by Ron Goulart
“Sparkling water,” said Smith. “No ice.”
Think-A-Drink bestowed a coppery sneer upon him. “Coming up, Percy.” Opening a panel in his side, he extracted a chilled plazglass. Then, the sneer still resting on his metallic lips, he pointed his little finger at the glass. A thin stream of club soda gushed out. “One sparkling water.”
“Thanks.”
Think-A-Drink rattled to the table on the other side of Smith. “What’ll she be, cobber?” he asked of the small, greyhaired man who sat with his back to Smith.
“As I was saying,” resumed Norman Vincent Bagdad. “I’ve always been a man who dotes on routine. When you have four wives, why then you can schedule your romantic life in such a—”
“Cheers.” Smith lifted his glass, took a sip. Frowning suddenly, he turned to watch the robot pouring the drink for the man at the next table.
“Something wrong, sir?” inquired the lizardman. Smith sniffed the air. “Damn,” he said, getting quickly up and free of his chair.
He lunged, swung at the plazglass in the greyhaired man’s hand and knocked it from his grasp.
The glass went spinning, splashing sticky green liquid on both of them. It hit the tabletop, bounced twice, and plunged to the black-carpeted saloon floor.
“I think your drink was poisoned,” said Smith, wiping his hand on his trouser leg.
“I know damn well it was, Smith,” said the sourfaced little man. “And you’ve just advertised the fact to half the lamebrains who’re traveling on this tub.”
* * * *
“Frosting,” muttered Smith as he waded along the corridor leading to his cabin.
The ribbed plaz floor was awash with nearly a foot of lukewarm sudsy water.
“Is that, you know, some Barnum curse word that the boys exchange around the locker room?” A slim, pretty blonde young woman had emerged from a sliding-paneled doorway just to his right. She wore a snug-fitting space steward unisuit of green and gold.
“Actually, no, Mercy Jane,” said Smith, halting in the tepid foamy water.
“I like to keep up on as much jargon as I can. So, you know, if people are exclaiming, ‘Oh, frosting!’ in moments of stress, why I want—”
“I was commenting to myself that the corridor being all futzed up was just so much frosting on the cake. The cake being a frumus that just took place up in the saloon.”
“I get it. Simile and metaphor,” she said, smiling brightly.
“More or less.”
“The laundrybots are having some problems,” explained the pretty spaceflight attendant. “Like, you know, they started falling down a lot. That oftentimes happens, but don’t tell anybody I told you. Usually right after we make our hyperspace jump, which we just did moments ago. Me, I get sort of woozy in the tummy, but the laundrybots fall over and lots of water gets spilled.”
“About how long do you think it’ll be before the water gets cleaned up?”
“Depends, you know, on how soon the vacuubots wake up.”
“This is their nap period?”
She laughed. “No, it’s simply that, you know, they pass out every darn time we make a hyperspace jump,” she said. “I hope all this isn’t giving you a bad impression of the SS Pearl of the Universe.”
“Your kind attentions, Mercy Jane, have more than made up for any little inconvenience like soggy ankles.” Grinning at her, he resumed his walk along the damp corridor.
“Would it cheer you up any if we, you know, went to your bunk and fooled around?” she asked, sloshing along beside him. “I have the next twenty-two minutes free.”
“It usually takes me that long just to get undressed,” Smith told her. “Besides, I’m expecting a visitor. I appreciate the offer, though.”
“You don’t find me repulsive, do you?”
“Not at all.”
“With so many different types of life in the universe, you know, a girl can’t always tell who she appeals to and who she doesn’t. Or should that be whom?” Mercy Jane said. “We even have a passenger on this very flight who’s traveling with four lizardladies. Four. Urf, that makes my skin all crawly.”
Halting at his door, Smith pressed his hand to the printrec plate. The door stuttered open. “Thanks for the kind thoughts.”
“Think nothing of it.” She patted his backside and hurried away.
Smith entered his cabin, pleased to notice that the floor was dry.
“Thought for a moment you were going to drag that skinny lass in here,” said Whistler, as he materialized near the bunk.
“So did I.” Smith dropped into a floating plaz sling-chair.”
“Then I decided, duty first.”
“I’ve got some new info for you,” said the detective agency terminal.
“First,” suggested Smith, “let me give you some.”
CHAPTER 5
“So tell me what…oops!” Whistler’s screen turned all at once an intense crimson.
“You okay?”
“Hush.” The terminal swooped down near the floor.
From its underside came a thin line of green light. The pulsating beam cut a small oval swatch out of the thermocarpet.
A tiny flat spybug had been nesting under the rug. Whistler sucked it up into its interior.
Smith said, “Who the hell planted—”
“Silence.” The terminal floated up to the sewdometal ceiling.
From within one of the three floating light balls Whistler extracted a second bugging device, this one larger.
“Now?” asked Smith, settling back into his chair.
“That’s the lot.” Whistler drifted down to a spot some four feet above the floor. “All those months of booze must’ve addled your wits, Smitty. You should’ve spotted these eavesdropping gadgets.”
“My fault, sure,” admitted Smith. “Thing is, you guys assured me this assignment was simple and routine. That lulled me into—”
“Being lulled is one thing, being jackass stupid is another.”
“Speaking of stupidity, how come you guys didn’t mention that the Trinidad Law Bureau was interested in this case? If you did know and forgot to tell me, that was stupid, too.”
“What makes you think TLB’s involved?”
Smith grinned. “I just bumped into Deac Constiner up in the saloon.”
“Constiner? He’s just about their best man. Are you certain he—”
“He didn’t give me a signed deposition, no,” said Smith. “He claims he’s just going back home after attending a law conference on Barnum.”
“That might be true.”
“Might, but I think he got wind of us somehow and got himself down to Barnum so he could catch the SS Pearl of the Universe and keep an eye on me.”
Whistler produced a faint buzzing sound. “Your hunch may just be right Smitty,” it said. “The under-the-rug snooping device tests out as standard Trinidad Law Bureau equipment.”
“Then they are interested in me,” Smith said. “That’s odd, if all that’s involved is a class reunion.”
“Isn’t it, though?” Whistler commenced humming again. “Tell you something else of interest, chum. The second spy gadget my keen senses detected is of maverick design.”
“Not TLB?”
“Nothing they’ve ever utilized before. I can’t even ID it right off,” replied the floating terminal. “It ain’t of Trinidad or Barnum System manufacture.”
Smith held out his hand, palm up. “Let me see.”
“Listen, inside me is equipment clever enough to identify, eventually, just about any—”
“A look.”
“Okay.” The bug dropped from beneath the terminal, went drifting over to Smith. “But if my highly—”
“Earth.” Smith tossed the little device up and caught it after examining it.
“The planet Earth in the Earth System?”
“That Earth, yep.”
“Heck of a ways from here. I can’t see why Earth agents’d be at all interested in—”
“The
equipment comes from Earth,” said Smith. “But I’ve seen people out here use stuff like this.”
“This seems to indicate there’s more than one agent interested in you.”
“It does.” Smith eyed the terminal. “Have you guys told me everything?”
“So help me, cross my heart.”
“I’ll have to nose around the liner more than I—”
“Don’t go getting bumped off like…um…”
Smith stood. “Bumped off like who?”
“Oh, that was just a figure of—”
“Who got killed on this case already, Whistler?”
The screen blushed pink for an instant. “Well, it wasn’t one of our operatives,” it said in a subdued tone. “An agent working in our client’s Security Division died under suspicious circumstances while trying to find some of the missing Horizon Kids. That’s one reason why Triplan decided to come to us and not—”
“Suspicious how?”
“Oh, his skycar exploded. Scattered him all over a stretch of Zegundo woodlands. They never found enough pieces of the man or his skycar to be absolutely sure if it was an accident or a rubout.”
“Simple case, no danger.” Smith sat, slouched. “This ties in with the attempt on Constiner, too, probably.”
“I’m not aware of any—”
“Just happened.” Smith pointed a thumb at the ceiling. “Up in the saloon. Someone tampered with the servobot so that it introduced a fairly obscure but deadly herbal poison into Constiner’s drink. The stuff has a very faint scent and I noticed it.”
“What did you do?”
“Knocked the damn glass out of his hand before he drank it.”
“Was that wise?”
“I didn’t know it was Constiner until after I acted,” said Smith. “Bastard wasn’t all that grateful, claiming he’d spotted the stuff, too, but was going to pretend to kick off. Then see who came nosing around his mortal remains.”
“That’s not a bad plan, much better than your—”
“I’m a shade rusty, I admit. Don’t worry, I won’t keep making mistakes.”
“Any notion who rigged the ’bot?”
“I managed to watch while Constiner dismantled the robot back in the pantry. Not a trace of who did the fiddling.”
“Most likely the same agent who decorated your quarters with this unorthodox snooping device.”
“Possibly.”
“Stands to reason, Smitty, because—”
“You guys don’t know everything yet,” Smith pointed out. “It could be there are a dozen different agents, each one with a different boss, interested in this mess. And every one of them may have orders to do me in next.”
“Why not try to thrive on the challenge. The added danger should buoy you up, make—”
“I don’t especially want to die,” explained Smith.
“You won’t,” Whistler assured him. “Your record shows you have an almost supernatural knack for survival.”
“Up to now.”
“This negative attitude is what led you to end up in the gutter, Smitty,” said the terminal. “You have to look on the bright—”
“Let’s move on to the subject of my crew,” he suggested. “You were supposed to drop in here to tell me who you’ve hired.”
“If you hadn’t sidetracked me with all this Gloomy Gus chitchat I’d have long since—”
“Fill me in.”
Whistler floated back a few feet farther away from him. “Before I fill you in on the excellent team we’ve put together,” he said, “I want you to make a little vow.”
“Vow?”
“That you won’t swear and yell and berate me in case…I merely say in case you notice…in case they don’t meet with your complete approval.”
“What sort of dimwitted louts have you saddled me—”
“Hear me out with a minimum of complaining and cursing, please. This is, after all, something of a rush situation and—”
“Okay, okay,” said Smith. “I won’t bitch and moan. It’s a promise. Go on.”
He was very nearly able to keep his promise.
CHAPTER 6
Someone whacked on the door of Smith’s cabin, hard, several times.
He eased up out of his chair, touched the door switch. The door coughed, jiggled, slid open.
Deac Constiner stood on the threshold. “Your frapping corridor’s full of sand.”
“Two hours ago it was soapy water.”
The Trinidad Law Bureau agent’s frown deepened. “I was a little harsh with you in the saloon,” he said. “Implied you were a bigger halfwit than you probably are.”
“Come on in,” invited Smith. “An apology from you is an event.”
Shaking yellow sand off his neohyde boots, the small lawman entered. “What’d you do with the damn bug I had planted in here?”
While they both glanced down at the small circular hole in the carpeting, Smith replied, “Got rid of it.”
“Do you realize those things cost five hundred trubux apiece?”
“When we get to Zegundo, I’ll show you a place you can buy them for two hundred.”
Constiner sat, uninvited, on the edge of the bunk. “Did you find any other bugs in here?”
“Should I have?”
“Let’s put our cards on the table,” said Constiner. “We’re both interested in the same case. See? I’m being frank with you.”
“After you realized I was on to you.”
The lawman said, “You used to be a pretty fair operative. At least you weren’t as much of a stumblebum as most of the lunks in the Territorial cops. I know you went blooey over a dame, but hell, that can happen to any of us.”
“Not to you.”
“I’m an exception,” admitted Constiner.
“What exactly,” inquired Smith, settling into a chair, “is this case we’re both working on?”
Constiner gave a dry chuckle. “You tell me, Smith.”
“I’m looking for some people.”
“Me, too.”
“Why?”
“Same reason you are.”
“To get them,” asked Smith, “to attend the Horizon Kids’ reunion?”
New lines joined the large selection on Constiner’s leathery forehead. “Is that really what you think you’re doing?”
“It is what I’m doing.”
“Here I just get through telling you that maybe you’re not a dimwit and you act like a dimwit,” the TLB man complained. “Use your damn noggin. Who ran Horizon House?”
“Westerland.”
“And what was he the head of? The freewheeling government research agency known as the Miracle Office.”
“Then all this maybe has something to do with an invention of his?”
Constiner folded his hands over his knee. “What do you think?”
“Is Westerland really dead?”
“Sure, he’s dead. You know that as well as…hold it. Do you have information to the contrary?”
Smith grinned. “Nope.”
“They never found his body after that nukeboat explosion,” said Constiner.
Smith asked, “Who else is interested in this?”
“Could be most anybody.”
“Can you narrow that some?”
“No.
“Who tried to poison you?”
“Could be most anybody.”
Smith nodded. “I appreciate your taking me into your confidence this way, Deac,” he said. “I learn all sorts of stuff.”
Leaving the bunk, Constiner said, “We’ll be arriving on Zegundo in a few minutes. No doubt I’ll be running into you again.”
“No doubt,” agreed Smith.
CHAPTER 7
Smith didn’t feel as though he’d come home. Walking along the stretch of orange beach that fronted the cottage the Whistler Agency had rented for him, he didn’t feel this was a homecoming. He was back on the planet Zegundo, back in Selva Territory, yet he didn’t feel much of anything.
> “Correction,” he said aloud, looking out across the clear blue of the sea.
When he thought about Jennifer Westerland and the fact that she was probably in the territory’s capital city right now, not more than forty miles from him, he did feel as…hell, that had nothing to do with the business at hand.
Far out in the hazy morning a scatter of bright yellow birds were gliding low over the quiet water.
“And her name’s Jennifer Arloff now,” he reminded himself. “Has been for—”
An incredible grating noise started up behind him.
Spinning, drawing the stungun he wore openly in his belt holster, Smith found himself facing the childsized servobot who came with the cottage. “The music, Bosco.” Smith let his gun slide back to rest.
“How’s that, tuan?” The silvery little robot cupped his metal hand to his plaz-trimmed earhole.
Smith reached out, tapped the portable radiobox that was magnetically attached to the mechanism’s tank-shaped torso and was blaring out some kind of godawful sound that might just be music. “Turn it off.”
“Ah, forgive me, bwana.” Bosco bowed, took a back-step, clicked off the radio. “It is merely that I’ve been designed to be not only efficient, loyal and trustworthy but also hep.”
“Hep?”
“I dig the jive, sahib,” amplified Bosco. “I’m a killerdiller.”
Something occurred to Smith. “Could that caterwauling have been a group called the Sophisticates?”
“You’re pretty hep yourself, gate. It was indeed, the solid goods,” replied Bosco. “Their latest hit platter, entitled He’s A Boogie Woogie Lycanthrope From—”
“Tell me the true purpose of your visit.”
“Ah, enough pop culture chitchat, yes. You are perfectly right to remind me of my mission, marse,” said the pintsized robot. “We’re being encroached on, I fear.”
“Explain,” requested Smith, gazing up at the glaz, plaz and neowood beach cottage a hundred yards away.
“A large, one might almost dub it flashy, landcar has rolled up in front of our domicile, sire,” he said. “Two relatively unsavory gentlemen are disembarking and before I give them the customary bum’s rush, I thought I’d best consult with you as to—”
“One is a big dark guy with a sleazy moustache, looks like he’s suffering from terminal horniness?” asked Smith. “The other’s a diminutive green gent you wouldn’t trust even with your everyday silverware?”
