Agent of Vega and Other Stories

by James H. Schmitz

  Camhorn said, "There's no question at all, of course, that the space transport your boys picked up is the one we're interested in. But is it absolutely certain that our YM-400 is no longer on board?"

  Fry shrugged. "It's certain that it isn't in the compartment where it was stored for the trip—and the locks to that compartment have been forced. It's possible that whoever removed the two YM cases has concealed them in some other part of the ship. That would be easy to do, but . . ."

  Camhorn shook his head. "No," he said. "Nobody would benefit from that. I'm afraid we'll have to resign ourselves to the fact that the stuff has been taken."

  Fry said, "It looks like it. The police search will go on until your own investigators get there, but there's no reason to believe anything will be found."

  "The ship's course had been reset so that it was headed into unoccupied space?"

  "Yes," said Fry. "It was only by a very improbable coincidence that an IPA boat happened to spot it. The transport's new course wouldn't have brought it anywhere near a traffic lane, inhabited planet, or normal patrol route. Three weeks later, when its fuel was exhausted, the planted explosives would have blown it up without a chance that the wreckage would ever be detected."

  "How about the cargo? Have you heard about that? Was it otherwise intact?"

  "As far as we can tell. The shippers will check everything in detail when the freighter gets back to port. But it's a good guess that the Overgovernment's YM-400 is the only item missing."

  Camhorn nodded. "A group which was planning to pick it up wouldn't be very interested in ordinary loot. That seems to make it conclusive." He wrinkled his nose reflectively. "Modus operandi?" he asked.

  "Two possibilities," Fry said. "They had themselves loaded aboard with the cargo, or they intercepted the transport en route and entered it in flight."

  "Which do you like?"

  "The first. In fact, the other is hardly a possibility. Even the IPA couldn't get aboard a modern automatic freighter between ports without setting off an explosion of alarms in every flight control station on its course. No such alarm was recorded. And there is no indication of a forcible entry."

  "So our thieves had themselves loaded on," said Camhorn. "Now, Gus, I've always been under the impression that the check system which keeps stowaways out of the automatic transports was foolproof."

  The IPA Chief shrugged. "It's been foolproof so far. But not because it was impossible to circumvent. It's simply that circumventing the check system would add up to so enormously expensive a proposition that the total cash value of a transport and its cargo wouldn't be worth the trouble. These people definitely were not considering expenses."

  "Apparently not," Camhorn said. "So how did they get the YM-400 off the ship?"

  "They had a small boat loaded on board with them. That's a supposition, so far; they left very few traces of their activities. But it's the only way the thing could have been done. They had obtained exact information of the transport's plotted route and time schedule. At a calculated point, they picked up the two cases of YM, rerouted the ship, timed and planted their explosives, disconnected the alarm system at the entry lock, and left in the boat. Naturally, another ship was moving along with the freighter by then, waiting to pick them up. That's all there was to it."

  "You make it sound simple," said Camhorn.

  "The difficulty," said Gus Fry, "would be in preparing such an operation. No matter how much money these people could lay on the line, they must have spent several months in making the necessary arrangements without once alerting the port authorities."

  "They had enough time," Camhorn admitted reflectively. "YM-400 has been shipped for a number of years in the same manner and over the same route."

  "I've been wondering," Fry remarked, "why this manner of shipping it was selected."

  Camhorn smiled briefly. "When was the last time an automatic transport was hijacked, Gus?"

  "Fifty-seven years ago," Fry said. "And the method employed then wouldn't have worked on a modern transport, or under the present check system."

  "Well, that's part of your answer. Automatic shipping risks have become negligible. The rest of the answer is that we've avoided too obviously elaborate safeguards for YM-400. If we put it on a battleship each time it was moved, the technological espionage brethren would hear about it. Which means that everybody who might be interested would hear about it. And once the word got out, we'd start losing the stuff regardless of safeguards to people who'd be willing to work out for themselves just what made it so valuable to the Overgovernment. As it is, this is the first sample of YM-400 to go astray in the thirty-two years we've had it."

  "Two thirty-four kilogram cases," Fry said. "Is that a significant amount?"

  "I'm afraid it's an extremely significant amount," Camhorn said wryly.

  Fry hesitated, said, "There's something very odd about this, Howard. . . ."

  "What's that?"

  "I had the definite impression a few hours ago that you were almost relieved to hear about the transport."

  Camhorn studied him for a few seconds. "As a matter of fact," he said, "I was. Because of one thing. If this hadn't been obviously a criminal act, humanly engineered—if the transport, say, had simply blown up en route or vanished without giving an alarm . . ."

  "Vanished without giving an alarm?" Fry repeated slowly. "Without human intervention?"

  "If," said Camhorn, "any least part of the YM-400 it was carrying had been radioactive, I wouldn't have been surprised to learn something like that had happened. But, of course, the shipment was stable. And stable YM-400 has shown no more disturbing potentialities to date than the equivalent amount of pig iron. If it ever develops them, the research programs connected with the substance will be indefinitely delayed. They may have to be abandoned." He gave Fry his lazy smile. "Does that explain my apparent relief, Gus?"

  "More or less," Gus Fry said. "Would it be a calamity if those particular programs had to be abandoned?"

  "The Overgovernment would consider it a calamity, yes."

  "Why?"

  "If and when," said Camhorn, "the bugs get worked out of YM-400, it may ensure our future control of space against any foreseeable opposition."

  Fry kept his face carefully expressionless.

  "So, naturally," Camhorn went on, "we'd prefer to keep dissident groups from playing around with the substance, or becoming aware of its possibilities."

  Fry said, "There seems to be at least one dissident group which has much more complete information about YM-400 than, for example, the Interstellar Police Authority."

  Camhorn shook his head. "We can't say how much they really knew, Gus. The theft might have been arranged as a speculative operation. There's enough loose money in large quantities around to make that quite possible."

  Fry grunted. "Do you have any definite suspects?"

  "A great many. Unfortunately, there seems to be at least some probability that the people involved won't turn out to be among them. However, those lists will provide an immediate starting point. They're being transferred to the IPA today."

  "Thanks," Fry said sourly.

  "I wouldn't do it if I didn't have to, Gus. Our Research investigators can't begin to cope with a number like that. They will cooperate with you closely, of course."

  "Nobody else will," said Fry. "I've come to the conclusion that our current populations are the least cooperative people in the history of the race."

  Camhorn nodded. "Naturally."

  "Naturally? Why should they be? Most of them are a little short of living space—unless they're willing to put up with frontier conditions—but otherwise humanity's never had it so good. They're not repressed; they're babied along—nine-tenths of the time anyway. They do just about as they damn well please. Thirty percent of them won't turn out a stroke of honest work from the beginning of their lives to the end."

  "True enough. And you've described an almost perfect setting for profound discontent. Which is being caref
ully maintained, by the way. We don't want humanity to go to sleep entirely just yet. Gus, how much do you know personally about YM-400?"

  "Nothing," said Fry. "Now and then some rumor about it comes to the IPA's attention. Rumors of that kind go into our files as a matter of course. I see the files."

  "Well, then," said Camhorn, "what rumors have you seen?"

  "I can give you those," Fry said, "in a few sentences. YM—or YM-400—is an element rather recently discovered by the Overgovernment's scientists; within the past few decades. It has the property of 'transmuting space-time stresses'—that's the rumor, verbatim. In that respect, it has some unspecified association with Riemann space phenomena. It has been located in a star system which lies beyond the areas officially listed as explored, and which at present is heavily guarded by Overgovernment ships. In this system is an asteroid belt, constituting the remnants of a planet broken up in an earlier period by YM action. And three," Fry added, grinning wolfishly, "I can even bring in a factual detail. I know that there is such a guarded system, and that it contains nothing but its star and the asteroid belt referred to. I could give you its location, but I'm sure you're familiar with it."

  Camhorn nodded. "I am. Any other rumors?"

  "I think that sums them up."

  "Well," Camhorn said judiciously, "if the IPA is to be of much use to us in this investigation, it should be better informed than that. The rumors are interesting, though satisfactorily inaccurate. YM-400, to begin with, is not a single element. It's a compound of several elements of the same series. The symbol attached to it is quite meaningless. . . ."

  "For security reasons?"

  "Of course. Now, with one notable exception, all elements in this series were discovered during the Overgovernment's investigation of Riemann space properties in the two intragalactic creation areas we have mapped to date. As you may recall, that program was initiated forty-five years ago. The elements we're talking about are radioactive: half-life of up to an hour. It was suspected they had a connection with the very curious, apparently random distortions of space-time factors found in the creation areas, but their essential properties made it impossible to produce them in sufficient quantity for a sufficient length of time to conduct a meaningful examination.

  "Ymir, the last element of this series, was not discovered in the same areas, or at the same time. It was located ten years later, in stable trace-quantities in the asteroid belt you've mentioned, and to date it has not been found anywhere else. Ymir is a freak. It is chemically very similar to the rest of the series and has an unstable structure. Theoretically, its presence as and where it was found was an impossibility. But it was recognized eventually that Ymir produces a force field which inhibits radioactivity. Until the field is interfered with the element is stable. . . ."

  "What interferes with it?"

  Camhorn grinned. "People. Until it's deliberately tampered with, Ymir is changeless—as far as we know. Furthermore it will, in compound, extend its inhibiting field effect instantaneously to three other elements of the same series. A very fortunate circumstance, because Ymir has been found only in minute amounts, and unknown factors still prevent its artificial production. The other three elements are produced readily, and since a very small proportion of Ymir retains them in stable—or pseudostable—form, they can be conserved indefinitely."

  "That's the YM-400 compound?" Fry asked.

  "That's it."

  Fry said thoughtfully, "Perhaps I should remind you, Howard, that this conversation is being recorded."

  Camhorn nodded. "That's all right. Now that we know someone else is in possession of sixty-eight kilograms of YM-400, we're confronted with radically altered circumstances. The loss incurred by the theft isn't important in itself. The Ymir component in such a quantity is detectable almost only by its effects, and the other components can be produced at will.

  "The question is how much the people who have the stolen compound in their hands actually know about it. We would prefer them to know several things. For example, up to a point YM-400 is easily handled. It's a comparatively simple operation to reduce or restore the force field effect. The result is a controlled flow of radioactivity from the compound, or its cessation. Now, you've mentioned having heard that YM-400 transmutes space-time stresses—"

  Fry nodded.

  "Well," Camhorn said, "as a matter of fact, that's exactly what it appears to do—as was surmised originally of the unstable elements in the series. The active compound transmutes space-time stresses into a new energy with theoretically predictable properties. Theoretically, for example, this new energy should again be completely controllable. Have you picked up any rumors of what our experiments with the substance were supposed to achieve?"

  Fry said, "Yes. I forgot that. I've heard two alternate theories. One is that the end result will be an explosive of almost unimaginable violence. The other is that you're working to obtain a matter transmitter—possibly one with an interstellar range."

  Camhorn nodded. "Potentially," he said, "YM-400 is an extremely violent explosive. No question about it. The other speculation—it isn't actually too far-fetched—well, that would be the equivalent of instantaneous space-travel, wouldn't it?"

  Fry shrugged. "I suppose so."

  "However," Camhorn said, "we haven't transmitted even a speck of matter as yet. Not deliberately, at any rate. Do you know why, Gus?"

  "No. How would I?"

  "No rumors on that, eh? I'll tell you. YM-400, when activated even in microquantities, immediately initiates the most perverse, incalculable effects ever to confront an experimenter. There has been, flatly, no explanation for them. I've had ordinarily unimpressionable physicists tell me with tears in their eyes that space-time is malevolently conscious of us, and of our attempts to manipulate it—that it delights in frustrating those attempts."

  Gus Fry grinned sourly. "Perhaps they're right."

  "As it happens," Camhorn observed, "the situation is very un-funny, Gus. Experiments with YM-400 have, to date, produced no useful results—and have produced over eleven hundred casualties. Most of the latter were highly trained men and women, not easily replaced."

  Fry studied him incredulously. "You say these accidents have not been explained?"

  Camhorn shook his head. "If they were explicable after the event," he said, "very few of them would have happened in the first place. I assure you there's been nothing sloppy about the manner in which the project has been conducted, Gus. But as it stands today, it's a flop. If the stakes were less high, it would have been washed out ten years ago. And, as I said before, if there were reason to believe that the stable compound was involved in the disappearance of a space transport, we probably would postpone further operations indefinitely. One such occurrence would raise the risks to the intolerable level."

  Fry grunted. "Is that what those accidents were like? Things—people—disappear?"

  "Well . . . some of them were of that general nature."

  Fry cleared his throat. "Just tell me one more thing, Howard."

  "What's that?"

  "Has any part of what you've said so far been the truth?"

  Camhorn hesitated an instant. "Gus," he said then, "can you erase your question and my reply from the recording?"

  "Of course."

  "Erase them, please. Then blank out our further conversation."

  * * *

  A few seconds later, Fry said, "All right. You're off the record."

  "Most of what I told you was the truth," Camhorn said, leaning back in his chair. "Perhaps not all of it. And perhaps I haven't told you the whole truth. But we're out to spread some plausible rumors, Gus. We could not afford to get caught in obvious lies."

  Fry reddened slowly. "You feel the Interstellar Police Authority will spread those rumors?"

  "Of course it will. Be realistic, Gus. Naturally, you'll transmit the information I've given you only to qualified personnel. But there'll be leaks, and . . . well, what better authentication can we have fo
r a rumor than precisely such a source?"

  "If you know of any potential leaks among the IPA's 'qualified personnel,' " Fry said, "I'd appreciate seeing the names."

  "Don't be stuffy, Gus," Camhorn said affably. "We're not slandering the Authority. We're banking on the law of averages. As you've indicated, the IPA can't be expected to carry out this investigation unless it's given some clues to work on. We're giving it those clues. In the process, we expect to start the spread of certain rumors. That's all to the good."

  "But what's the purpose?"

  "I've told you that. Our criminals may or may not be caught as quickly as we'd like. The group actually in the know may be—probably is—quite small. But they should have a widespread organization, and they'll be alert for counteraction now. They certainly will get the information we want them to have, whether it comes to them through the IPA or through some other channel; and that should be enough to keep them from committing any obvious stupidities. Meanwhile, we'll have avoided making the information public."

  "We want to make sure they know—if they don't already know it—that YM-400 is unpredictably dangerous. That leaves them with several choices of action. They can abandon those two thirty-four-kilogram cases, or simply keep them concealed until they obtain more complete information about the material. Considering the manner in which the theft was prepared and carried out, neither is a likely possibility. These people are not ignorant, and they aren't easily frightened—and they certainly have the resources to handle any expense factor."

  Fry nodded.

  "The probability is," Camhorn went on, "that they'll evaluate the warning contained in these rumors realistically, but proceed with experimentation—perhaps more cautiously than they would have done otherwise."

  "Which is as much as we hope to accomplish. I've told you of the losses among our personnel. We have no real objection to seeing someone else attempt to pull a few chestnuts out of the fire for us. That's the secondary purpose of sacrificing some quite valid information. By the time we catch up with our friends, we expect the sacrifice will have been—in one way or another—to our advantage."