Chapter 2

Castor P. Smith sat at the head of a steel and plastic table in the conference room, whistling thoughtfully as he waited for his assistants. Next door in the communications room, the tortured tune his lips emitted would have been treated as deliberate jamming. Simonetta Diorio entered carrying a recorder, and he roused himself for a smile of appreciation.

“You won’t forget to turn it on when you start, Mr. Smith?” she pleaded.

“I’ll keep my finger on the switch until then,” he grinned. “Thanks, Si.”

Left alone again, he told himself he would have to do something about the reputation he was acquiring--quite without foundation, he believed--for being absent minded. After all, he was hardly likely to forget to record a conference when it had been his own idea. So many ideas were tossed around on a good day that some were bound to be lost, unless they were down on tape. Even a good steno like Simonetta could not guarantee to keep up with it all when two or three got to talking at once.

Generally, he admitted to himself, he erased the tape without the necessity of filing some brilliant solution. Still, the one in a thousand that did turn up made the precaution worthwhile.

He stared morosely at the volume of the Galatlas he had brought from the communications room. Sometimes, in this job, he lost his sense of galactic direction. Calls were likely to come in from stars of which he had never heard.

Wish I could get a little more help from the D.I.R., he thought. It’s more than having one secretary on vacation just now; we’re always short-handed. They never brought us up to strength since old Murphy blew himself up in the lab with that little redhead. Maybe Willie will grow into something. That will take years, though. We ought to have some kind of training school.

In Smith’s opinion, he should have had a larger force of full time agents in the field, but he recognized the difficulties inherent in the immensity of Terran-influenced space. Even recruiting was a hit-or-miss process. He had made various working arrangements out of chance contacts with independent spacers--he supposed that it was unofficially expected of him--and most had worked out well. About a dozen routine cases were currently being handled out there somewhere by a motley group of his own men and piratical temporary help. In addition, there were three hot cases that had required supervision from headquarters.

I wonder if we should stay a little late tonight? he asked himself. I hate to ask them again, but who knows what will break with this new skull-cracker?

He looked up as Pete Parrish entered. His dapper assistant walked around the other end of the table and took a seat on the window side.

“I hear you have another one,” he greeted Smith.

Parrish was a trim man of thirty-six or thirty-seven, just about average in height but slim enough to seem taller. Smith was aware that the other took considerable pains to maintain that slimness. By his own account, he rode well and played a fast game of squash.

The wave in his dark hair was somewhat suppressed by careful grooming. He smiled frequently, or at least made a show of gleaming teeth; but at other times his neat, regular features were disciplined into a perfect mask.

Thank God that he doesn’t wear a mustache! thought Smith. That would put him over the brink.

He was reasonably certain that Parrish had given the idea careful calculation and stopped just short of the brink. That would be typical of the man. He had been at one time a publicist, then a salesman, on Terra and in space. Actually, he should have been a confidence man. It was not until the Department had stumbled across him that he had found opportunity to exercise his real talents. He was expert at estimating alien psychology and constructing rationalizations with which to thwart it.

Smith realized, self-consciously, that he had been staring through Parrish. He passed one hand down the back of his neck, reminding himself that he must get a haircut. He could not imagine why he kept forgetting; it occurred to him every time he faced Parrish. He decided further to wear a freshly pressed suit the next day.

Lydman padded in, glanced about the room, and sat down as near to the door as he could without leaving an obvious gap between himself and the others. He eyed Parrish briefly, and raised one hand to check the scarf at his throat. Lydman dressed unobtrusively, and probably would have preferred an old-fashioned tie to the bright neck scarves favored by current fashion.

I wonder why I get all the nuts? Smith asked himself, avoiding the beautiful eyes by looking squarely between them. Even the girls--people with romantic ideas of cloak and dagger work, or the ones that owe us favors, keep sending us peaches. Then they marry off, or go around acting so secretive that they draw attention to us.

Sometimes, he had to admit, he would have preferred having a babe marry and leave the department. Parrish was often helpful in such situations, which was only fair since he created most of them. Twice divorced, the assistant had lost none of his interest in women. He was as clever at feminine psychology as at alien.

“Well, I suppose you’ve heard something of the new squawk,” Smith said to break the silence. “I just don’t see how we’re going to reach this one. The damned fool got himself taken on an ocean bottom.”

He proceeded to outline the facts so far reported. Parrish received them impassively; Lydman began to scowl. The ex-spacer developed special grudges against aliens who attempted to conceal the detention of Terrans.

“First, let’s see where we are before we tackle this,” suggested Smith. “I’ve given you enough on Harris to let it percolate through your minds while we review the other cases. It looks like something we should all be in on.”

Sometimes he would put a case in the charge of one of them, but they were accustomed to exchanging information and advice.

“This business of the two spacers who were nailed for unauthorized entry in the Syssokan system seems about ripe,” he reminded them. “Taranto and Meyers, you remember.”

“Oh, yes,” said Lydman in a withdrawn tone. “The dope.”

“That’s right. There was no trouble getting information about them, just in comprehending the idiot reasoning that would maintain a law that makes it a crime to crash-land on that planet. Terra, like any other stellar government, is permitted one official resident there. Fortunately, we got the D.I.R. to slip him a little memo about us before he was sent out, and this is the outcome. They may even be on the loose right now.”

“Let me see,” mused Parrish. “Bob gave you the formula for something that practically suspends animation, didn’t he?”

“Yeah,” said Lydman. “We figured on the bastards to carry the bodies out and dump them. A bunch of tramp spacers is standing by to pick them up.”

“No reason why it shouldn’t work,” said Smith. “Variations of it have been keeping us in business. Some day we’ll slip up just by relying on it too much, but this looks okay. How is your Greenhaven case coming, Pete?”

Parrish hesitated before answering. He stroked the edge of the table with well manicured fingertips as he considered.

“Maria Ringstad,” he said thoughtfully. “These reporters should be more careful, should have some knowledge of the cultures they poke into. Greenhaven is hardly a colony to swash a buckle through. I suppose she never thought they would bother a newswoman.”

“Did you ever get the answer to what she was after on Greenhaven?”

“Nothing, just passing through!” Parrish snapped his fingers in contempt. “She was on a space liner enroute to Altair VII to gather material for a book. It stopped on Greenhaven to deliver a consignment of laboratory instruments.”

“Those Greenies,” Lydman put in, “are as crazy as bems. What a way to live!”

“They have been described as the bluest colony ever derived from Terra,” agreed Smith. “I shudder to think of the life Pete would lead there.”

Parrish smiled, but not very deeply.

“Miss Ringstad’s mistake was fairly simple-minded,” he said. “They had official prices posted in that shop she visited for souvenirs. When they claimed to be out of the article she fancied, she had the bad taste to offer a bonus price. On Greenhaven, this is regarded as bribery, immorality, and economic subversion, to touch merely upon the highlights.”