In something under two hours Hoddan was ushered into the ambassador's
office. He'd been refreshed, his torn clothing replaced by more
respectable garments, and the places where stun-pistols had stung him
soothed by ointments. But, more important, he'd worked out and firmly
adopted a new point of view.
He'd been a misfit at home on Zan because he was not contented with the
humdrum and monotonous life of a member of a space-pirate community.
Piracy was a matter of dangerous take-offs in cranky rocket-ships, to be
followed by weeks or months of tedious and uncomfortable boredom in
highly unhealthy re-breathed air. No voyage ever contained more than ten
seconds of satisfactory action--and all space-fighting took place just
out of the atmosphere of a possibly embattled planet, because you
couldn't intercept a ship at cruising speed between the stars.
Regardless of the result of the fighting, one had to get away fast when
it was over, lest overwhelming force swarm up from the nearby world. It
was intolerably devoid of anything an ambitious young man would want.
Even when one had made a good prize--with the lifeboats darting
frantically for ground--and after one got back to Zan with a captured
ship, even then there was little satisfaction in a piratical career. Zan
had not a large population. Piracy couldn't support a large number of
people. Zan couldn't attempt to defend itself against even single
heavily-armed ships that sometimes came in passionate resolve to avenge
the disappearance of a rich freighter or a fast new liner. So the people
of Zan, to avoid hanging, had to play innocent. They had to be
convincingly simple, harmless folk who cultivated their fields and led
quiet, blameless lives. They might loot, but they had to hide their
booty where investigators would not find it. They couldn't really
benefit by it. They had to build their own houses and make their own
garments and grow their own food. So life on Zan was dull. Piracy was
not profitable in the sense that one could live well by it. It simply
wasn't a trade for a man like Hoddan.
So he'd abandoned it. He'd studied electronics in books from looted
passenger-ship libraries. Within months after arrival on a law-abiding
planet, he was able to earn a living in electronics as an honest trade.
And that was unsatisfactory. Law-abiding communities were no more
thrilling or rewarding than piratical ones. A payday now and then didn't
make up for the tedium of labor. Even when one had money there wasn't
much to do with it. On Walden, to be sure, the level of civilization was
so high that many people needed psychiatric treatment to stand it, and
neurotics vastly outnumbered more normal folk. And on Walden electronics
was only a trade like piracy, and no more fun.
He should have known it would be this way. His grandfather had often
discussed this frustration in human life.
"Us humans," it was his grandfather's habit to say, "don't make sense!
There's some of us that work so hard they're too tired to enjoy life.
There's some that work so hard at enjoying it that they don't get no fun
out of it. And the rest of us spend our lives complainin' that there
ain't any fun in it anyhow. The man that over all has the best time of
any is one that picks out something he hasn't got a chance to do, and
spends his life raisin' hell because he's stopped from doing it.
When"--and here Hoddan's grandfather tended to be emphatic--"he
wouldn't think much of it if he could!"
What Hoddan craved, of course, was a sense of achievement, of doing
things worth doing, and doing them well. Technically there were
opportunities all around him. He'd developed one, and it would save
millions of credits a year if it were adopted. But nobody wanted it.
He'd tried to force its use, he was in trouble, and now he could
complain justly enough, but despite his grandfather he was not the
happiest man he knew.
* * * * *
The ambassador received him with a cordial wave of the hand.
"Things move fast," he said cheerfully. "You weren't here half an hour
before there was a police captain at the gate. He explained that an
excessively dangerous criminal had escaped jail and been seen to climb
the Embassy wall. He offered very generously to bring some men in and
capture you and take you away--with my permission, of course. He was
shocked when I declined."
"I can understand that," said Hoddan.
"By the way," said the ambassador. "Young men like yourself-- Is there a
girl involved in this?"
Hoddan considered.
"A girl's father," he acknowledged, "is the real complainant against
me."
"Does he complain," asked the ambassador, "because you want to marry
her, or because you don't?"
"Neither," Hoddan told him. "She hasn't quite decided that I'm worth
defying her rich father for."
"Good!" said the ambassador. "It can't be too bad a mess while a woman
is being really practical. I've checked your story. Allowing for
differences of viewpoint, it agrees with the official version. I've
ruled that you are a political refugee, and so entitled to sanctuary in
the Embassy. And that's that."
"Thank you, sir," said Hoddan.
"There's no question about the crime," observed the ambassador, "or that
it is primarily political. You proposed to improve a technical process
in a society which considers itself beyond improvement. If you'd
succeeded, the idea of change would have spread, people now poor would
have gotten rich, people now rich would have gotten poor, and you'd have
done what all governments are established to prevent. So you'll never be
able to walk the streets of this planet again in safety. You've scared
people."
"Yes, sir," said Hoddan. "It's been an unpleasant surprise to them, to
be scared."
The ambassador put the tips of his fingers together.
"Do you realize," he asked, "that the whole purpose of civilization is
to take the surprises out of life, so one can be bored to death? That a
culture in which nothing unexpected ever happens is in what is called
its Golden Age? That when nobody can even imagine anything happening
unexpectedly, that they later fondly refer to that period as the Good
Old Days?"
"I hadn't thought of it in just those words, sir--"
"It is one of the most-avoided facts of life," said the ambassador.
"Government, in the local or planetary sense of the word, is an
organization for the suppression of adventure. Taxes are, in part, the
insurance premiums one pays for protection against the unpredictable.
And you have offended against everything that is the foundation of a
stable and orderly and damnably tedious way of life--against
civilization, in fact."
Hoddan frowned.
"Yet you've granted me asylum--"
"Naturally!" said the ambassador. "The Diplomatic Service works for the
welfare of humanity. That doesn't mean stuffiness. A Golden Age in any
civilization is always followed by collapse. In ancient days savages
came and camped outside the walls of super-civilized towns. They were
unwashed, unmannerly, and unsanitary. Super-civilized people refused
even to think about them! So presently the savages stormed the city
walls and another civilization went up in flames."
"But now," objected Hoddan, "there are no savages."
* * * * *
"They invent themselves," the ambassador told him. "My point is that the
Diplomatic Service cherishes individuals and causes which battle
stuffiness and complacency and Golden Ages and monstrous things like
that. Not thieves, of course. They're degradation, like body lice. But
rebels and crackpots and revolutionaries who prevent hardening of the
arteries of commerce and furnish wholesome exercise to the body
politic--they're worth cherishing!"
"I ... think I see, sir," said Hoddan.
"I hope you do," said the ambassador. "My action on your behalf is pure
diplomatic policy. To encourage the dissatisfied is to insure against
universal satisfaction--which is lethal. Walden is in a bad way. You are
the most encouraging thing that has happened here in a long time. And
you're not a native."
"No-o-o," agreed Hoddan. "I come from Zan."
"Never mind." The ambassador turned to a stellar atlas. "Consider
yourself a good symptom, and valued as such. If you could start a
contagion, you'd deserve well of your fellow citizens. Savages can
always invent themselves. But enough of apology from me. Let us set
about your affairs." He consulted the atlas. "Where would you like to
go, since you must leave Walden?"
"Not too far, sir--"
"The girl, eh?" The ambassador did not smile. He ran his finger down a
page. "The nearest inhabited worlds, of course, are Krim and Darth. Krim
is a place of lively commercial activity, where an electronics engineer
should easily find employment. It is said to be progressive and there is
much organized research--"
"I wouldn't want to be a kept engineer, sir," said Hoddan
apologetically. "I'd rather ... well ... putter on my own."
"Impractical, but sensible," commented the ambassador. He turned a page.
"There's Darth. Its social system is practically feudal. It's
technically backward. There's a landing grid, but space exports are
skins and metal ingots and practically nothing else. There is no
broadcast power. Strangers find the local customs difficult. There is no
town larger than twenty thousand people, and few approach that size.
Most settled places are mere villages near some feudal castle, and roads
are so few and bad that wheeled transport is rare."
He leaned back and said in a detached voice:
"I had a letter from there a couple of months ago. It was rather
arrogant. The writer was one Don Loris, and he explained that his
dignity would not let him make a commercial offer, but an electronic
engineer who put himself under his protection would not be the loser. He
signed himself prince of this, lord of that, baron of the other thing
and claimant to the dukedom of something else. Are you interested? No
kings on Darth, just feudal chiefs."
Hoddan thought it over.
"I'll go to Darth," he decided. "It's bound to be better than Zan, and
it can't be worse than Walden."
The ambassador looked impassive. An Embassy servant came in and offered
an indoor communicator. The ambassador put it to his ear. After a moment
he said:
"Show him in." He turned to Hoddan. "You did kick up a storm! The
Minister of State, no less, is here to demand your surrender. I'll
counter with a formal request for an exit-permit. I'll talk to you again
when he leaves."
* * * * *
Hoddan went out. He paced up and down the other room into which he was
shown. Darth wouldn't be in a Golden Age! He was wiser now than he'd
been this same morning. He recognized that he'd made mistakes. Now he
could see rather ruefully how completely improbable it was that anybody
could put across a technical device merely by proving its value, without
making anybody want it. He shook his head regretfully at the blunder.
The ambassador sent for him.
"I've had a pleasant time," he told Hoddan genially. "There was a
beautiful row. You've really scared people, Hoddan! You deserve well of
the republic! Every government and every person needs to be thoroughly
terrified occasionally. It limbers up the brain."
"Yes, sir," said Hoddan. "I've--"
"The planetary government," said the ambassador with relish, "insists
that you have to be locked up with the key thrown away. Because you know
how to make deathrays. I said it was nonsense, and you were a political
refugee in sanctuary. The Minister of State said the Cabinet would
consider removing you forcibly from the Embassy if you weren't
surrendered. I said that if the Embassy was violated no ship would clear
for Walden from any other civilized planet. They wouldn't like losing
their off-planet trade! Then he said that the government would not give
you an exit-permit, and that he would hold me personally responsible if
you killed everybody on Walden, including himself and me. I said he
insulted me by suggesting that I'd permit such shenanigans. He said the
government would take an extremely grave view of my attitude, and I said
they would be silly if they did. Then he went off with great
dignity--but shaking with panic--to think up more nonsense."
[Illustration]
"Evidently," said Hoddan in relief, "you believe me when I say that my
gadget doesn't make deathrays."
The ambassador looked slightly embarrassed.
"To be honest," he admitted, "I've no doubt that you invented it
independently, but they've been using such a device for half a century
in the Cetis cluster. They've had no trouble."
Hoddan winced.
"Did you tell the Minister that?"
"Hardly," said the ambassador. "It would have done you no good. You're
in open revolt and have performed overt acts of violence against the
police. But also it was impolite enough for me to suggest that the local
government was stupid. It would have been most undiplomatic to prove
it."
Hoddan did not feel very proud, just then.
"I'm thinking that the cops--quite unofficially--might try to kidnap me
from the Embassy. They'll deny that they tried, especially if they
manage it. But I think they'll try."
"Very likely," said the ambassador. "We'll take precautions."
"I'd like to make something--not lethal--just in case," said Hoddan. "If
you can trust me not to make deathrays, I'd like to make a generator of
odd-shaped microwaves. They're described in textbooks. They ionize the
air where they strike. That's all. They make air a high-resistance
conductor. Nothing more than that."
The ambassador said:
"There was an old-fashioned way to make ozone...." When Hoddan nodded, a
little surprised, the ambassador said: "By all means go ahead. You
should be able to get parts from your room vision-receiver. I'll have
some tools given you." Then he added: "Diplomacy has to understand the
things that control events. Once it was social position. For a time it
was weapons. Then it was commerce. Now it's technology. But I wonder how
you'll use the ionization of air to protect yourself from kidnapers!
Don't tell me! I'd rather try to guess."
He waved his hand in cordial dismissal and an Embassy servant showed
Hoddan to his quarters. Ten minutes later another staff man brought him
tools such as would be needed for work on a vision set. He was left
alone.
* * * * *
He delicately disassembled the set in his room and began to put some of
the parts together in a novel but wholly rational fashion. The science
of electronics, like the science of mathematics, had progressed away
beyond the point where all of it had practical applications. One could
spend a lifetime learning things that research had discovered in the
past, and industry had never found a use for. On Zan, industriously
reading pirated books, Hoddan hadn't known where utility stopped. He'd
kept on learning long after a practical man would have stopped studying
to get a paying job.
Any electronic engineer could have made the device he now assembled. It
only needed to be wanted--and apparently he was the first person to want
it. In this respect it was like the receptor that had gotten him into
trouble. But as he put the small parts together, he felt a certain
loneliness. A man Hoddan's age needs to have some girl admire him from
time to time. If Nedda had been sitting cross-legged before him,
listening raptly while he explained, Hoddan would probably have been
perfectly happy. But she wasn't. It wasn't likely she ever would be.
Hoddan scowled.
Inside of an hour he'd made a hand-sized, five-watt, wave-guide
projector of waves of eccentric form. In the beam of that projector, air
became ionized. Air became a high-resistance conductor comparable to
nichrome wire, when and where the projector sent its microwaves.
He was wrapping tape about the pistol grip when a servant brought him a
scribbled note. It had been handed in at the Embassy gate by a woman who
fled after leaving it. It looked like Nedda's handwriting. It read like
Nedda's phrasing. It appeared to have been written by somebody in a
highly emotional state. But it wasn't quite--not absolutely--convincing.
He went to find the ambassador. He handed over the note. The ambassador
read it and raised his eyebrows.
"Well?"
"It could be authentic," admitted Hoddan.
"In other words," said the ambassador, "you are not sure that it is a
booby trap--an invitation to a date with the police?"
"I'm not sure," said Hoddan. "I think I'd better bite. If I have any
illusions left after this morning, I'd better find it out. I thought
Nedda liked me quite a lot."
"I make no comment," observed the ambassador. "Can I help you in any
way?"
"I have to leave the Embassy," said Hoddan, "and there's a practically
solid line of police outside the walls. Could I borrow some old clothes,
a few pillows, and a length of rope?"
Half an hour later a rope uncoiled itself at the very darkest outside
corner of the Embassy wall. It dangled down to the ground. This was at
the rear of the Embassy enclosure. The night was bright with stars, and
the city's towers glittered with many lights. But here there was almost
complete blackness and that silence of a city which is sometimes so
companionable.
The rope remained hanging from the wall. No light reached the ground
there. The tiny crescent of Walden's farthest moon cast an insufficient
glow. Nothing could be seen by it.
The rope went up, as if it had been lowered merely to make sure that it
was long enough for its purpose. Then it descended again. This time a
figure dangled at its end. It came down, swaying a little. It reached
the blackest part of the shadow at the wall's base. It stayed there.
Nothing happened. The figure rose swiftly, hauled up in rapid pullings
of the rope. Then the line came down again and again a figure descended.
But this figure moved. The rope swayed and oscillated. The figure came
down a good halfway to the ground. It paused, and then descended with
much movement to two-thirds of the way from the top.
There something seemed to alarm it. It began to rise with violent
writhings of the rope. It climbed--
There was a crackling noise. A stun-pistol. The figure seemed to climb
more frantically. More cracklings. Half a dozen--a dozen sharp, snapping
noises. They were stun-pistol charges and there were tiny sparks where
they hit. The dangling figure seemed convulsed. It went limp, but it did
not fall. More charges poured into it. It hung motionless halfway up the
wall of the Embassy.
Movements began in the darkness. Men appeared, talking in low tones and
straining their eyes toward the now motionless figure. They gathered
underneath it. One went off at a run, carrying a message. Someone of
authority arrived, panting. There was more low-toned argument. More and
still more men appeared. There were forty or fifty figures at the base
of the wall.
One of those figures began to climb the rope hand over hand. He reached
the motionless object. He swore in a shocked voice. He was shushed from
below. He let the figure drop. It made next to no sound when it landed.
Then there was a rushing, as the guards about the Embassy went furiously
back to their proper posts to keep anybody from slipping out Two men
remained swearing bitterly over a dummy made of old clothes and pillows.
But their profanity was in vain.
* * * * *
Hoddan was then some blocks away. He suffered painful doubt about the
note ostensibly from Nedda. The guards about the Embassy would have
tried to catch him in any case, but it did seem very plausible that the
note had been sent him to get him to try to get down the wall. On the
other hand, a false descent of a palpably dummylike dummy had been
plausible, too. He'd drawn all the guards to one spot by his seeming
doubt and by testing out their vigilance with a dummy. The only thing
improbable in his behavior had been that after testing their vigilance
with a dummy, he'd made use of it.
A fair distance away, he turned sedately into a narrow lane between
buildings. This paralleled another lane serving the home of a girl
friend of Nedda's. The note had named the garden behind that other
girl's home as a rendezvous. But Hoddan was not going to that garden. He
wanted to make sure. If the cops had forged the note--
He judged his position carefully. If he climbed this tree,--hm-m-m....
Kind of the city-planners of Walden to use trees so lavishly--if he
climbed this tree he could look into the garden where Nedda in theory
waited in tears. He climbed it. He sat astride a thick limb in scented
darkness and considered further. Presently he brought out his five-watt
projector. There was deepest darkness hereabouts. Trees and shrubbery
were merely blacker than their surroundings. But there was reason for
suspicion.
Neither in the house of Nedda's girl friend, nor in the nearer house
between, was there a single lighted window.
Hoddan adjusted the wave-guide and pressed the stud of his instrument.
He pointed it carefully into the nearer garden.
A man grunted in a surprised tone. There was a stirring. A man swore
startledly. The words seemed inappropriate to a citizen merely breathing
the evening air.
Hoddan frowned. The note from Nedda seemed to have been a forgery. To
make sure, he readjusted the wave-guide to project a thin but fan-shaped
beam. He aimed again. Painstakingly, he traversed the area in which men
would have been posted to jump him, in the event that the note was
forged. If Nedda were there, she would feel no effect. If police lay in
wait, they would notice. At once.
They did. A man howled. Two men yelled together. Somebody bellowed.
Somebody squealed. Someone, in charge of the flares made ready to give
light for the police, was so startled by a strange sensation that he
jerked the cord. An immense, cold-white brilliance appeared. The garden
where Nedda definitely was not present became bathed in incandescence.
Light spilled over the wall of one garden into the next and disclosed a
squirming mass of police in the nearer garden also. Some of them leaped
wildly and ungracefully while clawing behind them. Some stood still and
struggled desperately to accomplish something to their rear, while
others gazed blankly at them until Hoddan swung his instrument their
way, also.
A man tore off his pants and swarmed over the wall to get away from
something intolerable. Others imitated him, save in the direction of
their flight. Some removed their trousers before they fled, but others
tried to get them off while fleeing. Those last did not fare too well.
Mostly they stumbled and other men fell over them, when both fallen and
fallen-upon uttered hoarse and profane lamentations--they howled to the
high heavens.
Hoddan let the confusion mount past any unscrambling, and then slid down
the tree and joined in the rush. With the glare in the air behind him,
he only feigned to stumble over one figure after another. Once he
grunted as he scorched his own fingers. But he came out of the lane with
a dozen stun-pistols, mostly uncomfortably warm, as trophies of the
ambush.
As they cooled off he stowed them away in his belt and pockets,
strolling away down the tree-lined street. Behind him, cops realized
their trouserless condition and appealed plaintively to householders to
notify headquarters of their state.
Hoddan did not feel particularly disillusioned, somehow. It occurred to
him, even, that this particular event was likely to help him get off of
Walden. If he was to leave against the cops' will, he needed to have
them at less than top efficiency. And men who have had their pants
scorched off them are not apt to think too clearly. Hoddan felt a
certain confidence increase in his mind. He'd worked the thing out very
nicely. If ionization made air a high-resistance conductor, then an
ionizing beam would make a high-resistance short between the power
terminals of a stun-pistol. With the power a stun-pistol carried, that
short would get hot. So would the pistol. It would get hot enough, in
fact, to scorch cloth in contact with it. Which had happened.
If the effect had been produced in the soles of policemen's feet, Hoddan
would have given every cop a hotfoot. But since they carried their
stun-pistols in their hip-pockets--
The thought of Nedda diminished his satisfaction. The note could be pure
forgery, or the police could have learned about it through the treachery
of the servant she sent to the Embassy with it. It would be worthwhile
to know. He headed toward the home of her father. If she were loyal to
him--why it would complicate things considerably. But he felt it
necessary to find out.
He neared the spot where Nedda lived. This was an especially desirable
residential area. The houses were large and gracefully designed, and the
gardens were especially lush. Presently he heard music ahead--live
music. He went on. He came to a place where strolling citizens had
paused under the trees of the street to listen to the melody and the
sound of voices that accompanied it. And the music and the festivity was
in the house in which Nedda dwelt. She was having a party, on the very
night of the day in which he'd been framed for life imprisonment.
It was a shock. Then there was a rush of vehicles, and police trucks
were disgorging cops before the door. They formed a cordon about the
house, and some knocked and were admitted in haste. Then Hoddan nodded
dourly to himself.
His escape from the Embassy was now known. No less certainly, the
failure of the trap Nedda's note had baited had been reported. The
police were now turning the whole city into a trap for one Bron Hoddan,
and they were looking first at the most probable places, then they'd
search the possible places for him to be, and by the time that had been
accomplished they'd have cops from other cities pouring into the city
and they'd search every square inch of it for him. And certainly and
positively they'd take the most urgent and infallible precautions to
make sure he didn't get back into the Embassy.
It was a situation that would have appalled Hoddan only that morning.
Now, though, he only shook his head sadly. He moved on. He'd gotten into
trouble by trying to make an industrial civilization accept something it
didn't want--a technical improvement in a standard electronic device.
He'd gotten partly out of trouble by giving his jailers what they
definitely desired--the sight of him apparently a suicide in the cell in
the Detention Building. He'd come out of the Embassy, again, by giving
the watchers outside a view they urgently desired--a figure secretly
descending the Embassy wall. He'd indulged himself at the ambuscade, but
the way to get back into the Embassy....
* * * * *
It was not far from Nedda's house to a public-safety kiosk, decoratively
placed on a street corner. He entered it. It was unattended, of course.
It was simply an out-of-door installation where cops could be summoned
or fires reported or emergencies described by citizens independently of
the regular home communicators. It had occurred to Hoddan that the
planetary authorities would be greatly pleased to hear of a situation,
in a place, that would seem to hint at his presence. There were all
sorts of public services that would be delighted to operate impressively
in their own lines. There were bureaus which would rejoice in a chance
to show off their efficiency.
He used his microwave generator--which at short enough range would
short-circuit anything--upon the apparatus in the kiosk. It was
perfectly simple, if one knew how. He worked with a sort of tender
thoroughness, shorting this item, shorting that, giving this frantic
emergency call, stating that baseless lie. When he went out of the kiosk
he walked briskly toward an appointment he had made.
And presently the murmur of the city at night had new sounds added to
it. They began as a faint, confused clamor at the edges of the city. The
uproar moved centralward and grew louder as it came. There were clanging
bells and sirens and beeper-horns warning all nonofficial vehicles to
keep out of the way. On the raised-up expressway snorting metal monsters
rushed with squealing excitement. On the fragrant lesser streets, small
vehicles rushed with proportionately louder howlings. Police trucks
poured out of their cubbyholes and plunged valiantly through the dark.
Broadcast-units signaled emergency and cut off the air to make the
placid ether waves available to authority.
All these noises and all this tumult moved toward a single point. The
outer parts of the city regained their former quiet, save that there was
less music. The broadcasts were off. But the sound of racing vehicles
clamoring for right-of-way grew louder and louder, and more and more
peremptory as it concentrated toward the large open square on which the
Interstellar Embassy faced. From every street and avenue fire-fighting
equipment poured into that square. In between and behind, hooting loudly
for precedence, police trucks accompanied and fore-ran them. Emergency
vehicles of all the civic bureaus appeared, all of them with immense
conviction of their importance.
It was a very large open square, that space before the Embassy. From its
edge, the monument to the First Settlers in the center looked small. But
even that vast plaza filled up with trucks of every imaginable variety,
from the hose towers which could throw streams of water four hundred
feet straight up, to the miniature trouble-wagons of Electricity Supply.
Staff cars of fire and police and sanitary services crowded each other
and bumped fenders with tree-surgeon trucks prepared to move fallen
trees, and with public-address trucks ready to lend stentorian tones to
any voice of authority.
But there was no situation except that there was no situation. There was
no fire. There was no riot. There were not even stray dogs for the pound
wagons to pursue, nor broken water mains for the water department
technicians to shut off and repair. There was nothing for anybody to do
but ask everybody else what the hell they were doing there, and
presently to swear at each other for cluttering up the way.
* * * * *
The din of arriving horns and sirens had stopped, and a mutter of
profanity was developing, when a last vehicle arrived. It was an
ambulance, and it came purposefully out of a side avenue and swung
toward a particular place as if it knew exactly what it was about. When
its way was blocked, it hooted impatiently for passage. Its lights
blinked violently red, demanding clearance. A giant fire-fighting unit
pulled aside. The ambulance ran past and hooted at a cluster of police
trucks. They made way for it. It blared at a gathering of dismounted,
irritated truck personnel. It made its way through them. It moved in a
straight line for the gate of the Interstellar Embassy.
A hundred yards from that gate, its horn blatted irritably at the car of
the acting head of municipal police. That car obediently made way for
it.
The ambulance rolled briskly up to the very gate of the Embassy. There
it stopped. A figure got down from the driver's seat and walked
purposefully in the gate.
Thereafter nothing happened at all until a second figure rolled and
toppled itself out on the ground from the seat beside the ambulance
driver's. That figure kicked and writhed on the ground. A policeman went
to find out what was the matter.
It was the ambulance driver. Not the one who'd driven the ambulance to
the Embassy gate, but the one who should have. He was bound hand and
foot and not too tightly gagged. When released he swore vividly while
panting that he had been captured and bound by somebody who said he was
Bron Hoddan and was in a hurry to get back to the Interstellar Embassy.
There was no uproar. Those to whom Hoddan's name had meaning were struck
speechless with rage. The fury of the police was even too deep for
tears.
But Bron Hoddan, back in the quarters assigned him in the Embassy,
unloaded a dozen cooled-off stun-pistols from his pockets and sent word
to the ambassador that he was back, and that the note ostensibly from
Nedda had actually been a police trap.
Getting ready to retire, he reviewed his situation. In some respects it
was not too bad. All but Nedda's share in trying to trap him, and having
a party the same night.... He stared morosely at the wall. Then he saw,
very simply, that she mightn't have known even of his arrest. She lived
a highly sheltered life. Her father could have had her kept completely
in ignorance....
He cheered immediately. This would be his last night on Walden, if he
were lucky, but vague plans already revolved in his mind. Yes.... He'd
achieve splendid things, he'd grow rich, he'd come back and marry that
delightful girl, Nedda, and end as a great man. Already, today, he'd
done a number of things worth doing, and on the whole he'd done them
well.