He went down the room to the far window and bug-eyed. One block away,
at the end of Gorky Street, was Red Square. St. Basil's Cathedral at
the far end, and unbelievable candy-cane construction of fanciful
spirals, and every-colored turrets; the red marble mausoleum, Mecca of
world Communism, housing the prophet Lenin and his two disciples; the
long drab length of the GUM department store opposite. But it wasn't
these.
There on the square, nestled in the corner between St. Basil's and
the mausoleum, squatted what Henry Kuran had never really expected to
see, in spite of his assignment, in spite of news broadcasts, in spite
of everything to the contrary. Boomerang shaped, resting on short
stilts, six of them in all, a baby blue in color--an impossibly
beautiful baby blue.
The spaceship.
Paco stood at one shoulder, Loo at the other.
For once there was no humor in Paco's words. "There it is," he said.
"Our visitors from the stars."
"Possibly our teachers from the stars," Hank said huskily.
"Or our judges." Loo's voice was flat.
They stood there for another five minutes in silence. Loo said
finally, "Undoubtedly our Intourist guides will take us nearer, if
that's allowed, later during our stay. Meanwhile, my friends, I shall
rest up for the occasion."
"Let's take our quick look at the city," Paco said to Hank. "Once the
Intourist people take over they'll run our feet off. Frankly, I have
little interest in where the first shot of the revolution was fired,
the latest tractor factory, or where Rasputin got it in the neck.
There are more important things."
"We know," Loo said from the bed. "Women."
"Right!"
* * * * *
Hank was wondering whether or not to leave the room. The _Stilyagi_
were to contact him. Where? When? Obviously, he'd need their help. He
had no idea whatsoever on how to penetrate to the Interplanetary
emissaries.
[Illustration]
He spoke Russian. Fine. So what? Could he simply march up to the
spacecraft and knock on the door? Or would he make himself dangerously
conspicuous by just getting any closer than he now was to the craft?
As he stood now, he felt he was comparatively safe. He was sure the
Russkies had marked him down as a rather ordinary American. Heavens
knows, he'd worked hard enough at the role. A simple, average tourist,
a little on the square side, and not even particularly articulate.
However, he wasn't going to accomplish much by remaining here in this
room. He doubted that the _Stilyagi_ would get in touch with him
either by phone or simply knocking at the door.
"O.K., Paco," he said. "Let's go. In search of the pin-up girl--Moscow
style."
They walked down to the lobby and started for the door.
One of the Intourist guides who had brought them from the railroad
station stood to one side of the stairs. "Going for a walk, gentlemen?
I suggest you stroll up Gorky Street, it's the main shopping center."
Paco said, "How about going over into Red Square to see the
spaceship?"
The guide shrugged. "I don't believe the guards will allow you to get
too near. It would be undesirable to bother the Galactic delegates to
the Soviet Union."
That was one way of wording it, Hank thought glumly. _The Galactic
delegates to the Soviet Union._ Not to the Earth, but to the Soviet
Union. He wondered what the neutrals in such countries as India were
thinking.
But at least there were no restrictions on Paco and him.
They strolled up Gorky Street, jam packed with fellow pedestrians.
Shoppers, window-shoppers, men on the prowl for girls, girls on the
prowl for men, Ivan and his wife taking the baby for a stroll, street
cleaners at the endless job of keeping Moscow's streets the neatest in
the world.
Paco pointed out this to Hank, Hank pointed out that to Paco. Somehow
it seemed more than a visit to a western European nation. This was
Moscow. This was the head of the Soviet snake.
And then Hank had to laugh inwardly at himself as two youngsters,
running along playing tag in a grown-up world of long legs and stolid
pace, all but tripped him up. Head of a snake it might be, but
Moscow's people looked astonishingly like those of Portland, Maine or
Portland, Oregon.
"How do you like those two, coming now?" Paco said.
Those two coming now consisted of two better than averagely dressed
girls who would run somewhere in their early twenties. A little too
much make-up by western standards, and clumsily applied.
"Blondes," Paco said soulfully.
"They're all blondes here," Hank said.
"Wonderful, isn't it?"
The girls smiled at them in passing and Paco turned to look after, but
they didn't stop. Hank and Paco went on.
It didn't take Hank long to get onto Paco's system. It was beautifully
simple. He merely smiled widely at every girl that went by. If she
smiled back, he stopped and tried to start a conversation with her.
He got quite a few rebuffs but--Hank remembered an old joke--on the
other hand he got quite a bit of response.
Before they had completed a block and a half of strolling, they were
standing on a corner, trying to talk with two of Moscow's younger
set--female variety. Here again, Paco was a wonder. His languages were
evidently Spanish, English and French but he was in there pitching
with a language the full vocabulary of which consisted of _Da_ and
_Neit_ so far as he was concerned.
Hank stood back a little, smiling, trying to stay in character, but in
amused dismay at the other's aggressive abilities.
Paco said, "Listen, I think I can get these two to come up to the
room. Which one do you like?"
Hank said, "If they'll come up to the room, then they're
professionals."
Paco grinned at him. "I'm a professional, too. A lawyer by trade. It's
just a matter of different professions."
A middle-aged pedestrian, passing by, said to the girls in Russian,
"Have you no shame before the foreign tourists?"
They didn't bother to answer. Paco went back to his attempt to make a
deal with the taller of the two.
The smaller, who sported astonishingly big and blue eyes, said to Hank
in Russian, "You're too good to associate with _metrofanushka_ girls?"
Hank frowned puzzlement. "I don't speak Russian," he said.
She laughed lightly, almost a giggle, and, in the same low voice her
partner was using on Paco, said, "I think you do, Mr. Kuran. In the
afternoon, tomorrow, avoid whatever tour the Intourist people wish to
take you on and wander about Sovietska Park." She giggled some more.
The world-wide epitome of a girl being picked up on the street.
Hank took her in more closely. Possibly twenty-five years of age. The
skirt she was wearing was probably Russian, it looked sturdy and
durable, but the sweater was one of the new American fabrics. Her
shoes were probably western too, the latest flared heel effect. A
typical _stilyagi_ or _metrofanushka_ girl, he assumed. Except for one
thing--her eyes were cool and alert, intelligent beyond those of a
street pickup.
Paco said, "What do you think, Hank? This one will come back to the
hotel with me."
"Romeo, Romeo," Hank sighed, "wherefore do thou think thou art?"
Paco shrugged. "What's the difference? Buenos Aires, New York,
Moscow. Women are women."
"And men are evidently men," Hank said. "You do what you want."
"O.K., friend. Do you mind staying out of the room for a time?"
"Don't worry about me, but you'll have to get rid of Loo, and he
hasn't had his eighteen hours sleep yet today."
Paco had his girl by the arm. "I'll roll him into the hall. He'll
never wake up."
Hank's girl made a moue at him, shrugged as though laughing off the
fact that she had been rejected, and disappeared into the crowds. Hank
stuck his hands in his pockets and went on with his stroll.
The contact with the underground had been made.
* * * * *
Maintaining his front as an American tourist he wandered into several
stores, picked up some amber brooches at a bargain rate, fingered
through various books in English in an international bookshop. That
was one thing that hit hard. The bookshops were packed. Prices were
remarkably low and people were buying. In fact, he'd never seen a
country so full of people reading and studying. The park benches were
loaded with them, they read as the rode on streetcar and bus, they
read as they walked along the street. He had an uneasy feeling that
the jet-set kids were a small minority, that the juvenile delinquent
problem here wasn't a fraction what it was in the West.
He'd expected to be followed. In fact, that had puzzled him when he
first was given this unwanted assignment by Sheridan Hennessey. How
was he going to contact this so-called underground if he was watched
the way he had been led to believe Westerners were?
But he recalled their conducted tour of the Hermitage Museum in
Leningrad. The Intourist guide had started off with twenty-five
persons and had clucked over them like a hen all afternoon. In spite
of her frantic efforts to keep them together, however, she returned to
the Astoria Hotel that evening with eight missing--including Hank and
Loo who had wandered off to get a beer.
The idea of the KGB putting tails on the tens of thousands of tourists
that swarmed Moscow and Leningrad, became a little on the ridiculous
side. Besides, what secret does a tourist know, or what secrets could
he discover?
At any rate, Hank found no interference in his wanderings. He
deliberately avoided Red Square and its spaceship, taking no chances
on bringing himself to attention. Short of that locality, he wandered
freely.
At noon they ate at the Grand and the Intourist guide outlined the
afternoon program which involved a general sightseeing tour ranging
from the University to the Park of Rest and Culture, Moscow's
equivalent of Coney Island.
Loo said, "That all sounds very tiring, do we have time for a nap
before leaving?"
"I'm afraid not, Mr. Motlamelle," the guide told him.
Paco shook his head. "I've seen a university, and I've seen a sport
stadium and I've seen statues and monuments. I'll sit this one out."
"I think I'll lie this one out," Loo said. He complained plaintively
to Hank. "You know what happened to me this morning, just as I was
napping up in our room?"
"Yes," Hank said, "I was with our Argentine Casanova when he picked
her up."
* * * * *
Hank took the conducted tour with the rest. If he was going to beg off
the next day, he'd be less conspicuous tagging along on this one.
Besides it gave him the lay of the land.
And he took the morning trip the next day, the automobile factories on
the outskirts of town. It had been possibly fifteen years since Hank
had been through Detroit but he doubted greatly that automation had
developed as far in his own country as it seemed to have here. Or,
perhaps, this was merely a showplace. But he drew himself up at that
thought. That was one attitude the Western world couldn't
afford--deprecating Soviet progress. This was the very thing that had
led to such shocks as the launching of the early Sputniks.
Underestimate your adversary and sooner or later you paid for it.
The Soviets had at long last built up a productive machine as great as
any. Possibly greater. In sheer tonnage they were turning out more
gross national product than the West. This was no time to be
underestimating them.
All this was a double interest to a field man in Morton Twombly's
department, working against the Soviets in international trade. He was
beginning to understand at least one of the reasons why the Commies
could sell their products at such ridiculously low prices. Automation
beyond that of the West. In the Soviet complex the labor unions were
in no position to block the introduction of ultra-efficient methods,
and featherbedding was unheard of. If a Russian worker's job was
_automated_ out from under him, he shifted to a new plant, a new job,
and possibly even learned a new trade. The American worker's union, to
the contrary, did its best to save the job.
Hank Kuran remembered reading, a few months earlier, of a British
textile company which had attempted to introduce a whole line of new
automation equipment. The unions had struck, and the company had to
give up the project. What happened to the machinery? It was sold to
China!
Following the orders of his underground contact, he begged out of the
afternoon tour, as did half a dozen of the others. Sightseeing was as
hard on the feet in Moscow as anywhere else.
After lunch he looked up Sovietska Park on his tourist map of the
city. It was handy enough. A few blocks up Gorky Street.
It turned out to be typical. Well done so far as fountains, monuments
and gardens were concerned. Well equipped with park benches. In the
early afternoon it was by no means empty, but, on the other hand not
nearly so filled as he'd noticed the parks to be the evening before.
Hank stopped at one of the numerous cold drink stands where for a few
kopecks you could get raspberry syrup fizzed up with soda water. While
he sipped it, a teen-ager came up beside him and said in passable
English, "Excuse me, are you a tourist? Do you speak English?"
This had happened before. Another kid practicing his school language.
"That's right," Hank said.
The boy said, "You aren't a ham, are you?" He brought some cards from
an inner pocket. "I'm UA3-KAR."
For a moment Hank looked at him blankly, and then he recognized the
amateur radio call cards the other was displaying. "Oh, a _ham_. Well,
no, but I have a cousin who is."