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 think 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 silhouett
ed 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.