Simultaneously Vesta took his right hand in her left, brought it up to
her face, and laid the incredibly downy softness of her cheek against
the five-hour bristles of his; sounding the while a soft, low-pitched
but unmistakable _purr_!
“Just this once wouldn’t do any harm, would it, Captain Neelcloud?”
Vesta purred. “You zmell _zo_ wonderful, and she zmells nice, too.
_Pleeze_ keep her on!”
“QX. You win!” The Blaster pulled himself loose from the two
too-demonstrative females and addressed the group at large. “I think I
ought to have my head examined, but I’m signing all of you on as crew.
But _nobody else_. I’ll get the book.”
He got it. He signed them on. Chief Pilot Thlaskin. Chief Engineer
Tommie. Linguist Vesta. Doctor . . . what? He tried to call her
attention by thinking at her, but couldn’t. Then, through Vesta:
Manarkans didn’t have names, but were known by their personality
patterns. Didn’t they sign something to documents? No, they used
finger-prints only, without signatures.
“But we’ve got to have _something_ we can put in the book!” Cloud
protested. “Tell her to pick one.”
“No preference,” Vesta reported. “I’m to do it. I knew a lovely
Tellurian named “Nadinevandereckelberg” once. Let’s call her that.”
“Nadine van der Eckelberg? Better not. Not common enough—there might be
repercussions. We can use part of it, though. ‘Nadine,’ bracketed with
her prints . . . there. Now how about Maluleme?” He turned to the
“Classification” listing and frowned. “What to class _her_ as I’ll never
know. She’s got just about as much business aboard this bucket as I
would have in a sultan’s harem.”
“You might find quite a lot—and _that_ I’d like to see!” Vesta
snickered. “But look under ‘Mizzelaneouz,’ there.”
Her stiff, sharp fingernail ran down the column almost to the end.
“‘Zupercargo’? We have no cargo. ‘Zupernumerary’? That’s it! See? I
read: ‘Zupernumerary—Perzonnel beyond the nezezzary or uzhual;
ezpedjially thoze employed not for regular zervize, but only to fill the
plazez of otherz in caze of need.’ Perfect!”
“Whose place could _she_ fill?”
“The cook’s—if the automatics break down,” Vesta explained, gleefully.
“She says she can really cook—so even if they didn’t break down she can
tape lots of nice things to eat that aren’t in your kitchen banks.”
“Could be. I can get away with that. ‘Supernumerary (cook 1/c) Maluleme’
and her prints . . . there. Now we’re organized—let’s flit. Ready,
Thlaskin?”
“Ready, sir,” and the good ship _Vortex Blaster I_ took off.
“Now, Vesta, I s’pose you’ve all picked out your cabins and got
located?”
“Yes, sir.”
“QX. Tell ’em all, except Tommie, to go and do whatever they think they
ought to be doing. Tell Tommie to sit down at the chart-table. We’ll
join her. I want to find out what she’s got on her mind.”
Pulling a chart and rolling it out flat on the table, Cloud went on:
“We’re in this unexplored region, here, about thirty two dash twenty
five.[2] We’re headed for Nixson II, about sixty one dash forty six.”
“Nixson? Why, that’s only three thousand parsecs—a day and a half,
say—from Tominga, where I want you to go!” Tommie exclaimed.
“Check. That’s why I’m going to listen to what you have to say. We can
pick Manarka up—sixty five dash thirty-five, here; they’ve got two
really bad ones—on the way back. It’s a long flit to Chickladoria—’way
over there, one seventy seven dash thirty four—but I’ve got to go there
pretty quick, anyway. It’s way up on the A list. So, Tommie, start
talking.”
* * * * *
The run to Nixson II was uneventful, and Cloud rid that planet of its
loose atomic vortices in a few hours. The cruiser then headed directly
for Tominga, one man short, for Tommie was not aboard.
“Now remember, no matter what happens, you don’t know any one of us,”
had been the Blaster’s parting instructions to her. “After we’ve checked
in at the hotel we’ll meet in the lobby. Be sure you’re sitting—or
standing—some place where Vesta can pass a couple of words with you
without anybody catching on. Check?”
“Check.”
-----
[2] Rough locations are expressed in degrees of galactic longitude and
hundredths of the distance from Centralia to the Arbitrary Rim of the
galaxy. This convention ignores the galaxy’s thickness and is used only
in first approximations. E.E.S.
_Chapter 8_
▂▂▂▂▂▂VESTA THE VEGIAN
IMMEDIATELY AFTER SUPPER Cloud called Vesta and Nadine into his cabin.
“You first, Nadine.” He caught her eyes and stopped talking, but went on
thinking. He was amazed at how easy it had been to learn the knack of
telepathy with both Luda and the Manarkan. “How did you make out with
Tommie? Can’t she read you at all?”
“Not at all. I can read her easily enough, but she can neither send nor
receive.”
“How about Vesta, then? Any more progress?”
“No. Just like you. She learned very quickly to receive, but that is
all. She cannot tune her mind; I have to do it all.” It also amazed the
Blaster that, after learning one half of telepathy so easily, he had
been unable even to get a start on the other half. “We might try it
again, though, all three of us together?”
They tried, but it was no use. Think as they would, of even the simplest
things—squares, crosses, triangles, and circles—staring eye to eye and
even holding hands, neither the Blaster nor the Vegian could touch the
other’s mind. Nor could the Manarkan tell them or show them what to do.
“Well, that’s out, then.” Cloud frowned in concentration, the fingers of
his left hand drumming almost soundlessly on the table’s plastic top.
“Nadine, you can’t send simultaneously to both Vesta and me, because we
can’t tune ourselves into resonance with you, as a real telepath could.
However, could you read me and send my thoughts to Vesta, and do it fast
enough to keep up? As fast as I talk, say?”
“Oh, easily. I don’t have to tune sharply to receive—unless there’s a
lot of interference, of course—and even then, Vesta can read my
shorthand. She learned it before we met you.”
“Hm . . . m. Interesting. Let’s try it out. I’ll think at you, you put
it down in shorthand. You, Vesta, tape it in Spanish. Get your notebook
and recorder . . . ready? Let’s go!”
There ensued a strange spectacle. Cloud, leaning back in his seat with
his eyes closed, mumbled to himself in English, to slow his thoughts
down to approximately two hundred words per minute. Nadine, paying no
visible attention to the man, wrote unhurried, smoothly-flowing—most of
the time—symbols. Vesta, throat-mike in place and yellow-eyed gaze
nailed to the pencil’s point, kept pace effortlessly—most of the time.
“That’s all. Play it back, Vesta. If you girls got half of that, you’re
_good_.”
The speaker came to life, giving voice to a completely detailed and
extremely technical report on the extinction of an imaginary atomic
vortex, and as the transcription proceeded Cloud’s amazement deepened.
It was evident, of course, that neither of the two translators knew
anything at all about many of the scientific technicalities involved.
Nevertheless the Manarkan had put down—and Vesta had recorded in good,
idiomatic Galactic Spanish—an intelligent layman’s idea of what it was
that had been left out. That impromptu, completely unrehearsed report
would have been fully informative to any expert of the Vortex Control
Laboratory!
“Girls, you _are_ good—_very_ good.” Cloud paid deserved tribute to
ability. “First chance we get, I’ll split a bottle of fayalin with you.
Now we’d better hit the sack. We land early in the morning, and since
we’re going to stay here a while we’ll have to go through quarantine and
customs. So pack your bags and have ’em ready for inspection.”
They landed at the spaceport of Tommie’s home town, which Cloud, after
hearing Vesta’s literal translation of its native name, had entered in
his log as “Mingia.” They passed their physicals and healths easily
enough—the requirements for leaving a planet of warm-blooded
oxygen-breathers are so severe and so comprehensive that the matter of
landing on a similar one is almost always a matter of simple routine.
“Manarkan doctors we know of old; you are welcome indeed. We see very
few Tellurians or Vegians, but the standards of those worlds are very
high and we are glad to welcome you. But Chickladoria? I never heard of
it—we’ve had no one from that planet since I took charge of this port
of entry. . . .”
The Tomingan official punched buttons, gabbled briefly, and listened.
“Oh, yes. Excellent! The health, sanitation, and exit requirements of
Chickladoria are approved by the Galactic Medical Society. We welcome
you. You all may pass.”
They left the building and boarded a copter for their hotel.
“. . . and part of its name is ‘Forget-me-not’! Isn’t that a dilly of a
name for a hotel?” Vesta, who had been telepathing busily with Nadine,
was giggling sunnily.
Suddenly, however, she stopped laughing and, eyes slitted, leaped for
the door. Too late: the craft was already in the air.
“Do you know what that . . . that _clunker_ back there _really_ thought
of us?” she flared. “That we’re weak, skinny, insipid, under-developed
little _runts_! By Zevz and Tlazz and Jadkptn, I’ll show him—I’ll take
a tail-wrap around his neck and. . . .”
“Pipe down, Vesta—listen!” Cloud broke in, sharply. “You’re smart
enough to know better than to explode that way. For instance, you’re
stronger than I am, and faster—admitted. So what? I’m still your boss.
And Tommie isn’t, even though, as you ought to know by this time, she
could pull your tail out by the roots and beat you to death with the
butt end of it in thirty seconds flat.”
“Huh?” Vesta’s towering rage subsided miraculously into surprised
curiosity. “But you’re _admitting_ it!” she marvelled. “Even that _I_ am
stronger and faster than _you_ are!”
“Certainly. Why not? Servos are faster still, and ordinary derricks are
stronger. It’s _brains_ that count. I’d much rather have your linguistic
ability than the speed and strength of a Valerian.”
“So would I, really,” Vesta purred. “You’re the _nicest_ man!”
“So watch yourself, young lady,” Cloud went on evenly, “and behave
yourself. If you don’t, important as you are to this project, I’ll send
you back to the ship in irons. That’s a promise.”
“P-f-z-t-k!” Vesta fairly spat the expletive. Her first thought was
sheer defiance, but under the Blaster’s level stare she changed her mind
visibly. “I’ll behave myself, Captain Neelcloud.”
“Thanks, Vesta. You’ll be worth a whole platoon of Tomingans if you do.”
The copter landed on the flat roof of the hotel. The guests were
registered and shown to their rooms. The Forget-Me-Not’s air was hot and
humid, and the visitors wore the only clothing to be seen. Nevertheless,
Cloud was too squeamish to go all the way, so he still wore shorts and
sandals, as well as the side-arm of his rank, when he went back up to
the lobby to meet his crew.
Vesta, tail-tip waving gracefully a foot and a half above her head, was
wearing only her sandals. Thlaskin wore shorts and space-boots. Maluleme
had reduced her conventional forty one square inches of covering to a
daring twenty five—two narrow ribbons and a couple of jewels. Nadine,
alone of them all, had made no concession to that stickily sweltering
climate. She’d be disgraced for life, Cloud supposed, if she cut down by
even one the hundreds of feet of white glamorette in which she was
swathed. But Manarkans didn’t sweat like Tellurians, he guessed—if they
did, she’d either peel or smother before this job was over!
Cloud scanned the lobby carefully. Were they attracting too much
attention? They were not. They had had to pose for Telenews shots, of
course—the Chickladorians in particular had been held in the spots for
all of five minutes—but that was all. Like any other spaceport city,
Mingia was used to outlandish forms of warm-blooded, oxygen-breathing
life. Not counting his own group, he could see members of four different
non-Tomingan races, two of which were completely strange to him. And
Tommie, standing alone in front of one of the row of shop-windows
comprising one wall of the lobby—and very close to a mirrored
pillar—was intently studying a tobacconist’s display of domestic and
imported cigars.
“QX,” the Blaster said then. “We aren’t kicking up any fuss. Do your
stuff, Vesta.”
The girl sauntered over to the mirror, licked her forefinger, and began
to smooth an imaginary roughness out of one perfect eyebrow. Thus, palm
covering mouth—
“He still hangs out here, Tommie?”
“He still eats supper here every night, in the same private room.”
Tommie did not move or turn her head; her voice could not be heard three
feet away.
“When he comes in, take one good look at him and think ‘This is the
one’—Nadine’ll take over from there. Then sneak down to the chief’s
suite and join us.”
Vesta, with a final approving pat at her sleek head, sauntered on; past
a display of belt-pouches in which she was not interested, pausing
before one of ultra-fancy candies in which she very definitely was, and
back to her own group.
“On the green,” she reported.
“Then I’ll go on about my business of getting things lined up to blow
out vortices. You, Thlaskin and Maluleme, just run around and play. Act
innocent—you’re just atmosphere for now. Nadine and Vesta, go down to
my suite—here’s a key—and get your recorder and stuff ready. I’ll see
you later.”
Cloud came back, however, rather sooner than he had intended.
“I didn’t get far—I’ll have to take you along if I want to get any
business done,” he explained to Vesta. “Up to now, I’ve got along very
nicely with English, Spanish, and spaceal, but not here. We’re a long
ways from either Tellus or Vegia.”
“We are indeed. I don’t know what they do use for an interstellar
language here—I’ll have to find out and see if I know it yet.” Vesta
then switched to English. “While we wait, do you mind if I zpeak at you
in Englizh? And will you ztop me and correct, please, the errors I will
make? My pronunziazion is getting better, but I ztill have much trouble
with your irregular verbs and pronouns. I come, but I am not yet
arrive.”
“I’ll say you’re better!” Cloud knew that she had been studying hard;
studying with an intensity of concentration comparable only to that of a
cat on duty at a mouse-hole; but he had expected no such progress as
this. “It’s amazing—you have scarcely any more accent now in English
than in Spanish. I’ll be glad to coach you. What you just said was QX
except for the last sentence. Idiomatically, you should have said ‘I’m
coming along, but I’m not there yet,’” and Cloud explained in detail.
“Now, for practice, brief me on this job we’ve got here.”
“Thankz a lot. Tommie’s brother, whom we’ll call Jim, runs a tobacco
zhop here in town.” Cloud had had to explain what “briefing” meant, and
he corrected many slight errors which are not given here. “A man who
called himself ‘Number One’ organized a Protective Azzoziazion. Anyone
not joining, he zaid, would zuffer the conzequenzez of a looze atomic
vortex in his power plant. When he zhowed he meant buzzinez by exploding
one right where and when he zaid he would, many merchants joined and
began to pay. Jim did not. Inztead, he . . . I forget the idiom?”
“‘Stalled.’ That means delayed, played for time.”
“Oh, yez. Jim ztalled, and Tommie went looking for help, knowing the
government here thoroughly corrupt. Impozzible to alleviate intolerable
zituazion.”
“_What_ a vocabulary!”
“Iz wrong?” Vesta demanded.
“No, is _right_,” Cloud assured her. “I was complimenting you, young
lady—you’ll be teaching _me_ English before this trip is over.”
The class in English Conversation went on until the Manarkan warned its
two participants to get ready; that Tommie, having identified the
gangster, had left the lobby, had joined her brother, and was bringing
him with her.
“Is that safe, do you think?” Vesta asked.
“For now, before anything starts, yes.” Cloud replied. “After tonight,
no.”
The Tomingans arrived; Vesta let them in and introduced Jim to Nadine
and Cloud. The brother was taller, heavier, craggier than the sister;
his cigar was longer, thicker, and blacker than hers. Otherwise, they
were very much alike. Cloud waved them both into comfortable chairs, for
there was no time for conversation. Nadine began to write; Vesta to
record.
The Big Shot—Nadine took an instant to flash into Cloud’s mind a very
good picture of the fellow—was in his private room, but if a dinner
were to be on the program it would be later. There were two men in the
room; Number One and another man, whom he thought of and spoke to as
“Number Nine.” At present the affair was strictly business. Number Nine
was handing money to Number One, who was making notes in a book. Twenty
credits from Number Seventeen; 50 from No. 20; 25 from No. 26; 175 from
No. 29; 19 credits—all he could raise—from No. 30; 125 from No. 31,
and so on. . . .
The gangsters thought that they were being very smart and cagey in using
numbers instead of names, but neither had any idea of the power of a
really good telepathic mind, or of that of a really good linguist. Each
of those numbers meant something to either or to both of those men, and
whatever it was—a name, a picture, a storefront or address, or a
fleeting glimpse of personality pattern—Nadine seized and transmitted,
either in shorthand or by force of mind, or both; and Vesta taped, in
machine-gun-fast Spanish, every written word and every nuance of
thought.
The list was long. At its end:
“Three more didn’t pay up, huh? The same ones holding out as last time,
and three more besides, huh?” This was Number One, thinking deeply. “I
don’t like it. . . . Ninety Two, huh? I don’t like it a bit—or him,
either. I’ll have to do something about him.”
“Yeah. Ninety Two. The others all give the same old tear-jerker that
they didn’t have it, that our assessments were too stiff for their take,
and so on, but Ninety Two didn’t, this time. He simply blew his top. He
was hotter than the business end of a blow-torch.” Not much to Cloud’s
surprise, Nadine at this point poured into his mind the picture of
excessively angry Jim. “Not only he didn’t fork over, he told me to tell
you something.”
There was a long pause.
“Well, spill it!” Number One barked. “What did he say?”
“Shall I give it to you straight boss, or maybe I better tone it down
some?”
“Straight!”
“He said for you to go roast, for fourteen thousand years, in the
hottest corner you can find of the hottest hell of Telemachia, and take
your Srizonified association with you. Take your membership papers and
stick ’em. Blow his place up and be damned to you, he says. If you kill
him in the blast he’s left stuff in a deposit box that’ll blow all the
Srizonified crooked politicians and lawmen in the Fourth Continent off
of their perches and down onto their Srizonified butts. An’ if you
_don’t_ get him, he says, he’ll come after you with blasters in both
hands. Make it plain, he says, that it’s _you_ he’ll be after—not me.
That’s exactly what he told me to tell you, boss.”
“Me? ME?” Number One demanded. The towering rage, which he had been
scarcely able to control, subsided into a warily intense speculation.
“How did he find out about _me_? Somebody’ll burn for this!”
“I dunno, boss, but it looks like you said a mouthful about having to do
something about him. We got to make an example of _somebody_, boss—or
else—in my book it’d better be 92. He’s organizing, sure as hell, and
if we don’t knock him off it’ll spread fast.”
“Hm . . . m . . . m. Yes, but just him personally, not his place. I’m
not afraid of any evidence he can leave, of itself, but in connection
with the other thing it might be bad. His place is too big; too
centrally located. No matter what time of night it goes off it’ll kill
too many people and do too much damage. Yellow Castle might dump us
instead of trying to ride out such a storm.”
“Yeah, they might, at that. Prob’ly would. And the dogooders might get
some of them Srizonified Lensmen in here besides. But an ordinary bomb
would do the job.”
“No. Got to be a vortex. We promised ’em an atomic flare, so that’s what
it’s got to be. It doesn’t have to be 92, though. We can get away easy
enough with killing a few people, so I’d say somebody in the
outskirts—53 would be as good as any. So tell 53 his place gets it at
midnight tomorrow night, and the fewer people in it the more will stay
alive.”
“Check. And I’ll take care of 92?”
“Of course. You don’t have to be told _every_ move to make.”
“Just wanted to make sure, is all. What do I do in the big fireworks?”
It was clear that the underling was intensely curious about the
phenomenon, but his curiosity was not to be satisfied.
“Nothing,” his chief informed him flatly. “That isn’t your dish. Now
we’ll eat.”
Number One stopped talking, but he did not stop thinking; and Nadine
could read, and Vesta could transcribe, thoughts as well as words.
“Besides, it’s about time for 31 to earn some of the credits we’re
paying him,” was the grimly savage thought.
This thought was accompanied by a picture, which Nadine spread in full
in Cloud’s mind. A tall, lean, gray Tellurian was aiming a
mechanism—the details of which were so vague that it could have been
anything from a vest-pocket flash-pencil up to a half-track mobile
projector—at a power-plant, which immediately and enthusiastically went
out of control in a blindingly incandescent flare of raw energy.
Fairchild!
Cloud’s mind raced. That vortex on Deka _hadn’t_ been accidental, then,
even though there had been no evidence—no suspicion—even the Lensmen
hadn’t guessed that the radiationist had been anything other than a very
minor cog in Graves’ thionite-producing machine! Nobody except Fairchild
knew what he did or how he did it—the mob must have tried to find out,
too, but he wouldn’t give—but this stuff was very definitely for the
future; not for now.
“QX, girls. A nice job—thanks,” he said. “Now, Vesta, please tape the
actual facts and the actual words of the interview—none of the pictures
or guesses—in Middle Plateau Tomingan. Wherever possible, bracket real
names and addresses with the code numbers. Tommie and Jim can help you
on that.”
She did so.
When they came to that part of the transcription dealing with Number
Ninety Two, Jim stiffened and swelled in rage.
“Ask him if that’s an accurate report,” Cloud directed.
“It’s accurate enough as far as it goes,” Jim boomed. His voice, deeper
and louder than Tommie’s, and not nearly as musical, almost shook the
walls. “But he left out half of it. What I really told him would have
burned all the tape off of that recorder.”
“But they left in that . . . that awful one, three times.” Tommie, tough
as she was, was shocked. “You ought to be ashamed of yourself.”
“Srizonified?” Cloud whispered to Vesta. “It sounded bad, but not _that_
hot. Is it?”
“Yes, the hottest in the language. I never saw it in print, and heard it
only once, and that was by accident. Like most such things, though, it
doesn’t translate—‘descended from countless generations of dwellers in
stinking, unflowering mud’ is as close as I can come to it in Spanish.”
“QX. Finish up the tape and make two copies of it.”
When the copies were ready Cloud handed them to Tommie.
“Tell him to take one of these down to the Tomingan equivalent of the D.
A.’s office the first thing in the morning,” he instructed Vesta. “The
other ought to go to a big law firm—an honest one, if she knows of any.
Now ask Jim what he thinks he’s going to do.”
“I’m going to get a pair of blasters and. . . .”
“Yeah?” Cloud’s biting monosyllable, so ably translated by the Vegian,
stopped him in mid-sentence. “What chance do you think you stand of
getting home tonight in one piece? Your copter is probably mined right
now, and they’ve undoubtedly made arrangements to blast you if you leave
here any other way, even on foot. If you want to stay alive, though,
I’ve got a suggestion to make.”
“You may be right, sir.” Jim’s bluster died away as he began really to
think. “Do you see a way out?”