"You," said Kielgaard. "And you're going to be up against a deadly
proposition. Our opponent is established on the planet, and we're
going in cold. Fortunately, we've sunk a good part of our profits into
research and it's about to pay off. We have, for instance, installed in
your body cavity a remarkably small organo-transceiver. It uses a new
type of signal which should escape detection under any circumstances
you're likely to face on Truth."
* * * * *
"So I can be more or less constantly in touch with you?"
"In any period of relative calm, yes. During violent action, the
interference of other currents in your brain would drown out the
signal. But we've also run a series of delicate taps to your optic and
auditory nerves, so we should have continuous contact by sight and
sound."
"You mentioned that the cities and towns on the planet were separated
by wilderness. How do I travel?"
"We have a new type of unusually small mataform transceiver." Kielgaard
reached in a drawer and tossed on his desk a smooth olive-colored
object little larger than a package of cigarettes. "The range is only a
few hundred miles, but it uses the new type of signal I've mentioned,
which eliminates the problem of orbiting a set of satellites to relay
the signal. The problem of first putting the mataform transceiver in
the place where you want to go is tricky, but we have a little glider
that ought to do the trick."
He showed Dan how to use the glider, and several other new items of
equipment, then frowned and sat back. "The worst of this is, we don't
know exactly what to expect on the planet. Some big organization could
even be trying to take over the planetary government. If so, a lot will
depend on what stage things are in when you land. To give you as much
chance as possible, your body has been carefully restructured to give
you exceptional strength and endurance. The neuro-conditioning lab has
recreated in your nervous system the reflexes of one of the deadliest
agents ever known. Don't be surprised if you perform certain actions
almost before you're aware of your own intentions. It has to be that
way to cut down the risks."
Dan and Kielgaard shook hands, and Dan went out to check his equipment.
Early the next day, he was on a fast spaceship to the planet called
Truth.
* * * * *
Dan was dropped low over the night side of the planet in a vaned
capsule that whirled straight down, burst open on contact with the
water, and sank. From this capsule, a small boat nosed out toward the
coast.
In the cramped space inside, Dan checked a little gauge to be sure the
boat's outer layer had adjusted to the water around it, so that there
would be no sharp difference in the radiation of heat to show up on any
infrared detector that might be in range. Then the boat nosed down with
a _suck-swish_ from the water-jet engine and began to pick up speed.
Several hours later, a thin flexible cable shot out from shallow water
at the edge of the junglelike coastline. The cable whipped around the
trunk of a tree well back from the water's edge, there was a faint low
hum, a grating noise, and something slid up over the rocks and pebbles
and came to rest among the tangled trunks and roots of the trees. A
moment later, Dan was out and dragging the boat further inland.
When he was satisfied that the boat was safe, he glanced at his watch.
The planet's large moon should soon be up and he intended to waste no
time making his position more secure.
He broke open a carton of the little mataform transceivers, clipped
several of them on small, almost completely transparent gliders, and
checked to be sure the little auxiliary motors of the gliders were in
working order. He slid on a helmet that fit tightly over his head and
eyes, and sent up the first glider. As the faint whir of the small
engine receded, Dan could see before him in the helmet a clear view of
the sea, with the thin rim of the planet's moon just rising, huge and
blood-red, over the horizon.
The small sensor unit on the glider sent back an image from a safe
height above the forest, and Dan switched the helmet from this glider
long enough to send up another.
By dawn, he had landed gliders, with their small mataform transceivers,
in isolated spots outside three moderate-sized cities within range of
the boat. Dan then took another of the mataform units and buried it.
Standing nearby, he mentally pronounced a key word.
As he did this, the electro-chemical change in a nervous tract
triggered a tiny implanted device that sent its imperceptible signal
to the mataform transceiver. The transceiver interpreted the signal,
and for an instant Dan sensed a shift in the pattern of things around
him.
Abruptly he was standing in the clearing where he had brought down
the first glider. Around him were several tall wind-thrown trees. In
the gray light of early dawn, he could barely make out the glider and
little mataform unit clipped to it. A few minutes later, the unit was
temporarily hidden, he had returned the glider to the boat, and he was
picking up the second glider in a badly burned tract of forest near the
second city.
* * * * *
When the three mataform units were all hidden, Dan paused for a moment
to think through the next step. The three gliders, invisible to the
naked eye as they passed high above the tree tops, might possibly have
shown up on any of a number of detection devices, to give away both the
starting point and the places where they had landed. It was now Dan's
problem to outwit these detection devices.
Dan clipped another mataform transceiver to a glider, put on the
control helmet, and sent the glider dodging low and carefully through
the trees. He found a spot about two miles away that suited him
and landed the glider. He swiftly unloaded the boat and carried its
contents to the buried mataform unit, where he mentally pronounced a
new key word, which triggered the unit and took him to the glider and
transceiver he had just landed. In a short time, he had the contents of
the boat stacked beside the glider.
Dan then disassembled the boat and engine, and stacked the parts beside
the boat's piled-up contents. By now, the sun was well up, and Dan
was becoming aware of a thrumming drone that grew steadily louder. He
quickly dug up the buried mataform unit, clipped it to a glider, and
hung the glider to an overhead limb by a green string, knotted so as to
come undone at the first sharp pull.
Dan glanced around carefully and listened to the increasing drone. He
looked up and studied a bumpy blue-green limb well overhead. This limb
was located so that a spy unit on it would cover most of the place
where the boat had been. Dan carefully gauged the speed with which the
droning was coming closer, then went by the mataform to the pile of
goods he had transferred, came back with a long tube, and sighted at
the overhead limb. There was a _whoosh_ and a small colorless blob with
a tiny bump in the center spread out on the limb. The blob gradually
turned blue-gray, matching the limb, and then the spy unit was
indistinguishable from the limb's other bumps and irregularities.
The droning noise was now quite loud.
Dan went by the mataform to his new camp and put on the helmet he used
to control the glider.
An instant later, the glider gave a whir and jerked forward. The knot
came untied, and the glider, carrying the mataform unit and a length of
dark-green string, flitted out of sight amid the big tree trunks.
Dan, his hand on a knob at the side of the helmet, shifted his vision
rapidly back and forth from the glider to the spy unit over the spot
where the boat had been.
There now came into view, in the place where the boat had been,
something that looked like a cross between an oversize bloodhound and a
tiger. Right behind this came a man with a rifle. Then another man, and
another. The angle of vision did not let Dan see exactly where the men
came from, but he supposed there was a jetcopter just overhead.
The tiger-like animal snuffled around, pawed at the ground, made trips
into the jungle on all sides, and finally ran back toward the shore.
The men followed close behind.
* * * * *
Dan, shifting his attention back and forth from this scene to the
glider, landed the glider nearby, just as the last of the men left the
place where the boat had been. Dan quickly went to each of the three
places near cities where he had landed the mataform transceivers, and
moved each of them by glider well away from the places where they had
landed. He left behind in each place a small spy unit.
He had just finished doing this when several loads of heavily armed men
in jetcopters came down in all three places. The men, Dan noticed, wore
no uniforms, and the copters were unmarked.