by John Kippax
'Ah. Yes. There's many a true word spoken in jest. Now, in this little cupboard here, I have forty cassettes of my own droning voice giving a complete picture of the whole of our..
The cupboard was empty, save for a white card. Koninburger picked it up, read it, and quite impassively, handed it to Bruce. It read: 'Dear Professor Koninburger: This may seem a little ruthless, but I must protect my investment. Sincerely, Elsa Niebohr.'
Bruce read it and grimaced.
Koninburger said: 'Ex Excelsior semper aliquid novi.'
'She should not have done that,' Bruce said.
Koninburger shrugged. 'She has it on tapes, I have it in my mind. In any case, I am in her employ.'
Ten domes stood in the starved, icy wind of night. Eight were occupied by personnel, both Corps and civilian; the other two, vast structures which dwarfed the rest, stood a little apart. All domes were interconnected by transparent passages.
Both large domes were occupied; one was filled with the personal ship of Elsa Niebohr. The very middle of the oblately spheroidal ship was the private apartment of the owner, an owner who took both work and pleasure with a fierce gusto, who needed a succession of triumphs to please and maintain her. In the other dome squatted Vee Twelve.
Here, in her luxurious setting, there was another circular bed, and upon it were James Creighton and the lady owner herself. Now they were relaxed, and drinking wine.
'James, you are rather wonderful.'
Creighton sat up and clasped his hands round his knees. 'I've always thought so. To what aspect of my brilliance are you referri ng?'
She laughed. 'Well - three times in an hour. That's not bad.'
'I was hoping that you would say that it was rather good.' She mimicked. 'Oh, very well, then. Rather good.'
He said: 'I'll bet that this is the only ship so equipped.'
'I'm fond of my creature comforts, James.' 'I had noticed.'
'You've worked hard on that alien.'
'I work hard habitually.'
'I've noticed that too, and thank you.'
In the subdued lighting of her room, she saw him in profile. A big blond man, slim without being skinny, muscular without being overtly so. More than ever, now, she was determined to bag this one, firstly, to work for Excelsior Corporation, secondly... Why shouldn't he marry her?
'James...' 'Mmmm...?'
She was close to his side; all it needed was for her to slip a thigh over him, and he would rise again in passion. But she did not do this. She said: 'When it's safely back on Earth, won't your intensity of the study of the alien be shared out between a group of specialists? I mean - you won't be doing all the work yourself.'
'Earth knows we have an alien, of course. I have no doubt that Hurwitz will order the specimen to be taken back.'
'In Vee Twelve V
'Seems reasonable.'
'Why not the Loudon?' (It was she who chose that name. Those who did not understand her choice looked it up, and grimaced when they found the source.)
She set out to tease and entice him. 'If I were to make the offer, and the President agreed, then you could come back to Earth with me. Then you could look after us both.'
'Both?'
'The alien and myself. No - myself and the alien.'
He chuckled. 'I believe you'd try it on.'
'I would, I'm a girl who does her homework.'
All at once, Creighton laughed out loud. 'Oh, yes, try it on, by all means! We're still booked for another nine months in space, with five planets to call at! Oh, how bloody funny!'
'Bruce?'
'Yes, indeed my lovely. Bruce. He hates my guts.'
'And he can't fuck for little green apples.'
'What? Eh?' The laughter died, and Creighton wore a quizzical smile. 'Oh, you've tried him.'
Tried and found wanting. He left me for his duty, right in the middle of the performance.'
'Well I'm damned.'
'James, my sweet, do consider working for Excelsior.'
"There's my discharge; I'm on a three-year commission with the Corps, the least a doctor can do, and then only in special cases.'
'Of which you are one.'
'Indeed.'
'We could get round that.'
'I'm sure, my love, that you could get round anything or anybody.'
'You do a little of that, too.'
'Such as?'
'Bedding Lindstrom.'
'She asked me, you may like to know.'
'Did she now? Well, now I'm asking you, James.'
Elsa loved to play cat and mouse; especially did she like fooling the mouse and making it believe that it was the cat.
'You're asking me to get out of the Corps, and become Excelsior's Medical Superintendent at a yearly salary which is enough to build a spaceship, presumably.'
'I can get you out of the Corps. And I can give you the job. And me, if you like.'
Creighton was serious, now, she could see. That last item is one hell of an inducement.'
'Not forgetting that I like a change of scenery from time to time.'.
'Me too.'
'Married or not?'
'It might give me some little status. Won't someone start calling me "Mr Elsa Niebohr"?'
'Do you realize that already you have half-accepted my offer?'
'Sharp girl.'
'So what about the second half? Surely you know that you yourself are so distinguished that any subservience to me would be unthinkable. Or - at least - undetectable.'
Creighton's passion was down and his intellect up. 'Now just what do you mean by that?'
'How do you think I control Excelsior?'
'By expert delegation coupled with ruthless overall supervision.'
She liked his answer. She liked all of him more and more. 'That's a pretty good answer, James. Sp, take the job, eh? Chance of a lifetime.'
'Yes. Except for the undetectable bit. I'd like that explained.'
Now for it, she thought; if he takes this calmly, then he's one in a million. He's the man we need, and the one I want. She said: 'Could you give me a detailed account of your activities on the night of May 17th and 18th last?'
He did not show any emotion; for this, she admired him.
'I was riding you home. How could I forget that?'
'Before, James dear. How did you occupy the time between your rejection of my first offer of a job in the afternoon and your return to me at Excelsior building around midnight?'
He said nothing. He shook his head in mild despair, as though, she thought, he took her for some average woman; Elsa Niebohr, physiology apart, was nothing like the average woman. 'James. You spent the early part of the evening with some witless female of whom you got rid. You went to Jean-Claud Martin's hotel room, in disguise, and you killed him, to get your name at the top of the list for a short service commission doctor on Vee Twelve. Right?'
Leading Crewman Hans Muller, a thick, tousle-haired man from Hamburg, was one of the few crew members in the whole vast bulk of the Corps ship. It was a boring job, just walking the whole length and breadth of Vee Twelve, which was a mere half dozen switches off total shutdown. Taking the tour very steadily, it needed three hours and eleven minutes (Earth time) to complete one patrol well enough to satisfy PO Patel, in charge of the ship party. You couldn't fool Patel; he knew how long a proper walk-through should be. And there was no question of any patrol crewman stopping for a smoke in the course of his rounds; Patel searched every man for cigarettes or cigars. One bright spark, almost a year ago, who had cached cigarettes in various parts of the ship so as to collect en route, had been caught at it by one of the cigarettes being booby trapped, so that it stained his hand with a stream of green dye. He got himself a month's extra duties on refuse-and-sanitary detail, and a red entry on his dossier. Muller, a cigar man himself, always played it straight.
In hydroponics, he checked temperatures and liquid food levels, permitting himself one large, pear-shaped tomato from a great cross-bred vine which was stak
ed right up to the three-metre ceiling, with hundreds of ripe and near-ripe fruit. Then, sucking it appreciatively, he took the elevator down to the next floor, which was sick bay. For a few moments he looked down the shining corridor. There would be a sick berth attendant on duty there, so why should he bother to go inside? Then he remembered that CPO Caiola might be there, and decided that he had better go right down and be seen inside the place.
In the warm, quiet sick bay, he found CPO Dockridge reading a book, lying comfortably in bed, his left leg lightly caged.
'Hello, Doc. Didn't know you were here.'
Dockridge looked glum. 'This leg. Bloody thing started to hurt. Tried to stick it, couldn't. Went to Maseba. No sympathy. He said to have it off. Bastard.'
Muller's eyes looked down to the far end, where a section was segmented off. 'What's that at the end?'
That's where Charlie Alien lives.'
'Oh?' Muller was interested.
'And you can't go in and say howdo, either. The inside door to his hutch is locked, and so's the outside, with the guard on it as usual.'
'What guard?' Muller's whole body stiffened.
'Stands outside, in the corridor.'
'There's no guard there,' Muller said.
'Go and have a look, fathead.'
Muller went outside. The corridor was empty. He moved cautiously, and came to the door. No guard, as he had said. He approached the door, opened it. In the dull red light, he could make out no figure on or in the bed. He switched on the overhead light. At his feet lay a crewman whose name he could not remember. The body lay flat on its back, and the open, staring eyes were those of a dead man.
How the corpse came to be inside the alien's place, Muller could not guess, any more than he could figure out how the guard had been made to open the door. But his duty was plain. He ran out and found the nearest alarm and mike. He thumbed the button, urgent, and a little scared. 'Leading Crewman Muller speaking. The guard is dead, and the alien has escaped!'
Creighton seemed quite steady. 'When did you last have anyone eliminated?'
"About six months ago.'
'Who was it?'
'It is of no importance to you, James. What is important is that, if you are caught, tried and convicted, then that wonderful brain of yours will cease to be a wonderful brain; all its glorious power will be reduced to a near-vegetable existence.'
She saw his shoulders sag; that was the true James Creighton ! All that had to be done was to threaten him with the reconditioning process which was carried out on the subject after proven murder. The greatest fear within him, was that one day his brain power might wane.
She glowed with triumph. She had him. She used her silkiest tones. 'Darling James. I needn't have told you that. You and I are the only two people who know.'
'What about the agent who dug out the information? He must have been a shrewd fellow. Is he still about? I'm thinking of blackmail; not yours, his.'
'He is no longer in our service.' She brought herself close to him. 'My sweet, that will be the last time I shall ever mention it. Don't you see, I have to look after Excelsior, just as you have to look after the alien? I think I truly love you; please, don't hesitate. How can you worry about the alien and what it means compared to what I mean?'
The alien represents my work; strangely, it represents part of me. Difficult to explain... No, wait. I can explain. Despite the fact I'm supposed to be sleeping in Vee Twelve, in the same room as the alien, I came to you. Bruce is a madman on duty and discipline, but I still came to you. Well... that's as near as I can get to an explanation.'
'It's enough, James. It tells me all I want to know, darling.' She slipped her body over his, and at once felt his rising heat.
Suddenly, an intercom speaker came to life. A man's alarmed voice spoke. 'Miss Niebohr there's the Commander from Vee Twelve—'
The sharp voice of Lindstrom cut in. Tou are defying Space Corps Authority in a triple A emergency! Get out of the way!' The words were followed by the unmistakable •phut' of a stun charge. Creighton slipped off the bed and switched on his communicator, which should have been left on anyway.
'Dr Creighton, are you there?' came the voice of the second-in-command.
'Yes.'
Then get your cock out and your clothes on!' she rapped. Tour blasted alien killed his guard and now he's loose. Move man, move!'
Hans Koninburger, once again, felt the urge to go to the surface. If he met Fane, or Baksh, or the devoted, apologetic little Uschl, they would not approve of his going up to surface. He appreciated that they wanted to protect him, but he also knew that, if it came to the point, they dared not forbid him to go. He had no doubt that they would come with him, one of them at least.
Dressed in parka, thick overboots, and with a bright red woolly cap, he rose to the surface in one of the four passenger elevators. No one took any special notice of him. This little 'break for freedom' made him happy.
The first dome into which he came by means of the elevator was largely occupied by the elevator's machinery. Passing through to another dome, he was pleased to see that this contained recreation huts and sleeping quarters. He found that his clothing was very warm; he had forgotten that the domes would be heated. In the light from within he could see the Loudon and Vee Twelve in their own huge domes. How magnificent a sight; but how more magnificent when all his own work would be put into practice and, annihilating space and time, man was truly free to go where he would...
For some minutes he stood in rapt meditation along these lines, until a disturbance of sorts brought his attention back to the humans in the domes. There was some scurrying about, quiet, not obtrusive, but certainly urgent. A passing PO called to him: 'Hey, take yourself a rifle and breathing mask and get outside, buddy! That alien's not in the domes, so maybe he went walkabout; move!'
This other world which Koninburger had never known, this area of sweat and danger and hard physical work, was now thrust at him. Breathing masks? Something to do with the cold, no doubt. Then where... Men ran past him, struggling on lined coveralls, picking up rifles and masks at the brightly illuminated dome lock. A spasm of fear disturbed Koninburger. He wanted none of this; he thought of his snug quarters deep below ground, and he had a great desire to return to them. He headed for the elevator, leaped between its doors, and sobbed with relief when the machine began to plunge downwards. He got out at his level, scurried down the corridor, and found his door. He collapsed into a chair and lay there panting and feeling a warm protectiveness stealing over him...
He did not know how much later it was when he opened his eyes. He was still in the chair, untidy, overwarm. He stripped off the warm clothing.
He was not alone.
There was the strange figure in front of him, goggled, dressed in a white coat such as hundreds of the workers of the project wore.
Koninburger attempted to speak rationally. 'Who are you?'
The voice which replied astonished and alarmed him. Koninburger did not instantly divine that these high notes were the lowest it could manage.
'I came down,' it said, 'to set in motion reactions in all the machines dependent on pile power. Now I find you.'
Chapter 13
Seeing that death, a necessary end,
Will come when it will come.
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE, Julius Caesar
Lindstrom and her party were checking the domes at ground level. An all-male squad was roaming the bone-chilling outside darkness of Balomain Four. Bruce himself had four men, each armed with a Meissner rifle. He was on the point of checking the underground system, where the warning had been relayed, when Creighton found him.
Creighton saw quiet savagery in the Captain's face. 'You took your time!' Bruce said. 'I know but—'
Bruce gripped him by the lapel of his uniform. 'Listen, is there anything that alien can do - that you know it can do - that you haven't told us about?'
'It can punch a man inside his head, numb his brain—' 'That way, it can kill. Th
e guard on sick bay was a victim. Now, expert, think! Where's that pink bastard liable to be? What's its ambition?'
Creighton, in the space of a second, had the scene impressed deeply upon his mind. The swift urgency of movement in other domes, the eerie lighting, the grim expressions on the crewmen's faces... 'Well?' rapped Bruce.
Creighton knew that he had to get to Ba first, and, if
necessary, shield the alien with his own body.
'For God's sake, Creighton, will you answer! Is it below ground?'
'It's - likely,' Creighton said. He suddenly felt an enormous pressure on his mind. 'If Ba is going to go below - you see, we don't know how long it's been out of its room... If it knows anything about the project at all - like from when it went into Lindstrom's mind and brought her back to consciousness - then it might well go below...'
'Elevators!' Bruce snapped. He ran with his party to the four great cages. On one glowed an 'out of order' light. "Right, use all three, split up - first level. We'll check down from there!'
The cages speeded down, stopped with a jolt. Men hurled themselves out. The door almost opposite the shafts, marked 'Generators One' was ajar.
This way!'
Inside the generator room, three human figures lay spread- eagled on the floor. Ten dials had a red segment; on all the segment glowed angrily.
Bruce snapped. 'Pull these red-topped levers. Fast!'
It took ten seconds to drop the piles of each generator a thousand metres below the lowest level of Project Elkan, and each pile was capped, plugged - and they were safe.
Bruce consulted a wall chart. It showed all the generator systems. He detailed his men. 'You, level three, room seventeen. You level four, room six, you, level eight, room one, you, level nine, room three. Any dial showing red, pull the red-topped lever. Move!'
The pink-fleshed creature with the goggles said to Koninburger: 'You are the one. You are the real danger to our people. Let me tell you first, all your records down here are wiped clean, by my mind power. And I have discovered your weakness. Now I tell you. You are not on your own planet. You are far, far from where you think you are. You are far from your Earth. That will kill you.'
