Dead Giveaway

by Randall Garrett

  Produced by Greg Weeks, Bruce Albrecht, Mary Meehan andthe Online Distributed Proofreading Team athttps://www.pgdp.net

  DEAD GIVEAWAY

  BY RANDALL GARRETT

  Illustrated by Martinez

  [Transcriber's note: This etext was produced from Astounding ScienceFiction August 1959. Extensive research did not uncover any evidencethat the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]

  _Logic's a wonderful thing; by logical analysis, one can determine thenecessary reason for the existence of a dead city of a very high orderon an utterly useless planet. Obviously a shipping transfer point!Necessarily..._

  "Mendez?" said the young man in the blue-and-green tartan jacket. "Why,yes ... sure I've heard of it. Why?"

  The clerk behind the desk looked again at the information screen."That's the destination we have on file for Scholar Duckworth, Mr.Turnbull. That was six months ago." He looked up from the screen,waiting to see if Turnbull had any more questions.

  Turnbull tapped his teeth with a thumbnail for a couple of seconds, thenshrugged slightly. "Any address given for him?"

  "Yes, sir. The Hotel Byron, Landing City, Mendez."

  Turnbull nodded. "How much is the fare to Mendez?"

  The clerk thumbed a button which wiped the information screen clean,then replaced it with another list, which flowed upward for a fewseconds, then stopped. "Seven hundred and eighty-five fifty, sir," saidthe clerk. "Shall I make you out a ticket?"

  Turnbull hesitated. "What's the route?"

  The clerk touched another control, and again the information on thescreen changed. "You'll take the regular shuttle from here to Luna, thentake either the _Stellar Queen_ or the _Oriona_ to Sirius VI. Fromthere, you will have to pick up a ship to the Central Worlds--either toVanderlin or BenAbram--and take a ship from there to Mendez. Notcomplicated, really. The whole trip won't take you more than threeweeks, including stopovers."

  "I see," said Turnbull. "I haven't made up my mind yet. I'll let youknow."

  "Very well, sir. The _Stellar Queen_ leaves on Wednesdays and the_Oriona_ on Saturdays. We'll need three days' notice."

  Turnbull thanked the clerk and headed toward the big doors that led outof Long Island Terminal, threading his way through the little clumps ofpeople that milled around inside the big waiting room.

  He hadn't learned a hell of a lot, he thought. He'd known that Duckworthhad gone to Mendez, and he already had the Hotel Byron address. Therewas, however, some negative information there. The last address they hadwas on Mendez, and yet Scholar Duckworth couldn't be found on Mendez.Obviously, he had not filed a change of address there; just asobviously, he had managed to leave the planet without a trace. There wasalways the possibility that he'd been killed, of course. On a thinlypopulated world like Mendez, murder could still be committed with littlechance of being caught. Even here on Earth, a murderer with the rightcombination of skill and luck could remain unsuspected.

  But who would want to kill Scholar Duckworth?

  And why?

  Turnbull pushed the thought out of his mind. It was possible thatDuckworth was dead, but it was highly unlikely. It was vastly moreprobable that the old scholar had skipped off for reasons of his own andthat something had happened to prevent him from contacting Turnbull.

  After all, almost the same thing had happened in reverse a year ago.

  Outside the Terminal Building, Turnbull walked over to a hackstand andpressed the signal button on the top of the control column. An empty cabslid out of the traffic pattern and pulled up beside the barrier whichseparated the vehicular traffic from the pedestrian walkway. The gate inthe barrier slid open at the same time the cab door did, and Turnbullstepped inside and sat down. He dialed his own number, dropped in theindicated number of coins, and then relaxed as the cab pulled out andsped down the freeway towards Manhattan.

  He'd been back on Earth now for three days, and the problem of ScholarJames Duckworth was still bothering him. He hadn't known anything aboutit until he'd arrived at his apartment after a year's absence.

  * * * * *

  The apartment door sighed a little as Dave Turnbull broke the electronicseal with the double key. Half the key had been in his possession for ayear, jealousy guarded against loss during all the time he had been onLobon; the other half had been kept by the manager of the ExcelsiorApartments.

  As the door opened, Turnbull noticed the faint musty odor that told oflong-unused and poorly circulated air. The conditioners had been turneddown to low power for a year now.

  He went inside and allowed the door to close silently behind him. Theapartment was just the same--the broad expanse of pale blue rug, thematching furniture, including the long, comfortable couch and the fatoverstuffed chair--all just as he'd left them.

  He ran a finger experimentally over the top of the table near the door.There was a faint patina of dust covering the glossy surface, but it wasvery faint, indeed. He grinned to himself. In spite of the excitement ofthe explorations on Lobon, it was great to be home again.

  He went into the small kitchen, slid open the wall panel that concealedthe apartment's power controls, and flipped the switch from"maintenance" to "normal." The lights came on, and there was a faintsigh from the air conditioners as they began to move the air at a morenormal rate through the rooms.

  Then he walked over to the liquor cabinet, opened it, and surveyed thecontents. There, in all their glory, sat the half dozen bottles ofEnglish sherry that he'd been dreaming about for twelve solid months. Hetook one out and broke the seal almost reverently.

  Not that there had been nothing to drink for the men on Lobon: theUniversity had not been so blue-nosed as all that. But the choice hadbeen limited to bourbon and Scotch. Turnbull, who was not a whiskydrinker by choice, had longed for the mellow smoothness of Bristol CreamSherry instead of the smokiness of Scotch or the heavy-bodied strengthof the bourbon.

  He was just pouring his first glass when the announcer chimed. Frowning,Turnbull walked over to the viewscreen that was connected to the littleeye in the door. It showed the face of--what was his name? Samson?Sanders. That was it, Sanders, the building superintendent.

  Turnbull punched the opener and said: "Come in. I'll be right with you,Mr. Sanders."

  Sanders was a round, pleasant-faced, soft-voiced man, a good ten yearsolder than Turnbull himself. He was standing just inside the door asTurnbull entered the living room; there was a small brief case in hishand. He extended the other hand as Turnbull approached.

  "Welcome home again, Dr. Turnbull," he said warmly. "We've missed youhere at the Excelsior."

  Turnbull took the hand and smiled as he shook it. "Glad to be back, Mr.Sanders; the place looks good after a year of roughing it."

  The superintendent lifted the brief case. "I brought up the mail thataccumulated while you were gone. There's not much, since we sent cardsto each return address, notifying them that you were not available andthat your mail was being held until your return."

  He opened the brief case and took out seven standard pneumatic mailingtubes and handed them to Turnbull.

  Turnbull glanced at them. Three of them were from various friends of hisscattered over Earth; one was from Standard Recording Company; theremaining three carried the return address of James M. Duckworth, Ph.Sch., U.C.L.A., Great Los Angeles, California.

  "Thanks, Mr. Sanders," said Turnbull. He was wondering why the man hadbrought them up so promptly after his own arrival. Surely, having waiteda year, they would have waited until they were called for.

  Sanders blinked apologetically. "Uh ... Dr. Turnbull, I wonder if ... ifany of those contain money ... checks, cash, anything like that?"

  "I don't know. Why?" Turnbull asked in surprise.

  Sanders looked
even more apologetic. "Well, there was an attemptedrobbery here about six months ago. Someone broke into your mailboxdownstairs. There was nothing in it, of course; we've been puttingeverything into the vault as it came in. But the police thought it mightbe someone who knew you were getting money by mail. None of the otherboxes were opened, you see, and--" He let his voice trail off asTurnbull began opening the tubes.

  None of them contained anything but correspondence. There was no sign ofanything valuable.

  "Maybe they picked my box at random," Turnbull said. "They may have beenfrightened off after opening the one box."

  "That's very likely it," said Sanders. "The police said it seemed to bea rather amateurish job, although whoever did it certainly succeeded inneutralizing the alarms."

  Satisfied,