Chapter 15

Costigan was not surprised to see the man he had known as Birkenfeld in Uranium’s ornate conference room. He had not expected, however, to see Isaacson. He knew, of course, that Spaceways owned Uranium, Inc., and the planet Eridan, lock, stock, and barrel; but it never entered his modest mind that his case would be of sufficient importance to warrant the personal attention of the Big Noise himself. Hence the sight of that suave and unrevealing face gave the putative Jones a more than temporary qualm. Isaacson was top-bracket stuff, ‘way out of his class. Virgil Samms ought to be taking this assignment, but since he wasn’t--

But instead of being an inquisition, the meeting was friendly and informal from the start. They complimented him upon the soundness of his judgment and the accuracy of his decisions. They thanked him, both with words and with a considerable sum of expendable credits. They encouraged him to talk about himself, but there was nothing whatever of the star-chamber or of cross-examination. The last question was representative of the whole conference.

“One other thing, Jones, has me slightly baffled,” Isaacson said, with a really winning smile. “Since you do not drink, and since you were not in search of feminine ... er ... companionship, just why did you go down to Roaring Jack’s dive?”

“Two reasons,” Jones said, with a somewhat shamefaced grin. “The minor one isn’t easy to explain, but ... well, I hadn’t been having an exactly easy time of it on Earth ... you all know about that, I suppose?”

They knew.

“Well, I was taking a very dim view of things in general, and a good fight would get it out of my system. It always does.”

“I see. And the major reason?”

“I knew, of course, that I was on probation. I would have to get promoted, and fast, or stay sunk forever. To get promoted fast, a man can either be enough of a boot-licker to be pulled up from on high, or he can be shoved up by the men he is working with. The best way to get a crowd of hard-rock men to like you is to lick a few of ‘em--off hours, of course, and according to Hoyle--and the more of ‘em you can lick at once, the better. I’m pretty good at rough-and-tumble brawling, so I gambled that the cops would step in before I got banged up too much. I won.”

“I see,” Isaacson said again, in an entirely different tone. He did see, now. “The first technique is so universally used that the possibility of the second did not occur to me. Nice work--very nice.” He turned to the other members of the Board. “This, I believe, concludes the business of the meeting?”

For some reason or other Isaacson nodded slightly as he asked the question; and one by one, as though in concurrence, the others nodded in reply. The meeting broke up. Outside the door, however, the magnate did not go about his own business nor send Jones about his. Instead:

“I would like to show you, if I may, the above-ground part of our Works?”

“My time is yours, sir. I am interested.”

It is unnecessary here to go into the details of a Civilization’s greatest uranium operation; the storage bins, the grinders, the Wilfley tables and slime tanks, the flotation sluices, the roasters and reducers, the processes of solution and crystallization and recrystallization, of final oxidation and reduction. Suffice it to say that Isaacson showed Jones the whole immensity of Uranium Works Number One. The trip ended on the top floor of the towering Administration Building, in a heavily-screened room containing a desk, a couple of chairs, and a tremendously massive safe.

“Smoke up.” Isaacson indicated a package of Jones’ favorite brand of cigarettes and lighted a cigar. “You knew that you were under test. I wonder, though, if you knew how much of it was testing?”

“All of it.” Jones grinned. “Except for the big blow, of course.”

“Of course.”

“There were too many possibilities, of too many different kinds, too pat. I might warn you, though--I could have got away clear with that half-million.”

“The possibility existed.” Surprisingly, Isaacson did not tell him that the trap was more subtle than it had appeared to be. “It was, however, worth the risk. Why didn’t you?”

“Because I figure on making more than that, a little later, and I might live longer to spend it.”

“Sound thinking, my boy--really sound. Now--you noticed, of course, the vote at the end of the meeting?”

Jones had noticed it; and, although he did not say so, he had been wondering about it ever since. The older man strolled over to the safe and opened it, revealing a single, startlingly small package.

“You passed, unanimously; you are now learning what you have to know. Not that we trust you unreservedly. You will be watched for a long time, and before you can make one false step, you will die.”

“That would seem to be good business, sir.”

“Glad you look at it that way--we thought you would. You saw the Works. Quite an operation, don’t you think?”

“Immense, sir. The biggest thing I ever saw.”

“What would you say, then, to the idea of this office being our real headquarters, of that little package there being our real business?” He swung the safe door shut, spun the knob.

“It would have been highly surprising a couple of hours ago.” Costigan could not afford to appear stupid, nor to possess too much knowledge. He had to steer an extremely difficult middle course. “After the climax of this build-up, though, it wouldn’t seem at all impossible. Or that there were wheels--plenty of ‘em!--within wheels.”

“Smart!” Isaacson applauded. “And what would you think might be in that package? This room is ray-proof.”

“Against anything the Galactic Patrol can swing?”

“Positively.”

“Well, then, it might be something beginning with the letter” he flicked two fingers, almost invisibly fast, into a T and went on without a break “M, as in morphine.”

“Your caution and restraint are commendable. If I had any remaining doubt as to your ability, it is gone.” He paused, frowning. As belief in ability increased, that in sincerity lessened. This doubt, this questioning, existed every time a new executive was initiated into the mysteries of Department Q. The Board’s judgment was good. They had slipped only twice, and those two errors had been corrected easily enough. The fellow had been warned once; that was enough. He took the plunge. “You will work with the Assistant Works Manager here until you understand the duties of the position. You will be transferred to Tellus as Assistant Works Manager there. Your principal duties will, however, be concerned with Department Q--which you will head up one day if you make good. And, just incidentally, when you go to Tellus, a package like that one in the safe will go with you.”

“Oh ... I see. I’ll make good, sir.” Jones let Isaacson see his jaw-muscles tighten in resolve. “It may take a little time for me to learn my way around, sir, but I’ll learn it.”

“I’m sure you will. And now, to go into greater detail...”

Virgil Samms had to be sure of his facts. More than that, he had to be able to prove them; not merely to the satisfaction of a law-enforcement officer, but beyond any reasonable doubt of the hardest-headed member of a cynical and skeptical jury. Wherefore Jack Kinnison and Mase Northrop took up the thionite trail at the exact point where, each trip, George Olmstead had had to abandon it; in the atmosphere of Cavenda. And fortunately, not too much preparation was required.

Cavenda was, as has been intimated, a primitive world. Its native people, humanoid in type, had developed a culture approximating in some respects that of the North American Indian at about the time of Columbus, in others that of the ancient Nomads of Araby. Thus a couple of wandering natives, unrecognizable under their dirty stormproof blankets and their scarcely thinner layers of grease and grime, watched impassively, incuriously, while a box floated pendant from its parachute from sky to ground. Mounted upon their uncouth steeds, they followed that box when it was hauled to the white man’s village. Unlike many of the other natives, these two did not shuffle into that village, to lean silently against a rock or a wall awaiting their turns to exchange a few hours of simple labor for a container of a new and highly potent beverage. They did, however, keep themselves constantly and minutely informed as to everything these strange, devil-ridden white men did. One of these pseudo-natives wandered off into the wilderness two or three days before the huge thing-which-flies-without-wings left ground; the other immediately afterward.

Thus the departure of the space-ship from Cavenda was recorded, as was its arrival at Eridan. It had been extremely difficult for the Patrol’s engineers to devise ways and means of tracing that ship from departure to arrival without exciting suspicion, but it had not proved impossible.

And Jack Kinnison, lounging idly and elegantly in the concourse of Danopolis Spaceport, seethed imperceptibly. Having swallowed a tiny Service Special capsule that morning, he knew that he had been under continuous spy-ray inspection for over two hours. He had not given himself away--practically everybody screened their inside coat pockets and hip pockets, and the cat-whisker lead from Lens to leg simply could not be seen--but for all the good they were doing him his ultra-instruments might just as well have been back on Tellus.

“Mase!” he sent, with no change whatever in the vapid expression then on his face. “I’m still covered. Are you?”

“Covered!” the answering thought was a snort. “They’re covering me like water covers a submarine!”

“Keep tuned. I’ll call Spud. Spud!”

“Come in, Jack.” Conway Costigan, alone now in the sanctum of Department Q, did not seem to be busy, but he was.

“That red herring they told us to drag across the trail was too damned red. They must be touchier than fulminate to spy-work on their armed forces--neither Mase nor I can do a lick of work. Anybody else covered?”

“No. All clear.”

“Good. Tell them the zwilnik blockers took us out.”

“I’ll do that. Distance only, or is somebody on your tail?”

“Somebody; and I mean some body. A slick chick with a classy chassis; a blonde, with great, big come-hither eyes. Too good to be true; especially the falsies. Wiring, my friend--and I haven’t been able to get a close look, but I wouldn’t wonder if her nostrils had a skillionth of a whillimeter too much expansion. I want a spy-ray op--is it safe to use Fred?” Kinnison referred to the grizzled engineer now puttering about in a certain space-ship; not the one in which he and Northrop had come to Eridan.

“Definitely not. I can do it myself and still stay very much in character ... No, I don’t know her. Not surprising, of course, since the policy here is never to let the right hand know what the left is doing. How about you, Mase? Have you got a little girl-friend, too?”

“Yea, verily, brother; but not little. More my size.” Northrop pointed out a tall, trim brunette, strolling along with the effortless, consciously unconscious poise of the professional model.

“Hm ... m ... m. I don’t know her, either,” Costigan reported, “but both of them are wearing four-inch spy-ray blocks and are probably wired up like Christmas trees. By inference, P-gun proof. I can’t penetrate, of course, but maybe I can get a viewpoint ... You’re right, Jack. Nostrils plugged. Anti-thionite, anti-Vee-Two, anti-everything. In fact, anti-social. I’ll spread their pictures around and see if anybody knows either of them.”

He did so, and over a hundred of the Patrol’s shrewdest operatives--upon this occasion North America had invaded Eridan in force--studied and thought. No one knew the tall brunette, but--

“I know the blonde.” This was Parker of Washington, a Service ace for twenty five years. “‘Hell-cat Hazel’ DeForce, the hardest-boiled babe unhung. Watch your step around her; she’s just as handy with a knife and knock-out drops as she is with a gun.”

“Thanks, Parker. I’ve heard of her.” Costigan was thinking fast. “Free-lance. No way of telling who she’s working for at the moment.” This was a statement, not a question.

“Only that it would have to be somebody with a lot of money. Her price is high. That all?”

“That’s all, fellows.” Then, to Jack and Northrop: “My thought is that you two guys are completely out-classed--out-weighed, out-numbered, out-manned, and out-gunned. Undressed, you’re sitting ducks; and if you put out any screens it’ll crystallize their suspicions and they’ll grab you right then--or maybe even knock you off. You’d better get out of here at full blast; you can’t do any more good here, the way things are.”

“Sure we can!” Kinnison protested. “You wanted a diversion, didn’t you?”

“Yes, but you already...”

“What we’ve done already isn’t a patch to what we can do next. We can set up such a diversion that the boys can walk right on the thionite-carrier’s heels without anybody paying any attention. By the way, you don’t know yet who is going to carry it, do you?”

“No. No penetration at all.”

“You soon will, bucko. Watch our smoke!”

“What do you think you’re going to do?” Costigan demanded, sharply.

“This.” Jack explained. “And don’t try to say no. We’re on our own, you know.”

“We ... l ... l ... it sounds good, and if you can pull it off it will help no end. Go ahead.”

The demurely luscious blonde stared disconsolately at the bulletin board, upon which another thirty minutes was being added to the time of arrival of a ship already three hours late. She picked up a book, glanced at its cover, put it down. Her hand moved toward a magazine, drew back, dropped idly into her lap. She sighed, stifled a yawn prettily, leaned backward in her seat--in such a position, Jack noticed, that he could not see into her nostrils--and closed her eyes. And Jack Kinnison, coming visibly to a decision, sat down beside her.

“Pardon me, miss, but I feel just like you look. Can you tell me why convention decrees that two people, stuck in this concourse by arrivals that nobody knows when will arrive, have got to suffer alone when they could have so much more fun suffering together?”

The girl’s eyes opened slowly; she was neither startled, nor afraid, nor--it seemed--even interested. In fact, she gazed at him with so much disinterest and for so long a time that he began to wonder--was she going to play sweet and innocent to the end?

“Yes, conventions are stupid, sometimes,” she admitted finally, her lovely lips curving into the beginnings of a smile. Her voice, low and sweet, matched perfectly the rest of her charming self. “After all, perfectly nice people do meet informally on shipboard; why not in concourses?”