figuratively licked its chops. “Certain of our employees will presumably
have been upon an outing in the upper end of the valley when this
terrible accident takes place?”
“Exactly—enough of them to straighten out our books. Then, later, we
can dispose of undesirables as they appear. Vortices are absolutely
unpredictable, you know. People can die of radiation or of any one of a
mixture of various toxic gases and the vortex will take the blame.”
“And later on, when it gets dangerous, Storm Cloud can blow it out for
us,” Graves gloated. “But we won’t want him for a long, long time!”
“No, but we’ll report it and ask for him the hour it happens . . . use
your head, Graves!” He silenced the manager’s anguished howl of protest.
“Anybody who gets one wants it killed as soon as possible, but here’s
the joker. Cloud has enough Class-A-double-prime-urgent demands on file
already to keep him busy from now on, so we won’t be able to get him for
a long, long time. See?”
“I see. Nice, Doc . . . very, _very_ nice. But I’ll have the boys keep
an eye on Cloud just the same.”
* * * * *
At about this same time two minor cogs of TPI’s vast machine sat
blissfully, arms around each other, on a rustic seat improvised from
rocks, branches, and leaves. Below them, almost under their feet, was a
den of highly venemous snakes, but neither man or girl saw them. Before
them, also unperceived, was a magnificent view of valley and stream and
mountain.
All they saw, however, was each other—until their attention was
wrenched to a man who was climbing toward them with the aid of a thick
club which he used as a staff.
“Oh . . . Bob!” The girl stared briefly; then, with a half-articulate
moan, shrank even closer against her lover’s side.
Ryder, left arm tightening around the girl’s waist, felt with his right
hand for a club of his own and tensed his muscles, for the climbing man
was completely mad.
His breathing was . . . horrible. Mouth tight-clamped, despite his
terrific exertion, he was _sniffing_—sniffing loathsomely, lustfully,
each whistling inhalation filling his lungs to bursting. He exhaled
explosively, as though begrudging the second of time required to empty
himself of air. Wide-open eyes glaring fixedly ahead he blundered
upward, paying no attention whatever to his path. He tore through clumps
of thorny growth; he stumbled and fell over logs and stones; he caromed
away from boulders; as careless of the needles which tore clothing and
skin as of the rocks which bruised his flesh to the bone. He struck a
great tree and bounced; felt his frenzied way around the obstacle and
back into his original line.
He struck the gate of the pen immediately beneath the two appalled
watchers and stopped. He moved to the right and paused, whimpering in
anxious agony. Back to the gate and over to the left, where he stopped
and howled. Whatever the frightful compulsion was, whatever he sought,
he could not deviate enough from his line to go around the pen. He
looked, then, and for the first time saw the gate and the fence and the
ophidian inhabitants of the den. They did not matter. Nothing mattered.
He fumbled at the lock, then furiously attacked it and the gate and the
fence with his club—fruitlessly. He tried to climb the fence, but
failed. He tore off his shoes and socks and, by dint of jamming toes and
fingers ruthlessly into the meshes, he began to climb.
No more than he had minded the thorns and the rocks did he mind the
eight strands of viciously-barbed wire surmounting that fence; he did
not wince as the inch-long steel fangs bit into arms and legs and body.
He did, however, watch the snakes. He took pains to drop into an area
temporarily clear of them, and he pounded to death the half-dozen
serpents bold enough to bar his path.
Then, dropping to the ground, he writhed and scuttled about; sniffing
ever harder; nose plowing the ground. He halted; dug his bleeding
fingers into the hard soil; thrust his nose into the hole; inhaled
tremendously. His body writhed, trembled, shuddered uncontrollably, then
stiffened convulsively into a supremely ecstatic rigidity utterly
horrible to see.
The terribly labored breathing ceased. The body collapsed bonelessly,
even before the snakes crawled up and struck and struck and struck.
Jacqueline Comstock saw very little of the outrageous performance. She
screamed once, shut both eyes, and, twisting about within the man’s
encircling arm, burrowed her face into his left shoulder.
Ryder, however—white-faced, set-jawed, sweating—watched the thing to
its ghastly end. When it was over he licked his lips and swallowed twice
before he could speak.
“It’s all over, dear—no danger now,” he managed finally to say. “We’d
better go. We ought to turn in an alarm . . . make a report or
something.”
“Oh, I can’t, Bob—I can’t!” she sobbed. “If I open my eyes I just know
I’ll look, and if I look I’ll . . . I’ll simply turn inside out!”
“Hold everything, Jackie! Keep your eyes shut. I’ll pilot you and tell
you when we’re out of sight.”
More than half carrying his companion, Ryder set off down the rocky
trail. Out of sight of what had happened, the girl opened her eyes and
they continued their descent in a more usual, more decorous fashion
until they met a man hurrying upward.
“Oh, Dr. Fairchild! There was a. . . .” But the report which Ryder was
about to make was unnecessary; the alarm had already been given.
“I know,” the scientist puffed. “Stop! Stay exactly where you are!” He
jabbed a finger emphatically downward to anchor the young couple in the
spot they occupied. “Don’t talk—don’t say a word until I get back!”
Fairchild returned after a time, unhurried and completely at ease. He
did not ask the shaken couple if they had seen what had happened. He
knew.
“Bu . . . buh . . . but, doctor,” Ryder began.
“Keep still—don’t talk at all.” Fairchild ordered, bruskly. Then, in an
ordinary conversational tone, he went on: “Until we have investigated
this extraordinary occurrence thoroughly—sifted it to the bottom—the
possibility of sabotage and spying cannot be disregarded. As the only
eye-witnesses, your reports will be exceedingly valuable; but you must
not say a word until we are in a place which I _know_ is proof against
any and all spy-rays. Do you understand?”
“Oh! Yes, we understand.”
“Pull yourselves together, then. Act unconcerned, casual; particularly
when we get to the Administration Building. Talk about the weather—or,
better yet, about the honeymoon you are going to take on Chickladoria.”
Thus there was nothing visibly unusual about the group of three which
strolled into the building and into Graves’ private office. The fat man
raised an eyebrow.
“I’m taking them to the private laboratory,” Fairchild said, as he
touched the yellow button and led the two toward the private elevator.
“Frankly, young folks, I am a scared—yes, a badly scared man.”
This statement, so true and yet so misleading, resolved the young
couple’s inchoate doubts. Entirely unsuspectingly, they followed the
Senior Radiationist into the elevator and, after it had stopped, along,
a corridor. They paused as he unlocked and opened a door; they stepped
unquestioningly into the room at his gesture. He did not, however,
follow them in. Instead, the heavy metal slab slammed shut, cutting off
Jackie’s piercing shriek of fear.
“You might as well cut out the racket,” came from a speaker in the steel
ceiling of the room. “Nobody can hear you but me.”
“But Mr. Graves, I thought . . . Dr. Fairchild told us . . . we were
going to tell him about. . . .”
“You’re going to tell nobody nothing. You saw too much and know too
much, that’s all.”
“Oh, _that’s_ it!” Ryder’s mind reeled as some part of the actual
significance of what he had seen struck home. “But listen! Jackie didn’t
see anything—she had her eyes shut all the time—and doesn’t know
anything. You don’t want to have the murder of such a girl as _she_ is
on your mind, I know. Let her go and she’ll never say a word—we’ll both
swear to it—or you could. . . .”
“Why? Just because she’s got a face and a shape?” The fat man sneered.
“No soap, Junior. She’s not that much of a. . . .” He broke off as
Fairchild entered his office.
“Well, how about it? How bad is it?” Graves demanded.
“Not bad at all. Everything’s under control.”
“Listen, doctor!” Ryder pleaded. “Surely you don’t want to murder Jackie
here in cold blood? I was just suggesting to Graves that he could get a
therapist. . . .”
“Save your breath,” Fairchild ordered. “We have important things to
think about. You two die.”
“But why?” Ryder cried. He could as yet perceive only a fraction of the
tremendous truth. “I tell you, it’s. . . .”
“We’ll let you guess,” said Fairchild.
Shock upon shock had been too much for the girl’s overstrained nerves.
She fainted quietly and Ryder eased her down to the cold steel floor.
“Can’t you give her a better cell than this?” he protested then.
“There’s no . . . it isn’t _decent_!”
“You’ll find food and water, and that’s enough.” Graves laughed
coarsely. “You won’t live long, so don’t worry about conveniences. But
keep still. If you want to know what’s going on, you can listen, but one
more word out of you and I cut the circuit. Go ahead, Doc, with what you
were going to say.”
“There was a fault in the rock. Very small, but a little of the finest
smoke seeped through. Barney must have been a sniffer before to be able
to smell the trace of the stuff that was drifting down the hill. I’m
having the whole cave tested with a leak-detector and sealed
bottle-tight. The record can stand it that Barney—he was a
snake-tender, you know—died of snake-bite. That’s almost the truth,
too, by the way.”
“Fair enough. Now, how about these two?”
“Um . . . m. We’ve got to hold the risk at absolute minimum.” Fairchild
pondered briefly. “We can’t disintegrate them this month, that’s sure.
They’ve got to be found dead, and our books are full. We’ll have to keep
them alive—where they are now is as good a place as any—for a week.”
“Why alive? We’ve kept stiffs in cold storage before now.”
“Too chancey. Dead tissues change too much. You weren’t courting
investigation then; now we are. We’ve got to keep our noses clean. How
about this? They couldn’t wait any longer and got married today. You,
big-hearted philanthropist that you are, told them they could take their
two weeks vacation now for a honeymoon—you’d square it with their
department heads. They come back in about ten days, to get settled; go
up the valley to see the vortex; and out. Anything in that set-up we
can’t fake a cover for?”
“It looks perfect to me. We’ll let ’em enjoy life for ten days, right
where they are now. Hear that, Ryder?”
“Yes, you pot-bellied. . . .”
The fat man snapped a switch.
It is not necessary to go into the details of the imprisonment. Doggedly
and skillfully though he tried, Ryder could open up no avenue of escape
or of communication; and Jacqueline, facing the inevitability of death,
steadied down to meet it. She was a woman. In minor crises she had
shrieked and had hidden her face and had fainted: but in this ultimate
one she drew from the depths of her woman’s soul not only the power to
overcome her own weakness, but also an extra something with which to
sustain and fortify her man.
_Chapter 4_
▂▂▂▂▂▂“STORM” CLOUD ON DEKA
IN THE VORTEX CONTROL LABORATORY on Tellus, Cloud had just gone into
Philip Strong’s office.
“No trouble?” the Lensman asked, after greetings had been exchanged.
“Uh-huh. Simple as blowing out a match. You quit worrying about me long
ago, didn’t you?”
“Pretty much, except for the impossibility of training anybody else to
do it. We’re still working on that angle, though. You’re looking fit.”
He was. He carried no scars—the Phillips treatment had taken care of
that. His face looked young and keen; his hard-schooled, resilient body
was in surprisingly fine condition for that of a man crowding forty so
nearly. He no longer wore his psychic trauma visibly; it no longer
obtruded itself between him and those with whom he worked; but in his
own mind he was _sure_ that it still was, and always would be, there.
But the Lensman, studying him narrowly—and, if the truth must be known,
using his Lens as well—was _not_ sure, and was well content.
“Not bad for an old man, Phil. I could whip a wildcat, and spot him one
bite and two scratches. But what I came in here for, as you may have
suspected, is—where do I go from here? Spica or Rigel or Canopus?
They’re the worst, aren’t they?”
“Rigel’s is probably the worst in property damage and urgency. Before we
decide, though, I wish you’d take a good look at this data from Dekanore
III. See if you see what I do.”
“Huh? Dekanore III?” Cloud was surprised. “No trouble there, is there?
They’ve only got one, and it’s ’way down in Class Z somewhere.”
“Two now. It’s the new one I’m talking about. It’s acting
funny—_damned_ funny.”
Cloud went through the data, brow furrowed in concentration; then
sketched three charts and frowned.
“I see what you mean. ‘_Damned_ funny’ is right. The toxicity is too
steady, but at the same time the composition of the effluvium is too
varied. Inconsistent. However, there’s no real attempt at a gamma
analysis—nowhere near enough data for one—this _could_ be right;
they’re so utterly unpredictable. The observers were inexperienced, I
take it, with medical and chemical bias?”
“Check. That’s the way I read it.”
“Well, I’ll say this much—I never saw a gamma chart that would accept
half of this stuff, and I can’t even imagine what the sigma curve would
look like. Boss, what say I skip over there and get us a full reading on
that baby before she goes orthodox—or, should I say, orthodoxly
unorthodox?”
“However you say it, that’s my thought exactly; and we have a good
excuse for giving it priority. It’s killing more people than all three
of the bad ones together.”
“If I can’t fix the toxicity with exciters I’ll throw a solid cordon
around it to keep people away. I won’t blow it out, though, until I find
out why it’s acting so—if it is. Clear ether, chief, I’m practically
there!”
It did not take long to load Cloud’s flitter aboard a Dekanore-bound
liner. Half-way there however, an alarm rang out and the dread word
“Pirates!” resounded through the ship.
Consternation reigned, for organized piracy had disappeared with the
fall of the Council of Boskone. Furthermore, this was not in any sense a
treasure ship; she was an ordinary passenger liner.
She had had little enough warning—her communications officer had sent
out only a part of his first distress call when the blanketing
interference jammed his channels. The pirate—a first-class
superdreadnought—flashed up and a visual beam drove in.
“Go inert,” came the terse command. “We’re coming aboard.”
“Are you completely crazy?” The liner’s captain was surprised and
disgusted, rather than alarmed. “If not, you’ve got the wrong ship.
Everything aboard—including any ransom you could get for our passenger
list—wouldn’t pay your expenses.”
“You wouldn’t know, of course, that you’re carrying a package of
Lonabarian jewelry, or would you?” The question was elaborately
skeptical.
“I know damned well I’m _not_.”
“We’ll take the package you _haven’t_ got, then!” the pirate snapped.
“Go inert and open up, or I’ll do it for you—like this.” A needle-beam
lashed out and expired. “That was through one of your holds. The next
one will be through your control room.”
Resistance being out of the question, the liner went inert. While the
intrinsic velocities of the two vessels were being matched, the pirate
issued further instructions.
“All officers now in the control room, stay there. All other officers,
round up all passengers and herd them into the main saloon. Anybody that
acts up or doesn’t do exactly what he’s told will be blasted.”
The pirates boarded. One squad went to the control room. Its leader,
seeing that the communications officer was still trying to drive a call
through the blanket of interference, beamed him down without a word. At
this murder the captain and four or five other officers went for their
guns and there was a brief but bloody battle. There were too many
pirates.
A larger group invaded the main saloon. Most of them went through, only
half a dozen or so posting themselves to guard the passengers. One of
the guards, a hook-nosed individual wearing consciously an aura of
authority, spoke.
“Take it easy, folks, and nobody’ll get hurt. If any of you’ve got guns,
don’t go for ’em. That’s a specialty that. . . .”
One of his DeLameters flamed briefly. Cloud’s right arm, almost to the
shoulder, vanished. The man behind him dropped—in two different places.
“Take it easy, I said,” the pirate chief went calmly on. “You can tie
that arm up, fella, if you want to. It was in line with that guy who was
trying to pull a gun. You nurse over there—take him to sick-bay and fix
up his wing. If anybody stops you tell ’em Number One said to. Now, the
rest of you, watch your step. I’ll cut down every damn one of you that
so much as looks like he wanted to start something.”
They obeyed.
In a few minutes the looting parties returned to the saloon.
“Did you get it, Six?”
“Yeah. In the mail, like you said.”
“The safe?”
“Sure. Wasn’t much in it, but not too bad, at that.”
“QX. Control room! QX?”
“Ten dead,” the intercom blatted in reply. “Otherwise QX.”
“Fuse the panels?”
“Natch.”
“Let’s go!”
They went. Their vessel flashed away. The passengers rushed to their
staterooms. Then:
“Doctor Cloud!” came from the speaker. “Doctor Neal Cloud! Control room
calling Doctor Cloud!”
“Cloud speaking.”
“Report to the control room, please.”
“Oh—excuse me—I didn’t know you were wounded,” the officer apologized
as he saw the bandaged stump and the white, sweating face. “You’d better
go to bed.”
“Doing nothing wouldn’t help. What did you want me for?”
“Do you know anything about communicators?”
“A little—what a nucleonics man has to know.”
“Good. They killed all our communications officers and blasted the
panels, even in the lifeboats. You can’t do much with your left hand, of
course, but you may be able to boss the job of rigging up a spare.”
“I can do more than you think—I’m left-handed. Give me a couple of
technicians and I’ll see what we can do.”
They set to work, but before they could accomplish anything a cruiser
drove up, flashing its identification as a warship of the Galactic
Patrol.
“We picked up the partial call you got off,” its young commander said,
briskly. “With that and the plotted center of interference we didn’t
lose any time. Let’s make this snappy.” He was itching to be off after
the marauder, but he could not leave until he had ascertained the facts
and had been given clearance. “You aren’t hurt much—don’t need to call
a tug, do you?”
“No,” replied the liner’s senior surviving officer.
“QX,” and a quick investigation followed.
“Anybody who ships stuff like that open mail ought to lose it, but it’s
tough on innocent bystanders. Anything else I can do for you?”
“Not unless you can lend us some officers, particularly navigators and
communications officers.”
“Sorry, but we’re short there ourselves—four of my best are in
sick-bay. Sign this clearance, please, and I’ll get on that fellow’s
tail. I’ll send your copy of my report to your head office. Clear
ether!”
The cruiser shot away. Temporary repairs were made and the liner, with
Cloud and a couple of electronics technicians as communications
officers, finished the voyage to Dekanore III without more interruption.
The Vortex Blaster was met at the dock by Works Manager Graves himself.
The fat man was effusively sorry that Cloud had lost an arm, but assured
him that the accident wouldn’t lay him up very long. He, Graves, would
get a Posenian surgeon over here so fast that. . . .
If the manager was taken aback to learn that Cloud had already had a
Phillips treatment, he did not show it. He escorted the specialist to
Deka’s best hotel, where he introduced him largely and volubly. Graves
took him to supper. Graves took him to a theater and showed him the
town. Graves told the hotel management to give the scientist the best
rooms and the best valet they had, and that Cloud was not to be allowed
to spend any of his own money. All of his activities, whatever their
nature, purpose, or extent, were to be charged to Tellurian
Pharmaceuticals, Inc. Graves was a grand guy.
Cloud broke loose, finally, and went to the dock to see about getting
his flitter.
It had not been unloaded. There would be a slight delay, he was
informed, because of the insurance inspections necessitated by the
damage—and Cloud had not known that there had been any! When he had
learned what had been done to his little ship he swore bitterly and
sought out the liner’s senior officer.
“Why didn’t you tell me we got holed?” he demanded.
“Why, I don’t know . . . just that you didn’t ask, is all, I guess. I
don’t suppose it occurred to anybody—I know it didn’t to me—that you
might be interested.”
And that was, Cloud knew, strictly true. Passengers were not informed of
such occurrences. He had been enough of an officer so that he could have
learned anything he wished; but not enough of one to have been informed
of such matters as routine. Nor was it surprising that it had not come
up in conversation. Damage to cargo meant nothing whatever to the
liner’s overworked officers, standing double watches; a couple of
easily-patched holes in the hull were not worth mentioning. From their
standpoint the _only_ damage was done to the communicators, and Cloud
himself had set them to rights. This delay was his own fault as much as
anybody else’s. Yes, more.
“You won’t lose anything, though,” the officer said, helpfully.
“Everything’s covered, you know.”
“It isn’t the money I’m yowling about—it’s the time. That apparatus
can’t be duplicated anywhere except on Tellus, and even there it’s all
special-order stuff. OH, DAMN!” and Cloud strode away toward his hotel.
During the following days TPI entertained him royally. Not
insistently—Graves was an expert in such matters—but simply by giving
him the keys to the planet. He could do anything he pleased. He could
have all the company he wanted, male or female, to help him to do it.
Thus he did—within limits—just about what Graves wanted him to do;
and, in spite of the fact that he did not want to enjoy life, he liked
it.
One evening, however, he refused to play a slot machine, explaining to
his laughing companion that the laws of chance were pretty thoroughly
shackled in such mechanisms—and the idle remark backfired. What was the
mathematical probability that all the things that had happened to him
could have happened by pure chance?
That night he analyzed his data. Six incidents; the probability was
extremely small. Seven, if he counted his arm. If it had been his _left_
arm—jet back! Since he wrote with his right hand, very few people knew
that he was left-handed. Seven it was; and that made it virtually
certain. Accident was out.
But if he _was_ being delayed and hampered deliberately, who was doing
it, and why? It didn’t make sense. Nevertheless, the idea would not
down.
He was a trained observer and an analyst second to none. Therefore he
soon found out that he was being shadowed wherever he went, but he could
not get any really significant leads. Wherefore:
“Graves, have you got a spy-ray detector?” he asked boldly—and
watchfully.
The fat man did not turn a hair. “No, nobody would want to spy on me.
Why?”
“I feel jumpy. I don’t know why anybody would be spying on me, either,
but—I’m neither a Lensman nor an esper, but I’d swear that somebody’s
peeking over my shoulder half the time. I think I’ll go over to the
Patrol station and borrow one.”
“Nerves, my boy; nerves and shock,” Graves diagnosed. “Losing an arm
would shock hell out of anybody’s nervous system, I’d say. Maybe the
Phillips treatment—the new one growing on—sort of pulls you out of
shape.”
“Could be,” Cloud assented, moodily. His act had been a flop. If Graves
knew anything—and he’d be damned if he could see any grounds for such a
suspicion—he hadn’t given away a thing.