Space Service

by Andre Norton

  “That’s an interstellar ship coming in,” announced Hane, returning.

  “Mariel” snapped Ramsay. “Come away from that window and get me a face-to-face with Fuller. Right now—before I pop off with apoplexy and cheat the Delthigans of their revenge!”

  She sped out the door. Hane continued to watch out the window as Ramsay tramped about the office. He was still pacing ten minutes later, when the girl returned.

  “They can’t get him,” she reported.

  Ramsay reached her in two strides.

  “What do you mean? Are communications out?”

  “No, no; they got through to Bormek V for me. Mr. Fuller had stopped back and received your last message, but he went off again to arrange something else, and . . . and . . . the Bormekian operators can’t reach him.”

  “Oh, fine! Did they say he was doing anything about those projectors?”

  “Yes, I asked. They said he ordered them sent directly to Delthig III to speed up delivery as much as possible.”

  The silence in the office became so marked that they could hear the working of the air lock outside as the truck came in off the field. “I quit!” said Ramsay.

  He turned to Hane.

  “What ships of mine are out there?”

  “There were two; but they blasted off for IV just before Puag Tukhi came.”

  “When are more due in?”

  “A fleet of four might be here by tomorrow night.”

  Ramsay groaned.

  “Worse than I thought! I can’t quit before that squid will get back with his story and maybe even have their films on the way up here. They have cinemas; they must have something ready.”

  “Couldn’t you explain to Mr. Neuberg?” asked Marie.

  He looked at her.

  “You know,” he said thoughtfully, “you’re much too pretty a girl to be just a secretary. I ought to make you an executive assistant.”

  “Why, thank you, Mr. Ramsay. I—”

  “And the first execution you can go to will be Neuberg’s—unless you can convince him Fuller sent me permission!”

  “But—”

  “I tried to tell him, but he has his orders,” said Ramsay, urging her toward the door with a firm grip on her arm. “Now, you try it. All you have to do is make him forget to ask for a look at the filmed message.”

  “I could offer to act in another demonstration.”

  “Good, good!” he approved, marching through her small office and easing her into the corridor.

  He started her off down the corridor with a little shove. A short, sturdy young man wearing a space officer’s cap rakishly slanted atop curly yellow hair stepped politely out of her way in his course up the hall. He approached Ramsay.

  “I’m Donovan,” he said. “Chief pilot of the Silver Comet from Cagsan IX. You Ramsay?”

  “That’s right.”

  “I got fifty million ears for you.”

  Ramsay looked at him.

  “How’s that, friend?” he queried.

  Donovan stared back curiously. He flipped the pages of the manifest in his hand.

  “Frozen corn. On the cob. Fifty million ears tabbed as a luxury item for . . . lemme see here . . . ‘for government officials of Delthig III.’ ”

  Ramsay shook his head slightly, and Donovan’s face swam back into focus.

  “Mr. Fuller, of the B.S.T., said—”

  Ramsay wearily turned away, reaching back to point at the office behind him.

  “Tell Mr. Hane all about it,” he pleaded. “I’m . . . it’s my watch off. I believe I’ll go lie down a little while—”

  Just before he reached his quarters, he heard running footsteps behind him. One of the communications men caught up, waving a message memo.

  “An alert from Delthig III, Mr. Ramsay.”

  “What!”

  “That high mucky-muck that was up here talked to them from his ship, and they sent a message saying they’re shooting some movies up here by mail rocket.”

  “Oh,” said Ramsay. “That will come under Mr. Neuberg’s department. Take them to his ship when they land and let him figure out what to do with them. Er . . . just a minute!”

  “Yes, Mr. Ramsay?”

  “You techs . . . ah, generally have something stowed away for every emergency. Happen to have anything to . . . discourage a headache, if you see what I mean?”

  The operator grinned and winked.

  “I’ll look around. Might be something in the files.”

  The next morning, awakened again by the chiming of the intercom beside his bed, Ramsay found that he had a real headache. The motion of sitting up in bed caused him to clutch frantically at his temples.

  The bing-bing-bing persisted. When he reached for the visor, he managed to knock a large but empty bottle to the floor. He fumbled at the set until he had the video cut off, then answered the call. “Ramsay?” demanded Hane’s voice. “Are you there?”

  “Mostly. What’s up now?”

  “We can’t quite tell,” said Hane, “but I think you had better get over to the office.”

  Ramsay switched off, wondering if he could get to the shower without dropping his head.

  When he reached his office, he found Hane and Marie waiting, with a pair of television operators loitering in the background. Hane waited for Ramsay to ease himself tenderly into his chair, then gestured for the pair to tell their story.

  Ramsay listened with growing dismay to the account of an audio message just received from Delthig III.

  “And it sounded like Puag Tukhi, you say? But you’re not sure?”

  “No video, Mr. Ramsay,” the operator shrugged. “Besides, like I say, he sort of got off the track after saying something about you making trouble.”

  “That,” explained Hane, “was where he lapsed into his own vernacular, so to speak. I listened to the transcription, and one would have to be well versed in Delthigan to understand it.”

  “Why?” asked Ramsay. “Was he that excited?”

  “I think he was cursing you!”

  “What?”

  “It was too fast for me to catch, and some of the words seemed very strange; but I judged mainly by his tone of voice.”

  Ramsay absorbed this with a poker face, and dismissed the operators to monitor the Delthigan communication band. When they left, he rested his head in his hands a moment before asking, “Either of you got any idea what we’ve done this time?”

  “Everything seemed fine,” said Marie blankly.

  “We received another shipment of laborers,” said Hane thoughtfully. “Whatever happened must have done so since they left the planet. Then, too, the Delthigan films for Neuberg came in by radio-controlled rocket.”

  “That was last night,” Marie told Ramsay. “You . . . er, had that ‘Don’t Disturb’ sign on your door, so we just took them over to Mr. Neuberg.”

  “What were they about?” asked Ramsay absent-mindedly.

  “I don’t know. He said he’d start using them right away—after I talked to him again, for a little while.”

  “There might be one on now,” suggested Hane.

  The girl walked over to where the cheap, one-channel set rested on a file cabinet. She turned it on, and in a few seconds Ramsay began to see what was happening.

  By luck, they caught the end of a Delthigan propaganda film which Neuberg’s technicians had evidently managed to project and relay. The language was too fast for Hane, the only one of them who knew any Delthigan, but the general import of the speeches was clear,

  Those shots of factories! thought Ramsay. No real workers ever looked that happy and dedicated to their jobs. And the farm scenes between ones of the old squid with the star-maps—looking at the stuff growing isn’t filling any Delthigan bellies, but the whole thing is obviously a shot in the arm to try to convince them they’re well off.

  “I liked Mr. Neuberg’s pictures better,” Marie announced. “He actually had some made of all the things we’re sending down there—teles
creens, the gold and silver braid for the generals, and even a piece of cloth being colored bright red with some of that dye from Fegash.”

  Ramsay thought of the dingy gray loincloths of the laborers sent by Puag Tukhi. Even that official, he recalled, had worn a tunic of dull and sleazy goods.

  What a deadly parallel! he thought.

  “And did he show any projectors?”

  “No,” Marie told him, “there weren’t any pictures of those, but he did film a good one of the old scrap dumps out behind the domes. He wants the Delthigans to know they’re paying for all their imports.”

  “Paying, all right,” murmured Ramsay, “but who down there is doing the receiving?”

  “I saw some of them,” remarked Hane. “Ones about household gadgets and food. He even had our charming executive assistant nibble on a couple of ears of corn.”

  “I don’t suppose,” commented Ramsay deliberately, “that anyone explained in the film that the cobs aren’t edible?”

  They looked at him blankly. He tried to imagine how it would feel to be a starved, overworked Delthigan, in a steel mill, say, and to witness a blithe being from some fabulous world of plenty toss aside food that had apparently barely been sampled. He decided that it would drive him frantic.

  Hane ran a hand distractedly through his sparse white hair, comprehension lighting his old eyes.

  “No wonder they are . . . displeased,” he muttered.

  “Displeased!” snorted Ramsay.

  That Fuller and his outfit! he thought. “Bureau of Slick Tricks” they call it, huh? Well, he’s not as slick as I thought, but he sure got me in a hole!

  He switched on his desk visor and demanded Neuberg. After a slight delay, the pudgy, cheerful face appeared.

  “Look here!” Ramsay said sternly. “I want you to cut it out!”

  “I beg your pardon!”

  “That mixing up Delthigan ‘educational films’ with corn on the cob! It makes their government look like chumps. Don’t you realize that’s bad for business?”

  “Mr. Ramsay, am I to blame if they are a pack of chumps? I have my orders from Mr. Fuller, and—”

  Something in Ramsay finally snapped. Half rising behind the desk, he thrust his flushed face close to the scanner.

  “Cut it out, I tell you!” he bellowed. “Or do you want me to come over there with a wrench and fix that chatterbox toy of yours so’s it won’t cast a picture past its own shadow?”

  Neuberg’s dark eyes widened. Without a word, he faded from the screen.

  “Hane!” snapped the spaceman. “Get hold of the foreman of that Delthigan labor gang! Have them start searching through the scrap for live shells and pull out a couple of old guns to match!”

  “What are you going to do?” gasped Marie.

  “If I were a general from that Planetary State down there,” said Ramsay, “I’d be on my way up here now to censor those telecasts. But being the cat’s-paw I am, I’m at least going to have the satisfaction of popping somebody before this place gets wiped off the face of Chika!”

  Before Hane could reach the door, a siren somewhere in the dome wailed out in sudden urgency. The three in the office froze.

  “That’s an air leak!” exclaimed Ramsay. “Where’s the spacesuit locker?”

  He started for the door, but relaxed as the siren cut off. The visor on his desk emitted a series of bings.

  “Yeah?” he barked, flipping the switch.

  “Everything under control, Mr. Ramsay,” reported the communications operator who had found him the bottle “in the files” the previous night. “That telecasting ship took off without seeing that the connecting tube was sealed. Murphy’s got it air-tight again.”

  Ramsay muttered something or other in reply and sprang to the window. He could not see the former position of Neuberg’s ship, but the expressions of several men outside looking at where it had been confirmed the report.

  “Turn that gadget back on!” he told Marie.

  The telecast was still going. It flickered and faded as they watched, but steadied again. Neuberg was carrying out his orders—where Ramsay could not interfere.

  “Uh . . . I shall see about that ammunition,” said Hane after a moment during which the air in the office seemed to vibrate silently.

  He went out, looking grateful for the opportunity to escape Ramsay’s presence.

  The latter realized that he had been scowling across the room for some time when Marie spoke.

  “Can I do something?” she asked timidly.

  “Huh? Well, yeah. Go ride herd on those operators until they get a radio call through to the planet. If we can get hold of someone in authority, it might still be smoothed over.”

  Alone, he paced up and down the office for a while. When that failed to help, he sat at his desk with his head cradled carefully between both hands. He realized with surprise that his headache had disappeared.

  The advantage of a good fright, he reflected. I only wish I could see Fuller here too!

  He punched viciously at the intercom switch. Marie answered from the communications room.

  “Any luck?” he demanded.

  “Not yet.”

  “Then have them see if they can reach Fuller on Bormek V!”

  Time passed. A report came back from Bormek to the effect that Mr. Fuller was expected there very soon.

  Delthig III radio stations maintained an ominous silence.

  Ramsay took presently to making short excursions around the outside of the building, peering through the plastic dome at the space-suited figures of Hane and some Delthigans out at the heaps of scrap metal, or up into the dark sky.

  Finally, Hane returned to report that two cannon had been loaded and put in charge of Terrans from among the spaceport personnel.

  “The Delthigans seemed only too willing to help me,” he told Ramsay. “One wonders if they are not somewhat resentful toward their present masters.”

  “One wonders what’s wrong with them if they’re not!” retorted the spaceman.

  Bing-bing-bing-bing!

  He switched his televisor on, and saw Marie’s pale face.

  “The techs say they’ve picked up a ship approaching in a landing orbit,” she reported breathlessly.

  “How many?” asked Ramsay, beckoning to Hane.

  “Only one, but it’s acting funny, not sticking to a smooth curve, they say.”

  “Evasive action!” he guessed. “Hane, tell your men out there to be ready. Marie, you’d better get back here in case something happens.”

  He switched off and ran to the window, but nothing was to be seen. After putting through a brief call, Hane joined him.

  “Maybe we can stall a few hours,” said Ramsay. “When my four ships get in tonight, we can fold our domes and silently run away.”

  Bing-bing-bing-bing!

  “Now what?” he demanded of the operator whose image he found on the screen.

  “We have Mr. Fuller for you now.”

  “No!” exclaimed Ramsay with heavy sarcasm. “What did he stop flitting around for—to hear me make my will? Put him on!”

  He agonized through several seconds of coalescing images as the various operators handling the interstellar call withdrew themselves. Then Fuller’s bland face looked out at him.

  “Well, well!” said the B.S.T. agent heartily. “Heard you were trying to get me. I was rounding up a few things on the next planet. Everything going all right?”

  Ramsay opened his mouth, closed it, and brought both fists down on the edge of his desk.

  Where should I begin? he asked himself. Shall f tell him what a mess he’s made while I try to think up a good name, or shall I call him the first thing that occurs to me?

  Fuller ran one hand over his golden, slightly wavy hair. Ramsay thought that he looked a little tired, as if he really had been hustling from one planet to another.

  “One little detail seems to have gone wrong,” the spaceman said, biting off his words carefully. “Somehow, the Del
thigans seem to have taken offense.”

  “To what?” asked Fuller calmly.

  “To me in particular and Terrans in general. There is a ship maneuvering at us now. Don’t be surprised if this call is cut off suddenly. You sent a gentleman named Neuberg—”

  The door was flung open. Marie ran in.

  “It landed!” she shrilled. “The Delthigan ship. Some of the men took the truck out to it while the others covered it with the cannon.”

  “Hold on!” Ramsay grunted to Fuller.

  He bounded across to the window, callously flipped Hane to one side and the girl to the other, and peered out. The pressurized truck was just coming out of the air lock. As he watched, five figures alighted. The trio of four-legged ones marched briskly toward the entrance of the building. They were dressed plainly, even for Delthigans.

  “Those are no ambassadors,” said Ramsay. “Hatchet-men is more like it. Marie, Hane, get out of here!”

  “No!” protested the girl.

  “Go get help!” Ramsay rephrased it, which sent her running through the outer office and into the corridor.

  “I’ll make sure those guns are ready,” said Hane with unusual verve. “If they make trouble, they’ll never take off!”

  Left alone, Ramsay became aware of a plaintive demand for information emanating from his desk instrument. Fuller was close to betraying concern as he vainly attempted to see something besides the wall behind Ramsay’s chair.

  The spaceman seized the visor and turned it around, treating Fuller to a clear view of the doorway as the three Delthigans churned through it.

  They clumped to a halt. The one in the middle, a lean individual with a jagged scar climbing up over his crest from between his right and center eyes, stepped forward.

  “Ramsay, the Terran?” he demanded, in an accent as bad as that of Puag Tukhi.

  Ii it’s the last thing I do, Ramsay promised himself, I’m going to punch that middle eye right through the back of his skull! I’m fed up with these squids!

  He moved forward, clenching his fist. The Delthigan apparently misunderstood the gesture for one of assent.

  “I am Yil Khoff,” he said. “Ssent we are to discuss trade contract.” Ramsay heard Fuller murmur behind his back, “Find out what they want.” He unclenched his fist and waited.