"_I'm_ not anxious for any changes," Beulah said. "I like Roye the way
it is."
She peered at a button on the go-chair's armrest which had just begun to
put out small bright-blue flashes of light. "Pies are done," she
announced. "Phil, are you sure you can't stay for dinner?"
Phil looked at his watch, shook his head. "I'd love to, but I really
have to get back."
"Then I'll go wrap up the pies for you."
Beulah swung the go-chair around, sent it slithering up the stairs and
out the door. Phil stood up quickly. He stepped over to the fireplace,
opened his coat and detached a flexible, box-shaped object from the
inner lining. He laid this object on the mantle, and turned one of three
small knobs about its front edge to the right. The box promptly extruded
a supporting leg from each of its four corners, pushed itself up from
the mantle and became a miniature table. Phil glanced at the door
through which Beulah had vanished, listened a moment, then took the
Geest gun from the wall, laid it carefully on top of the device and
twisted the second dial.
The odd-looking gun began to sink slowly down through the surface of
Phil's instrument, like a rock disappearing in mud. Within seconds it
vanished completely; then, a moment later, it began to emerge from the
box's underside. Phil let the Geest gun drop into his hand, replaced it
on the wall, turned the third knob. The box withdrew its supports and
sank down to the mantle. Phil clipped it back inside his coat, closed
the coat, and strolled over to the center of the room to wait for Aunt
Beulah to return with the pies.
* * * * *
It was curious, Phil Boles reflected as his aircar moved out over the
craggy, plunging coastline to the north some while later, that a few
bold minds could be all that was needed to change the fate of a world. A
few minds with imagination enough to see how circumstances about them
might be altered.
On his left, far below, was now the flat ribbon of the peninsula, almost
at sea level, its tip widening and lifting into the broad, rocky
promontory on which stood Fort Roye--the only thing on the planet bigger
and of more significance than the shabby backwoods settlements. And Fort
Roye was neither very big nor very significant. A Class F military base
around which, over the years, a straggling town had come into existence,
Fort Roye was a space-age trading post linking Roye's population to the
mighty mother planet, and a station from which the otherwise vacant and
utterly unimportant 132nd Segment of the Space Territories was
periodically and uneventfully patrolled. It was no more than that. Twice
a month, an Earth ship settled down to the tiny port, bringing supplies,
purchases, occasional groups of reassigned military and civilians--the
latter suspected of being drawn as a rule from Earth's Undesirable
classification. The ship would take off some days later, with a return
load of the few local products for which there was outside demand,
primarily the medically valuable tupa roots; and Fort Roye lay quiet
again.
The planet was not at fault. Essentially, it had what was needed to
become a thriving colony in every sense. At fault was the Geest War. The
war had periods of flare-up and periods in which it seemed to be
subsiding. During the past decade it had been subsiding again. One of
the early flare-ups, one of the worst, and the one which brought the war
closest to Earth itself, was the Gunderland Battle in which Uncle
William Boles' trophy gun had been acquired. But the war never came near
Roye. The action was all in the opposite section of the giant sphere of
the Space Territories, and over the years the war drew steadily farther
away.
And Earth's vast wealth--its manpower, materials and money--was pouring
into space in the direction the Geest War was moving. Worlds not a tenth
as naturally attractive as Roye, worlds where the basic conditions for
human life were just above the unbearable point, were settled and held,
equipped with everything needed and wanted to turn them into independent
giant fortresses, with a population not too dissatisfied with its lot.
When Earth government didn't count the expense, life could be made
considerably better than bearable almost anywhere.
Those were the circumstances which condemned Roye to insignificance. Not
everyone minded. Phil Boles, native son, did mind. His inclinations were
those of an operator, and he was not being given an adequate opportunity
to exercise them. Therefore, the circumstances would have to be changed,
and the precise time to make the change was at hand. Phil himself was
not aware of every factor involved, but he was aware of enough of them.
Back on Earth, a certain political situation was edging towards a
specific point of instability. As a result, an Earth ship which was not
one of the regular freighters had put down at Fort Roye some days
before. Among its passengers were Commissioner Sanford of the
Territorial Office, a well-known politician, and a Mr. Ronald Black, the
popular and enterprising owner of Earth's second largest news outlet
system. They were on a joint fact-finding tour of the thinly scattered
colonies in this remote section of the Territories, and had wound up
eventually at the most remote of all--the 132nd Segment and Roye.
That was one factor. Just visible twenty thousand feet below
Phil--almost directly beneath him now as the aircar made its third
leisurely crossing of the central belt of the peninsula--was another.
From here it looked like an irregular brown circle against the
peninsula's nearly white ground. Lower down, it would have resembled
nothing so much as the broken and half-decayed spirals of a gigantic
snail shell, its base sunk deep in the ground and its shattered point
rearing twelve stories above it. This structure, known popularly as "the
ruins" in Fort Roye, was supposed to have been the last stronghold of a
semi-intelligent race native to Roye, which might have become extinct
barely a century before the Earthmen arrived. A factor associated with
the ruins again was that their investigation was the passionately
pursued hobby of First Lieutenant Norman Vaughn, Fort Roye's Science
Officer.
Add to such things the reason Roye was not considered in need of a
serious defensive effort by Earth's strategists--the vast distances
between it and any troubled area, and so the utter improbability that a
Geest ship might come close enough to discover that here was another
world as well suited for its race as for human beings. And then a final
factor: the instrument attached to the lining of Phil's coat--a very
special "camera" which now carried the contact impressions made on it by
Uncle William's souvenir gun. Put 'em all together, Phil thought
cheerily, and they spelled out interesting developments on Roye in the
very near future.
He glanced at his watch again, swung the aircar about and started back
inland. He passed presently high above Aunt Beulah's tupa ranch and that
of the Feeney family two miles farther up the mountain, turned gradually
to the east and twenty minutes later was edging back down the ranges to
the coast. Here in a wild, unfarmed region, perched at the edge of a
cliff dropping nearly nine hundred feet to the swirling tide, was a
small, trim cabin which was the property of a small, trim Fort Roye lady
named Celia Adams. Celia had been shipped out from Earth six years
before, almost certainly as an Undesirable, though only the Territorial
Office and Celia herself knew about that, the Botany Bay aspect of
worlds like Roye being handled with some tact by Earth.
* * *
Phil approached the cabin only as far as was necessary to make sure that
the dark-green aircar parked before it was one belonging to Major Wayne
Jackson, the Administration Officer and second in command at Fort
Roye--another native son and an old acquaintance. He then turned away,
dropped to the woods ten miles south and made a second inconspicuous
approach under cover of the trees. There might be casual observers in
the area, and while his meeting with Jackson and Celia Adams today
revealed nothing in itself, it would be better if no one knew about it.
He grounded the car in the forest a few hundred yards from the Adams
cabin, slung a rifle over his shoulder and set off along a game path. It
was good hunting territory, and the rifle would explain his presence if
he ran into somebody. When he came within view of the cabin, he
discovered Celia and her visitor on the covered back patio, drinks
standing before them. Jackson was in hunting clothes. Phil remained
quietly back among the trees for some seconds watching the two, aware of
something like a last-minute hesitancy. A number of things passed slowly
through his mind.
What they planned to do was no small matter. It was a hoax which should
have far-reaching results, on a gigantic scale. And if Earth government
realized it had been hoaxed, the thing could become very unpleasant.
That tough-minded central bureaucracy did not ordinarily bother to
obtain proof against those it suspected. The suspicion was enough.
Individuals and groups whom the shadow of doubt touched found themselves
shunted unobtrusively into some backwater of existence and kept there.
It was supposed to be very difficult to emerge from such a position
again.
In the back of his mind, Phil had been conscious of that, but it had
seemed an insignificant threat against the excitement arising from the
grandiose impudence of the plan, the perhaps rather small-boyish delight
at being able to put something over, profitably, on the greatest power
of all. Even now it might have been only a natural wariness that brought
the threat up for a final moment of reflection. He didn't, of course,
want to incur Earth government's disapproval. But why believe that he
might? On all Roye there would be only three who knew--Wayne Jackson,
Celia Adams, and himself. All three would benefit, each in a different
way, and all would be equally responsible for the hoax. No chance of
indiscretion or belated qualms there. Their own interest ruled it out in
each case.
And from the other men now involved there was as little danger of
betrayal. Their gain would be vastly greater, but they had
correspondingly more to lose. They would take every step required to
insure their protection, and in doing that they would necessarily take
the best of care of Phil Boles.
* * * * *
"How did you ever get such a thing smuggled in to Roye?" Phil asked.
He'd swallowed half the drink Celia offered him at a gulp and now, a few
minutes later, he was experiencing what might have been under different
circumstances a comfortable glow, but which didn't entirely erase the
awareness of having committed himself at this hour to an irrevocable
line of action.
Celia stroked a fluffy lock of red-brown hair back from her forehead and
glanced over at him. She had a narrow, pretty face, marred only by a
suggestion of hardness about the mouth--which was a little more than
ordinarily noticeable just now. Phil decided she felt something like his
own tensions, for identical reasons. He was less certain about Major
Wayne Jackson, a big, loose-jointed man with an easy-going smile and a
pleasantly self-assured voice. The voice might be veering a trifle too
far to the hearty side; but that was all.
"I didn't," Celia said. "It belonged to Frank. How he got it shipped in
with him--or after him--from Earth I don't know. He never told me. When
he died a couple of years ago, I took it over."
Phil gazed reflectively at the row of unfamiliar instruments covering
half the table beside her. The "camera" which had taken an imprint of
the Geest gun in Aunt Beulah's living room went with that equipment and
had become an interior section of the largest of the instruments. "What
do you call it?" he asked.
Celia looked irritated. Jackson laughed, said, "Why not tell him? Phil's
feeling like we do--this is the last chance to look everything over,
make sure nobody's slipped up, that nothing can go wrong. Right, Phil?"