_[18]_
The detective pushed his way out of the crowded courtroom before the
rest of the crowd started to move. The members of the jury were still
filing in, and he knew that no one else would leave the room until the
verdict was in.
He didn't care. He knew what the verdict ought to be. He knew also that
juries had occasionally been swayed by histrionics on the part of the
defense counsel, and had been persuaded to free guilty men. He knew,
too, that prosecutors had railroaded innocent men. But such things as
that didn't happen often in the Belt. A man doesn't live too long in
the Belt unless he's capable of recognizing Truth when he sees it.
But even if the wrong verdict had been brought in, there would have been
nothing he could do about it now. He had done his part. He had done
everything he could. He had brought them in. He had testified. All the
rest of it was up to the Jury and the Court--those two enigmatic halves
of Justice and Judgment.
The point was that this was the perfect time to leave the courtroom.
When he reached his office, he could, if he wanted--and, he thought
ruefully, he probably _would_ want to, in spite of his pretended
indifference--call up to find out what the verdict had been. But, during
these few moments, all eyes were on the jury box. No one was watching
who left quietly by the side door of the big courtroom.
He moved silently and with assurance in the fractional-gee field of the
planetoid. One of the uniformed guards looked at him and smiled,
throwing him an informal salute.
The detective returned both. "If any of those news reporters ask which
way I went," he said amiably, "tell 'em I went thataway." He gestured
over his shoulder with a thumb.
"I ain't even seen you, Mr. Martin," said the guard.
The detective waved his thanks and kept going. It wasn't that he
disliked newsmen. Most of them were fairly intelligent, pleasant people.
But he didn't want to be asked any questions right now. He had given
them interviews aplenty during the trial, and they could use those, now
that the end of the trial had lifted the news ban. They had plenty of
quotations from Stan Martin without asking him what he thought of the
verdict itself.
Ten minutes later, he was in his own office in the Lloyd's Area. Helen,
his secretary, was just cutting off the phone as he walked into the
outer office. She flashed him a big smile.
"They just gave the verdict, Mr. Martin! Guilty all the way down the
line--conspiracy, extortion, kidnapping, and all the others. The only
'not guilty' verdict was a minor one. They decided that Hedgepeth wasn't
involved in the actual kidnapping itself, and therefore wasn't guilty of
the physical assault of the guard."
"They're probably right," the detective said, "but, as you said, it's a
minor point. It doesn't much matter whether he was physically present at
the time the boy was taken or not; he was certainly in on the plot." He
paused, frowning. "That's over and done with, except for a possible
appeal. And it's unlikely that that would involve us, anyway. Get Mr.
Pelham on the phone, will you? I'll take it in my office."
"The _Morton_ case?" she asked.
"Yeah. There's something fishy about the wreck of the spaceship
_Morton_, and I want Pelham to let me work on it."
He went on into his office and had barely sat down when the phone
hummed. "Yes?" he said, depressing the switch.
"Mr. BenChaim would like to speak to you, sir," Helen said formally.
"Oh?" In order to have gotten here so quickly, BenChaim, too, must have
left before the verdict was delivered. He was hardly more than a minute
behind the detective. And that was unusual in a man who was waiting at
the trial of the kidnappers of his own son. Still, Moishe BenChaim was
an unusual man.
"Tell him to come right on in," the detective said. "Oh, and Helen ...
hold off on that Pelham call for a little while." He didn't want to be
talking business while BenChaim was in the office.
"Yes, sir," she said.
A few seconds later, the door opened, and Moishe BenChaim came in. He
was not a big man, but he was broad of shoulder and broad of girth,
built like a wrestler. He had a heavy, graying beard, and wore it with a
patriarchal air. He was breathing rather heavily as he came through the
door, and he stopped suddenly to pull a handkerchief from his pocket. He
began coughing--harsh, racking, painful coughs that shook his heavy
frame.
"Sorry," he said after a moment. "Damn lungs. Shouldn't try to move so
fast." He wiped his lips and put the handkerchief away.
The detective didn't say anything. He knew that Moishe BenChaim had
injured his lungs eighteen years before. An accident in space had
ruptured his spacesuit, and the explosive decompression that had
resulted had almost killed him. He had saved his own life by holding the
torn spot with one hand and turning up the air-tank valve full blast
with the other. The rough patch job had held long enough for him to get
back inside his ship, but his lungs had never been the same, and his
eyes were eternally bloodshot from the ruptured and distended
capillaries.
"I noticed you'd slipped out of the courtroom," he went on. "I hope you
don't mind my following you."
"Of course not, Mr. BenChaim," the detective said. "Sit down."
BenChaim sat in the chair across the desk from the detective. "I didn't
wait for the verdict," he said. "I knew the conviction was certain after
you testified."
"Thanks. My secretary got the news just before you came in. Guilty
straight across the board. But your son's testimony was a lot more
telling than mine."
"Guilty," BenChaim repeated with satisfaction. "Naturally. What else? I
admit my son's testimony was good," he continued; "Little Shmuela told
his story like a little man up there in the witness-box. Never looked
scared, never got mixed up. But Shmuela's testimony was your testimony
too, Mr. Martin. If it hadn't been for you, he wouldn't be here to
testify, for which I'm grateful to God." Then he leaned back and spread
his hands apart in a gesture of dismissal.
"But that's all over and done with," he said. "I came about a different
matter." Again he paused, as if picking his words carefully. "Do you
know a man named Barnabas Nguma?"
"Nguma? Yes; I met him once. Why?"
"He was in the courtroom today. He came to see me just before court
convened."
"Oh?" the detective said noncommittally.
"Yes. He claims to represent an organization on Earth which has been
trying to hire you for a job there. Is that right?"
"That's right," the detective said warily. "What did he want with you?"
"Now, that's a funny thing," BenChaim said. "It seems that he's under
the impression that you turned down his job to take on this kidnapping.
Is that right?"
"Not exactly," the detective said tightly. "I was working on your son's
case before he and a couple of other men came out here to talk to me.
But they'd written to me long before that." He wondered what BenChaim
was getting at. He didn't owe any explanations to the industrialist,
but, on the other hand, he couldn't be impolite to him.
"I see," BenChaim said, nodding his head slowly. "Like most Earthies,
Mr. Nguma is suffering under a misapprehension. He seems to think that I
have some sort of hold over you, that I was the one who made you turn
down his job, so that you'd take _my_ case."
"Oh? Was he angry because you'd put your own selfish interests ahead of
his unselfish ones?" the detective asked with a trace of hard sarcasm in
his voice.
"Oh, no," said BenChaim. "Oh, no. Not at all. He said he understood
perfectly. But he wondered if, now that my boy had been returned safely,
I might not put a little pressure on you to get you to take his case."
"And what did you say?"
Moishe BenChaim scowled. "I told him exactly where he could head in. I
told him that I had no power over you whatever, that I hadn't hired you
at all, that I didn't even know that you were working on the case until
after you rescued Shmuel. I told him that even if I held the power of
life and death over you I would never lift so much as a finger against
you. I told him that it was just the other way around, in fact. I told
him that you have such a power over me because of what you did for
Shmuel that it is _I_ who will jump through _your_ hoop if ordered, not
the other way around. I was quite angry." BenChaim relaxed a little
before going on. "Actually, I'm sorry I blew up. He's a well-meaning
man, I think."
"No doubt," the detective said. "Did he tell you what the job was?"
"With most heart-rending particulars," said BenChaim. "I was told all
about how this Nipe has been killing and eating people, as if I didn't
know already. But it wasn't until I heard him talk that I realized how
scared people are back there on Earth. You know, Martin, we're insulated
out here. We don't feel that terror, even when we read about it or see
the reports on the newscasts. If everybody on Earth is as scared as that
Mr. Nguma is, it's a wonder they haven't all panicked and taken to
running around in circles."
"As a matter of fact, Mr. BenChaim," the detective said levelly, "they
have begun to do just that. Mr. Nguma and his friends have been after me
for a long time to take their job. They have pulled every trick they can
think of--including this last one with you--to get me to go back to
Earth and find that monster. I have refused them so often and so firmly
that they are convinced I'm afraid to tackle the Nipe. They are
convinced that I know I'll fail. And yet they keep after me. If that
isn't running around in circles, it'll do until a better example comes
along."
"They're out of their minds," BenChaim said flatly. "Of _course_ no man
in his right mind would try to face down that thing! It would be as
silly as trying to outrun a bullet or do arithmetic faster than a
computer. That's common sense. That's showing a healthy respect for the
Nipe--not fear. At least, not fear in the way that those men are
afraid."
Suddenly the detective knew why the industrialist had come. He knew that
Moishe BenChaim wanted to reassure Stanley Martin, to tell him that he
was doing the sensible thing in turning down so dangerous an assignment.
He could almost have predicted word for word what BenChaim was going to
say next.
"Nguma may be here at any minute," said the industrialist. "He told me
that he was going to come as soon as the trial was over. What are you
going to tell him this time? I know it's none of my business, but I'm
asking, just the same."
"I'm going to tell him _no_," the detective said. "I will not return to
Earth for any reason whatever."
"Good," said BenChaim. "Good. That's the smart thing to do. And don't
let him buffalo you. We know you out here in the Belt, Martin. I've been
out here for thirty years, and I know what kind of guts it takes to do
the things you've done. Those men don't understand space. Nobody
understands space until he's lived in it and worked in it, and had cold
death only a fraction of an inch away from his skin for hours and days
at a time. No matter what those Earthies say, we know you've got more
guts than anybody else in the Belt--to say nothing of those
stay-at-homes on Earth."
"Thank you. I appreciate that," the detective said. But they were only
words. He knew that BenChaim meant exactly what he said--or thought he
meant it. But he also knew that BenChaim and others would always wonder
why he had turned the job down.
_God!_ he thought, _I wish I knew!_ The thought was only momentary.
Then, as it had done so many times before, his mind veered away from the
dangerous subject.
Moishe BenChaim stood up. "Well, that's all I had to say, Mr. Martin. I
just wanted to warn you that that man might be coming around and to tell
you how I felt. Remember what I said about jumping through a hoop. Any
time you need me, for anything at all, you just say so. Understand?"
"I understand," the detective said, forcing a smile. He rose and shook
the industrialist's outstretched hand. "And thanks again," he added.
After BenChaim had gone, the detective sat thinking, toying with a
pencil on his desk. Moishe BenChaim, like so many others in the Belt,
had come out with nothing but his brain and his two hands and the
equipment necessary to keep him alive. In thirty years, he had parlayed
that into one of the biggest fortunes in the Solar System. It was men
like that whose respect he valued, and, on the surface, he apparently
had that respect. But refusing the Nipe job would dull the bright sheen
of that respect, and he knew it. BenChaim had talked about how foolish
it would be to try to beat the Nipe in a face-to-face encounter, but he
hadn't meant it. He knew perfectly well that all Stanley Martin would be
expected to do would be to find out where the Nipe's hideout was. Once
that had been accomplished, men and machines--most especially
machines--could wipe the monster from the face of the Earth. One
well-placed bomb would do it, if the authorities only knew where to
place that bomb. If only--
Again his mind veered away, refusing to consider the Nipe too carefully
or too closely.
The intercom on his desk hummed, and he pressed the switch.
"Yes, Helen?"
"That Mr. Nguma was here while Mr. BenChaim was with you, Mr. Martin. I
followed your instructions and told him that you would not see him."
"Fine. Thanks, Helen."
"Also, there's a radiogram for you from Earth."
"If it's from one of Nguma's colleagues," the detective said, "I don't
want to see it. File it in the cylindrical file--under _W_."
"I don't think it is," the secretary said doubtfully. "I can't make any
sense out of it. I'd better bring it in."
"Okay. And then put that call through to Pelham. I want to get going on
that _Morton_ spaceship wrecking. I'm getting itchy for action."
She brought in the radiogram and put it on his desk before calling
Pelham. She had already read it, of course. It was her job to read such
things.
The detective picked up the sheet of paper and read it.