
The sky rang with the reverberation of fierce white
sunlight like the interior of a blue drum. Wind hot as the
breath of a furnace teased the silver ocean into ripples,
and the ripples shattered the sun's image into ablazing
pathway of diamond fragments. Itching with sweat,
aching with tension, Justin Kolb had to narrow his eyes
even behind his wholeface visor because the response-limit of the glass was exceeded if he turned his head
towards that glistening track over the water and the
opacity curve took a sudden dive towards complete
blankness.
Maddeningly, it was to sunward that he had caught
the first wing-glints.
He had expected that the sight of the Jackson's buzzards would crystallise his formless tension into the old
familiar excitement, re-unite mind and body into the efficient combination, as much weapon as person, which was
Juson Kolb at peak operational efficiency. He had been
trying for so long to get away on his own like this, on
the hunter's trail which now had to make do for his old,
preferred pastimes, that the strain of habituation to waiting had soured his keen anticipation of the chase.
Only till I see the buzzards, he had promised himself.
And then
But he'd seen the buzzards at last, when he had half
decided he was too far north even at this season, two
days past midsummer, and the instant of thrill had
beenan instant. Now he was back in the slough of
dreary awareness which had plagued him the whole of
yesterday and the whole of the day before. He was conscious of suffocating heat, of blinding brightness, of
prickling perspiration, of cramp from keeping the skimmer level and aligned despite the tag of the waves. His
hands were slippery on the controls, and the hard butt of
his harpoon-gan seemed to take up twice as much room
on the skimmer's deck as it usually did.
Briefly, he shut his eyes, wishing with all his force that
somehow time could turn back and he could be free to
return to space.
Cyclops, though, was a relatively poor world. It could
not support luxury spaceflight. Out there, a man had to
be productivemining asteroids, servicing solar power
relays, doing some clock-around job with the absolute
concentration of machinery.
What the hell am I now? A gigolo.
The thought passed. True or not, he was at least able
to indulge this much of his thirst for excitement and
challenge; if he had taken any other of the courses open
to him, he would have been drudging away this glorious
summer in a city or on a farm or in some squalid fishing-port, pestered continually by the demands of other
people, by the need to stack up work-credits, by holes in
his shoes or leaks in his roof.
Even her high-and-mightiness is preferable to that. ..
He biinked. The wing-glints had come again, and this
time remained in view instead of vanishing into the blur
of heat-haze and shimmery reflection along the skyline.
His pulse beat faster as he began to count: five, six
eight, ten, at least a dozen and possibly more.
Name of the cosmos, but it must be a giantf
For one moment, uncharacteristic alarm filled him. He
had come deliberately to this northern extreme of the
wolfsharks\* range, because those that beat a path of
slaughter more than a hundred miles from the equatorial
shallows which were their customary habitat were certain to be the largest and greediest specimens, and after
his long impatient chafing in Frecity he had felt nothing
less than a monster would compensate him.
But seeing a dozen or more buzzards hovering was ft
shock.
It was perhaps the most characteristic sight on Cyclops: Jackson's buzzards, swift, cniel-taloned, steely-winged, on the track of a wolfshark, which killed for
savage delight and not for hunger, so that even the mon-strous appetites of the birds were easily glutted by its
gore-leaking victims. At this time of year, nearer the
equator, one could look out over the sea and espy as
many as five or six groups of the carrion-eaters following the blood-smeared killers, for the ocean teemed with
'life.
Yet it was rare to see more than six buzzards to every
wolfshark. By twos and threes, they would sate themselves and flap heavily away, while others took their
place, the total number in the sky remaining roughly
constant. And there were reasons why those that roamed
furthest north were followed usually only by two or
three buzzards: first, the sea offered fewer victims and
hence less carrion; second, the birds were still feeding
their young at this time of year, and could not wander
too far from their breeding-mats, the vast raft-like assemblies of Cyclops kelp which occurred only in a narrow belt around the planet's centre.
Nonetheless, here it was: a wolfshark so big, so fast,
and so murderous that a hundred miles away from home
it was killing in quantities great enough to tip the balance in the buzzards' dim minds on the side of greed
rather than loyalty to their offspring.
He pursed his lips and eased his harpoon-gun closer to
the firing-notch out in the forward gunwale of the skimmer. Would one shot do the )ob? Would it be better to
load first with an unlined harpoon, to weaken the killer,
before risking a shot with line attached and the consequent danger of being dragged to the bottom? Had this
enormous beast been attacked and escaped beforeif it
had, how many times? The more often, the warier it
would be of an approaching skimmer, and the more
likely" it would be to attack even if there was easy prey
closer to hand.
He weighed possibilities with half his mind, while with
the other half he reviewed the area where he found himself.
This was the water-hemisphere of Cyclops, insofar as
the differentiation was meaningful. It was a shallow-sea
planetits moon being rather small, and incapable of
raising large tides either in the cnistal material or in the
oceans, although its sun exerted considerable tidal influence.
The shallowness of the sea, combined with a total volume of water close to the average for Class A planets
(those on which human beings could survive, eating
some of the vegetation and at least a few of .the native
animals) meant that the dry-land area was chopped up
into small sections. The other half of the planet boasted
some quite sizeable islands, and even a quasi-conrinent
consisting of a score of large islands linked by isthmuses.
This side was sparsely inhabited, and the largest island
within hundreds of miles was officially not even part of
Cyclops, but a repair and recreation base for the Corps
Galactica.
A certain amount of fishing; a certain amount of
scrap-reclamation; some terrafarms on islands isolated
enough to be worth maintaining as pure-human ecologi-cal units against the risk of drifting seeds and wandering
fauna from the Cyclops-normal islands around them
that was the sum of human engagement with this hemisphere, apart from solar and tidal power installations
operating with a minimum of manned supervision.
Kolb hesitated. Then he gave a harsh laugh. Was he
going to let the risk of dying alone and far from rescue
prevent him from going after this record-breaking wolfshark? He would never be able to face his image in the
mirror again.'
In any case, out in space he had faced death not
hundreds, but hundreds of thousands of miles from the
nearest other humans.
His mind darkened briefly. He never cared to recall
the circumstances that had brought him back from space
to a planet-bound existence, and forbidden him to combine his lust for danger with valuable work. There was
nothing of value to anyone but himself in this single-handed hunting; men had shared Cyclops with wolfsharks for long enough to determine the limits within
which they could be a nuisance, and if the necessity
arose, the species was culled efficiently and with precision by teams working from the air.
In fact, thought Kolb greyly, there's damned little
value to anybody in anything I've done with my life
lately. Least of all to me...
Slowly, as the wing-glints came closer, following a line
that would pass him within some four or five miles and
if extended would eventually approach the island where
the Corps Galactica maintained its repair base, a kind of
muted exultation filled him. He could see now that the
buzzards were too full already to make more than token
swoops on what the wolfshark killed, yetas though admiring the energy of the beastthey none of them made
to flap back to the south and their breeding-mats.
It'll break all the records. I never even heard of such a
giant!
He put aside the unlined harpoon which his hand had
automatically sought for the first shot. With fingers as
exact as a surgeon's, he loaded a harpoon with line attached, and laid the gun in its firing-notch.
Then he closed his left hand on the control levers, and
without a tremor fed power to the reactor.
The skimmer leapt up on its planes with a shriek loud
enough to startle a wolfshark at twice this range, and instantly the wheeling buzzards disgorged the last food
they had eaten and climbed a safe hundred feet into the
sky. Just audible over the thrum of power from his
craft, Kolb heard their whickering cries, like the neigh-ing of frightened horses.
And one of his questions was answered, anyway. This
wolfshark had been attacked before, often enough to
recognise a skimmer for the danger it represented. It forgot its business of stitching a line of destruction across
the peaceful ocean, and spun around in the water to confront the fragile boat. It lowered its tail and spread its
fans, and its head rose to the surface.
Kolb's self-possession wavered, so that he had to cling
desperately to his unverbalised decision: it 'doesn't matter
if I die or not! Thinking of it as huge, and seeing how
huge it was, were two different things.
How big, then? Fifty feet from fan-tip to fan-tip, os-cillating in the water like a manta ray, but having a tapered body which was all keel for the muscles driving
those fans, perfectly streamlined; a mere twitch, a single
shrug of those muscles would hurl it torpedo-swift on
anything else which swam the waters of Cyclops, and
jaws which could open to engulf a man would clamp
serrated rows of fangs into, and through, the victim. The
bite killed, and the Idller forgot. In summer, it was never
hungry. It swallowed what its )aws held, and that sufficed until the next kill, minutes later.
Kolb silenced the yammering alarms in his mind and
lined up the sights of his gun rock-steady on the centre
of the maw.
And then, with the distance closing to two hundred
yards, a hundred and fifty, there came the boom.
It rocked the skimmer. It starded the wolfshark. It was
the noise of a Corps Galactica spacecraft braking at the
edge of atmosphere to put down at the repair base.
By a reflex not even the danger of death could overrule, ex-spaceman Justin Kolb glanced up, and the sun
shone full on his wholeface visor, triggering and over-loading the glare response, so that he was blind. He cried
out, his hand closing on the trigger of his gun. The harpoon whistled wide of a target, and the wolfshark
charged.
During the flight Maddalena Santos had mostly-sat
staring at nothing, turning over and over in her mind the
decision which now confronted her: to stay on, or not,
in the Patrol Service.
Three other passengers were aboardpersonnel from
an airless Corps base further out towards the limits of
the explored galaxy, on rotating local leave and very excited about it. Two of them were men. The fact that
these men looked at her once only told her something
about the effect of the last twenty years on her appearance.
It was one thing to know that she was assured of another two centuries of life. It was another to realise on
this first visit to civilisation in so long a time how deep
the impact of two decades on a barbarian world had
gone.
She was assured of her longevity by the Patrol's pay-scale; in a galaxy where the older worlds were so rich it
literally made no difference whether a given individual
worked or not, it required either accidental dedication or
a tempting bait to enlist volunteers for the necessary
drudgery of governmental service.
Not that you can really call it government, Maddalena
reminded herself listlessly. It's more like herding cattle.
And lazy cattle, at that.
The other branches of government service paid at
lower rates; only the Patrol paid ten-for-one in the
unique currency of life.
She had served twenty years as an on-planet agent,
among stinking barbarians lost in a mud-wallow, and she
was entitledif she chose to take it here and nowto a
guaranteed two centuries of comfortable, healthy life,
anywhere she chose. She could even go clear back to
Earth, for she had been born there.
Wistfully, she looked at the black star-spangled back-drop of space, wondering what had happened on the
mother world in the period she had been away.
She had been so optimistic . . . Right at the beginning
of her career, when she was making out so badly in the
Corps that she risked not even being promoted lieutenant
from her initial probationer statusand hence losing forever her chance at longevity-paymentshe had saved everything and indeed acquired some small reputation by a
successful coup on a barbarian planet: one of the isolated
Zarathustra Refugee Planets where fugitives had survived
after fleeing the hell of the Zarathustra nova more than
seven centuries previous.
But when she was offered a post as an on-planet agent,
supervising and watching the progress of these stranded
outcasts of humanity, since she was not permitted to return to the world where she had stirred up such a to-do,
she had had to pick almost at random from the existing
four or five vacancies.
And she had realised quite shortly after being assigned
her post, in which the minimum stay was twenty years,
that she had chosen wrong.
It had seemed that something was going to happen on
the planet she selecteda transition from the typical
mud-grubbing peasant level where many of the refugees
had got stuck, .to an expanding phase of incipient civilisation, with some industrialisation and a great deal of
cross-cultural influence: fascinating material to study at
first-hand.
But that occurrence depended on the survival of an
organisational genius who had inherited the headship of a
strategically sited city-state. And within a month of her
arrival, one of his jealous rivals assassinated him and
seized power, condemning the planet to at least one more
generation of stagnancy.
She was absolutely forbidden to interfere. And, having
to sit helplessly-by and watch nothing happen, she had
grown so bored she hardly dared think about it.
Now was time for leave, and reassignment. Her
"death" had been arranged; her successor had been
briefed and was even now aboard the Patrol ship which
would land him with utter secrecy to take over his carefully prepared r61e in the local society. . . and she was
on her way to Cyclops, a planet she had never conceived
she might want to visit.
Yet she had welcomed the reasonless order to come
here before proceeding on leave. The delay gave her
time to arrive at the decision she had postponed so long:
stay on, ask for transfer to some lower-paying )ob, or
resign?
She thought enviously of Gus Langenschmidt, the Patrol Major who had maintained the beat including her
assigned world when she first went there; he was aging,
greying, even running to fat when she last saw him, yet
because he could think of no better purpose to which to
devote his accrued longevity, he was continuing far beyond the maximum service-time which qualified for ten-to-one pay. Five centuries was the limit of credit Fifty
years in the Patrol.
More than the total of years Fve yet lived, Maddalena
reflected. How is Gus? Where is he? It would have been
easier to endure my job if I'd .known he was still going
to call two or three times a yearbut they 'pulled him off
his beat to do something else when he topped the limit,
and I could never like his successor so well.
The communicators announced the imminence of
planetfall. The whisper of air began on the hull, like the
drumming of scores of marching feet. Maddalena leaned
back and closed her eyes, struggling once more with the
irresoluble problem. She scarcely noticed the actual landing period, although her fellow passengers were chatter-ing and joking and exchanging snippets of information
about Cyclops. A rough world, they thought it was.
Rough world.' Maddalena echoed silently. These soft-handed chair-warmers should go where I've just come
from.'
And yet...
Her mind drifted back two decades on the instant. "A
predatory kind of world"that was the description she
had been given when it was first learned Cyclopeans
were behind the interference with a ZRP which she had
cancelled out by an inspired improvisation.
What did they want her here for, anyway? Why in
the galaxy had that message come through at the Corps
base where she had been trying to decide whether to go
all the way home to Earth for her leave-year, instructing
that she be sent to Cyclops on the next available flight?
The answer turned up the moment the locks were
opened on the landing-groundor rather, pontoon. Cyclops, having so much water, had correspondingly little
dry ground available for parking spaceships. More than si
dozen vessels were in view from the seat in which she
still sat listlessly although the others had risen excitedly
to await permission to step outside. The gawky shapes of
cranes, the abstract formations of hulls in process of cut-ting up for scrap, the clean bright rails of overhead gan-tries, wove webs of metal across the blinding blue
background of a summer sky.
She had not expected to find such bright light; the primary of the world she had left was cooler than Earth's,
but that of Cyclops was whiter and hotter.
A man in summer undress uniform, hair clipped close
and indicating that he was called on to fly space where
long hair was forbidden because it was dangerous inside
a helmet, hauled himself dexterously through the lock
even before the mobile gangvroy trundled into position.
He peered down the shadowy aisle of the passenger
cabin.
"Senior Lieutenant Santos?" he inquired.
Maddalena stirred and got up.
"The base commandant is waiting for you," the man
said. "Would you come with me?"
The other passengers exchanged resentful glances, especially the woman. She had never been out of range of
civilised cosmetic treatment, and her age was impossible
to assess, whereas Maddalena had had to age the full
twenty years she'd spent where cosmetics were mere
primitive pastes and powders.
She obeyed the instruction apathetically. But the moment she came to the lock and saw who was waiting below in the open cockpit of the ground-skimmer, she
forgot everything in a wave of pure joy.
"Gus."' she shouted, and flew down the gangway three
steps at a time to hurl her arms around his neck.
"Easy, girl, easy!" he said, disengaging her grip. "I
have to maintain some show of authority around this
dump, even though I hate it. Let's have a look at you.
It's been a long time."
Maddalena pulled back to arm's reach and studied her
old friend. "You look better on. it than I do," she said
with a twinge of envy. And indeed he did; his grey hair
had been treated, his face smoothed to wipe away
worry-lines, his waistline trimmed to a lean youthfulness.
In his immaculate commandant-rank uniform, he looked
like a come-on advertisement for Patrol recruitment.
"Have to maintain appearances, the same way you've
had to," he grunted. "Here, get in and I'll run you back
to my HQ for a bit of refreshment. Your gear will be
taken care of. It's not often I get the chance to use my
position for my own amusement, but this time I've done
it, and you're getting the finest treatment the planet can
afford."
"Amusement?" Maddalena said, relaxing with a sigh
into the soft padding of the passenger seat. "Did you
fetch me here simply for amusement?"
Langenschmidt, easing the ground-skimmer around the
tail of the newly-landed shipthe metal shell of the pontoon resonated under themshot a starded glance at her.
"Weren't you told why you were being sent here? I'd
have expected you to raise hell at having your leave
postponed when you've waited twenty years for it!"
"No, I just did as I was told." Maddalena narrowed
her eyes against the brilliant sunshine and let her gaze
rove over the ddily-parked spaceships.
"Hm! You must have changed in the years since we
last met," Langenschmidt said. "Yon used to be a considerable spitfire. Well, IWell!" He ran his hand
around the collar of his full-dress jacket. "I'd better start
by explaining, hadn't I? It's to do with the ZRP's, of
course. The row about non-interference has blown up
yet once moreit's been in the wind since shortly before
I was recalled from my beat and put in charge here, and
I was put in charge here for precisely the reason that the
centre of the whole brewing row was right on Cyclops."
Maddalena, hardly paying attention, made some sort of
sound interpretable as an interested comment.
Langenschmidt went on: "In fact, some of it was to
do with our little affair at Carrig. Although they were
never able to come out and complain openly, the pride
of the Cyclops government was badly hurt by the fact
that a hundred or so Cyclopeans had been dropped into
volcanoes by dirty smelly barbarians, and that we hadn't
acted to stop this because of the principle of non-interference with ZRP development. It takes years to stir up
trouble when there are two hundred and whatevertwo
hundred sixty, isn't it?worlds with a say in running the
Corps, but a determined party can get the wheels turning eventually. And on Cyclops we have just such a determined party. Her name is Alura Quist, and if there
weren't officially a representative government here I'd
say she was a dictator. She's just ahunstoppable.
"The Cyclopeans don't like having our base here, but
they can't balance their planetary budget without the
revenue it brings in. So short of kicking the Corps off-planet, there's only one way they can get back at us for
the Carrig business. That's to attack our prized principle
of non-interference. And with a view to this, Quist is
right now staging a big conference on the subject, with
delegates from all kinds of worlds including Earth, and
frankly I'm horrified at the influential names she's managed to rope in.
"The problem is in my lap, Maddalena, and I've worried myself stupid about it. They put me here to try and
stave off what Quist is doing, and I'm losing out. When I
heard you were at the end of your tour, I thought, 'By
Cosmos! She's from Earth, and out this way Earthborn
Corpsmen are few and far betweenshe's served as an
on-planet agent, so she has first-hand testimony available.' For all these and several other reasons, I thought
maybe you'd jolt my mind out of its old grooves and
somehow inspire me to get the better of Quist."
Maddalena stirred and turned her finely-shaped head.
Her former look of fragility, Langenschmidt noted, had
faded, and she seemed toughened and far less feminine.
"After twenty years watching a gang of Zarathustra
refugees getting nowhere, Gus, I'm pretty well convinced myself that it's a crime to leave them to make
fools of themselves. I'm sorry to disappoint you within
minutes of our first meeting in years, but that's the way I
feel right now, and if you want to convince the delegates to this conference that non-interference is the right
course, you can start by trying it on me!"
m
For the third time Bracy Dyge began on the miscel-laneous collection of transistors littering the bottom of
his spares box, hoping against hope that the fault in his
fish-finder would put itself right. He was four days from
port, even if he started home right away, in this sluggish
ancient trawler which represented his whole family's
means of supportwith himself as sole able-bodied
seaman. He had been three days on the fishing-grounds,
and only last night had he cottoned on to the fact that
the reason for his inability to locate any schools of oilfish
lay in an equipment fault, not in a total absence of fish.
For some reason far beyond his rudimentary technical
knowledge to fathom, the fish-finder refused to signal
anything closer than the bottom of the sea. With mad-dening precision it delineated on its circular screen the
profile of the rocks three hundred feet below his keel,
but it wouldn't even show the big plastic bucket he was
trailing as a sea-anchor.
Transistors were expensive, and it was impossible to
tell by merely looking at them whether they were in
functional condition or not. Accordingly, he couldn't
say whether those he had salvaged at various times and
popped in the spares box were better, or worse, than the
ones installed in the fish-finder already. He could merely
try every possible combination until he had exhausted
the last permutation, and since there were altogether six-teen transistors in the fish-finder and seven in the spares
box, it was proving an impossibly long job.
At least, however, it was ridding him of some useless
junk. Two of the spares had put the fish-finder completely out of action, and these he had tossed overboard
with annoyance.
The son was baldng hot, and the sea was completely
featureless. His trawler, shabby and paint-peeling, was
the only sign of life as far as he could see. On the after-deck, in the exiguous shadow of a torn plastic awning,
he sat with legs crossed, using the front plate off the
fish-finder housing as a tray for the loose parts. He was
very lean, and the summer had tanned his naturally-dark
skin to the colour of old rich leather. His hair hung
around his shoulders in thick braids, and a shiny but
sea-tarnished chrome ring was threaded through the
pierced lobe of his left ear. Anyone with a knowledge of
the culture of Cyclops would have placed him instantly,
even without stopping to consider his off-white loincloth
and elastic sandals: a fisherboy from one of the sea-hemisphere ports, most likely Grarignol, and doing rather
badly this year.
Correct. Morosely, Bracy discovered that another
transistor was worthless, and that made three over the
side.
At least, he promised himself, he was not going to turn
for home before he had exhausted all possibilities for
self-help. Even then.. .
His stomach churned and his mind quailed at the prospect of going home with an empty hold. Better, surely,
to cruise at random until his nets chanced on something
for the family to eat, even if he found no oilfish. Oilfish
were the only salable species in this part of the ocean;
eating fish could be got by anyone, simply by casting a
few lines with bait. Oilfish travelled in vast schools of
eight to ten thousand, but because the schools were so
big they were likewise concentrated, and without a fish-finder one might hunt for weeks and not cross the path
of a single school.
. If only he belonged to a different family . . . ! If he
were one of the Agmess boys, for instance, six brothers
of whom two had sufficient technical skill not merely to
do their own electronics repairs but actually to build
equipment for other families' boats . .. But by the same
token, they guarded their knowledge well. He would
have to go home and pay for their assistance, or pay
someone elsewhat with, after a fruitless voyage?
Agmess boats had radio, too, and in the event of a break-down they could signal for help, whereas he was on his
own, in charge of the boat which supported his four sisters, his grandmother and his eight-year-old younger
brother.
He was himself seventeen years old. He had been the
breadwinner of the family since the great storm of the
winter before last during which his parents had been
drowned in the capsizing of a lifeboat put out to rescue
a damned fool.
Add me to the list, Bracy told himself sourly. My
parents would be dreadfully ashamed, to see me in this
stupid mess!
He paused in his thankless task and cast a casual glance
over the bumished shield of the sea, not expecting to see
anything but the water and the sky. His heart gave a
lurch and seemed to go out of rhythm for several beats,
and he almost spilled the spare parts from the makeshift
tray balanced on his legs.
Jackson's buzzards! This far north, they could mean
Only one thinga wolfshark!
With frantic haste he gathered the bits of the fish-finder and thrust them in a bag where at least he could
find them again, and scrambled to his feet. There was
one other way of tracking oilfish besides using electronic
aids, and that was to follow a wolfshark as the buzzards
did, until its eagerness for prey led it to a school. It
could sense the same nutrient-rich currents as all the
other fish, and those currents always defined the oilfish's
path.
Of course, not all such currents held oilfishthere
were too many of them. But it was an idea.
He hesitated, eyes screwed np against the glare, raising
the sole of one foot to rub it on the calf of the opposite
leg as he always did when concentrating on a problem.
There were several factors to weigh before a decision
was reached. First off, this wolfshark must be a whopper
to have so many blizzards trailing him. Second, he was
already four days from home, and a wolfshark finding
plenty of prey might kill the clock around for a week
before tiring and turning towards the equator again.
Third, although he had heard about using a wolfshark as
a pilot on the traces of an oilfish school, he had never
known anyone really do itit was needlessly chancy
now that everyone sailing from Grarignol could afford a
fish-finder.
Finally, if a wolfshark that size decided to attack his
trawler, it could probably sink it with a single fierce
charge.
Bracy drew a very deep breath. Now was the time for
desperate measures, he concluded, and went to see
whether he was equipped for the job.
Stores were no problem, apart from water, and unless
the weather broke he could keep the solar still going.
- Power, likewiseduring the day he drew enough to
move the boat at a sluggish walking pace from silicon-dynide sails spread to catch the sun, and at night he
could spare a little of his stored reserves. He could tisk a
couple of days on the wolfshark's trail.
Defending himself if the beast turned nasty was another matter altogether. His only weapons were two
fish-gaffs, rather corroded from long use and one in particular looking likely to snap soon, and an unreliable
self-seeking seine, not much use for anything except
bringing up jellyfish to be melted in the sun.
One moment! An inspiration struck him. In the
emergency locker he had at least half a dozen signal
rockets, which on a sparsely populated world like this
needed to reach stratospheric altitude if they were to be
any use. They weighed sixty-five pounds apiece, and
were triggered automatically by contact with sea-water
at one-hour intervals after the life-raft was cast overboard.
He spent fifteen sweaty, swearing minutes manhan-dling two of them into position on the forward rail, and
fishing up a bucket of sea-water to fire them with. If
luck and judgement combined, he could give even a monster wolfshark a meal worth remembering with these
things.
Then, feeling remarkably cold despite the heat of the
day, he fed power to the weakly-responding reaction jets
and the trawler began to creep in the wolfshark's general
direction.
He was about a mile distant when the skimmer came
in sight.
It seemed to appear from nowhere. It was so low in
the water, even the shallow troughs of this oily swell had
concealed it until it got up on its planes and spewed a
frothy plume astem. There seemed to be nothing of it,
toojust a platform with a slightly raised rim forward,
and a man lying on it, his face masked with a visor
against the sun.
Bracy gulped. Going after the wolfshark? Yes! For
he was lying on the butt of a harpoon-gun, and a gleam
of sun caught the barbs of the missile.
He saw the wolfshark then, and wished he hadn't
come near after all, for it was gigantic beyond his worst
nightmaresits span as great as the entire length of his
trawler.
The scene of the man on the skimmer confronting the
horrible aquatic killer lasted just long enough to burn
into his memory, before a sonic boom thundered across
the sky and the tableau, one second old, dissolved into a
chaos of spray and shrieking cries from the buzzards,
which had withdrawn to a safe height after vomiting
their half-digested stomach contents.
The skimmer vanished as suddenly as it had appeared,
in a whirlpool generated by the passage of the wolfshark, and a dozen fragments sailed into the air to land at
distances up to a hundred feet away. Of the man who
had been on it, Bracy saw nothing more for the moment.
Chiefly, this was because he was no longer wasting time
on looking. He had stopped his engines on solar power
and feverishly switched to stored reservesnot that that
would enable him to outrun the monster, but at least it
would give him a chance to dodge if he timed the ma-noeuvre correctly.
He waited, wholly tense. Would the beast ignore him,
or? No, his luck was out. For, having turned in a lazy
circle, it was rising to the surface again and surveying
the upper side of the sea.
This was an old rogue, clearly, as well as a monster.
No sooner had it sighted the trawler than it buried itself
forward.
Bracy was yelling at the top of his voicehe had no
idea what words he was uttering, but they might have
been curses. By crazy guesswork he aligned the trawler
on the wolfshark's course, slopped water over the firing
mechanism of both rockets, and buried himself into the
well of the deck, hoping the blast would be deflected
from him.
Onetwothree heartbeats, as widely spaced as
measured footfalls, intolerably slow.
And the universe exploded.
Dazed, he picked up his bruised body, feeling as if it
belonged to someone else, and put his head over the
well's edge to look at the deck. Two of his solar sails
were ripped, and the plastic awning which had given
him shade had blown clear out of sight; there were
char-marks on the planking and the window of the
stemhouse was smashed.
Bat there had been a very satisfactory-calamity twenty
yards from his bows. He could tell, even before looldng
over the side, because the buzzardsnot choosy about
what carrion they atehad descended already to replace
the food wasted in panicky vomiting.
The writhing corpse of the wolfshark, torn almost in
two, was pumping its life's blood in great oozing gouts
into the ocean.
Limp, Bracy had to cling to the railand instantly
snatched his hand away. It was still hot from the blaze of
the rockets' exhaust. A miracle I didn't set the ship afire,
he thought wanly.
He looked apatherically at the water. Now he'd lost
two solar sails, and his pilot to an oilfish school, for
nothing.
He stiffened abruptly. What was that in the water
yonder? Something writhingas though beating at the
sky?
The man from the skimmer! Still alive, floating on
some buoyant section of his crafteven having the
strength to utter faint cries, now that Bracy's ears were
attuned to the sound half-masked by the whinnying of
the buzzards.
With infinite effort he put the trawler about and drew
alongside the floating man. He was by then too weak to
help himself; Bracy had to gaff him through a pair of
cross-belts on his back. And small wonder he was weak.
When he was dragged from the water, he proved to
have lost one leg from the knee down to the fangs of the
wolfshark.
"Don'tworry," the man whispered, seeing Bracy
stare aghast at the injury. "Suitwill stopthe bleeding."
What suit? Bracy peered closer. The man's skin was
covered with a transparent film of some kind, that must
be it, and it was contracting now of its own accord,
forming an automatic tourniquet around the amputated
leg so that the flesh turned death-white and the bleeding
reduced to a capillary leakage.
Well, that fettles it, Bracy thought glumly, and went
to fetch another signal rocket, this time to cry for help
from wherever it might be available.
Even on a poor world like Cyclops, the Corps en)oyed
the best of everything. It was a necessity to compensate
personnel for the often heartbreaking tasks that faced
them; likewise, however, it was a drawback in the same
way as the pay system based on longevity treatment,
creating envy and troubling Corps selection boards with
mobs of totally unsuitable candidates.
Symptomatic of Corps luxury here was Langenschmidt's home and headquarters, a villa crowning the
highest point on the island which the Cyclops government leased to them. There was no need for the commandant to be in close physical touch with his
responsibilities in the repair-yard and portelectronic
links served the purpose and permitted the privacy preferred by a man whose longest service had been on a
lonely Patrol beat one tour of which might take a decade.
His dismay at Maddalena's unexpected response to his
first remarks after their meeting kept him silent until
they were together in the long, low, cool main room of
the villa, with the panorama of the island and its offshore
pontoons spread like a map in front of the wall-high
windows. Then, cradling a drink in both hands, he
leaned back in a contoured chair and stared at this
woman whom subconsciously he had still regarded an
hour ago as the hotheaded standin agent of the Carrig
affair, twenty years previous.
He had grown accustomed to the changes wrought in
himself by a return to comfort and civilisationthe reversal of the aging effect, for instance. The sight of Maddalena at a "natural" forty-five years of age was a shock to
him. Her bones were still fine, her head still as exquisitely
shaped as an abstract sculpture, her eyes srill bright as
gems on either side of her regal nose, sharp as though to
symbolise her innate curiosity. But her skin was coarse,
her hands were rough, and there was an aura of exhaustion in her attitude and her voice.
Tp try and dispel the disturbance she had caused in his
mind, he said with insincere heartiness, "Well, Maddalena! How have things been going for you since we
last met?"
"Badly." She made no move to sip the drink provided
for her, although she had taken a dry savoury crackerball from a bowl and was rolling it absently between her
fingers. "I doubt if it was more than a logbook entry
for you, but you may remember that Headman Cashus
was assassinated soon after my assignment, and with him
went any hope of progress. So"
She crumbled the crackerball into dust and dropped
the fragments back in the dish. "So I've spent one hell of
a long time watching absolutely nothing happen. And
you?"
"AhI've been learning a new trade and finding I'm
not very good at it. Contemporary diplomacy, I guess
you'd say. I haven't seen nothing happen, but on the
galactic scale things take place so slowly as to make a
fair approximation." Langenschmidt hesitated. "Maddalena, were you serious m what you said earlier, about
non-interference, or was that just due to tiredness after
your trip?"
"The tiredness has been building up for a long, long
time." Now, finally, she tasted her drink, making no
comment on it. "Andyes. I'm serious."
"Are you going clear back to the point of view I had
such trouble kicking you out ofalong with Pavel
Brzeskawhen we were going to Carrig?"
"No. That was the preconceived notion of a silly girl.
It's been a long time, Gus, even for a Corpsman, and
I'vechanged, I guess."
"Now look here!" Langenschmidt leaned forward.
"You've been on Thirteen, which barely counts as Class
A, where the refugees have had extremes of climate to
contend with, and in any case started off on the worst
possible basis by having no adequately trained leaders. I
can understand the sight of a primitive peasant community getting anybody down. But before you change sides
on the question of non-interference, think of Fourteen
and Carrigyou should see the recent reports from
there, incidentally. Think of Seven, where they're developing some new biological and generic skills, or
Eighteen, where there are some language changes going
on which will eventually influence the whole pattern of
human communication."
"Think of Five," Maddalena countered. "Unless they've
licked the cerebral palsy problem, the survivors there are
back to grunting like apes."
There was silence for a feW minutes. Unhappily, Langenschmidt chewed his lower lip and stared at Maddalena, wondering what next to say.
The problem was a recurrent one, and had been debated for a century and a half. Its roots, though, lay
much further backto be precise, some seven hundred
and seventy years before, when the primary of a planet
called Zarathustra went nova. For six hundred and thirty
years thereafter, it was believed that only a small handful
of refugees had escapedto Baucis Alpha, on the
Solward side. Then, without warning, radio signals began to be received from the opposite direction; fruit of
generation upon generation of dedicated workers starting from no better level than the salvaged scrap in a
single starship, climaxing in the conversion of an asteroid into a huge generating station fed by solar power
and oriented to form a bowl-like transmission antenna
for messages limping at light-speed back to civilisation.
They came from Lex's Planet, otherwise known as
ZRP One: the first Zarathustra Refugee Planet to be located and recontacted. Now, it was part of the galactic
union, and regarded as a civilised world.
From there, it had been learned that no fewer than
three thousand ships got away from the night side of
Zarathustia, and the far quadrant of its orbit, carrying
some two and a quarter million people. The Patrol, constituted a couple of centuries before, was given the task
of tracking down the remaining survivors, if any.
Twenty-one worlds had now been found where fugitives had landed. On some, they had not only survived,
but built up during their period of isolation quite interesting and respectable cultures. Few of them boasted
technology to more than rudimeritary level, but some
had other achievementssuch as those Langenschmidt
had cited to Maddalenawhich promised new avenues
for human cultural or scientific development.
After much argument and heart-searching, the non-interference rule was formulated and applied. Unless the
ZRP's succeeded in recontacting civilisation themselves,
they were to be left to evolve along the paths they had
themselves created. There were many reasons for this.
On some planets there had been evolutionary changes
due to environment: on all, there had been cultural dis-ruption, and centuries of "natural" breeding, four to five
generations per century, had magnified the discontinuity.
Perhaps most significant of all, galactic civilisation was
slowing down its former progress, as though the distance
between the stars imposed a psychological as well as
physical barrier on cross-fertilisation of cultures. Seemingly, one felt there was little point in research or inven-tiveness when for all one could determine on some other
of the 260 human planets the same work had already
been carried out.
Left to themselves, it was suggested, the ZRP's might
rediscover the basic human drives of curiosity and ultimately re-infect the rest of the race.
Elsewhere, there had been a cultural smoothing
process. Worlds like Earth were looked np to, but only
the superficialities of fashion spread, not the real changes
which underlay them, and consequently things were
much the same everywhere as they had been when the
Patrol was set up. Backward worlds struggled to catch
~up to the average standard, and some did so, but the
worlds above average were placid and lacked any initiative. -
Maddalena stirred in her chair and raised her eyes to
her old friend's rejuvenated face. "Who's spearheading
the campaign this time? ZRP One as usual, presumably."
Langenschmidt pounced. "No, and that's the most interesting part of it. It used to be fashionable for One to
shout about the shocking way their kinfolk were being
left to rot instead of rescued and brought home. But this
conservative tradition has died out lately, and I think this
is because it's taken until now for One to mesh completely with galactic civilisation and discover just how
great a change was wrought in their own culture by
their isolation period. Now, One's spokesmen are mostly
keeping quiet, and we're hoping they will eventually
plump for non-interference themselves.
"In their place, we have Cyclops beating the drum, as
a result of the Carrig affair in my personal opinion, and a
whole lot of charitably-minded but short-sighted people
from the older worlds, including and especially Earth.
What they fail to understand1 sayis that Earth-type
luxury isn't the perfect human way of life. They want to
impose it as a standard everywhere, whether or not the
recipients enjoy the cultures they have at present,
whether or not these cultures are productive, creative
ones."
"Thirteen's certainly isn't," Maddalena muttered.
Langenschmidt didn't answer. His eyes had turned
towards the window, and widened on seeing a line of
brilliant sparks like stitches sewn upward across the blue
of the sky.
"Hullo!" he exclaimed. "That's an emergency rocket.
Some fisherman in difficulties, presumably. We're always
having to nursemaid local folkeither fisherman who go
too far to sea with inadequate equipment, or upper-crust
playboys out wolfshark-hunring whose nerve fails them
at the crucial moment. Still, it interrupts the monotony."
He addressed himself to a communicator panel
discreetly blended with the room's no-nonsense decor.
"Anyone taking action on that emergency rocket just
now?"
Pause. Then a disembodied voice, sounding irritated,
answered him. "Sorry, commandant, what was that?"
And, as if re-hearing the question in memory: "Oh! The
rocket! Yes, I'll send someone dut to gaff the guy and
drag hmi ashore."
"Fine." Langenschmidt's attention reverted to Maddalena. "You know,' I think before we finish this argument, I'd better give you a chance to see galactic
civilisation, Cyclops-style, so that you can learn all over
again what a shallow thing it really is. Take the situation
here at present as a shining example. We have this
woman Alura Quist, who runs things, as I told you. She's
certainly very capable and ruthless. But to have to confine her efforts to Cyclops, which is so poor it still runs
on fission rather than fusion, galls her. She doesn't see
why Corps personnel should enjoy longevity payments,
to start with, when she is aging and having to send clear
back to Earth for even her cosmetic treatments. I think
in fact some of her hostility to us is due to nothing more
abstract than simple jealousy. A woman afraid of losing
her youthful looks is a sad case. She has an official lover,
one of the handsomest men I've ever seen, who's also a
kind of planetary hero, a former spaceman who suffered
some kind of crippling injury in creditable circumstances. I don't know the full details. She treats him like
aa tame animal, as it were. Shows him off: here he is,
the famous Justin Kolb, and he's my lover. Follow me?"
Maddalena gave a listless nod. She had heard all this,
apart from the story of Kolb, at the time of the Carrig
affair, when a group of Cyclopean entrepreneurs learned
from a failed Corps probationer the location of ZRP
Fourteen and its deposits of high-yield radioactives.
They had operated a mine with local slave-labour for a
considerable time before the Patrol managed to displace
them, and Cyclops had smarted ever since under the
knowledge that a bunch of ZRP barbarians had dropped
civilised menso-calleddown a volcano, the standard
punishment for the crimes they had committed by the
local ethical yardstick.
"I honestly don't think Quist has any interest in the
ZRP's as such," Langenschmidt pursued. "She wants to
get back at the Corps for personal reasons of jealousy,
and the existence of a fund of hostility due to the episode on Fourteen provides her with a handle. If we
were to abandon non-interference for sound, rational
reasons. I'd swallow the decision gagging, maybe, but
I'd stomach it. But to do it for such a"
The disembodied voice spoke again from the communicator. "Commandant? "
"Yes?" Langenschmidt half-turned in his chair.
"That signal rocket. I thought you'd be interested to
know about it."
"Not especially, but tell me anyway."
"We've found one of the Grarignol fishermena boy,
rather, not more than seventeen, they say. He's tangled
with a wolfshark being hunted by auhrather notorious person. He fished said notorious person out of the
water short of most of one leg. Luckily for him, he was
wearing a medisuit, and though he's unconscious he isn't
dead. But it's who he is which may interest you."
"Well, then, spit it out," Langenschmidt grunted.
"It's Jusrin Kolb," said the disembodied voice.
Alura Quist was pleased with the way things were going. Not even the reflection which came back to her
from the polyview mirror at which she was preparing
for the official banquet due at sunset could wholly dispel
the mood of grim satisfaction the offworld delegation
had generated in her.
Of course, those from the wealthier worlds such as
Earth had felt patronising about the best Cyclops could
offer, but it was out of keeping with their professed
charitable intentions towards the underprivileged of the
ZRP's to make open complaint, so they had been on
their best behaviour. And the ferocity of the representative from ZRP OneOmar Haust, an old man now but
still vehementoutweighed a dozen of his fainter-hearted
colleagues. He still clung to views that most people on
his planet had reluctantly abandoned.
The banquet would be magnificent; the food and
liquor would be so expensive as to have to figure as a
special entry in the planetary budget for the yearbut
never mind, it could appropriately be written off against
a one per cent surcharge on the rental of the Corps
Galactica base. Afterwards there would have to be
speeches, of coursecurious how tradition lingered in
these formal areas of human activity, even after countless
generationsbut she could endure that In sight of a
success schemed for over so many years, she could put
up with acouple of hours' repetitious mouthing.
"We of Cyclops," she said to the mirror, and watched
how the muscles of her throat moved with the words,
"are not among the most prosperous peoples of the
galaxy. Yet what we have we do not regard selfishly.
We would eagerly share it with those who are still
worse off than we. In pregalactic days, the historians
tell us, there was a fable recounted about a dog which
made its bed on the fodder of a draft-animal and so
caused the animal to starve."
She paused, at first because she was still uncertain
about including this arcane literary reference even now
the speech-compositor had shorn it of obsolete words
like "manger" and "ox", and then to carry out yet one
more inspection of her appearance.
She was still slender; she had the nervous, energetic
constitution which assured her of boniness rather than
excess fat in her declining years. Her hair, fair and
warmly coloured, was impeccably dressed and framed a
strong face in which her eyes were blue and brilliant as
sapphires. Her gown was of Earthside manufacture-dated, no doubt, in the eyes of the visitors from the
mother world, but suiting her so well she could disregard that minority opinion.
How long would it all last? Her mouth twisted into a
harsh grimace, instantly destroying her usual pretriness,
as the thought of such a man as Gus Langenschmidt
crossed her mind. After fifty years patrolling a beat
among the ZRP barbarians, he was promised survival in
good health and artificial youth when she was long rele-gated to footnotes in local history records.
That fact could scarcely be changed. But the purpose
to which he had dedicated his life could be emptied of
meaning.
Oh, the draft of her speech would do well enough.
She let that matter drop, and spoke to the attendant
manicuring her toenails on another subject which was
currently worrying her.
"Would you tell Justin Kolb that I wish to speak with
him before the banquet?"
"Is he going to be there, mistress?" the girl countered.
Quist started. Was there mockery in that level voice?
There was no obvious sign of it in the dark eyes which
met hers; she relaxed fractionally.
"What do you mean? Of course he will be there.
Why not?"
"I understood from his valet, mistress, that he had not
returned half an hour ago."
"Returned?" Bewildered, Quist stared down at the
girl. In the past two days, since the arrival of the
offworld delegates, she had spared scarcely a moment to
think of her lover. She had been vaguely aware that he
had gone off somewhere, but had assumed without question that he would be back for tonight's major official
function.
She slapped the old-fashioned communicator built into
her dressing-table and spoke to the air. "Has Justin Kolb
come home yet?"
"I am his valet, mistress," a suave voice replied. "No,
he has not yet returned."
"Where is he, then? Has there been a message?"
"No message, mistress. If you wish, I will attempt to
contact him."
"Do you know where he is?" Belatedly, it struck
Quist as bad for her image not to know already, but she
could hardly recall the words once spoken.
"Approximately, mistress. He went wolfshark-hunting
at the extreme northern limit of the species' range."
Time seemed to stand still. Finally, her voice ragged,
she whispered, "Contact him and find outfind out
when he will be back."
And when he does come home, she finished silently,
Pa teach him a lesson he'll never forget for bis im-pudence in disregarding my orders to be here tonight.
In fact, it might well be time to dispense with Justin
Kolbsend him back to the menial job. where but for her
he would now be slaving out his miserable existence, one
leg reduced to a stump by the freezing cold of space.
Cyclops had no slack in its economy to allow for the
luxury of unproductive cripples.
She was making alterations to the seating arrangements
for the banquet when the communicator sounded again.
Was it Justin calling? She closed her eyes for a second,
wondering how she could bring herself to get rid of this
man whose half-tamed spirit represented the second most
constant challenge of her life.
"Mistress, it is I once more," the valet said. "I have bad
news, I regret to say."
She could not speak, but waited passively. The girl
completed her toe-manicure and gathered her equipment
to move away.
"Justin Kolb is in hospital at the Corps Galactica base.
He was attacked by the wolfshark he was hunting and a
fisherman rescued him. He will live, they say, but" The
valet hesitated.
"Go on," she said in a dead voice. The next of her attendants, charged with fitting her shoes, came and knelt
at her feet.
"He has lost his right foot, and the lower part of his
leg, to the wolfshark's bite."
Does the madman want to be a cripple? The question
sped across her mind, and then was replaced by an
uncontrollable wave of pity and sympathy. But for
tonight's banquet, she would have jumped up that moment and gone to his hospital bed, to hold his hand and
croon comfort.
Oh, Justin, Justin! What's the love of danger that you
draw your fire from? One day it will kill you, and I
shall instantly be made old . ..
Aloud, she spoke with determination. "Put me in
touch with him. At once!"
"I will try, mistress," was the doubtful answer, and the
communicator went silent.
All thought of the recriminations she was going to
level at her lover had evaporated on this news. She could
visualise the way he would have brought her his trophy,
defiant because he knew it offended her when he courted
danger, yet in some ways shy, toolike a boy uncertainly seeking the praise of his first girl. He would have
intended to return for the banquet, had the accident not
overtaken him, bringing his tribute, and she would have
been both angry and delighted, for knowledge that such
a man was her lover comforted her.
The communicator spoke once more. "Alura Quist?"
it said, and she recognised the voice.
"Commandant Langenschmidt," she said coldly. "I did
not ask to speak to you."
"No, but I thought you'd rather speak to me than no-body at all. Justin Kolb won't regain consciousness for
some whileat least a couple of hours. He was severely
shocked by his experience. But you can have him back
tomorrow or the day after, the doctors say."
She tensed. "With his leg restored?"
There was a blank pause. Then Langenschmidt gave a
forced chuckle. "Hardly, I'm afraid. Some people seem
to have exaggerated ideas of what our medicine can ac-complish. Limb-regeneration overnight isn't among our
capabilities."
She had expected no other answer, but she had been
unable to prevent the words from emergingthey were
driven by the savage jealousy she felt towards the
Corpsman for his payment in youth and health.
No matter, anyhow. Justin had lost that leg before,
and more than simply the foot and lower partthe
whole of it, almost all the way to the hip, from space-gangrene.
"Thank you for your courtesy in telling me," she said
without warmth. "I'd have appreciated earlier notifica-tion, of course."
"It was my belief that you had other things to occupy
your mind," Langenschmidt countered mildly.
With a snarl which made her glad communicator links
on Cyclops were restricted to sound without vision,
Quist forced herself to maintain calm. She said, "I will
have transport sent in the morning, to bring him home.
Will that be convenient?"
"I imagine so, but send a doctor as well, of course."
Langenschmidt sounded a trifle surprised, as though he
had expected an attempt to persuade him that Kolb's leg
should be restored at the Corps hospital.
"Of course," Quist echoed, and silenced the communicator.
She waited a second. Then she spoke to it again. "Find
me Dr Aleazar Rimerley, and be quick about it!"
Dr Rimerley was enjoying the sunset when the call
came. He was among the wealthiest men on Cyclops,
and his home consisted of the surface and the heart of an
entire island, some mile or so in circumference. His living quarters were built out into the ocean, so that when
he choseas nowhe could sit on a higher level and
watch the sky, or else he could move down to the seabed
and enjoy the vivid panorama of the ocean's summer life.
His chief personal servant brought news of the call.
He rubbed his chin in wonder; he had not been intending to get in contact with Quist again just yet, but a
further deal was certain once simple cosmetic treatment
ceased to stave off time's ravages. Now, therefore, was as
good a time as any to talk to her, since she had initiated
the conversation.
He smiled automatically even though she could not see
him, and said with extreme heartiness, "My dear Alura
Quist! What an honour to speak with you after all this
time!"
She brushed aside the social formalities and went
straight to the point.
"Doctor, I have another job for you. As far as I know,
you're the only person on Cyclops capable of tackling
it."
"Pll do my best," Rimeriey agreed, and repressed a
smile that was more sincere than the original one.
"Justin Kolb has lost his leg again. Wolfshark-hunt-fag."
Rimerley blinked. He had expected something altogether different, almost certainly for Quist herself. This
request took him aback.
"I'm having him brought to you tomorrow morning. I
count on you to do as thorough a job of regeneration as
you did the last time."
"Ahjust a moment," Rimerley said uncomfortably.
"It's not the sort of job that can be tackled on a few
hours' notice, you understand." In the back of his mind
he was running calculations; so long to locate material,
so long to make the tissue immunologically neutral, so
long to get it here. "I doubt whether it would be possible to handle the case in less than two weeks, I'm
afraid."
"Two weeks!"
"That's my rough estimate. Of course, I may be-"
"Then I might just as well leave him where he is. He'll
be better looked after than in one of our second-rate
hospitals."
A warning tremor ran down Rimerley's spine. He said
in a voice suddenly fainter than normal, "Ahwhere is
he, then?"
"In the Corps Galactica hospital. He was taken there
after some fisherman rescued him from the water."
Silence.
"Dr Rimerley?" Quist demanded at last, sounding
alarmed.
She was not half as alarmed as Rimerley himself. He
could barely choke out his answer.
"On uh-on second thoughts, perhaps it would be
better to have him brought here. At once, the sooner the
better." He gulped the rest of the drink he had been sipping while he relaxed for the evening. "Yes, certainly
not later than tomorrow morning, on any account!"
He was sweating like a river when he cut the connection.
Soraya was woridng as vsaal at the waterworks, and
having the inevitable argument with Firdausi about marrying him, which he had been urging on her ever since
she achieved puberty, when she heard her name being
frantically shouted.
She motioned Firdausi to be silent, and peered through
the wraiths of steam from the main cauldron, trying to
make out who it was. The voice was a child's, but so
hoarse with agitation she could not recognise its owner.
The waterworks consisted of three parts. First, there
was the dipper which brought water from the natural
pool; this was a chain of buckets on two big wooden
pulleys, driven by a yorb which seemed quite content to
walk around all day in a circle and get an evening reward of food for its trouble. The dipper emptied its
water into the main cauldron, under which a hot fire
burned all the time, raising sluggishly bursting bubbles in
the contents. Although the water seemed perfectly clear
and pure when it was raised from the pool, a scum always formed during boiling, and it was in removing this
scum with wooden ladles that Soraya and Firdausi were
engaged.
Then the water was run off, a little at a time, into the
cooling tank, a tapered cylindrical container of heavy-stones mortared with natural cement, whence the towns-folk could fetch it in bucketfuls for use at home.
"Can you see who it is?" Soraya demanded.
Firdausi clambered down from the ladder on which
they were working, to get below the clouds of steam,
and reported. "It looks like the youngest from next door
to youBaby Hakim."
"Oh no\" Soraya gulped, and dropped to the ground
with a lithe flexing of her long legs. Firdausi's eyes followed her hungrily. She was by far the most beautiful
unmarried girl in the whole town: sloe-eyed, olive-skinned, with long dark hair and supple, graceful limbs.
He wished achingly that his parents were not so concerned with mundanities like a dowry and would give
him permission to marry her anyway. He was sure she
would make an excellent wife . . .
"Hakim baby!" she cried, dropping on her knees and
sweeping her arms around the tearful youngster who
came charging up to her. "What's wrong?"
Between sobs of exhaustion and terror, the child
forced out the news: Soraya's mother had been taken ill
yet again.
"You go straight home," Firdausi instructed. "I'll
bring Marouz to you there."
She shot him a smile of gratitude and went racing
back to the town.
It consisted of two rows of wattle-and-daub houses
facing one another, widely spaced, with large vegetable
gardens and runs for livestock surrounding them. Teth-ered yorbs regarded her incuriously as she sped past, feet
splashing in puddles left by the overnight rain which the
sky threatened to let flood down again at any moment.
In the fifth house from the left was her home; she
slammed back the crude wooden gate in the fence enclosing its garden, and ran indoors.
Hakim's elder sister, Yana, was bending over the bed
on which lay the wheezing form of apparently an old
woman. In truth, Soraya's mother was no more than
thirty-seven, but in this harsh environment age descended with the swiftness of tropical night.
And yet it was not mere ageendurable, because visited on everyonewhich afflicted her. It was something
random, and more deadly. There was a name for it; the
quakes. But simply to have a name was no help. What
was needed was a cure.
Sick with despair, Soraya glanced at Yana. "Has she
been like this long?"
"I found her on the floor by the hearth," the other girl
answered in low tones. "See, her dress is scorchedit was
lucky I chanced to look in, or she might have been
burned to death."
Soraya shuddered. "When? Just now?"
"So long ago as it took Hakim to reach you." Yana
shrugged. "I sent him at once."
Soraya clutched her mother's hand, feeling the uncontrollable trembling that racked her weak body, and
railed mentally against the capriciousness of fate.
"Shall I go for Marouz?" Yana suggested.
"Thank you, but Firdausi was with me at the waterworks, and he has gone already. Not that he'll be any
help," Soraya added bitterly.
"You shouldn't talk so. He's the wisest man among us
as well as the oldest!" Yana sounded horrified.
"What use is wisdom without practical applications?
He can tell us to be duriful children and loving parents,
and we do our bestand my mother who is the kindest
of women has the quakes." Soraya put up her hand to
wipe away a tear.
"Sssh! He's coming now," Yana murmured, and
turned to bow as Marouz dipped his white-bearded head
under the low lintel.
"Honour and profit upon this house," the mage said in
a single rapid burst, and limped to a chair which Yana
brought up beside the bed. "Hmmm! Has your mother
drunk unboiled water, Soraya?"
"You think I would let her?" Soraya jumped to her
feet, appalled. "I, who work where I do? What do you
take me for?"
"Soraya, that's unwise," Firdausi said softly; he had
come in just behind Marouz, holding Baby Hakim's
chubby hand.
"I don't care!" Tears were gathering in Soraya's eyes
also now. "I don't care! My mother lies sick to death,
and all he can think of is that she might have drunk unboiled water! What has water to do with it, anyway?
My father tended the waterworks before me, and he'd
never have let her do such a thing, and I wouldn'tand
still she has the quakes! What can water possibly have to
do with it?"
Marouz's face went hard as stone. "We are taught by
the wisdom of the ancients" he began.
"And a fat lot of good it does us!" Soraya blazed. But
on the last word she collapsed to her knees before him,
her shoulders heaving in helpless sobs.
"There, there," Marouz said, giving her an awkward
pat on top of the head. "These things are sent to try us,
daughter. We do what we can, but we are still far from
understanding all life's mysteries. When you grow as old
as Iwhich may you do!you'll have learned patience
with the inescapable."
"I'm sorry," Soraya choked out. "But I love my
mother, and she's done so much for me . . . Is there no
help you can give?"
"Spiritual comfort I would offer, but I know your
mother as a fine, noble-hearted woman in small need of
my advice." Marouz waggled his flowing beard regret-fully. "The only counsel I can give is to you. And yon
know what that is, for I've suggested it before."
"I've urged it on her also," Firdausi put in. "And she
won't listen."
"Take my mother away from her own home, and send
her who knows where?" Soraya exclaimed. "It seems to
me soso heartless!"
"Now, now, my daughter," Marouz soothed. "We all
hate necessity, but that's no use. The Receivers of the
Sick are good men, full of ancient wisdom and kindly intentions. Is it not better to see your mother in safe keeping than lying here quivering her life away on this
narrow hard bed?"
There was silence after that blunt question, until at last
Marouz stirred. "Well, I can do no more than I've
done," he said, and reached for Yana's arm to get to his
feet. "Make your mind up quickly, Soraya the Receivers are coming to this area in a few days' time, I
hear, and they won't be back for months, at least."
He hobbled out, and automatically they threw good
wishes after him in the form traditional for very old persons"May good health attend you to your grave."
Firdausi caught Yana's eye and she took the hint.
Crossing the dirt floor to retrieve her young brother, she
said in a strained voice, "Well, I have things to see to
next door. I guess you'd like to be alone, anyway."
The moment she was out of sight, Firdausi put his arm
around Soraya. "Dearest, why do you torture yourself
and your motherthis way?"
She shook off his grip and took the chair Marouz had
vacated, to sit gazing down at her mother, fingers driving their nails deep into her palms as though to share her
mother's suffering by self-inflicted pain.
"Shall I sell her like a yorb?" she snapped. "You know
as I do that but for the payment we'd never have let a
single person go from this town to the Receivers! It may
be well enough for towns where they don't teach love
for one's parents, but it disgusts me."
"Can you do more for her than the Receivers?"
Firdausi countered.
"What do they do?" Soraya demanded. "No one will
tell me that! What becomes of those committed to their
mercies?"
"You should ask Marouz."
"I did, the first rime he made this suggestion. And he
could only say that he didn't doubt'didn't doubt'!that
their fate was better than we ignorant folk could offer."
"Wouldn't almost anything be better than this?"
Firdausi argued. "Lying helpless among others equally
helpless?"
He dropped to his knees, face pleading. "I admire you
for your wish to keep your mother with you, believe
me! But looking at her, knowing there's nothing we can
dohow can you condemn her to it any longer? Look,
why don't you ask her views when she's able to talk
again?"
Soraya's face was very pale as she murmured, "I did."
"What did she say?" Firdausi pressed.
"That the paymentif the Receivers accept her
would be dowry for me and I could marry you and inherit the house." She formed the words as though each
tasted bad in her mouth.
"But in that case!" Firdausi rocked back on his heels.
"If it's her own wish, what holds you back?"
"They might not accept her," Soraya whispered.
"They don't take everyone, do they?"
"But it's a chance, don't you see? What chance has she
here of any other fate but a lingering, unpleasant death?"
Soraya delayed her answer for long moments. Finally
she said, "Firdausi, all you care about is freeing me to
marry you. Suppose I say that ifif1 take my mother
to the Receivers, this does not mean I intend to marry
you."
It was Firdausi's turn to hesitate.
"I think," he said slowly, "that the way you're keeping
your mother here, suffering needlessly, is likely to make
me less eager to have you for my wife."
She flinched as though from a physical blow, and fresh
tears gathered in her eyes. Seeing his advantage, Firdausi
pressed it.
"There's something almost selfish about it. You've just
told me what her own desires are, yet you insist on going against them. If that's not pandering to your own
self-esteem, I don't know what is."
She bit down on her lower lip to stop it quivering, and
was only able to speak after a further pause. The words
came like leaden footfalls.
"Very well. Go to Marouz and find out when the Receivers are due, and where. And I'll try and borrow a
wagon and a yorb to take her."
Firdausi's jubilation showed in his face, although his
voice was sober enough as he said, "I do really think it's
the wisest course."
He turned and went out.
So I'll do it, Soraya thought bitterly. But I won't
marry you or anyone eke in this horrible town. If they
take her, I'll burn the house and we the pay to go somewhere I can hide from my shame.
Abruptly she turned to the water-bucket and began to
rinse her hands, over and over, as though to remove
some clinging invisible foulness.
vn
Maddalena and Langenschmidt ate their evening meal
together in the main base restaurant. Under the influence
of the nearest approach to civilised luxury she had enjoyed for many yearsthe Corps base where she had
been most recently was as spartan as any of the other
outlying stations Maddalena's mood of exhaustion and
apathy faded. The music, food and wine made her expand like a flower to the sun, so that even before she
took the course of cosmetic treatment she was due for
traces of the impetuous girl Langenschmidt had formerly
known began to peek through.
Unfortunately, it was his turn to become distracted
and stare for long silent periods into nowhere. It was
some while before Maddalena noticed the factshe had
been gossiping about her experiences on ZRP Thirteen
and when she did, she spoke teasingly to him.
"Why, Gus! Is this any way to treat a guest? I
thought you'd spent your time here learning all the correct social behaviour!"
"Hm?" He snapped back to the present with a start.
"Oh, I'm sorry. There's something bothering me, and I
think I just figured out what it has to be. Please excuse
me for a few minutes. I have to check on it."
Maddalena stared at him. Suddenly she leaned forward
and put her hand on his. "I'm sorry, Gus. I didn't intend
to act this way on seeing you for the first time in so
many years. You do have problems to handle, and I
shouldn't be disregarding them the way I have been."
"No, this is nothing directly to do with you. At least I
don't believe it is. Will you excuse me?"
"Is it something I'm not allowed to know about, or
may I come with you?"
"Sure, come if yon like. I'm not going far. To a communicator first, then to the hospital if my suspicions
prove correct."
"Something about this man Justin Kolb?"
"Very much so."
She pushed back her chair and rose.
The network of communicator links knitted the base
together as intimately as the nerves in a living body, so
that none of the key personnel need ever be oat of reach
in the rare event of an emergency. Here, Maddalena
thought as she studied Langenschmidt's strong profile
against the wall of the restaurant communicator booth,
emergencies would be even less common than on most
Corps bases. He must make a first-class commandant:;
thorough, patient, farsighted.
But he had been a first-class Patrol Major, too, and
would have been equally efficient as an on-planet agent
like herselfhad stood in as one during the Carrig crisis,
and proved that.
She sighed imperceptibly, envying his adaptability and
dedication. By comparison she felt herself pliable, weak
and self-centred.
The signal indicating access to the base computer
memory shone out of the screen in the booththe Corps
was the only regular user of vision circuits on Cyclops
apart from the government.
"Justin Kolb, Cyclopean," Langenschmidt said briskly.
"Circumstances attending his retirement from the Cyclops space service, please."
The last word tickled Maddalena's fancy. Imagine saying "please" to a machine! But after a second it didn't
seem fannyonly characteristic of the man who uttered
it.
"Select auditory or visual presentation," the machine
requested, and he selected sound, thinking it was more
convenient for Maddalena, -<yho had to peer into the
booth from outside.
The machine spoke dates key-ed to an unfamiliar calen-dar, and continued. "Kolb, Jusrin. Asteroid mining engineer, spaceman. Second in command of local system
mine-ship Sigma. Awarded Medal of Cyclops for hero-ism following accidental destruction of Sigma with loss
of captain and fifteen crew. Sustained space-gangrene of
right leg to mid-thigh, resulting in permanent retirement
from space service. More?"
The gently questioning tone of the last word was a
marvel of sophisticated engineering, if you thought
about it, Maddalena informed herself absently. What was
Gus driving at?
"Who was responsible for regenerating his leg?" Langenschmidt demanded.
"No information specific to this question," the
machine answered.
"Damn. Uhwhat doctor was in charge of his case
and supervised his eventual recovery?"
"Dr Aleazar Rimerley," the machine said.
"Thought it might have been," Langenschmidt muttered, and made as though to turn away. He hesitated,
and at length voiced another question.
"What facilities exist on Cyclops for the major regeneration of human limbs?"
"The hospital at the Corps Galactica base is fully
equipped for limb-regeneration."
"Are there no other facilities for the )ob here?"
"No information," the machine said after a pause.
"Ve-ery interesting," Langenschmidt said, and shut the
communicator off. "Come on!" he added to Maddalena.
"We're going down to the hospital. Are you with me so
far?"
"His right legboth times, including today?"
"You're not stupid, are you?" Langenschmidt said af-fectionately, and put his arm through hers to lead her
away.
"I think you're glad to see me in spite of what I said
earlier," she murmured when they had gone a short distance.
"Hm? Oh, of course I am!"
"You have learned the socially correct things here!"
she snapped, and withdrew her arm.
He seemed still to be puzzling over that crack when
they reached the hospital and were shown into the
presence of a tall, brown-bearded man in self-sterilising
whites, passing time with a chess problem.
"This isDr Anstey Nole, our senior medical officer,"
Langenschmidt told Maddalena in passing. "Doc! It's
about this Justin Kolb. How is he?"
"As well as you'd expect, seeing he's lost half his right
calf and the foot, endured a medisuit tourniquet for long
enough to starve the tissues of blood, and been
frightened nearly out of his wits by that wolfshark. Not
to mention almost being blown to pieces when this
fisher-lad let go his rockets."
"What? I saw one of the rockets go up myself
seemed to work perfectly." Langenschmidt biinked.
"Oh, not the one he used to call for help. Didn't they
tell you how he dealt with the wolfshark? Set up two of
these damned great fireworks on the foredeck of his
trawler and let them go pointblank. Tore the wolfshark
to ribbons, I gather. Quite a bright kid, I can tell you.
He's in here too, being treated for malnutrition, incipient
lupus and minor burns sustained when he let the rockets
go. Lost half his hair."
"Lupus? " Maddalena put in inquiringly.
"Strictly that's incorrect, I grant you, but it's the term
we apply. A skin disease common among the fisher-folkthey get it from overexposure to sunlight and the
irritants secreted by oilfish scales. Life on a backward
world like this is a pretty unpleasant business sometimes.
Sorry to have brought the subject up." Nole looked
uncomfortable.
"You don't have to tell me," Maddalena snapped. "I
just completed a twenty-year tour on a ZRP."
Nole looked still more uncomfortable and changed the
subject hastily.
"Alatter of fact, as soon as he recovers I mean to send
this kid to see you, commandant. His name's Bracy
Dyge, by the way. Says he wants to be considered for
Corps membership. I laughed at him at first, frankly.
Then I thought it over, and finally decided: hell, he has
initiative, anyway!"
"Every waterfront on the planet is swarming with kids
who think they want to join the Corps," Langenschmidt
said cynically. "I'm surprised at you, doc. It's the pay
they're after."
"He doesn't know about the pay,'\* the doctor said.
"At least, I don't think he can."
"What? Of course he must! Everybody"
Nole interrupted firmly. "No, all the time we were
talking it was never mentioned. He just wants to be able
to support his familyparents are both deadsome better
way than by chasing oilfish. His fish-finder has been out
of order, and . . . I asked for it to be seen to in our
workshops, by the way. Hope you've no objection. It
seemed liketheleastwe "
"Hell, I didn't come down here to talk about thisthis
Bracy Dyge!" exclaimed Langenschmidt. "I came to talk
about Kolb. In particular, about Kolb's leg."
Nole shrugged. "I've told you all I can, I guess."
"Wrong. You haven't started. You didn't even mention that he'd lost it before."
It was Nole's turn to be astonished, "Nobody told me
so! Are you sure about that? Why, it looked like a
natural legwhat was left of itwhen I examined him
earlier."
"You wouldn't expect it to look like a false one, would
you? Does the name of Dr Aleazar Rimerley mean anything to you?"
"No, I don't believe so. A local sawbones, perhaps?"
"You could call him that. The most successful doctor
on Cyclopshas been retamed by Quist at least once.
Would he be able to regenerate Kolb's leg?"
Nole pursed his lips and looked dubious. "Just possibly. Regeneration of a legahyes, with half a megabrain computer capacity you could do a fair job from
the knee down. It is conceivable, but I didn't realise Cyclops could afford medical computers on this scale."
"This wasn't for a knee-down job. This was from
mid-thigh."
"Then I don't believe it," Nole said. "You'd need a
full megabrain, and at that the job might not come off."
He gave Maddalena an apologetic glance, as though fearing this was distasteful to her. "It's the joint, you seees-pecially the synovial membranes. Very tricky to
programme well."
"What are you standing there for?" Langenschmidt
inquired sweetly. "Has, or has not, Justin Kolb two functioning knees?"
Nole made a wordless noise and spun on his heel.
Maddalena sat down on the corner of the table where
Nole had set out his chessboard, and stared at Langenschmidt.
"I don't quite see the significance of this," she ventured. "There are places where regeneration is available,
and if this man Kolb is the uh accepted lover of Alura
Quist, could she not have pulled strings to have him
treated on some more advanced planet?"
"If she had done so, the memory bank would have
mentioned it." Langenschmidt began to pace the room.
"I didn't. It gave me an unequivocal answer when I
asked who was responsible for Kolb's eventual recov-cry it named a Cyclopean doctor, who's probably very
good in his limited sphere, but simply hasn't got access
to the medical computer capacity needed for regeneration."
Maddalena paled. "But what alternative treatment
could he have offered? Kolb did regain his leg, didn't
he? Nole might have overlooked the fact that the limb
wasn't an original, but he couldn't have overlooked a
prosthetic!"
"Exactly," Langenschmidt muttered, and fell silent.
They waited, neither saying anything, for twenty
minutes before Nole returned, his face pale above his full
brown beard.
"I don't know what put you onto this, commandant,"
he began, "and equally I don't know how I came to
miss"
"Save the apologies. What have you found now yon
have looked?"
"His right leg isn't his own. It's not regenerated is
what I meanregeneration counts as own-tissue substance." Nole combed his beard with agitated fingers.
"That leaves one possibility. It's a graft. An exceptionally good one, what's moreit must have been selected
most carefully to make a pair with the left leg. Well, of
course, the moment I discovered this I took a cell-sample
and processed it for genetic structure, and I've come up
with the most alarming result."
Langenschmidt's face was quite calm, as though he had
already worked out what revelation Nole had brought
them. He said merely, "Go on."
"Well, it's hard to be absolutely certain, but I'd say on
the basis of what I've just seen that the leg's not merely
not his ownit's also not Cyclopean in origin. At any
rate, the particular gene-structure of the cells I processed
has never been recorded on Cyclops."
"Can you tell me where it is from?" Langenschmidt
snapped.
"I've set the computers to search, but there may not
be a definite reading." Nole combed his beard again.
"Commandant, this is the most extraordinary thing I ever
heard of!"
vm
The screen of the subspace communicator lit. The
venture was a profitable one; the partners in it had become able to allow themselves such refinements as interstellar vision circuits. It showed a man with a face as
cruelly beaked as a Jackson's buzzard, clad in the decent
black robe of a Receiver of the Sick, with the hood
thrown back on his shoulders. His hair was greying but
still luxuriant, and his face was lined more by reflected
concentration than by the passage of time.
This was Lors Heirndall, on whom Rimerley was totally dependent.
"What is it?" he grunted, eyes scanning the image of
the doctor confronting him. Vaguely in the background
could be seen the interior of his headquarters, with a
rack of robes hanging like dead bats on the wall, a video-graph playing over a recording of some music-drama or
other.
If he can't read the crisis straight off my face, Rimerley thought, / must be over the worst of the shock.
Indeed, he felt considerably better than he had done
when he finished speaking to Quist. As well as taking another stiff drink, he had given himself a shot of mixed
tranquillisers and mind-keeners, a blend which he usually
only relied on when making the preparations for a major
operation. But this affair, of course, might turn out to be
a major operation in its own way...
"Two things," he said crisply. "Sorry to disturb you,
by the way, but you'll see the urgency when I tell you
the background. Did I interrupt anything?"
"No, it's early morning here, half an hour past dawn.
We weren't ready to move off yet." Heirndall was
doubtless impatient, but his tone was superficially affable.
"Where are you at present?"
"Working south from Idiot's Head towards Encamp-ment Hills. Am I to take it you have a special order for
us?"
Rimerley nodded. "A double. First off, how would
you like to do a favour for Justin Kolb?"
"Another?" Heirndall said acidly. "The bastard has
had too many breaks in life already. True, but for his incompetence I wouldn't be where I am nowbut I've
settled that score, and I'd rather not know. Cosmos, he
wasn't even a moderately capable spacemanjust a
hothead with a specious brand of charmand they made
him a hero. Or rather, Quist did." He scowled. "Okay.
What sort of a favour?"
Rimerley had to wipe away a trace of itching sweat.
"Hot herefull summer," he muttered in explanation to
Heirndall. "Well, as a matter of fact he's lost his leg
again. To a wolfshark 'this time. The same leg."
"And Quist no doubt wants her tame monkey cured,"
Heirndall agreed briskly. "Also we must fill the order
quickly to keep her sweet against the day when she becomes our biggest client. We have the specifications on
record, so it should be fairly easy. Yes?"
"Not altogether," Rimerley muttered. "I mean, that
part of it is. But what's resulted from his encounter with
the wolfshark isn't so cheerful. He was rescued by some
ignorant fisherman and taken to the Corps Galacdca hospitalit was the nearest point from which help could get
to him, I suppose."
Heirndall's face darkened like the sky before a thun-derstorm. "In that case, we're leaving here at once! I
want to be on some good and distant planet before the
pan boils over, with a change of name and a change of
identitraces!"
"Wait!" Rimerley instructed in a soothing tone. "All
is not lost, you know. I told Quist to get her boyfriend
out of there tomorrow morning at the latest, and bring
him to me. There's an excellent chance they won't be interested enough in Cyclopean scandal to know Kolb's
historythere's little contact between the Corps and the
Cyclopeans, as you're well aware."
"Any atall is too much for me," Heirndall scowled.
"How about the genetic pattern of the graft, though?"
"Why should it occur to them to check it?" Rimerley
countered. "If they don't know Kolb's story, they'll assume it's his original legthe mafch was eye-perfect,
remember. Didn't I give you hell finding the exact
match, and reject who knows how many faulty samples
first?"
Heirndall nodded, but looked worried even so. Rimerley plunged on.
"Even if they do know his story, they'll most likely
take it for a regenerated limb. After all, if he's Quist's
lover, who would be more likely to afford the journey
offworld to somewhere he could find that standard of
medical computation? The only thing which would
make them stumble on the unmatched genetic pattern
would be if they attempted a fresh regeneration themselves, and cross-checked to the left leg."
"Might they not do that?" Heirndall suggested. "It's
an open secret that Quist has no love for them, and
would discontinue their lease on the island they use if
she could. It might occur to them to fix up Kolb to
sweeten her a little. A sort of bribe."
"If that were their intention," Rimerley said with exaggerated confidence, "she wouldn't have offered, of her
own accord, to have him brought here tomorrow morning, would she? She'd never have bothered to get in
touch with me at all, in fact."
"No, I guess that figures," conceded Heirndall.
"And besides," Rimerley pursued, leaning closer to the
screen, "we are the ones who are going to offer Quist a
bribe. A bribe she couldn't possibly refuse, even if the
price were something very helpful to us, likelet's say
ordering the Corps to abandon their base on Cyclops
with immediate effect. That should give them enough to
occupy their minds without worrying about Jusrin
Kolb's leg!"
A spark gleamed in Heirndall's eyes. He said, "If yon
can pull a trick like that to divert the storm, you're clev-erer than I thought you were. How will you organise
it?"
"Like this," Rimerley said, and began to explain.
The banquet had passed tolerably swiftly, but the
speeches afterwards were dragging on to all eternity.
Alura Quist had given up listening to the actual words
a quarter-hour earlier, and was lost in a maze of private
contemplation.
Every now and again her eyes strayed to the seat on
her left, occupied by the senior representative of the par-ticipants from Earth, which should have been Jusrin's
tonight.
/ feel horribly old, she told herself. And if anyone
cares to peer closely enough at me, more than likely I
look old. And when I die, what will stand to my
memory other than a weatherworn gravestone and some
dates in my career which no one off Cyclops will learn
in school?
Even the long-schemed-for plan to overset the Corps's
prized principle of non-interference with ZRP's was sour
to the taste now, as she contemplated the old man at her
right: Omar Haust, from ZRP One, honoured by being
seated next to her because he was the only person present
whose ancestors had had to endure the mud-grubbing
existence of a refugee planet.
And he was disgracing himself.
He had drunk too much, to start with. At the com-mencement of the evening he had looked ascetic, almost
saintly, with his fierce white moustache fringing his upper lip, his halo-like white hair circling his shiny bald
pate. But he had continued to drink heavily; for the later
courses, he had insisted on waving aside cutlery and
eating with his fingers, as a sort of gesture of solidarity
with those on the ZRP's who were denied any other implements. Twice his hand, made greasy with the food, let
fall full goblets of liquor that splashed all over his seat-neighbour-including Quist, whose prized Earth-made
gown was spattered with dark stains. And for the past
several minutes, during the speech by the senior Earth
delegate, he had been muttering insulting remarks in his
own mother-tongue, a divergent offshoot of the common
Galactic language which was still sufficiently close for
Quist to have flinched at what she half-understood.
Since letting herself drift off into her private worries,
however, she had paid no more attention.
Suddenly she was snatched out of a mingled kaleido-scope of self-pity and optimism, in which Justin Kolb
figured very frequently, to realise that the old man's patience was at an end. He was on his feet, hammering
with the base of his goblet on the table, and every blow
splashed fresh gouts of liquor far and wide. The delegate
delivering the current speech broke off in horror as
Haust bellowed in his thick accent.
"It makes me sick! It makes me want to vomit! Here's
all this fine talk about our poor miserable brothers and
sisters out on the refugee planets, which we're forbidden to liberate and bring back to the fold of civilisa-tionand who's spewing out these platitudes? Hm?
Who's mouthing these pious nothings about what we
ought to do?"
Aghast, the assembled company of notables looked
elsewhere for some less embarrassing spectacle than the
aged drunkard, slobbering down his chin.
"I'll tell you!" he roared. "A gang of dirty lying hypo-crites! That's what you all are! Look at you!" He
hurled his goblet in the general direction of the speaker
from Earth, a mild-mannered woman of ninety or a
hundred with a distinguished political record on her
home world; fortunately the missile sailed wide of her.
"Look at you!" Haust repeated. "With the rolls of
Earthside fat wobbling around your middle! And all the
rest of you, the same. As for you"
He rounded on Quist, who shrank back in her chair.
Alarmed attendants moved close, uncertain whether to
try and restrain Haust or wait till he actually struck
their mistress. She was frozen and could offer them no
clue for guidance.
"You're as bad as the rest!" the old man raved. "Who
keeps the ZRP's in subjusubju'arion? The Corps stinking Galacrica, that's who, and their whining lackeys in
the Patrol! And who leases a base right here on Cy-closhShyclopsright on this filthy world whatever its
name is!to the triply damned Corps? Why, you do!
Aargh! Give me some more drink to wash away the
taste of you!"
H snatched at the nearest goblet, which happened to
be Quist's own, and as he made to raise it to his lips lost
his precarious grip on stability and went crashing to the
floor.
"I am sure," said the next speaker, "we ought to learn
a lesson from what too many of us took simply as a disgusting exhibition." He was a lean man from the twin
worlds of Alpha and Beta Lobulae, which having been
blessed with few internal troubles had much surplus energy for meddling in those of other systems. "It should
have reminded us all that we are not dealing with abstracts, but with human beings, with a capacity to suffer,
and suffer more greatly than we fortunate children of
happier worlds can know. Indeed, it comes as no great
surprise to me to realise that Omar Haust feels himself
unnecessarily mocked by the presence of the Corps
Galacrica base on this planetwhose hospitality and
whose government's sympathy with our aims I do not
question, but whose action in this respect perhaps casts
doubt in the minds of waverers about our ultimate determination."
That, Quist realised with a sinking heart, called for a
reply. And it would be useless to state the truththat but
for the income the leasing of that island to the Corps
brought to Cyclops, the delegates would not be here; the
revenue tipped the balance between Cyclops affording
and not affording an interstellar fleet, small though it had
to be.
She rose and looked around. She could use the opening
of her original speech, she decided, and began on it. The
compositor had worked well, and it soon had the delegates listening in calm self-approval, bar the man from
Lobulae.
To him, finally, she said with an air of desperation, "It
must of course be recalled that in the days when the
agreement between my our government and the Corps
was reached, the first of the ZRP's had not yet been
chanced upon. Far be it from me to decry the useful
work the Corps has done, in its capacity as the interstellar counterpart to a police force. It seems only to be in
the area of framing policy that they have exceeded their
intended brief."
Nods to that.
"However, we are grateful for the suggestion. I'll have
the proposal investigated, and if on balance it does appear th;kt such an action would be an effective lever in
securing our aims against the opposition of the Corps, I
will make a formal statement to that effect."
Appla?ase. She sat down, wishing with all her heart
that justin were here to shower his praise on her, forced
though she knew it to be.
Heaven help Cyclops if I have to act on that vaporous
promise, she thought grimly, and turned to smile at those
delegates who were complimenting her on what she had
said\*
Nole had gone off again, still in a state of agitation, to
see whether there was a print-out from the computer
which he had set to tracking the gene-type of the tissue
in Kolb's leg-graft.
It was very quiet in the office where Maddalena and
Langenschmidt waited for news. The hospital hummed
with the same soft efficient noise as an advanced automatic factory; since its business was the repair and main-tenance of what were after all the highly complex
mechanisms of human flesh, that wasn't surprising. Dimly
from beyond the walls noise of other repair work reached
them: clashing as hull-plates were fitted to ships under-going overhaul, the subdy disturbing moan of drive units
on test.
Maddalena had been staring at tonight's half moon-small, and reduced in size still further by its distance
from Cyclopsfor some minutes before she spoke again.
"There are an awful lot of things I can't get clear
about the situation here, Gus. Maybe you'd better edu-cate me."
"Hm?" Langenschmidt jerked his head. "Oh! Oh yes.
I'm sorryI'm still working on the false assumption that
you were briefed before you were sent to Cyclops. Since
you weren't, presumably you know practically nothing
about it. After all, it's never been a world to hit the
galactic headlines."
"The last rime I paid it any attention was twenty years
back. There must have been many changes since then."
"Yes and no." Langenschmidt had been perching on
the end of the room's single large table; now he grew
uncomfortable and moved to a contoured chair, dropping his body into it absently and letting it slump.
"Thethe mood of Cyclops, the planetaiy average of
human attitudes, so to speak, is constant over a long
period, as it is anywhere. What was the word I beard
you apply?"
"Predatory?"
"Exactly. Ummmm . . . Where the hell ought I to
start?" Langenschmidt rubbed his face tiredly. "Clear
back at the beginning, I guess. It must start with the fact
that it's an unsupendsed foundation."
Maddalena started. "Is is now? That accounts for a
great deal, I imagine."
"I'm sure it does. Of the two hundred and sixty civilised worlds, over two hundred followed the standard official patternexploration, selected colonisation under the
direction of a polymath trained intensively for the development of one and only one particular planet, and
eventually opening to immigration. Cyclops is among the
anomalous fifty-odd. It's a second-stage offshoot from
Dagon. Ring any bells?"
"Of course it does." Maddalena hesitated, then gave a
little nervous laugh. "Dear Gus! How little you've
changed! You still have exactly the same lecturing manner as you did when you first briefed me on ZRP Four-teentouchy, expecting this conceited Earthgirl to have
ignorance of unplumbable depth."
"I'm sorry." Langenschmidt gave a crooked smile. "So
we take the rest as read. They made one of their rare
mistakes on Dagon, and picked for its polymath a man
who couldn't stand the strain. He clashed with one of his
continental managers, who finally couldn't endure it any
more and decided he could do better by himself on some
other planet. He, and about four thousand followers, left
Dagon and set out towell, to homestead Cyclops, I
guess.
"It was as tough in the early days as it must have been
on ZRP One, or some other comparatively hospitable
ZRP. Naturally, since he'd attracted his followers on the
basis of liberty-from the authoritarian whims of a bad
polymath, the original leader insisted on at least the
structure of a representative government, and that's survived, but only as a formality to the degree required to
qualify Cyclops as a member of galactic civilisation.
Their laws follow the Unified Galactic Code, too. In
theory.
"In fact, starting off with so great a handicap, they let
all this remain a formality and proceeded to develop a
hand-to-mouth pattern they've never escaped from. It's
one of the few civilised planets where ruthlessness brings
power. Quist, who has been the de facto head of government for a long time now, has no better qualifications
for the )ob than sheer love of authority. She enjoys giving orders and having them obeyed that significant one
per cent more than anyone else.
"If you want handy comparisonswell, they have to
be preGalactic. First century atomic era. Earthside areas
like Spain, some countries of Latin America, and some of
South Asia. Where you had an economy too impover-ished to support the governmental structure of a finan-cially efficient administration, but a sort of crust of great
wealth overlying it. Half the population are at the poverty line, a third are illiterate, a quarter are diseasedbut
perhaps one in twenty have achieved some kind of personal success by pure doggedness."
"I didn't realise you knew Earthside history as well as
that," Maddalena said after a moment's silence.
"I don't, really, I just needed some guide to Cyclops
when they posted me here, and these are the examples
our social psychologists dredged up for me."
"What does support the Cyclopean economy? And
wliat's the total population now?"
"Efficient census-taking is one of the expensive luxuries
they don't enjoy, but our best estimates are around seven
to eight hundred million. Mark you, life expectancy is
low; one child in eight dies in its first year. As to the
economy: it's self-sapporring in respect of food and
housingthe climate in the equatorial belt is an advantage there, with very mild rainy seasons and no real
wintersand several other basics like textiles . . . It's a
safe Class A planet, or the original settlers would never
have survived.
"About the only exports are fish-oil, which serves as a
source of proteins for farther synthesis and ultimate use
as a diet-supplement on some nearby vitamin-poor worlds,
and raw materials from the asteroid belt. There are some
lumps of ore pure enough to be worth shipping long distances. But the margin is slender, and two invisible exports make the crucial difference between getting by and
relapsing to starvation.
"One of them is a small tramp space-fleet, consisting of
a hundred-odd interstellar vessels. And the other isall
this." Langenschmidt gestured to embrace their surroundings. "Cyclops is conveniently sited with respect to the
forward bases in this sector, and we've rented this island
since shortly after the Corps was constituted.
"Trapped in their economic snare, the Cyclopeans
don't like having us beret Isn't it a truly ancient platitude
that the poor don't like the police? But here we are, and
they can't afford to be rid of us."
The office communicator sounded, and Nole's voice,
nervous, addressed them. "Commandant, can you come
down to the computing room? I'm getting results I can't
make sense of, and I think you'll want to see them."
"Coming!" Langenschmidt said briskly, and rose.
Very cautiously, Bracy Dyge swung his legs over the
side of the bed. It was further to the floor than he had
expected. Anyway, this hardly fitted his concept of a
bedit was an elaborate therapeutic installation with a
disturbing aura of near-sentience about it, and he would
much rather have been on the pile of inflated fish-skins
which he was used to at home, three inches from the
ground.
He had been instructed to lie here and sleep, but he'd
been unable to. After ashort lifetime on the edge of
starvation, the nutrient and restorative shots he had been
given had acted like a violent stimulantsomething the
doctors should have made allowances for, but hadn't,
being used to scaling their treatment to the healthier and
better-fed patients they-normally had.
He felt, in short, fighting fit. The burns he had suffered when he let off his signal rockets against the wolfshark had been dressed with something to relieve the
pain, and although he had lost half his braided hair and
several square inches of skin, the injured area was cool
and perfectly comfortable. Nothing distracted him from
what was uppermost in his mindto wit, the fact that he
had been brought to half-legendary Corps Island, from
which the local inhabitants were strictly excluded.
Tomorrow he would have to ask to be sent awayhe
owed it to his family to get back to sea and try and
complete his unfinished business. He had ventured to tell
the doctor of his dream-ambitionbeing allowed to join
the Corpsbut something in the answering laugh had
convinced him it was a ridiculous proposal. They had
promised to mend his fish-finder, and he would have to
be content with that as his reward for rescuing the wolfshark-hunter.
If only it had been one of the men from the Corps
base . . .! But it was useless to wish that the past were
different.
Maybe he could beg replacements for his torn solar
sails, too. Even so, tomorrow he would have to leave
and lying wakeful without using this opportunity to see
how the Corps lived was more than he could endure.
He stole to the door and fumbled with the latch. It
proved to be simple in operation, and after pressure .on a
raised patch in its centre the panel slid back into the
wall, revealing an empty corridor beyond.
After cautious listening for footsteps or hushing
wheels such as he had heard earlier, when he was being
brought in, he darted down the passage and around the
first corner.
Here the nature of his surroundings changed completely. Instead of barely delineated doors, there were
large oblong windows, and not giving on to the outside,
either, like any windows he had seen before. They revealed the interior of the adjacent rooms.
He crept to the first one and peered through. All he
could see was a tangle of equipment like the interior of
his fish-finder, but much more complicated. He tried to
discern its function, and failed; then it moved of its own
accord, some shining arm making a connection, and
alarmed at this he moved on.
Here what he found was far more interesting. There
was a naked woman.
She was tall, and very beautiful even though her skin
was darker than Bracy's owna sign, according to his
standards, that she was of his own low class, too poor to
sit in the shade when the sun was hot. She lay supine on
a padded trolley, eyes closed. Around her, the whole
room was filled with mechanisms that moved slowly,
slowly, on incomprehensible tasks.
His eyes traced the curves of her shapely body: left
arm here, folded over her breast, right armwhere?
With sudden shock he realised that her right arm was
in the maw of one of the machines, which was moving
up it in precisely the same way as a suckermouth lam-prey engulfed its unfortunate prey.
Like all poverty-line children on Cyclops, he had been
threatened with the vengeance of the Corps when he
misbehaved as a youngster. To see what he mistook for
some terrible torture unnerved him, and he uttered a cry
nf terror.
"What was that?" a voice said, distant but distinct, and
he realised abruptly that had he not been so fascinated
by what he had discovered he would have heard footsteps approaching. Gasping, he spun, and caught sight of
a man and a woman at the intersection of corridors behind him.
"Who in the-?" the man said. "Hey, you!''
Bracy took to his heels, fleeing randomly down the
blank-walled passages. Behind him came the fearful pursuers, shouting, until the superior speed which terror lent
enabled him to outstrip them, and he came to a dark tunnel-like tube down which he dived, thinking to find
sanctuary.
"That must be the fisherboy who rescued Kolb," Langenschmidt told Maddalena. "No one else with hair like
that would be in the hospital. And where the hell he's
managed to disappear to, I don't know. But one thing's
surehe was heading for master operations control, and
we've got to winkle him out before he breaks something.
See a communicator anywhere? Whatever Nole has
found it will just have to wait."
Overnight rain had made the track into a muddy
swamp. The patient, immensely strong yorb floundered
many times, its broad pads sliding on the greasy ground
as it strove to drag the laden cart past a particularly
treacherous patch. On each occasion, however, Firdausi
got down without complaint to break branches from the
surrounding undergrowth and spread them in front of
the wheels.
The reins limp and slippery in her hands, Soraya
found herself stirred to dim gratitude for the boy's
silence. Almost, she was minded to go back on her decision that if the Receivers of the Sick accepted her
mother she would leave home forever. Perhaps Firdausi
did indeed have her best interests at heart. . .
The old woman lay uncomplaining on the heap of soft
skins with which they had padded the crude wooden
cart. Occasionally her hands twitched in her sleep. It was
better that she should sleep, Soraya thought. Even
though she had had a long lucid period since her near-fatal attack of the quakes, the disease had weakened her
dreadfully; she could hardly walk more than a dozen
steps without a fit of fainting, and her skin was shrunken
over her wasted flesh.
She had said she was pleased at Soraya's decision to try
and get her taken by the Receivers, declaring she had
been a useless burden for far too long. But was that a rational opinion, or the apathetic consequence of the debil-itating sickness? After so many bouts of it, anyone might
wish to get things over and done with.
"Not far now," Firdausi whispered. "One more hill,
and we shall be on a good dry road for the rest of the
trip."
She gave a nod, but in reality scarcely heard what he
had said.
The sky was grey above; the trees around, draped
with their curious hair-like foliage, were grey-green and
still dripping from the last downpour before dawn. It
was a setting which exactly matched her depressed
mood.
Suppose they don't take her after all? Suppose they
say Fve delayed too longthat if Fd brought her to
them a month sooner, they could have helped her, but
now it's useless? I shall never forgive myself. Never!
The yorb drew the cart over the crest of the last hill
before their destination, and as Firdausi had promised
they found themselves on a good hard road, well beaten
down and with a top dressing of compacted gravel.
Ahead, the town loomed, much larger than the village
where she had spent her life: there must be almost a
thousand houses, she told herself.
It was hard to credit the stories of the ancients that
men had once been numbered in millions, and dwelt
among the shining stars. . .
A little distance further on, they encountered a farm
labourer backing a balky yorb into the shafts of a cart
piled high with edible roots, and he greeted them civilly.
When they explained the purpose of their errand, he
pointed towards the town.
"The Receivers aren't yet here, but they're expected
hourly, I believe. Good health attends my family, luck-ily, so I made no special inquiry this time. Go to the
market squareyou'll find others gathered who are afflicted as you are."
"Many thanks," Firdausi said, and urged their yorb
onward.
Lors Heirndall's lip curled with utter contempt as the
first sign reached him that they were nearing the goal;
the smell.
The stupidity of these people! The dirt, the disease,
the lack of hygiene! How could they be regarded as human at all when they lived like wild beasts? If this were
truly man's "natural state", from which only a slow
process of technical evolution had lifted him towards the
clean bright cities of galactic civilisation, it was a wonder any progress was ever achieved.
They seemed to lack all rational system, operating by
a bunch of crude uncomprehended near-superstitions:
boiling their drinking-water, for examplefrom here, it
was possible to see the plume of steam ascending over
the local waterworks. That was presumably a diktat imposed by one of the original refugees who had kept his
head in the aftermath of disaster, and would have made
sense in the context of a proper sanitary code. As it
stood, it was a pointless ritual negated by the lack of decent drainage.
Still, some of the accidents of cultural evolution had
turned out to be advantageous: the institution of the Receivers of the Sick, for instance. That must have begun
as a form of quarantine and isolation for sufferers from
diseases which the rudimentary facilities of the refugees
could not cope with; it woTild have been hoped that
some at least of the patients might recover naturally, but
as a precaution they were removed from their own communities to special locations.
The system had fallen almost completely into disuse,
because the staff of these quarantine areas were themselves successively wiped out by infections caught from
those they were trying to help. But reviving it had provided Heirndall and his men with an excellent cover for
their work.
And if it ever came to light what had been done here,
there was little chance of swift retribution. Most civilised
planets recognised the right of euthanasia for the incura-biy sick, and provided the debate about non-interference,
yes or no, could be kept on the boil the Corps would
never dare execute summary punishment.
He found these reflections comforting to some
degreeand he needed comfort. For all his mask of dedicated ruthlessness, Heirndall was capable of anxiety, and
what Rimerley had told him had been alarming, to say
the least.
It was to be hoped that his ingenious trick to provide
the Corps with another major headache and distract their
interest would work.
His train of attendantsriding yorbs, as he was: no
other transportation was known here apart from rough
cartsfollowed him down the hill road towards the
town. Behind came the wagon, covered with an opaque
cloth screen on wooden poles, in which were the well-guarded secrets of their job. A party of local notables
waited to greet them at the town's edge, and after a
suitably grave exchange of good wishes they all
proceeded together to the market square.
We shall have to do some more propaganda here,
Heirndall advised himself as he scanned the horrible collection of palsied and maimed and sickly candidates for
the good offices of the Receivers. We must get it through
their heads that an aged crone, or an ill-nourished infant,
is beyond hope--rwhat we can "offer to help" is typically
a healthy but injured late adolescent.
Suddenly, as he was about to turn away, he saw the
girl sitting with her boyfriend on the last-arrived cart at
the side of the square. His heart gave an uncharacteristic
leap. To a first glance, it appeared that what he had been
asked by Rimerley to locate had turned up without his
even looking. Of course, it would require closer examination to make sure, but the chance was so good he
found himself grinning in a fashion quite unsuited to his
pose in this society.
Nervously, Soraya waited as the Receivers made their
rounds of the sick. Firdauri wanted to hold her hand
while they watched, but she could not bear anyone's
touch except her mother's. The old woman was awake
and kept trying to lift her head, but failed.
At last the Receivers came to their cart, and after acknowledging good wishes peered down solemnly at the
wasted body on the heap of skins.
"Your mother?" the leader of the Receivers inquired
of them.
"Mine," Soraya said. "Uhthis young man is a friend
who came with us."
"I see." The Receiver nodded. He had a face of such
sternnessnose cruelly beaked, mouth thin and
straightthat Soraya found it hard to recall what Marouz had told her: that these were good men, full of ancient wisdom and kind intentions.
"Come with me, please," he said abruptly, and gestured Soraya to descend from the cart. Shivering a little,
she complied, and was astonished when the Receiver set
off at a brisk pace towards his own wagon.
Following, she tried to point out that it was her
mother and not herself who had come to seek help. The
man ignored her protestations, saying nothing until they
came to the wagon. Then he made her get up on it,
holding back the cloth screens to let her through.
Beyond, in a tiny enclosure, there was a table with
many strange things on it: little glass tubes, white tiles
marked in squares on some of which were smears of
blood, dishes and jars containing coloured liquids. There
were also two chairs, one this side, one that side of the
table.
A man in Receiver robes with his hood thrown back
appeared from between the hangings that concealed the
rear part of the wagon. He instructed her to sit down,
taking from a pad on the table a sharp needle which
he Jabbed without warning into the ball of her thumb.
She gave a litde cry, and the Receiver who had escort-ed her uttered a few words of mechanical reassurance.
There followed a sort of ritual whose meaning she did
not understand. The blood from the needle-prick was
taken in a glass tube and smeared on the white tiles; then
some more was dropped into a )ar of coloured liquid;
then more still, which had to be squeezed out, was taken
out of sight into the back of the wagon. Incomprehensible sounds followedhumming like insects', a gentle clat-tering, muttered comments in near-whispers.
The man with his hood thrown back returned and
gave a nod to the other man waiting at Soraya's side. He
had brought with him another needle, which he drove
into the fleshy part of her forearmonce more without
warning her.
Eyes pleading, Soraya mutely sought an explanation
for all this.
"There is nothing we can do for your mother," said
the man who had brought her. "We have said often and
often that the aged are beyond our help. Sickness must
mostly be overcome by the sufferer; we can best help
those who have youth and strength on their side."
Soraya's ears were full of the rushing of blood.
"However, by the same token, that makes you very
lucky," the Receiver said.
"What?" Though the beginnings of tears she gazed
Tip.
"You are young enough to be helped, and it is still
early in the course of"
"What?" She leapt to her feet. "I'm not sick! 1-1-"
The rushing in her ears gave way to ringing; the cloth
walls, the tall black-garbed Receivers, everything seemed
to swirl around like water in a stirred pot.
She collapsed.
With great apprehension Firdausi saw the Receiver
returning alone from their wagon. He glanced at Soray-a's mother and saw she had drifted back into coma.
But where was Soraya?
"I have good and bad news for you, young man," the
Receiver said, coming close.
"Idon't understand!" Firdausi stammered.
"Your girl-friend has come to us in good time, and we
will accept her."
"But!" His mind froze; his eyes sought a key-to this
mystery on the Receiver's face.
"I presume you will be entitled to accept the payment
we customarily make?" the black-robed man encour-aged, and lifted into sight a heavy jingling bag which
could only contain the crude soft metal which served as
currency here.
Greed fought with amazement in Firdausi's baffled
brain. That bag looked heavythe size of a rich girl's
dowry. Nonetheless, he choked out, "But her mother?"
"She is old, and past our help."
There was a moment of silence. Then he said with a
surge of determination, "But Soraya is fit and well!"
"You think so? Then come with me!"
Dumb, he complied, and trailed the Receiver across
the square to the space before the covered wagon.
There, his astonished eyes met the spectacle of Soraya,
being carried down the steps to be laid on a pallet on the
ground. There was absolutely no mistaking the tremors
that racked her slender young body.
The quakes. The dread killer was afflicting her as it
had done her mother.
"In our care, there is hope for her," the Receiver was
saying. "If you are fond of her, you'll raise no objection."
Firdausi wasn't listening. He barely felt the tug on his
hand as the string of the metal-heavy bag was looped
around his nerveless fingers.
Nonetheless, since it was the only consolation he was
likely to be offered, he finally clutched it to him.
AJarm lights were already flashing and bells sounding
discreet but insistent warnings everywhere in the hospital when Nole came running full pelt to join Langenschmidt and Maddalena outside the entry to master
operations control.
"I've alerted as many of the staff as I can reach," he
panted. "Not many, of coarsewe don't maintain a night
schedule normally. And this isn't the kind of emergency
we have drills prepared for. What exactly happened?"
Langenschmidt explained how they came to spot
Bracy on their way to )oin him in the computing office.
Nole gave a comprehending nod.
"He must have been looking in at one of the regeneration roomsprobably the end one. There's a woman in
there who lost her right hand in an accident at the main
repair dock last week. What this fisherboy was doing
out of his own room, thoughthat's what I can't understand. He seemed very tired and perfectly cooperative
when I checked him earlier."
"I'll make a guess," Maddalena said sourly. "He didn't
want to miss his one and only chance of seeing over the
premises."
"That doesn't matter," Langenschmidt cut in. "The
fact is he's gone down that tunnel there, and it's taking
him where he can cause one hell of a mess if he's not
stopped quickly."
"Where does it lead?" Maddalena demanded.
"I told you, didn't I? The hospital's power-plant is
down there, all its automatic service controls, all its supplies of things like activated water, oxygen, life-sustain-ing nutrient flows, artificial tissue-synthesisthe whole
lot."
"Why in the galaxy, then, do you just leave the tunnel
open like that?" Maddalena exclaimed, astonished.
"Anyone likely to come this way in the normal course
of events is a Corpsman, and too sensible to pry into
dark corners," Langenschmidt grunted. "I'm going to
have your hide, Noleyou realise that, don't you.? Leaving the kid in an unlocked room! "
"Yes, but" Nole recognised the futility of making
excuses, and turned away.
Men and women were joining them now from every
direction, one or two in the same self-sterilising whites as
Nole, the majority in casual clothing, having been routed
out of their quarters or called back from recreation.
Langenschmidt briefed them crisply on the situation.
Dismayed, they exchanged glances.
"Is there any risk of him doing deliberate damage?"
one of the earliest arrivals inquired.
"No, but he's probably in panic. He ran as soon as he
saw us. Any suggestions?"
For a moment there was silence. Then an elderly
woman who had apparently left the solar therapy room
to come here, for she wore only a muslin thigh-length
shift, spoke up.
"Not more than two people to go after him, wearing
respirators, and carrying cylinders of some anaesthetic
would be easier than trying to reason with him."
"Great," Langenschmidt said. "Let's"
"Just a moment," Nole put in. "How about the radiation?"
"What?" Langenschmidt biinked. "We're on fusion,
aren't we? What radiation?"
"I have a couple of cases at the moment in need of iso-tope treatment. I'm processing iodine-131 and potas-sium-40. I'm not saying he will, but he might go too
close to the bombardment source."
"Marvellous," Langenschmidt said bitterly. "So we
don't just go after him looking like monsterswe go
looking like mechanical men, in armoured suits. Well, if
it's got to be done, it's got to be done. Volunteers?"
"I'll go," Nole muttered. "My fault."
Bracy Dyge was hardly thinking at all now. The effect of irrational terror had been multiplied a score of
times in his mind by the combined impact of the drugs
he had been given and the violent expenditure of energy
while he was fleeing from unnamable horrors. To find
himself among machineryseemingly without end, floor
to ceilingwhich at any moment might devour him as
the naked woman behind the window had appeared to
be being consumed, was more than the fragile web of his
self-control could stand. He was moaning and panting as
he stumbled around the banked machines seeking a place
of safety.
When he first came down here, it had been dark, but
some distant switch had been turned and now the whole
huge room glowed with sourceless light. Was there no
shadowy corner for him to skulk in?
Movements at the corner of vision terrified him; lamps
signalling on instrument panels made him jump. Even the
high-ozone smell, indicative of the immense power slum-bering within the apparatus, was fearful to him who had
never before been so near a fusion plant.
Gasping for breath, he halted on a gleaming panel set
into the floor, which was warm to his bare feet, and
heard a noise behind him. Jerking his head around, he
saw two white, bulky forms like distorted human beings
approaching noiselessly, carrying what his fright-warped
eyes interpreted as guns. He screamed wordlessly and
ran forward again, randomly, to begin a deadly game of
cat-and-mouse all over the big hall.
It was not long before his remnants of cunning discovered that there was one place where his pursuers were
reluctant to go; twice, he saw them sidle away from a
large black machine the body of which was a metal tube
as long as his ann, with thick power cables snaldng away
from it across the floor. Why they avoided it, he
conidn't guess, but as soon as he found a means of doing
so, he dived for this tabooed zone.
Bat those attending him had not bothered to remove
the chrome ear-ring he wore, once they were satisfied it
was adequately sterile. As soon as he came in range of
the eddy-currents surrounding the machinery, the metal
heated up. It was as well Cyclops was not so totally
backward as still to use metal tooth-fillings, for the effect
on those would have been agonising. As it was, he felt as
though he had been seized by the ear-lobe in a pair of
red-hot pincers, and screamed, and incontinently fled
back towards the door.
And that was where they gassed him down, but not
before he had acquired a dose of hard radiation sufficient
to strip the other half of his head bare of his prized black
hair.
"We got him," Nole said unnecessarily as the limp
body was placed on a trolley for removal to the wards.
"But he'll be one sick boy for at least a week."
"You're an idiot, Nole," Langenschmidt said in a tone-less voice. "That's only the start of the trouble. How
about the family he's said to have left in Grarignol?
Now we'll have to send them some sort of relief, and if
we don't gauge it exactly right we'll have half the poor
fisherfolk of the planet begging for handouts to match
those given to this one family . . . Hell, that's my worry,
and it can wait for tomorrow. I'm getting tired, you
know? I've had a pretty wearing time lately, and dealing
with emergencies when I ought to be catching up on lost
sleep isn't helping me any! "
Nole hesitated. "Uh don't you want to know about
the data I got on Kolb's leg?"
It seemed like last year, instead of an hour earlier,
when they had set out to the computing room to inspect
these carious findings. Langenschmidt ran a weary hand
through his hair.
"Okay, I guess so. But there's not much point, really. I
can hardly take any action before the morning, and even
thenoh. I'm rambling! Hurry up, then, before I keel
over and take my nap on the floor!"
Following him down the corridor with Nole, Maddalena found herself regretting that she had. ever uttered
her contrary opinion when Langenschmidt told her
about the ZRP controversy. The pleasure he had felt on
seeing her had masked the toll the problem had taken
from him. Now, she was coming to realise that if it affected him so deeply she had no right to judge it on the
basis of her own miserable experience on a single ZRP
which, after all, she had chosen herself, with her eyes
open.
"Here's the print-out," Nole said, with a kind of eager
nervousness perhaps intended to disguise his embarrass-ment at letting the Dyge boy get out of his room and
cause so much bother. "You'll see it come in three sections. First off, I asked for a local identificationin other
words, for a likely point of origin on Cyclops."
"And got a zero reading, hm?" Langenschmidt's brow
was furrowing; he seemed to have recovered a little
from his fit of exhaustion.
"That's right. The gene-type is non-Cyclopean, yoa
may take that as definite. His other leg, from which I
took a comparison sample, is local and quite common.
"Now the memory does contain a list of those
worldssome eight or ten of them, I believewhere donor-grafting is still accepted medical practice. Some cultures regard it as an honorable thing to permit part of
one's body to continue in service after one's death. But
there's nowhere within about thirty parsecs where this
applies.
"Anyway, I got another zero out of that line of inquiry. So I set for all-galaxy parameters, and I got nonsense!"
He made an impatient gesture at the print-out, and
Langenschmidt read it through very slowly and carefully.
"How many's that? Ninety-some worlds.?" he grunted.
"Ninety-twobut blazes, look at them, will you?
Highest probability, which isn't a match even so, is
Earth! And who would conceivably have got Kolb a
limb-graft from Earth?"
"What do you think, Maddalena?" Langenschmidt demanded.
"Unless things have changed beyond belief," Maddalena said slowly, "no Earthborn person would consider
letting part of his body be exported after death."
"But that's not the whole story!" Nole rapped. "The
computer was hesitant about assigning these locations.
The correspondence is marginal. And the direction in
which the variations are significant is ridiculous! I could
print the information if you want, but it's highly technical."
"We'll take your word," Langenschmidt said. "Just
make it a bit clearer, will you?"
"Welluhone could say that the direction of the
anomalies is away from the human."
There was a puzzled silence. Maddalena broke it. "It
couldn't be a synthesised prosthetic, could it? I've never
heard of such a thing, but it seems a reasonable suggestion."
Impressed, Nole gave a nod. "Yon mean a limb synthesised to an approximate specification, instead of regenerated to make a match with the opposite limb? It could
be, it just conid."
"But is there anywhere to your knowledge where such
a technique is employed?" Langenschmidt asked.
"No . . . Though with the log)am we have in scientific communication these days, that's not conclusive. If
you like, I'll have the data sifted and give you a verdict
jn the morning."
"You do that," Langenschmidt sighed. "Right now, I
want to call it a day. I'm sorry I fouled up your first
evening here, Maddalena, because I was really intending
to give you a good time."
"What? Oh!" Maddalena had clearly not been listening. "That doesn't matter, Gus. But before we go, can I
just check out another idea I had a moment ago?"
"Why not?"
Maddalena looked at Nole. "Can you fix an Earthside
location with your equipment? In other words, can you
determine the areas where the correspondence is closest?"
"Earth's population is pretty damned mixed," Nole
said, staring. "After all, every single gene-type in the
galaxy is found there, barring a few late mutations."
"I'm pretty mixed myself," Maddalena agreed impatiently. "Iberian, Amerind, and who knows what? But
check, will you?"
Nole shrugged and put the question to the machine.
"Below the limit of acceptable probability," he announced. The closest approach isuh how do you pronounce that? Iran, would it be?"
"Gus," Maddalena said, barely audible, "there was a
second language on Zarathustra, wasn't there?"
"Of course there was! You've been speaking a bastard
cross between Irani and Galactic for the past twenty"
Langenschmidt broke off, his face going milk-pale.
"Dr Nole," Maddalena pursued, "did you compute
your findings with non-civilised gene-types as well as
civilised? I'll wager you didn't!" A trifle maliciously, she
added, "I'm referring, of course, to the ZRP's."
Nole gave a strangled gasp and revised his instructions
to the machine. Almost instantly there was a fresh
print-out.
"Probability seventy per cent plus or minus two," he
reported. "No, I'm afraid you're wrong, in that case
which is a relief. The reading would have to exceed
eighty to be actionable."
"Even if we turn out to be dealing with ZRP Number
Twenty-two?" Maddalena said softly.
There was a frozen pause. Then Langenschmidt
clapped his hands and exploded. "Maddalena, how have I
managed without you for all this time? Nole, where the
hell is the nearest communicator? Maddalena, you're a
geniusdamn you!"
xn
Looldng slightly-dazed, Nole stared at Maddalena
while Langenschmidt waited for his communicator connection to be made.
"NumberTwenty-two," he said, as though weighing
the statement for some elusive additional meaning. "I'm
sorry, but I'm not yet sure what you mean."
"Oh, come now!" Maddalena snapped. "If you weren't
so worried about Gus's threat to have your hide for letting the fisherboy get loose, you'd have seen it before I
did. That leg of Kolb isn't regenerated and it isn't original. So it's got to be either a graft or a synthesised prosthetic. You said yourself you didn't know of anywhere
the latter technique was being applied, though it's perfectly feasible. So it's almost certainly a graft.
"You saidagainyou don't know of any nearby
worlds where they make graft material available. More-over, the computer virtually rules out the chance of a
gene-type corresponding to the tissue of the leg occurring on any planet near Cyclops. But it does suggest that
the ultimate origin of the ancestral strain might well
have lain in the Iran area of Earth.
"At the time when the Zarathustra nova took place,
some ten or twelve per cent of the planet's population
were of predominantly Irani stockenough to support
their own language as a minority tongue against the
pressure of Galactic, and to develop a Zarathustran dialect with Irani admixtures." Maddalena checked. "Stop
me, by the way, if I'm ploughing old ground for you."
Nole shook his head quickly. "Candidly, even though
at least half the patients who get sent here for ma)or
overhaul have been on the ZRP's, I've never really
studied the events which led to the present situation."
'Ton should," Maddalena said grimly. "The ZRP's are
the most significant single factor in this sector of the
galaxy. But never mindthis'll help me to get my theory
straight to my own satisfaction.
"Where was I? Oh yes. Traditions preserved on ZRP
One indicate that the incredible number of three thousand ships carrying well over two million people probably managed to lift from Zarathustrafrom the night
side, which was protected from the fury of the nova by
-the mass of the planet for several hours after its inception.
"We've located to date twenty-one refugee planets on
which people have at least survived, even if only at the
most primitive level. But these account between them for
a mere ten per cent of the rumoured three thousand
ships which got awayin fact, just about three hundred
and six. On ZRP One, for instance, we know that precisely two ships landed; on Fourteen, only one. On Thirteen, where I've spent two decades, about sixty made
landingsthe first arrivals left a subradio beacon in orbit,
and others homed on it. Which was a disastrous mistake,
the casualties hit eighty per cent in the first year, and
despair overwhelmed the remainder to such a degree
they still haven't made a full psychological recovery. But
I'm digressing.
"The essential point is this. Since the episode on Fourteen with which Gus and I were involved twenty-odd
years agothe time when a gang of Cyclopean entrepreneurs were led by a failed Corps probationer to deposits of radioactive ore there, and used the local people
as slave labour to exploit themwe've kept so keen a
watch on the known ZRP's that the chance of outsiders
from space being able to pull another such trick is negli-gible.
"On a hitherto undiscovered ZRP, though, all the facts
would fit neatly. The gene-type of that graft would
correspond well with an isolated group of refugees, from
Irani basal strains, and one of the reasons why the Corps
maintains its base here is that Cyclops is conveniently
located for the entire volume of space through which
the ZRP's are scattered."
Nole's face was haggard and pale. She broke off and
gave him a look inviting comment.
"In other words," he said, "you think someone from
Cyclops is using an unknown ZRP as aa spare-parts
bank."
"Exactly," Maddalena agreed.
"But that's murder!"
"Of course it is, if they're killing the original owners
of the organs they're taking. But don't think murder is
so shocking to all human beings as it is to you! Where
I've just come from, assassination is a recognised political
weaponand here on Cyclops, Gus tells me, one child in
eight doesn't survive its first year. When lifd is short like
that, it becomes cheap."
That was too much for Nole. A Corps medical officer
was of necessity dedicated to the preservation of life no
matter what the cost to himself. The theory Maddalena
had put to him was too cold-blooded for him to endure.
He excused himself with a whisper and headed for the
nearest convenience to overcome the nausea which had
revolted him.
"Where's Nole off to?" Langenschmidt demanded,
turning away from his communicator.
"By the look of him, he needs to vomit!" Maddalena
shrugged. "I've been explaining to him that Kolb's leg
was probably cut off some poor devil on a lost ZRP, and
he's upset."
"Not surprised," Langenschmidt grunted. "Though
he's by no means a practical manwitness what he allowed to happen tonight!he's a nice guy at heart, and a
damned good doctor. But for pity's sake, Maddalena,
don't go spreading this notion of yours broadcast, will
yon? There are all lands of possibilities we have to elim<
inate before we can act on the suggestion."
"Such as?" Maddalena said sourly.
"Well, the most likely is this one you put forward
yourselfthat the leg is synthetic. This would be much
easier to do than a normal regeneration job, you realise,
and probably within the capacity of medical computers
such as you might find here. I'm having a search of the
data initiated to determine whether Nole's right in saying the practice is unknown. If it is, I'll be surprised."
"Why? The number of worlds which can't afford full
regeneration techniques is strictly limited, and of those,
damned few would support a short-term stopgap ar-rangementthey'd rather go for the advanced method as
soon as possible."
"I guess so," Langenschmidt sighed. "Nonetheless, I'm
making the check. I'm also requesting the latest information on all the known ZRP's. I've asked for fullest details
on the gene-type records which the Corps has made."
"But you think I'm right," Maddalena pressed him.
He was silent for long seconds. At last he gave a reluctant nod.
"I hope you're wrong, blast it! To have another scandal on Cyclops will give me headaches fbr the rest of my
tour as Commandant, and if we find out that this is a
collective-guilt case, so we have to administer punitive
measures, we shall be living here like an occupying
army."
"Is that likely?"
"Yes and no. The mass of the people, insofar as they
understand the ZRP problem, sympathise with a plight
which so nearly resembles their own. Otherwise Quist
wouldn't have popular support for her campaign against
the policy of non-interference, and she certainly does. So
a dirty business like this could scarcely be public
knowledgeand indeed if it were we'd have stumbled on
it before.
"But Kolb's isn't likely to be an isolated case. And we
still have here a top twentieth of the population who've
reached positions of wealth and power by ruthlessness. I
said this to you earlier, didn't I? And if you find being
callous pays, then you're quite likely to feel that some
primitive survivor on a ZRP isis a null quantity. Who
the hell cares what becomes of him so long as I'm made
whole?"
"The pattern would be similar to that in the Carrig affair, then?" Maddalena hazarded. "A small group would
be in full possession of the facts, but because what they
have to offer is so valuable, those who benefit from it
won't investigate what they're gettingturn a blind eye,
as they say.'\*
"What?"
"Turn a blind eye. It's a phrase that's survived on
Thirteen, where there are a good many eye afflictions. I
believe it's pregalactic in origin."
"Prehistoric, I'd have said," Langenschmidt muttered.
"Except on the ZRP's, I've never seen a blind person.
When eyesight is so valuable, it's worth taking the trouble to preserve."
"Hmmm . . ." Maddalena cocked her head. "You said
Kolb's isn't apt to be a unique case, didn't you? Would
it be possible to find out whether any of the 'top twentieth' of the people of Cyclops have made unexpected
recoveries from serious injuries or illnesses lately? Failure
of their eyesight strikes me as a good starting-point."
"I must be tired," Langenschmidt said. "Or else life on
this damned planet has sapped my intelligence. I should
have thought of that myself. I'll get the matter looked
into in the morning. I don't think there's much I can do
tonight. It's gone midnight, you realise?"
"I've been keeping Corps time for the past few weeks
on an airless base-planet," Maddalena said tardy. "I've
got out of gear with natural day and night." But the
reference to the lateness of the hour made her stretch absent-mindedly and repress a yawn.
"What action do you propose talong if my guess turns
out to be well-founded? Will you hold Kolb here instead of letting them take him off to this local doctor
Rimerley, I think the name was?"
"Of course not!" Langenschmidt snapped.
"But he's the only evidence we have"
"He's a two-edged sword," Langenschmidt internipt-ed. "To use one of the archaic phrases you seem to like!
If I do hold him instead of sending him off to Rimerley,
it'll be like sounding an alarm bell. You can bet that Rimerley is involved, to start with. He'll signal the team
collecting material on the ZRP, they'll pull out instantly,
and even if we do locate the planet we'll never find
proof of any connection with Cyclops apart from a ten-uous link via the gene-type of the tissue. And short of
finding the rest of the original owner, or his surviving
identical twin, we'll never bring the matter to trial."
"You're quite right, of course," Maddalena confirmed.
"Will you wait until they actually bring the new graft
down for him?"
"If we can spot that being done. Which I doubt. I expect we'll have to locate the ZRP and catch the collec-tors red-handed. And I don't have to tell you what a )ob
that'll be!"
"I don't even see how" Maddalena checked. "Oh yes,
I guess it could be done, at that. It must be possible to
find out the high-Irani areas of Zarathustra, and compute
the most likely courses which ships leaving that part of
the planet would have followed. But it'll be the devil's
own problem, even then, and the search might take
months."
"Years," said Langenschmidt succinctly. "Damn it,
we're searching for ZRP's all the time, and if we haven't
found this one by now, it must be in a highly improba-ble corner of space."
"How could the Cyclopeans have found it, do you
think?"
"Shall we ask them when we catch them?" Langenschmidt snapped, and was immediately repentant. "Sorry!
I didn't mean to bark at you like that."
"No, I'm the one who should apologise. After all, it's
still only a suspicion, and I've no business pestering you
as if it was already proven. And you are tired. I'll leave
you in peace. Will you have me roused in the morning
in time to see Kolb collected? I'd beinterested."
"Surely," Langenschmidt agreed, and gave her a
weary smile which she returned with warmth.
As she was walking away, he called after her.
"Maddalena!"
"Yes?"
"Too soon to ask your views on non-interference
again, hub?"
"Now who's treating my suspicions as a proven fact?"
"Right." Langenschmidt smiled again, with greater
naturalness this time. "Good night. Andit's good to see
you after all this time."
"In spite of all the trouble I've brought with me? I'm
flattered."
"Get away from that girl!" rasped Lors Heirndall.
The two members of his team who had been bending
over the unconscious form of Soraya jerked and spun
around. They had drawn back the light coverlet to expose her high, youthful bosom and flat firm belly, and
the next stage in their plan took very little deduction to
work out.
"What's wrong with you?" the older of them grunted.
"Are we getting a high price for virgins this trip, or
something? It's not going to make any odds in the long
run!"
"Get the hell out of here!" Heirndall thundered, and
tugged aside his black robe to reveal the butt of his energy gun.
The two men exchanged glances, shrugged, and complied.
Heirndall re-belted his robe and wiped a trace of sweat
from his face. He dared not tell his subordinates just
how necessary it was to get the girl home in perfect condition; one hint of the danger they had all been running
since Kolb was taken to the Corps hospital, and they
would desert forthwith.
Still, luck was on his side so far. To have got his hands
on the girl, the very same day he received the request
from Rimerley, was remarkable, and had greatly built up
his confidence. Of course, she was rather dark-complex-ioned, like nine out of ten of the inhabitants, but there
were ways of eliminating the melanin secretion which
caused that. And in every other respect she was close to
perfect: the right build, the right proportions, the right
category as regards immunological reactions. . . Rimerley had said, in view of the importance attaching to this
)ob, that he was prepared to accept far less adequate
material and work it over to the required specifications;
so much trouble would not after all be necessary.
He bent to spread the coverlet over Soraya again, and
paused with his hands grasping the cloth. Of course, it
was quite true that in the long run it wouldn't matter
no actual physical damage would result, apart from the
inevitable minimum, and on any world with reasonable
sexual standards that would have been sustained within a
year or two of puberty, while as to psychological damage, that was absolutely irrelevant.
He blocked off the train of thought with determination, however, and threw the coverlet back to its
former position. Then he crossed the room and seated
himself before the carved wooden chest which concealed
the subspace communicator.
Rimerley had been waiting tensely for the call ever
since Kolb was brought in and he finished making his
checks of the man's condition. As he had expected, he
was in amazingly good shape considering what he had
been through less than one full day earlierthe Corps
hospital offered treatment which Rimerley simply had
no facilities for.
But the facilities he could offer had brought him immense wealth and not inconsiderable hidden power.
Now was the time to use that power, to protect himself.
The moment the call came, he knew from the expression of near-gloating on Heirndall's face that the
worst of the risks had passed: that resulting from delay
in making the key proposition to Quist.
"You got someone?" he rapped, leaning forward excitedly.
"I think so," Heirndall nodded. "I haven't yet found
the material for Kolb, but"
"The hell with that," Rimerley interrupted. "We can
attend to Kolb at our leisure. First we have to make sure
the leisure happens!" He peered at the corner of the
screen, where a draped body was dimly visible, slightly
out of focus, beyond Heirndall's shoulder. "Is that the
girl behind you?"
"That's the one. We had to bring her in by giving her
a phoney attack of the local killing diseasethe quakes,
as they call itbut she's over the symptoms now and in
artificial coma. In view of the circumstances, we weren't
able to find out much about her barring what her boyfriend told us, but it is definite that she's no older than
her midteens, and all the items which you listed for me
when you put in the request appear to be satisfactory.
She even has the right blood-group, which I gather you
were worried about."
"Has she? That's amazing!" Rimerley felt tension go
out of him like air from a punctured spacesuit. "The
commonest groups on Cyclops seem to be the least common out there. I take it you're sending her home straight
away?"
"I was wondering, in view of the urgency, whether
we ought not to risk bringing the ship down directly to
some point near here. The chance of it being seen"
"Isn't worth taking," Rimerley cut in. "No, even if it
means a day's delay, transport her by inconspicuous
means to the usual landing-area in the hills. There remains a slight chance of being caught, you know, and
the compounding what we've done by exposing a ZRP
to open contact with space-travel is a needless additional
danger."
"I've always assumed they'll throw the book at us if
they catch us," Heirndall grunted.
"I've had this out with you a dozen times," Rimerley
countered. "There are enough worlds offering voluntary
euthanasia for us to make a case Just a moment! Have
you told the girl anything?"
"Haven't spoken to her since we gave her the fake disease, of course!"
"Hpi . . . We'll have to convince her, for the sake of
appearances, that she's deathly ill and better off enjoying
a quiet demise."
"We've done that successfully more times than I can
count," Heirndall commented with a cynical smile.
"Yes, butHell, why I'm wasting time / don't know!
I'm going to see Quist now. Wish me luck."
The message was brought to Quist during the second
session of the day's conference. Dr Aleazar Rimerley was
waiting to see her at her earliest convenience.
Damn the man! Picking this moment to comeand in
person, for some inconceivable reason! A communicator
would have served for any message, surely!
She bit her lip, looking around the conference hall
while the servant who had brought the message waited
discreetly at the back of her tall chair. The morning had
seen the last of the differences of opinion between delegates ironed out to acceptable levels; this afternoon,
there had been several much-applauded suggestions for
lines of action to secure a reversal of the non-interference policy. Two of them even, in Quist's view, offered
a better-than-fifty-fifty chance of succeeding; a record.
Omar Haust hadn't shown up after his disgraceful exhibition of last evening. Maybe that had something to do
with itdelegates from wealthy advanced worlds always
seemed to be uncomfortable in the presence of a genuine
ZRP native.
The speaker who had the floor at the moment sensed
that something was amiss. He paused courteously and
looked at Quist. So did everyone else.
Cursing again silently, but keeping her face composed,
she stood up.
"I'll beg your indulgence," she said. "A very dear
friendas some of you may have heardwas savaged by
a wolfshark yesterday."
A murmur of sympathy spread around the meetings,
she saw one or two baffled expressions, but seat-neighbours of those who didn't know about wolfsharks soon
explained.
"I'm told that the doctor attending him wishes to see
me urgently. If you can forgive me?"
"Of course!" exclaimed a dozen voices, and she slipped
away with a bow.
Rimerley was waiting for her in an audience room
with delicate silver-filigree walls. The setting seemed
particularly appropriate to the most highly reputed medical man on the planet, Quist thought, and her irritation
at being summoned away from the conference gave way
to anxiety at Kolb's condition. If Rimerley had come
here in person, that might all too easily mean bad news.
She said, "Doctor, is it something about?"
He cut her short brusquely. "Before we discuss anything, I want your assurance that we are neither over-heard nor recorded."
"Doctor! I assure you"
"Save it. I know that no one gets to the heights you've
scaled on a planet like ours without being very cautious
and farsighted. But caution says we talk privately about
the matter I've come to raise with you."
She stared at him. Previously, Rimerley had treated
her with urbane courtesyeven obsequiousness. Now he
was addressing her not merely as an equal, but even as an
inferior. The last statement was an order: gift-wrapped,
but an order nonetheless.
Colouring, she snapped, "I prefer not to be spoken to
in those terms!"
"I know. But if you care about Justin Kolb, you'll
have to put up with it."
There was a pause. Finally she shrugged and crossed
the room to the far side. Lifting one of the elaborate filigree decorative motifs, she exposed a small switch and
twisted it through ninety degrees.
"All right. The record will show nothing now, not
even the fact that I came in to join you. What is it you
want to say? Have youhave you attended to Jusdn
yet?"
"No. Oh, there's nothing to worry about as far as he's
concernedthe Corps doctors did a good first-aid job on
the stump and it'll heal quickly."
"The reference to a stump made her flinch. To cover his
out-of-character weakness, she countered him harshly.
"How soon will he be well? And why, if that's all
that's been done to him so far, have you left him directly
after taking him into your care?"
"There's nothing I can do until we find a graft for
him," Rimerley said. And waited for his meaning to sink
in.
"A graft?'\* Quist listened to her own repetition of the
word, as if it were mere noise. "But I thought you used
regeneration. Isn't that what it's called?"
"For a woman who's been the effective government of
a planet for so long, you're astonishingly ignorant," Rimerley said. "I'll cheerfully regenerate the limb for
youif you'll buy me a megabrain-capacity medical
computer to do it, and pay for having it stocked with
the appropriate data for Cyclops. Since you can't afford
to do that, Kolb will have to get the same as he did before: a limb-graft, which is easier and cheaper."
"Before? You mean-"
"I'm coming to what I mean. And it's going to take a
lot of explaining, so I'd better sit down." Rimerley
glanced around for a chair and did as he said.
"Graft!" he continued. "The taking of an existing organ and the incorporation of it into another body.
Clear? You gave me Justin Kolb with a leg lost to space-gangrene, and I replaced it with a nearly perfect match,
immunologically neutral, the nerves and muscles tied in
as well as might be hoped. Not well enough for him to
endure the strain of space-side work any longer, but this
wasn't a drawback you'd object to in view of your
uh relationship."
"Rimerley," Quist said between clenched teeth, "I
don't know what you're getting at, but"
"Then wait till you find out!" Rimerley ordered.
"Yesterday that leg was being attended to by Corps doctors. I have no way of knowing whether they looked at
it closely enough to determine its origin, but if they did,
you're in trouble. Apparently you didn't actually know
that limb-regeneration was beyond our facilities; it's
common knowledge, however, and it would be assumed
that you connived at what was done"
Quist was waving a feeble hand, floundering two sentences behind Rimerley's urgent flow of words.
"Origin?" she forced out.
"Yes, origin. What do you think I didbought the leg
off some dockside layabout in Gratignol, maybe? Even a
starving fisherman wouldn't be likely to sell a healthy
limb, would he? No, it was imported. From somewhere
where none of the natives can spread the newsto be
precise, from an unnumbered ZRP."
Quist's mouth worked, but no sound emerged.
"I was going to say," Rimerley pursued, "no intelligent outsider would credit that you, Alura Quist, imagined I'd regenerated the leg! You must have known. And
what happens to your precious conference, to start with,
when the word gets out?"
The prospect of this news reaching the delegates was
appalling. Quist clenched her hands into bony fists.
"This is blackmail!" she whispered. "You won't get
away with it! I'll denounce you1 don't care what happens to Jusrin. Maybe the Corps will mend his leg when
I tell them about"
"Denounce me? It'll look like panic to save your campaign against the Corps, and they won't fall for it!
Besides, the Corps will have other things on their minds.
After what you do to them!"
She gave him a blank stare.
"The Corps mightyes, }ust possibly might heal Jasrin
Kolb as a generous gesture," Rimerley conceded with a
judicious air. "But they won't offer you a new lease of
life, as I will. You're afraid of old age, aren't you?
You're afraid of death, and the long dark silence beyond."
There was something so evocative of terror in the
words that Quist found herself nodding numbly.
"So now we come to the point," Rimerley said. "The
proposal I have for you, which is to the advantage of
both of us. I don't want this story to get out, even
though you'd be the worst sufferer. I'm saving my own
skin, and I won't deny the fact. But the chance of the
Corps being sufficiently intrigued by Kolb's leg to make
investigations depends on what else they have to occupy
them, and you're in a position to give them a problem
which will drive everything else into the background
for good, let's hope. What's more, I see from the news
reports on your current conference that you've already
prepared the ground for what I want you to do."
He added, offhand, "Kolb will get his leg back too, of
course."
Quist was absolutely frozen for long moments. Finally,
in a voice drained of emotion, she said, "What, then?"
"What I offer?" Rimerley countered. "Oh, nothing
much. Twenty years of additional youth. Maybe fifty!"
Greed blazed in Quist's eyes for a moment, until it
was extinguished by tears. "It's a cruel joke!" she said
hoarsely. "It's the foulest, dirtiest"
"I'm not joking." Rimerley leaned back in his chair
with such complete calm she was again tempted to believe him.
"How?"
"That I'm not telling you. Yet. I'm simply making the
offer. Twenty years, possibly a lot more." He studied
her with insolent directness. "How's the unsupported
shape of your breasts these days? Flabby, I imagine! And
the belly-muscles must be giving way by now, in spite of
cosmetic treatment. I could fix all that."
Once more, silence filled the room. It dragged on and
dragged on. Rimerley broke it, shrugging and rising.
"Too bad. I didn't really expect you to prefer public
humiliation and probably trial for an infringement of the
laws against interference with ZRP's. Which will be a
very ironical climax to your campaign, won't it?"
"Wait," she whispered. "Damn you! You knew there
was one bribe I couldn't resist!"
"Of course I did," Rimerley said with a sneer.
"Whatwhat do I have to do? "
He told her, in a single crackling sentence, and added,
"Today!"
As promised, they had fetched Justin Kolb away early
in the morning. Maddalena saw him go, in a white-paint-ed hospital 'copter which went droning towards the
southwest. Its design strucK her as somehow archaic, but
after twenty years in surroundings absolutely devoid of
technology beyond crude tool-making, she found she
was ill-attuned to refinements in engineering practice.
"I wish there was some way we could have put a
tracer on him," Langenschmidt had muttered as he stood
beside her, gazing at the diminishing white speck against
the vivid blue sky.
"I'd have thought there was!"
"I asked Nole what a reasonably thorough medical
check might overlook, and he said, pointblank, 'Nothing.' Rimerley can't be incompetenthis patients have
included some of the most notable people on Cyclops."
"Did you ask Nole how it was in that case he came to
overlook the nature of Kolb's mended leg?"
"As a matter of fact"Langenschmidt looked slightly
uncomfortable"I did. We had some words about it. But
the point stands; no tracer, for fear of alerting them."
"Surely you know where he's going, though."
"Allegedly, to Rimerely's private island. But I'd be
happier if I was convinced of that. As you said last
night, he's our evidence."
"You've kept some tissue-samples, presumably."
"Nole took some from places where they wouldn't be
noticed, and they're preserved as a calibration standard
for this analysis of gene-types he's doing. At least, that's
our story if the matter comes up." The 'copter had vanished. Briskening: "Well, I can't stand here all day. I
have a base to run."
"I haven't," Maddalena said demurely. "And since you
had me brought to Cyclops, I guess there's something
you can have me do instead of 'standing here all day'."
"Actually there are a couple of things . . . I wasn't
very eager to ask you, since it seems unfair when
you're theoretically on long furlough, but as the subject
has come up"
"You're a poor diplomat, Gus, in spite of your boast-ing. Well?"
"What spare time I have right now is generally taken
up with studying the progress of this damned conference
of Quist's. The local news bulletins are full of it,
painting it as an unselfish venture by Cyclops on behalf
of their poor brothers neglected by the rich greedy
worlds ofetcetera; why should I tell you what you can
imagine easily enough? There was some land of outburst
at an official banquet last nightthe delegate from ZRP
One got drunk and uttered a few home truths which
embarrassed the organisers dreadfully. Catch the reports
of the morning session of the conference, will you? Let
me have a digest of their progress if any at the noon
break. That's one thing. And the other is of your own
making. Go help my overworked programming staff to
get a line on the probable location of Twenty-two. We
probably won't get the margin of error lower than a
hundred parsecs, but if we can possibly shave it to fifty I
think I can swing the assignment of a couple of search
ships."
The problem was fascinating, and intensely complicated. It was known what the populations distribution
had been on Zarathustra at the time of the nova, so it
was possible to determine which of the high-Irani areas
would have been on the day side and hence wiped out
immediately. On the night side, however, there were
three notable zones where the minority language was
spoken, and in any of these such a gene-type as they had
found in Kolb's leg might have occurred.
With this as a basis, it was then necessary to compute
whether one or two or all three stood a chance of getting people from their homes to the nearest spaceport before the planet turned far enough on its axis to expose
the rising ships to the nova. Only those which had been
able to keep in shadow of the planet for several million
miles had escaped the storm of radiation.
One of the key zones had been in darkness for a full
seven hours; the other two, for a mere half of that.
Settling on that as the most likely course of events, the
team instructing the computers then had to work out
what trajectory ships would have followed to remain in
shadow if they had stayed till the last moment picking
up refugees; if they had left with an hour to spare, or
two hours, and so on, backward through the Zarathustran night. And from these hypothetical lines of flight,
they attempted to calculate where they would have
wound up.
The process went smoothly for a while; several possible courses were at once ruled out because the Corps
had explored the volume of space through which they
led, to the extreme range any ship could have covered
with its passengers in a fit state to endure a landing. After that, though, it was like plodding through heavy fog
and deep mud.
Maddalena complied vidth Langenschmidt's request to
hear the local news bulletins about the conference; they
were platitudinous, merely giving extracts from pious
speeches interlarded with praise for Quist's and Cyclops's
noble compassion towards the ZRP's. Listening, she was
reminded of what Langenschmidt had said last night,
when he asked if it was too soon to requestion her on
her attitude towards the non-interference policy.
She was no longer sure what her attitude was. And to
find this reaction in heiself so soon after her arrival here
was disturbing.
She was glad to lose herself again in the complexities
of interstellar course-plotting, and was deep in what appeared to be a promising assumption when an argent
message came through to the computing room for her:
would she go see the commandant at once?
Reluctantly she complied, framing a jocular complaint
to utter when she saw Langenschmidt. It died on her
lips. One glance told her he had been badly shocked by
something.
"Gus!" she exclaimed. "You look as though you've
)ust heard this sun is going nova too!"
"Next best thing," grated Langenschmidt. "At any
rate, it's having the same effectwe're compelled to
evacuate."
"What?"
"Sit down and I'll play you back a recording of the
news. I couldn't trust myself to repeat it coherently." He
slammed switches on the desk at which he sat, and a
screen lit. Maddalena moved numbly to a seat from
which she could see it properly.
At first there was only a blur, with an automatic
voice-over signal identifying the time of reception and
dating it on the basic Corps scale; then the blurring
faded, and a harsh incisive voice with a Cyclops accent
rang out.
"Personal and official from Alura Quist to the Commandant, Corps Galactica Repair, Refit and Recreation
Base, Cyclops. Alura Quist!"
A face appeared on the screen. Maddalena studied it
with interest; this was the first time she had seen the famous Quist, who had for so many years been undisputed
arbiter of this planet's fate. She saw a pretty blonde
woman whose best attempts to stand off the effects of
age had not entirely succeeded.
"Commandant, you will learn from the appended
recording of my address to the Conference on Non-interference with Zarathustra Refugee Planets at which I
am currently-presiding what it is that you are required
to do. I only wish to add that action is to fae taken forthwith to implement the decision of the government of my
planet."
The face vanished, and re-appeared, this time in the
context of a large conference hall, in which sat delegates
from worlds affecting over a dozen different styles of
dress. Quist was addressing them, and had clearly won
the approval of all those listening.
"You will recall," she was saying, "that the respected
representative from ZRP Onewho is regrettably indis-posed and cannot hear me make this public pronounce-mentsuggested a lever to oust the Corps from its role
of policy-maker in this area. I have reflected on what
was suggested, and come to an inescapable conclusion: it
is not consistent with our professed ideals to tolerate the
Corps's presence here while they are flouting our
wishes."
Stunned silence, from the audience in the screen and
from Maddalena.
"I therefore wish to inform you that I am serving notice today on the base's commandant to withdraw all
Corps personnel from Cyclops and close the base. This
cannot presumably be done overnight, but it must be
done quickly, and in any case from this moment forward
the base will be quarantined, and all contact whatever
between Cyclops and the Corps Galactica will cease barring such official conversations as the evacuation may
call for. I-"
Stormy applause drowned out the remainder of the
statement. Langenschmidt snapped the switch to stop the
replay.
"Well?" he rapped.
Maddalena shook her head, dazed. "I thought you said
the planet couldn't afford to lose the base!"
"It can't. Which means the Quist woman has gone in-sane. Insane or not, though, she's legally the boss of Cyclops, and when I get word from Corps HQwhich I've
sent forI'm damned sure they'll tell me I've got to do
as she orders."
Langenschmidt's gloomy assessment of the situation
was justified; his own computers assured him of that
even before a verdict came through from headquarters.
No inhabited world was compelled to provide facilities
for the Corps. To obtain those which it needed and
could not adequately arrange on the airless lumps of
rock where most of its bases were sited, the Corps wrote
treaties like an independent sovereign planet. But it
wasn't one, and in the event of a planetary-government
deciding that it wished to withdraw leased territory, the
decision was unilateral and unarguable.
When the legal experts from HQ informed him of this
situation, Langenschmidt railed at them, demanding why
such a predicament had not been foreseen and guarded
against. There was a chilly tone in the voice of the man
he was talking to as he retorted that the circumstances
were unique and unprecedented, and after' all hethe
base commandant on the spothad been in the ideal position to do the foreseeing.
Sweating, Langenschmidt cut the connection.
But that crack was srill ringing in his memory the next
morning when he went out on the main pontoon of the
repair docks to meet the official Cyclopean representative he had been warned to expect. This was a very tall,
very thin, very bitter young man in immaculate white
uniform, who stepped down the gangway from the big
skimmer which had brought him and even before Langenschmidt had a chance to speak waved a brisk hand at
the men who had gathered on the vessel's deck as she approached the pontoon.
"My staff," he said. "Empowered by the government
of Cyclops to supervise the evacuation of Corps personnel."
Langenschmidt looked them over. In all, they numbered at least two hundred. Like a good many worlds
whose economy was too precarious to support full employment and too poor to pass the leisure barrier beyond
which working became irrelevant for the individual, Cyclops made the worst of both worlds by maintaining a
government labour force analogous to the pregalactic
armed forces of Earthside nation-states. These would be
a detachment of picked men drawn from that pool.
They were armed, Langenschmidt saw sickly, with
obsolete but doubtless workable energy guns. Quist must
have lost her mind!
"And madriel!" he snapped.
The tall thin young man biinked at him. "My instructions are not definite on that point," he replied. "I am
simply to see that this base is evacuated of all its personnel within a reasonable time. Unofficially, I'm to inform
you that the government regards seven days as reasonable."
"Seven days!" Langenschmidt hadn't meant to let the
exclamation go, but he could not restrain his dismay as
he surveyed the immense repair docks and all the build-ings beyonda complete self-contained city, with some
of its foundations including those under the space-drive
test-beds going clear to the bedrock of the planet.
"Seven days," the tall thin young man said, and gave a
cadaverous smile. "My name is Bengt Early, incidentally.
I hold the rank of major in the Cyclops space-force."
"Hold tight," Langenschmidt told him savagely.
"You're apt to drop it any moment."
He swung on his heel and signalled one of his subordinates.
"This is Major Early" he snapped. "No doubt he
would prefer to deal with someone of his own status.
Certainly I'd rather he did so."
Early coloured bright pink, which gave Langenschmidt a moment of gloomy satisfation. But that was
the last such moment he enjoyed for sometime.
What possibilities were open to him, other than complying with the edict of the government? His superiors
said there were none; ships would be detached from
other posts and sent to conduct the evacuation in the
speediest and most efficient manner available resources
would allow. And that was that.
He drove fist into palm in helpless fury. Clearly, the
only recourse was to overset the Quist governmentand
how could he do that? If only they had delayed this
lunatic expulsion order another couple of days, long
enough to pile up concrete evidence on the matter of
Kolb's leg!
Which reminded him that Maddalena hadn't shown up
this morning. He looked around vaguely for her, but she
wasn't to be seen, and immediately his other worries
drove her out of his thoughts.
Overset the Quist government . . . This was the obvious lever. But already, during the night, radar-carrying
vessels had encircled the base island, and a ship had gone
into stationary orbit at twenty-three thousand miles,
watching through sensitive detectors for any breach of
the rule that there was to be no contact whatever between the Corps and the rest of Cyclops. Even a sub-mersible wouldn't get away to hunt the evidence
Maddalena had suggested and check on rich Cyclopeans
who had made miraculous recoveries lately. After all,
even the Bracy kid's trawler had an electronic fish-finder, and submarine detectors would certainly be
watching the nearby waters
The trawler!
He stopped himself, by a tremendous effort, from
turning to look at the ramshackle craft, with its peeling
paint and torn solar sails which were in fact currently
being replaced by a robot to which no one had remembered to give contrary orders.
Hmmm . . . / But the idea was only-a germ so far,
and there still remained his other obligations: more inescapable ones. He shelved the problem of what could be
done with a sure method of escape from the island, and
went to attend to another pressing matter. It derived
from one of his unsuccessful pleas to headquarters; begging for orders to decline Quist's ultimatum, he had
suggested that this was a plot to get the Cyclopeans'
hands on the material resources at the base, and perhaps
set up a commercial starship repair service with what
they inherited.
The staff of Corps HQ were sufficiently cynical for
that to register. But they didn't change their instructions.
They merely recommended the installation of a new
switch, radio-controlled, on the main fusion generator
buried at the island's heart, so that as soon as the personnel had been evacuated what was left could be reduced
to a smolang crater.
That would be a small consolation. Sighing, Langenschmidt set off to rout out his chief power engineer.
Maddalena had thought of the trawler much sooner
last night, to be precise, while restlessly trying to doze
off. She had also taken into consideration the fact that,
not being on the established strength of the Corps here,
she figured in the computer records only as "personnel
on leave" and a tap on a computer keyboard could abol-ish her without explaining where she had gone.
These points led her to pester Nole for half an hour,
until in sheer desperation he allowed her what she
wanted: to see Bracy Dyge, in private.
When she opened the door of his room, the fisherboy
cowered back like a frightened animal, doubtless having
taken the shaving of his headpart of the treatment
necessitated by his exposure to an overdose of radia-tionas a prelude to some terrible punishment for his
temerity last night.
It took all Maddalena's experience as a diplomat
among primitive peoples to bring him to the point where
he would listen to her without trembling. Time was
wasting; she had to seize her hard-won advantage.
"Bracy," she coaxed, "didn't you say when you first
came here that you had always dreamed of working for
the Corps?"
The boy's answer was inaudible; she had to wheedle
for minutes to get him to speak his mind honestly. Then
what he had to say was hardly promising. She damned
Nole for the sarcastic reception he must have given the
boy's reluctant plea; it had closed him up tighter than a
Pelagian clam.
She was forced to make wild promises and offer wilder bribesnot to him: for his family, which was more
honourablebefore she got the assurance of his help.
Langenschmidt wouldn't like this, but then he might
well not like any of it.
The door of the room slid aside, and there he was.
"Beat me to it again, did you?" he muttered.
Maddalena was bewildered for a moment, and then she
started to laugh. "You mean you thought of it too?"
"Of course I did!" Langenschmidt rapped. "Did you
expect me to lie down under the edict of this damned
idiot Quist? Nole told me you were down here, and I
immediately saw why I'd had that boat of Dyge's on my
mind all day, in spite of the swarm of Cyclopean officials
crawling over the base like bedbugs."
"Well, it's no good to you, is it?" Maddalena countered. "Your chance of staying behind on Cyclops is
zero."
"I could swing it so that"
"Could you, hell! The protocol of the evacuation of a
Corps base traces all the way back to the abandonment
of a sea-going ship on Earth. I'm closer to my Corps
training than you are, by a long way. You've probably
forgotten the irrelevancies you pick up in traininglike
that onebut there's the regulation if you care to check:
the commandant is the last to leave the base, and the person responsible for handing over control to the successor
authority."
Langenschmidt gave a groan. "They planned this to
drive me out of my mind with frustration! But what
good is the boat to you?"
"If you'll let me finish what I was saying to young
Bracy here, you'll see soon enough." And, turning to the
fisherboy, who had listened with blank incomprehension
to this exchange, she resumed, "Now if you had good
maps, and perhaps a radio, you wouldn't mind sailing
half around the planet, would you?"
"I'd sail to the stars if I had a ship," Bracy declared
with a sudden fit of braggadocio.
"I believe you. You're a brave boy man. Anyone
could tell that after hearing how you killed the giant
wolfshark. Now here's your chance to prove it still further, and to do the kind of job which will interest the
Corps in you, as well as earning you that new set of solar sails, and a new set of reactors, and a radio for your
ship." Maddalena eyed Langenschmidt as she spoke, and
received a shrug to indicate that if the Corps was leaving
behind much of its mat6riel here at the base it could afford to give Bracy a few such odds and ends.
The coaxing went on, the flattery, the cajolement.
Langenschmidt's mind, greatly preoccupied, went dart-ing away. If only they had waited till this business of
Maddalena's "undiscovered ZRP" had been cleared
up ... Was it coincidence or not? Oh, surely it must
be! True, Rimerley was in the space parts trade up to his
neckmust be, as the surgeon who performed the graft
on Kolbbut surely he couldn't have a hold over Quist
sufficient to compel her to act this wayl The existence of
a link between them wasn't proof of criminal complicity.
Even if he was blacimiailing her because she knew the
source of Kolb's new leg, that alone wouldn't make her
jeopardise the planetary budget of Cyclops for the indefinite future. As soon as the drawbacks of losing the
Corps' rent began to be felt, she would be done for anyway. Someone else would overthrow her government
and more than likely invite the Corps back. In which
case, perhaps he shouldn't blow up the baserepossessing
a workable installation was one thing, rebuilding a pile
of rubble was another, and progress over the past century had probably made the job uneconomic.
Running the base here wasn't as challenging as
maintaining his old Patrol beat, but it had its own rewards, and he had enjoyed the work.
If I do leave here for good, he told himself sourly, I
can go two waysback to headquarters to serve as the
walkitlg spokesman for a computer, or out of the Corps.
Or eke I can jump in space.
He grew suddenly aware that Maddalena was addressing him, and muttered an apology for his rudeness.
"I was aslang," she repeated with a twinkle, "whether
you've booby-trapped the island."
"How did you? Oh, I guess it's an obvious precaution. Yes, I have, but with a radioactivated trigger."
"Don't be in too much of a hurry to press the button,
then. Bracy here has just agreed to smuggle me out of
the area and around the world to Rimerley's private island, and with his help I may very well give you back
your job when the Quist government falls in the wake
of the row I'm cooking up."
"You? " Langenschmidt said.
"Yes, me!" She gave him a defiant stare. "Gus, the reason I've been hanging around making up my mind what
to do with my furlough is perfectly simple. I don't want
to 'rest up' on Earth or any other soft-centred planet.
I've been doing damn-all for twenty mortal years. I want
some action to get my blood flowing againand here it
comes!"
"What's thatobject over there?" inquired the insuf-ferable Major Barly, gesturing.
Langenschmidt turned, hoping that his personal
concern with the "object" would not show. The sun lay
bright and full over the gloaming hulls of the vessels
from space currently in the repair dock, making the con-trast between them and the tiny, dirty trawler all the
more marked. Around the fishing-boat, robots and men
were busy in a manner that could not be glossed over except by a half-truth.
"That?" he said with maximum smoothness. "Oh,
you'll recall that Justin KolbQuist's friendwas rescued from an encounter with a wolfshark. That trawler
belongs to the boy who saved him. We don't want to ex-acerbate relations with the populace more than we can
help, so we thought we'd overhaul it for him while he's
recovering from his experience."
Major Barly's opinion was clear from his expression:
Only idiots would concern themselves with one worthless fisherboy at a juncture like this. However, he vouch-safed his gracious permission to carry on, so long as it
did not interfere with the speedy departure of all Corps
personnel.
It was lucky, Langenschmidt reflected, that Quist had
sent them a fool to supervise the evacuation. Maybe
there were none but fools in the Cyclopean government
forces, but that was doubtful. An intelligent man, Langenschmidt suspected, would have wondered what was
amiss when the base commandantso gruff and ill-mannered on first meetingsuddenly turned extremely affable and insisted on spending the entire working day
escorting his visitors over the base, snapping at subordinates who seemed reluctant to comply-with the Cyclopeans' requests, apologising for any-delay longer than
two minutes, and in general being cooperative to the
point of parody.
Registers of personnel were printed out of the computers; roll-calls were taken to ensure that no one slipped
away unaccounted for; ships were called in from nearby
stations to orbit Cyclops until the momentscheduled
for day six after the ultimatumwhen loading of personnel and salvageable goods would begin.
Damned if I don't think I made a mistake in running
such an efficient base, Langenschmidt told himself glumly. If I hadn't given strict orders to the contrary, I think
we could have done the whole job in two days flat.
Meantime, while he cast around for new ways of
stalling the Cyclopeans, two significant tasks were in
progress. A friendly executive of the Corps personnel
branch, back at headquarters, was tracing one Pavel
Brzeska, on promotion furlough following his tour as
commandant of the Patrol sector which included Langenschmidt's old beatnormally, Langenschmidt preferred not to have more truck with generals than he
could avoid, but this was a special caseand some highly
interesting work was going on at the dock, under the
rough wooden deck of Bracy's trawler.
Already it had had enough trickery and gadgets
crammed into its small hull to make it the envy of the
richest fishing family in Grarignol. If there was room for
all the machinery Maddalena had specified as "poten-tially handy", it would wind up being the envy of the
richest private yachtsman this side of Earth.
Not that the said yachtsman would ever get to hear of
it.
By the evening of Day Two, as Langenschmidt was
now mentally labelling it, both these matters arrived at a
satisfactory conclusion. The trawler would have to make
its departure as openly as possible, so there was no question of a night sailinga waste of several hours, but on
the other hand no matter how fast the ship could poten-tially travel it would have to dawdle until it was beyond
the watchful ring of Cyclopean forces, which would
make the start of the trip very slow anyway. Maddalena
was closeted with Bracy, training him in some of the
techniques the rebuilt vessel would call on him to employ.
And the call came through from Pavel Brzeska. Langenschmidt, having made quite certain that the Cyclopean inspectors would be kept away for an hour or
two, took it in his villa.
"Gus!" the new general exclaimed as the connection
came through. "I )ust got the news of the pickle you're
in out on Cyclops! What possessed you to get backed
into a corner by that crowd? You've tangled with them
before, haven't you? During the affair on Fourteen, I
seem to remember."
"That's right." Langenschmidt nodded. "With Maddalena Santoswho's here, by the way; I sent for her because of the Conference on Non-Interference with
ZRP's they're holding."
"Heard about it. The first time Cyclops has made the
news in the Old System since its original breakaway
from Dagon, I imagine. There's a powerful lobby working on the subject, and a good deal of sentimental propaganda being splashed around." Brzeska scowled. "What
does it look like from the Cyclops end, anyway?"
"Much the same as those we've had beforepious and
empty. But listen, Pavel! What I need you for is something more or less related to the ZRP's, and with your
background you can tell me a lot of things I daren't obtain conspicuously through normal channels. I'm going
on a. string of suspicions, and though I'm morally certain
I'm right I can't call for full Corps support without more
solid evidence."
"Explain!" Brzesica commanded.
Langenschmidt did so. He wound up, "It's been very-tricky trying to complete the calculations involved, of
coursewe have to keep taking the Cyclopean inspectors
in and out of the computing rooms to check on
manifests and personnel registers and so forth. But by
nha bit of dodging we've managed to narrow the
search area in which the missing ZRP must lie down to a
fifty-parsec sphere. Who do I ask to loan me some ships
to find it?"
Brzeska scowled again, this time ferociously. "Damnation! What's become of the Corps in your sector since I
came home? Time was, if a suspicion like yours blew up,
they'd assign you the entire Fourth Fleet and no questions asked!"
"If they hadn't issued this ultimatum to me, I'd have
been in a position to make the request officially. As it
stands, the assumption is that I'm costing the Corps its
base here through incompetence, poor intelligence and
general mishandling of relations with the local government."
Brzeska eyed him keenly. "I know. There's a three-member commission of inquiry on its way to you
should reach you just about in time to see you leave, if
this one week's grace stands. And ah did you foul
things up that way?"
"I did not. I took it for granted that Cyclops wouldn't
cut its collective throat. Without the income from the
base their planetary budget will go to hell in two years."
"I know."
"I didn't realise you'd made a special study of the matter," Langenschmidt said vidth some bitterness.
"But I have," Brzeska countered softly. "It was touch
and go whether another commandant was appointed after your immediate predecessor, or whether the base
should be closed as obsolete and saperfluous. The dependence of Cyclops on the revenue from it tipped the
balance. Actually, when they consulted me I advised
continuance1 went there on local leave and enjoyed
some wolfshark-hunting when I was younger."
"It sounds as though I picked the right man to contact," Langenschmidt said, pleased.
"You certainly did. Nowlet's see . . ." Brzeska stared
at nothing for a moment. "Oh yes. You want Keita Bak-ary, at my old base. He'll fix what you want in short order."
"Thanks very much. What I do plan to do, incidentally, is slip away under the pretext of being called to a
top-level conference on the redeployment of personnel
from here and the selection of a substitute base-location,
and by the time they finish investigating the circumstances I should have the rope braided to hang Quist by
the neck."
Brzeska shuddered visibly. "You pick some unpleasant
similes, Gus. Must be the effect of your long-time contact with the ZRP's. Well, I wish you success, and a
speedy return to your base."
It was still quite dark, lacking another hour till dawn,
when Maddalena stole down the steps to the dock at
which Bracy's trawler was moored. A tightly co-ordinated plan to distract the attention of the Cyclopean inspectors, nodding at their guard-posts, ensured that she
reached her goal safely and was able to slip below unno-ticed.
There, she laid herself down in a concealed compartment )ust forward of the engines and ran a quick check
of the new instrumentation which had been fitted. All
seemed to be in perfect order. She repressed a chuckle
due to sheer exhilaration and spoke in a whisper to the
microphone she wore taped against her vocal chords.
"Gas! I got aboardno troubleand your engineers
have done a magnificent )ob on the boat. I don't know
where it's all been put, but one still has so much room I
was afraid at first sight something had been left out!"
"If you really want to know," Langenschmidt answered in a tinny buzz from the bone-conduction receiver Nole had fitted to her, "they took out the original
lining of the hull and replaced it with solid-state and
printed circuitry. Be careful not to foul any rocksa
dent in the hull could put a dozen gadgets out of operation."
"If you wanted to hit a rock with this kind of nav
equipment, you'd have to aim deliberatelyand at that
the automatics would probably overrule you." Maddalena made reflexively to brush back her hair, and
remembered belatedly that last evening she had had it
trimmed to the regulation Patrol length of one inchas a
safety precaution when wearing a space-helmet. She
wasn't sure why, but a set of space-kit was among the
gear she had asked to have put aboard.
"Just a second," from Langenschmidt, and then:
"That was Nole. Bracy is now awake and they're check-ing him over. His condition last night appeared good,
but you'll have to make sure he continues to take drugs
against the dose of radiation he received. Also he doesn't
like the flavour of our standard high-vitamin rations. I
tried him on synthesiser cake and he likes that okay, so
he'll be coming aboard with a portable diet-synthesiser
a 'farewell gift' from his friends in the Corps."
"Barly will probably take it off him," Maddalena said
sourly.
"He won't get the chance. I obtained his permit to
clear the trawler for open sea last night, and then Nole
fixed himuha liquid lullaby. He'll sleep till noon."
"A shame. I had as much as I could stand of synthesiser cake away back when on Fourteen. Well, all I have
to do now, I guess, is wait."
"Exactlyanril you're hull-down away from the last
of the Cyclopean ships watching this area. And then-swift journey!"
Maddalena gave a throaty laugh and signed off.
Bracy Dyge played his part magnificently, Langenschmidt had to admit. He came down the steps to the
dock with just the right mixture of regret at leaving the
comfortable island and the luxuries the Corps enjoyed,
and eagerness to try out the new solar sails and mended
fish-finder which were the official extent of the modifica-tions to his boat.
"There was no call to go to such trouble for the lad,"
said one of the Cyclopean inspectors, a man with a face
like a lemon whom Langenschmidt had preferred not to
fix a name on in case it was as ugly as he was. "I'm sure
Alura Quist will see he gets properly rewarded."
"I'm sure," Langenschmidt agreed blandly, forbearing
to mention that if all went well Quist would be getting a
reward of her own quite shortly.
He was almost holding his breath as the trawler eased
out to open water, with Bracy proudly waving at his
new solar sails. Then he relaxed. In two hours, or three
at the most, the boat would have passed the outermost
circle of quarantine vessels, and then some remarkable
changes would come over it.
The solar sails would be furled, and a pair of hydro-foils would extrude from a hidden compartment under
the hull, and the compact fusion reactor which had replaced the old stored-power accumulators would feed
power to the pipesand the trawler, shaking a little, but
perfectly sound after what the engineers had done to it,
would take off for Rimerley's private island at a comfortable hundred and fifty knots.
Quite neat. Quite neat. He only hoped he would have
been able to wipe the grin from his face by the time he
next had to confront Barly and explain about the need
for his departure to attend this important conference
about a base to substitute for the one being closed down.
xvn
That voyage was among the most extraordinary experiences of Maddalena's chequered life. She had hung
from the talons of a parradile; she had dropped through
atmosphere with nothing but a spacesuit's reacdon jets to
save her from a fatal crash; she had canoed over rapids
and ridden all manner of odd beasts of burden. But
streaking across the oceans of Cyclops was perhaps the
weirdest journey of all.
To start with, the news that a Gratignol trawlerlast
seem limping along at a typical speed of a few knots-was outrunning all but the fastest passenger skimmers
plying between the more densely inhabited islands would
certainly have alerted someone's interest if it had been
noised around. Accordingly, whenever the automatic detectors spotted another vessel in the vicinity, they cut
the power and spread the solar sails. Bracy and Maddalena then sat out idly on the deck looking as though
they hadn't a worry in the universe bar the shortage of
oilfish in these waters. The danger past, the power returned, the sails furled, and once more they leapt
towards their goal at the front tip of a mile-long jet of
heated water.
Bracy, although he had been very willing to start on
this mission, and at the outset was delighted with what
had been done to his craft, grew bored within a few
hours. Maddalena had shown him the operation of everything, including the devices which had no connection
with seafaring, in order to entertain him, but the fact
that control of his vessel had been given over to
machinery disturbed him, and he sat with a worried expression staring at the wake and listening with head
cocked to the hum of power emanating from below.
What was chiefly worrying him, Maddalena puzzled
out at last, was not being able to see where they were
going with his own eyes; he had known of radar, of
coursesome of the wealthier fishing-families in Grad-gnol could afford both it and a fish-finder, whereas the
poor families had to settle for the latter onlybut the
little screen was no psychological equivalent for eyesight.
It was, naturally, out of the question to go on deck
with a hundred-fifty-knot wind howling past them; they
were only able to sit in the after cockpit because the
fairing over the cabin had been subtly altered to make it
aerodynamically efficient at these speeds. But when
Bracy showed signs of real distress at this headlong
career, she decided they might risk running for a while
on manual control, to show that the ultimate responsibil-ity had not been ceded to the machines.
That was almost the last decision she took in life.
Some enormous marine creaturenot a wolfshark, but
nearly as large and quite as solidshowed up on the
fish-finder, and seeing such a huge obstacle dead ahead
Bracy yelled with alarm and put the helm hard over.
The boat dipped its side in the water, because the foils
could not cope with such a violent change of direction,
and for half a mile they skidded in a tight circle with
spray streaming over the deck and great shuddering
slams of water battering the hull.
By the time Maddelena got the helm away from him
and let the boat straighten of her own accord, the cause
of the trouble was miles astern. But that was the last attempt the fisherboy made to control his craft at its new
maximum velocity.
Especially when they were compelled to slow to avoid
comment on sighting other ships, Maddalena had a good
deal of time to talk to the boy, and by the end of the
voyage had come to like him a great deal. Faced with
such problems as he had, many youths would have given
np at once; instead, orphaned, with nothing but this
trawler as a means of livelihood, he had grimly set out to
replace two healthy, hard-working adults with decades
of seafaring experience. That sort of thing took guts of a
different kind than those needed to save one from panic
at the sight of strange armoured figures chasing a hospital patient through a nightmare of menacing machinery.
She had thought of him entirely as an instrument, a way
to escape the surveillance of the Cyclopeans and follow
Kobi to Rimerley's island; now at last she came to see
him as a personshy, ambitious even though trapped by
circumstances, and intensely proud.
Also, handicapped as he was by his overdose of radiation, he had the kind of tough persistence legend attrib-uted to the pregalactic coolie who, half-starved,
half-frozen, dressed in rags, had maintained unstoppable
energy.
By the time they came over the horizon to Rimerley's
island, and accordingly had to slow to typical trawler
speed to escape notice, she had extensively revised her
original plan and spent a couple of hours before nightfall
and the landing in briefing him with the new instructions.
It was ironical that they should be able to drift with
the current here, in plain view, Maddalena thought as she
surveyed the doctor's private domain. So much the better, thoughto have had to wait till dark before coming
into line-of-sight would have imposed extra difficulties.
With a powerful magnifying periscope which had
been built into the mast of the trawler and projected a
needle-sharp image on a screen at the bottom, she studied
the prospect before her. Clearly, Rimerley was one of
Cyclops's "top twentieth", as Gus Langenschmidt called
themindeed, he must be among the thousand wealthiest
men on the planet to maintain premises like these. A
huge house, part of it extending out into the ocean so
mat one coma en)oy tne sensation or t)emg in a vast
aquarium by descending a short flight of steps; a private
dockyard with two skimmers at the quay; a 'copter
parked behind the house, and beyond that a road wind-ing up to the topmost point on the island, where trees
concealed the ground.
If it was true that he had built his fortune by selling
the spare parts of human beings, he must have run
through scorespossibly hundredsof victims, Maddalena thought, and the realisation made her stomach
churn with nausea.
Faint from below came the sound of martial music,
and then a voice too muted for her to catch the words,
but having a distinctly coaxing tone. Bracy was playing
with the radio again. Though his family had had one before his parents died, he had had to sell it, he told her,
during the hungry month of last winter, and in any case
the one which the Corps had fitted aboard the trawler
was far superior to any in Grarignol.
She continued her study of the land ahead, looking for
signs of life. Some turned up: a man came back from
taking in fish-lines, carrying a large basket of gloaming
sea-creatures; a man in white, probably a mechanic, came
out to attend to some job on the 'copter and went into
the house again.
"Bracy! "she called.
"Just a moment." There was a pause, and then he put
his head out of the cockpit. "Yes?"
"I'm sorrywere you listening to something?"
The boy's lip curled. "A government announcement.
The man was saying how the closing of your base would
make life more difficult, but we must think of our poor
brothers on the refugee planets. What I want to know is,
why are they so eager to have more poor people to cope
with when they can't even give us a decent living?"
Good question, Maddalena commented silently. During the voyage Bracy had plied her with questions about
Cyclops and other planets, and had shown a surprising
degree of natural insight into the problems they discussed. Most likely, Maddalena assumed, his parents had
been comparatively literate as Cyclopean fisherfolk -went,
and had done their best to pass on their education to
their son.
"You wanted something?" Bracy added.
"Yes. I want to find out if there's any communication
going on between the island and some other part of the
planet. There's a device for doing that among the equipment below. I showed you how it worksdo you think
you can remember the details?"
"Yes, I think so. If I can't, I'll be honest." He gave her
a flashing grin and vanished again.
She chuckled, resuming her examination of the island's
image. Shortly, he called back to her.
"No, there are no communicators operating as close as
that. The nearest is over to the eastward1 think it's a
pleasure-boat acknowledging an alteration of schedule."
"Goodthank you. Now how about internal communicators?"
"Right!"
And within minutes: "Maddalena! There's a conversation going on I think you might like to hear."
She rose in a lithe movement and dropped through the
open hatch. A voice was coming from the remote tapper
which enabled eavesdropping on room-to-room communicators at distances up to ten miles.
"everything ready by midnight," the crisp words
rang out. "Now there must be no delays! I know I always say that, but tonight is more crucial than usual,
even. We must have the entire job finished within half
an hour."
A different voice said, "With this quarantine and em-bargo business, what happens if they recognise an un-scheduled landing and take it for a Corps intrusion?"
Maddalena tensed.
"They won't!" the first voice snapped. "It's not an un-scheduled landing. This one is for Quist, remember?
And I got her to have it officially scheduled. I don't
blow what it's being called: luxury goods for private
consumption, I think"
An appreciative though fawning laugh broke in, and a
muttered, "Very good, very good!"
"So!" the first speaker said. "Anything else?"
"No, I guess not."
"Get on with it, then."
The tapper went silent; there were no communicators
in use on the island any longer.
"What was all that about?" Bracy demanded, staring.
"Something is going to be brought down-from space,
for Quist," Maddalena said. "At about midnight. That
much is clear, but exactly what"
She broke off, a light dawning. Langenschmidt had
mentioned to her his half-formed suspicion that the ultimatum for evacuation of the Corps base might be connected with Kolb's leg and the risk of its origin being
discovered, but he had been unable to see what link
could compel Quist into action. Suppose, though, it
wasn't a matter of compulsion, but of bribery; suppose
she was due to become one of Rimerley's customers for
the renewal of some failing organfrom her recorded
image at the Non-Interference Conference it was plain
she was no longer youthfuland Rimerley had told her
that she would lose her chance if the Corps cut off the
supply of spare parts . . .
"That must be it!" she exclaimed, and ignoring Bracy's
bewilderment she dived for the subspace communicator
which was her link with the Corps. The bands it used
were untappable, as far as was known, by any equipment
on Cyclops, but just in case Corps intelligence was faulty
in that area there was an automatic scrambler on the circuit as well.
"Maddalena Santos," she said as soon as she had her
connection. \*1 want to speak to Commandant Langenschmidt."
"I'm sorry," came the smooth reply. "The commandant has been called off the planet for a conference on
redeployment of base personnel."
"Damnalready? Then give me whoever\*s acting for
him."
"Dr Nole is the senior officer at present on duty, bat
he's engaged with the Cyclopean inspection team at the
hospital. Is there anyone else you wish to speak to?"
"Not particularly," Maddelena sighed. "Wait a second,
though, I have an idea. Can you record a scrambled
message and get it to Langenschmidt for me?"
"Yes, certainly. Just one moment." A series of clicks;
then"Go ahead now, please. Recording."
In terse words Maddalena summed up her suspicions
and ended, "By the way, Gus! Since you're so sure
you'll be back as soon as the Cyclopeans feel the pinch,
why not try and con the authorities into assigning this
evacuation fleet to search for the unknown ZRP, instead
of just tamely spreading our personnel here over a dozen
bases and leaving it at that? It's going to take at least
thirty ships to shift what's being lifted awayhalf that
number could carry out a thorough sweep of the high-probability locations.
"Of course, knowing you, that's probably exactly
what you're doing at the moment."
She closed the message and thanked the Corps opera-tor. Then she turned to Bracy.
"Can you use an energy gun?" she demanded.
The boy shook his head.
"I think I'll pass the next half hour teaching you.
Whatever's being brought down here at midnight is
valuable, and if we interfere there may be trouble.
Lucky I brought a spare gun along, isn't it?"
xvm
Darkness closed around the boat, still drifting as any
fishing-boat might when awaiting the arrival of a shoal
along the line of a nutrient-rich current.
"That makes us effectively invisible to the naked eye,"
Maddalena muttered. "Now let's make ourselves invisible
to his burglar alarms, and we can go ashore."
Bracy had tried and failed to comprehend the concepts
behind this cryptic statement. He put out his arm passively, and Maddalena strapped a miniature radio beacon
around it.
She had programmed a geepee computer for the task
of making them electronically invisible, and it was perhaps the neatest trick of all those they were using. Essentially she had shifted frequencies on the tapper and
connected both it and the computer to an ultra-tight-beam transmitter. The beacons would show their location at any given moment; the tapper would indicate on
what band the detectors were operating, and the transmitter would put out an eddy current, so to speak,
which would confuse the circuits in the detectors and
cause them to record something as diffuse and harmless
as a patch of sea-mist. The fact that slight mist usually
followed sundown at these latitudes in summer was an
additional advantage.
"Remember, though," Maddalena admonished Bracy
sternly, "even if it is pitch dark, and you're masked for
the detectors, you can still make noise, and that'll give us
away. Be careful."
Bracy nodded and grinned. The grin vanished as he
glanced down at the butt of his energy gun, protruding
from its water-proof holster. Maddalena felt a twinge of
worrywas it wise to have given him the weapon when
any instruction had necessarily to be theoretical? She
had restrained him from firing it only with difficulty,
but she dared not let him see a bolt actually fireden-ergy guns were not the sort of weapons common fisherfolk could afford, and their discharge was extremely
conspicuous, especially over water where they raised a
wall of steam fifty or more feet high.
Too late to change her mind nowtime was wasting,
and well before midnight they had to explore the house,
the nearby estate and the high ground behind, among the
trees. For that, in Maddalena's judgement, was the only
place a spaceship could put down near here, unless it
landed on water, and that too was an attention-getting
event attended by clouds of spray and high waves.
Almost certainly among the trees, she had concluded.
And going at a snail's pace, it would talte a couple of
hours to carry out their preliminary survey, let alone
prepare counter-action against Rimerley and his staff.
"Anchor!" she told Bracy.
Silent as a ghost, he lowered it to the bottom and gave
a cautious tug to ensure it had gripped. On his whispered
confirmation, Maddalena let herself over the side and,
using a stroke that created minimum disturbance in the
water, set off for the shore.
There were lights on in the extension of the house that
ran along the sea-bed, but the room within was empty.
On a low table lay the remains of a mealthe eater, apparently, had had little appetite tonight. Through windows higher up, women could be seen moving about
three of them in all, one in white, the others in dark
green gowns.
Maddalena led Bracy some distance along the shore
before heading inland. She had already got a clear idea
of the layout of the house: the seaward side was the
owner's, the landward included servants' quarters and all
the domestic and mechanical offices. There seemed to be
no trace of children; presumably either Rimerley was
unmarried or he maintained a separate establishment elsewhere. Or, of course, he might be old enough to have
children already grownshe had somehow been thinking
of him as a young man, greedy and ruthless, rather than
an old man, merely callous.
Their first stop was the dock where the skimmers
were moored. No one noticed them as they bent over
first one, then the other, of the graceful craft. From
there, they went to the 'copter. The mechanic was just
finishing his job, wiping his hands and putting away
some tools. They waited for five minutes to let him get
clear, and then Maddalena tossed a small sticky object at
the side of the machine. It clung as it touched.
Now, anyone attempting to leave the island by skimmer or 'copter would attract the unwelcome attention of
a homing rocket with a shaped-charge head, unless he
was sufficiently observant to remove the sticky objects
Maddalena had planted.
Which she doubted. The said person was likely to be
in a wild panic.
"Door shut," Maddalena whispered very softly. "Now
the ventilators."
The house's air-conditioning system was quite conspicuous from the trawler: two high circulating stacks led
down to the pump-chamber on the roof. Bracy had assured her that he, accustomed to grappling with solar
sails in unexpected gales of wind, could get to the top
easily; nonetheless, she waited with heart in mouth and
hand on gun while he scaled the intake stack and placed
at the top the three glass canisters tied into a bundle with
an explosive cord which she had given him. There was a
radioactivated fuse on the end of the cord.
She had been puzzling for some time over the matter
of where Justin Kolb would be located; it wasn't until
she was planning this job on the air-conditioning that she
saw the most likely possibility. Any sensible doctor taking patients into his private dwelling would put them at
the terminal end of the air-circulation system, in case
they had infections which draughts could carry to the
other occupants. As soon as Bracy had come down
safely, she told him to keep watch for her and approached the window of the room adjacent to the base
of the discharge stack.
And there he was, in a large room full of medical
equipment, watching a musical recording and sipping a
cup of wine. No one else was in the room with him, but
there were open communicators on both sides of the
bed, and a medical scanner was focused on his torso.
Her original plan had ended with the location of Justin Kolb and his removal to a point from which the
Corps could send down a ship to retrieve him, and she
was glad that she had acquired information leading to a
change of plan. It would have been far too easy, as she
had envisaged it. Just fire the radio-fuse, wait ten
minutes until everyone in the house was unconscious,
smash a way in to bring Kolb to the boat, andend.
Tame. This way was much better.
She had seen enough of the house now, and led Bracy
away from it towards the high ground. They kept a
course parallel to the road, but out of sight of it, a precaution she was glad of when a fast ground-skimmer
hummed up from the house to the concealing trees
ahead, and within minutes came back.
The trees were thickly leaved and prickly, some local
species she hadn't been warned about; before Bracy was
able to show her how to avoid the dropping branches,
she sustained several scratches on her face. They made
the last stretch of their )oumey interminably slow, but at
length they emerged into sight of a small plateau crowning the island.
Maddalena pursed her lips. Even without more help
than starlight, she could see that this was one of the
best-equipped private landing-grounds she had ever
heard of. A squat building dominated it, with an im-pressive array of antennae on top, mcinding one unmis-takable one meant for subspace communication over
interstellar distancesa real shock, to find that sort of
equipment here. Maybe the Cyclopean government was
conniving at Rimerley's actions'
And what could it be that was expected at or soon after midnight? A new leg for Justin Kolb? Such a
gruesome piece of evidence as that would be enough to
convict Rimerley and his associates even in a Cyclopean
court, let alone a galactic one!
"What now?" Bracy whispered, touching her arm to
attract her attention.
"I'm going to try and plan an ambush for the people
who are coming from space," Maddalena told him,
equally softly. "I don't know how many there may be of
them, nor how many of the staff from the house will
come with Rimerley to greet the ship. Those who stay
behind, of course, won't pose any problems . . . Oh,
damnation!"
She clapped her hand to her forehead.
"What's wrong?" Bracy demanded. He had put on a
wolfish grin at the thought of what was to hold back
those in the house from interferingit was a trick that
tickled him immensely, especially since he had had personal experience of the same brand of anaesthetic gas
when he was cornered in the operations control room of
the Corps base. The grin had vanished immediately Maddalena let out her stifled exclamation.
"Rimerley may not come up here by ground-skimmer.
He may prefer to use the 'copter, and if he does, it'll be
brought down instantly. I'll have to go back and unbug
the damned thing!"
"Let me go," Bracy suggested.
She hesitated. But so far he had shown himself reliable,
and after all there was little time now . . .
"Okay!" she decided. "All you have to do is get close
enough to take off the sticky thingyon saw -where I
threw it?"
"Yes. I can do it quicidy and come back soon!"
"Good luck!" she shot after him as he disappeared.
Then, furious with her own excess of ingenuity, she
set off on a tour of the miniature spaceport, looking for
the best hiding-places and points of vantage. To ambush
the crew of an interstellar ship with only two persons
was a tall order, but there was equipment in the trawler
which should make it possible, if she could get back
there, collect it, and get it installed in time . . . What was
keeping Bracy? Was it necessary to wait for himcould
she not meet him on the way back to the shore and save
time?
Better not.
The stars crept around the sky towards the midnight
configuration, and still no Bracy. With a start she realised that if he took any longer it would already be too
late to fetch what she needed from the trawler.
And it was too late! From the direction of the house
came the distinctive drone of the 'copter's engines; she
could see lights moving around its parking-place, and
shadowy figures crossing bright lamps.
It began to rise, and for long moments she was imagin-ing the whish and crash of the rocket which was keyed
to home on the sticky beacon. But nothing happened.
The 'copter merely turned towards the tiny spaceport.
There was a rusde in the undergrowth beside her, and
she spun, hand slapping the butt of her gun.
"Bracy!" the boy said in alarm, and she recognized
him. Furious, she railed at him.
"What kept yon? Now we have no time to go to the
trawler and get what we need!"
"I'm sorry. I dared not go close. They were working
on the machinefitting something like a tray under its
belly. In the end I could not wait any more. I caught
one of the men, about my size, as he went out of sight of
the others, and did so." Graphically, he closed his hand
on his own throat and groaned. "Then I took his clothes
and went openly to the machine to remove the sticky
thing. I was just in timea man of great importance
came from the house to see that all was well with the
work. So I went back and killed the man I had taken
clothes from, and got rid of his body. They looked for
as long as I was near enough to hear, but I think they
will not find him. There is a wolfshark in the baydid
you see it, earlier?"
"No r'Maddalena exclaimed.
"Yes. Not feeding, not followed by buzzards, but they
are always hungry for human meat."
Maddalena digested that information as well as she
could.
"What now?" Bracy pressed her.
She shrugged. "We play by ear, I guess."
"What?"
"Never mind. Watch, and listen, and take your orders
from my signals. We shall simply have to do as well as
we can with two energy guns and the advantage of surprise."
She motioned him silent, for the 'copter was humming
down over the treetops, and the last scene of the night's
drama was all set
As the ship slanted through the fringes of the air, Lors
Heirndall wondered grimly )ust how much of his explanation his men had believed. He'd told them that this
deal was so profitable they could afford to return home
ahead of schedule, and there weren't likely to be many
complaints about thatthe natives could get along without Receivers of the Sick for a while, until the next time
some death-fearing client put in for a new heart or some
wealthy idiot crossed up another wolfshark, like Justin
Kolb.
Nonetheless, it was quite unprecedented in the history
of their venture to pull the entire team off the ZRP and
go home en masse.
He'd taken the decision to do this in cold blood. If by
any chance Rimerley had been wrong in his estimate of
the effect on the Corps of Quist's ultimatum, and some
too-nosy doctor had thought to check the gene-type of
Kolb's leg, he didn't want to be trapped by the Patrol on
a noisome, dirty, mud-grubbing planet not worth a snap
of the fingers.
There wasn't any question of cancelling their long-term plans completely, of course. In a few years more,
he himself would inevitably become a customer for Rimerley's skilled attentionssometimes, after great effort,
he found it hard to breathe, and knew that his lungs and
bronchi were aging. And why should he squander most
of his hard-earned fortune on a trip to some prosperous
world, for medical treatment, when he was indispensable
to Rimerley and could persuade the doctor to overhaul
him without charge?
All this aside, though, he did wonder very seriously
whether his men had not guessed the truth behind his order to pull out.
It was lucky the trip was such a short one; the ship
was crowded, and in a confined space tempers could easily be rubbed raw.
Also there was the girl, who was indisputably attractive. Most of the men hadn't been able to overcome their
revulsion against dirt and take themselves a native
woman during their stay on the ZRP. Now Soraya had
been washed and disinfected, though . . . Yes: the
shortness of the journey was something to be thankful
for.
"They're waiting for us at the landing ground," the
pilot reported unnecessarily. "I'm going straight in."
"You're watching out for Patrol ships? With the evacuation of the Corps base, I'd expected local space to be
crawling with them."
"They're over the shoulder of the planet," the pilot
grunted. "Two, two and a half thousand miles from
where we're setting down."
Not a hitch. Heirndall found himself relaxing from un-noticed tension.
Everything, indeed, went with such smoothness that he
was almost disappointed to have wasted so much energy
on needless apprehension. The ship settled with hardly a
bumpthe pilot had become accustomed to rough landings on the ZRP, and this was the next best thing to a.
public spaceport. Heirndall was already at the port when
the all-clear lamps winked on, and the panels slid back to
reveal the night outside, and a few glinring lights silhou-etting a parked 'copter with a group of four men close
by.
"Wait a moment!" Heirndall snapped to those of his
own team who were excessively eager to jump down,
and called in a low voice across the field. "Doctor?"
"Here I am," Rimerley answered. "You weren't Jboth-ered, were you?"
"No, no challengesnothing. Can you take the girl
down in the 'copter? I've kept her in coma all the way."
"Yes, there's a cradle slung for her stretcher. Get her
over here quickly and we'll take her to the house. Then
I'll come back for you."
"Right!" Heirndall turned and gestured curtly for the
girl to be carried to the lock. He thought it as well not
to tell Rimerley yet that there would have to be at least
three trips with the 'copter to bring down all the men
who had returned with him.
Soraya was carried by two complaining bearers over
to the 'copter and placed in the cradle. Heirndall walked
with her, and as soon as the job was done nodded to Rimerley.
"Off you gobut don't be too long over sending back
the 'copter, will you?"
Rimerley, edgy, caught a false note in the words, and
gave him a long hard stare. Then he walked a few paces
away, beyond the pool of light in which the 'copter
rested, so that he could see the dim glow of the ship's
lock. There were more craning, peering heads in view
than there ought to have been.
"Heirndall, have you brought your whole damned
team with you?" he rasped.
Heirndall took a deep breath. "Yes. And we're not going back till the pressure is off."
Starded, the men who had come up with Rimerley
closed on their boss; similarly, catching Heirndall's words
and finding their half-formed suspicions confirmed, everyone from the ship came scrambling out of the lock
and hurried to ask frantic questions. There was a bab-bling argument within seconds, and accusations and
counter-accusations poured out as though a dam had
burst.
Couldift be better, Maddalena thought. That's everyone from the ship outside now. I'll bet on itthere simply wovldn't be room for any more. And they said
something about bringing a girl with them. From the
ZRP, beyond doubt.
She nudged Bracy, who slipped away into the
darkness a score of paces, and as soon as he was at his appointed position she rose to her feet.
Her voice rang out with shocking authority, amplified
to ten rimes natural volume. "Stand still, all of you! I am
an executive officer of the Corps Galacrica, and you arc
under arrest for violations of the Unified Galactic
Code!"
The effect of the roaring order was all Maddalena had
hoped for. Long seconds passed with everyone on the
port immobilised by shock; during the passage of those
seconds, she pressed the little button on a device clipped
to her belt and transmitted the signal which would explode the cord tying the three glass cylinders together at
the top of the intake stack supplying the house's air.
Enough anaesthetic to knock out an army flowed sluggishly down to the ventilators.
Then the man whom she had managed to identify as
Rimerley quicker-witted than his companionsbroke
from the group and ran hell-bent for the 'copter. Shouts
greeted this act, and someone with good sense yelled,
"Stop him!"
"Patrol Probationer Bracy!" Maddalena shouted into
her loud-hailer. "Disable that helicopter!"
And for pity's sake, do it without injuring the girl
slung underneath!
She thought he would never respond, and was lifting
her own gun when at last he did.
Perfect.
He had displayed the unexpected good sense not to
hurry over this first use of his weapon; he had remained
calm enough to sight as he had been told, to steady his
arm, hold his breath, and only then let go the bolt.
It blazed across the field, illuminating the entire island
as brilliantly as lightning, and sheared away the rotor
from the 'copter just as Rimerley got the power on and
turned the blades into a shimmering disc.
Droplets of molten metal shattered the transparent
roof of the pilot compartment into shards of opaque
plastic, and Rimerley screamed like a frightened beast.
But it was unlikely the girl, protected by the craft's hull,
had suffered any hurt.
"Thank you, Bracy," Maddalena said at full volume.
"The rest of you, stay where you are, and if one of these
disgusting butchers makes a move, or tries to run for it,
burn him, understood? Bracy, come over and help me
disarm them."
There was a powerful psychological impact in the un-leashed violence of an energy gun, even to people raised
on Cyclops, where violence was far commoner than on
most civilised worlds. Sullen, sick-faced with terror, the
cluster d>{ men waited as patiently as cattle in a slaugh-terhouse for Bracy and Maddalena to come up to them.
Bracy was grinning all over his face, he was so pleased
with his contribution to the night's work; Maddalena
had to scowl ferociously before he smoothed his features
into a pattern more suited to a probationer on official
business.
The technique Maddalena had devised for this stage of
the proceedings worked beautifully. Bracy came up to
each man in turn, gun in his right hand, palming in his
left an anaesthetic capsule with a self-injector attached.
He clapped the victim on the shoulder and left the capsule sticking to the flesh while he withdrew any weapon
the man had at his belt: in all, four of them had arms. A
look of vague surprise would cross the man's face, and
he would slump about half a minute later.
Meantime, Maddalena had gone over to the 'copter,
playing a handlight on the wreckage. Rimerley was sitting still and moaning. Below him, the girl lay uncaring,
long black hair draped over the end of the stretcher.
Hminm! Very pretty! I wonder if they toere going
toto dismantle her for spares!
But she had no time for such gruesome reflections.
There was a flash from behind her, and she whirled. The
tall, cruel-nosed man who had supervised the bringing of
the girl from the shipHeirndall, Rimerley had called
himhad broken from the group and was dashing
towards the dark shelter of the trees. Bracy had loosed a
bolt at him, and fired wide.
Maddalena's gun was np on the instant, and her bolt
did not miss.
Those of the group who were still conscious gaped,
and then, in comical unison, doubled up to vomit on the
ground. At this range, an energy gun turned a man into
a handful of calcined bones, and a smell, sickeningly delicious, of well-roasted meat...
Maddalena waited till she was sure Bracy had the situation under control again, holstered her gun, and turned
back to Rimerley. He had regamed some of his self-possession, and was bieating into the communicator, trying
to raise his staff back at the house.
"That won't do you any good," Maddalena said curtly. "I gassed the house and they'll sleep till morning.
Come onget down from there! "
Like a badly operated marionette, Rimerley complied,
falling awkwardly and twisting his ankle. He limped
when Maddalena ordered him to move towards his colleagues, and made a whimpering complaint about such
treatment.
"If you complain once more," Maddalena told him
stonily, "I'll take a leg off you, the way you did to the
poor bastard who provided a graft for Jusdn Kolb. Is
that clear?"
Rimerley gulped enormously, and began to waddle
hastily forward.
"That's the lot," Bracy said proudly, indicating the
scattered forms oa the ground. "And I've piled their
guns over there."
"Excellent," Maddalena said. "I never thought we'd do
it, to be frank. You've been quite amazing." She clapped
him on the shoulder, forgetful for the moment of what
he had )ust been doing, and was first startled, then
amazed, when he put up his hand anxiously to make certain it was not the end of his usefulness and his turn to
be knocked unconscious.
Rimerley, breathing raggedly, fought to recover his
dignity. He said, "I demand to know by what right
you"
"I told you," Maddalena snapped. "If you want specific charges, the main one will probably be murder, and
the subsidiary, interference with a Zarathustra Refugee
Planet."
Rimerley gave an oily smile. He said, "My government contests the legality of the non-interference rule, as
you ought to know. And plenty of planets recognise the
right of euthanasia. If you're assuming that we committed murder to obtain the grafts we have employed,
you're wrong. I can show you a release for each of the
donors, agreeing to euthanasia because of incurable
illness or serious injury."
"Including the girl over there?" Maddalena countered,
and saw with satisfaction the look of horror that wiped
away the doctor's smile.
"What now?" Bracy pressed her.
"Well, since they've been so kind as to provide the
means," Maddalena said, "I think we might as well go
directly to see Commandant Langenschmidt. I haven't
flown a spaceship for several years, but I was taught how
in Corps indoctrination, and they say what the Corps
teaches you can never be forgotten. Want to try space
for a change, Bracy?"
The boy hesitated. Then self-respect overcame his
doubts, and he pat his shoulders back and nodded vigor-ously.
"Then help me drag this load of carrion aboard, and
we'll leave." Maddalena said.
The ship bringing the three-merober board of inquiry
from Earth, which had pat the parsecs behind it at a
speed to make light look like a tired snail, dropped into
its assigned slot at the Cyclops base. The three board
members emerged: Senior General Lyia Baden, small of
build but large of voice, and two colonelsa staff rank,
indicating that they had not served in the Patrol, but had
spent their entire careers in administration.
"General Baden?" said Dr Anstey Nole, stepping forward to greet them. "My name is Nole, second senior
officer here at present."
General Baden looked at her surroundings with an icy
blue eye. She said at length, "You're under ultimatum to
leave this base by tomorrow at latest, aren't you? Where
are your preparations for departure?"
Indeed, it was obvious to the most casual glance that
the work of the base was proceeding normallyfar from
tearing down the installations, men and robots were at
work on repair and renovation, a fact which had given
the Cyclopean inspectors a bad time recently. It made
them feel peculiarly helpless, for there was nothing
whatever a backward world like Cyclops could do
against the Corps if it decided to dig in its heels.
Major Barly strode forward from where he had been
standing, next to Nole. "I want to register the strongest
possible protest against the defiant behaviour of your
base commandant!" he thundered. "Until yesterday he
was according us full cooperation. Then suddenly he
turned about and countermanded all his orders, and refused to see me and explain his high-handed obstinacy."
"Hmmm!" General Baden looked him over. "Who
are you?"
"My apologies." Barly recollected himself and clicked
his heels. "Bengt Barly, Major, Cyclops Space Force, assigned to supervise the evacuation of this base."
"I see. Where is this commandant now? Why didn't
he come down to meet us on our arrival?" A chill per-vaded the general's words.
"Commandant Langenschmidt is awaiting you in his
villa. General," Nole said calmly. "I am asked to take
you there at once."
"Carry on, then," the general said grimly. "I shall
want an explanationand it will have to be a good one."
Langenschmidt greeted the newcomers with a mask of
inscrutability. He was not alone in the room where he
received them. In addition to six armed Corpsmen, there
were an aging man who looked to be ill from some cause
subtler than diseasepossibly fear; a youth who held
himself as erect as a Corpsman but clearly wasn't, for his
hair was completely shaven, not trimmed to the Patrol's
standard inch; a very young girl with dark hair and
wide, doe-like eyes full of alarm; and a woman in
undress Corps uniform around whose mouth played the
suspicion of a smile.
Without preamble. General Baden said, "I'm told by
the head of the Cyclopean inspection team that you've
countermanded the orders to evacuate. Why?"
Not twitching an eyelid, Langenschmidt retorted, "Because the base is not going to be closed. Furthermore, I
intend to ask that the ships assigned to transport our personnel away, which are released from that duty now, be
reassigned to me for a special task." He paused. "In fact,
I think about half the total number of ships will suffice
the rest can return to regular duty."
"Have you taken leave of your senses, man?" rapped
the general, emphasising the last word as though she had
long ago ceased to expect intelligence in members of the
opposite sex.
"General, if you'd sit down? Chairs!" Langenschmidt
barked, and the Corpsmen moved hastily to bring some.
"I think you need only listen to me for a few minute
to see I know what I'm talking about. I'd like to
start by introducing all those present, if I may. Ah . . .
Maddalena Santos here is attached to my staff for special
duties, and I'll be asking you to take back with you a
commendation in her name for diligence above the call
of duty. But that's by the way. This young man here is a
Cyclopean fisherboy from a place called Grarignol,
Bracy Dyge; he has applied for probadoner status in the
Corps and has so conducted himself as to earn my maximum approval for the application."
Bracy grinned broadly and went back to the pastime
mainly engaging his attention at the moment: looking at
the slender, attractive girl next to him.
"This," Langenschmidt continued, "is Dr Aleazar Rimerley, who is not here under quite such favourable aus-pices. He is in fact under arrest for systematic and
flagrant violation of several clauses of the Unified Galactic Code, details of which I shall be giving you.
"And thischild, I think one must say," he concluded,
turning, "is named Soraya. She doesn't understand much
of what we are saying, which is hardly surprising. She
wasn't brought up to speak pure Galactic, but an Irani.
dialect with some Galactic admixtures. She is, in
fact''and he looked straight at General Baden, wanting
to see the full impact of his bombshell"a native of ZRP
Number Twenty-two, whose location we haven't yet established, but which narrows down to a thirty-parsec
sphere now, and"
"Twenty-two?" echoed the general in a strangled
voice.
"But" said both colonels simultaneously.
Langenschmidt let his face relax at last, into a beaming
smile. "Have I your permission to explain my actions
now?"
It had been decided at the last moment to make the
closing session of the Conference on Non-Interference
with Zarathustra Refugee Planets a public affair, with as
much pomp and spectacle as Cyclopean resources could
furnish at short notice, and full coverage by the planet's
news services. There was much adulation of Omar
Haust, the living representative of those who on un-tamed worlds struggled to wrest a precarious living from
a hostile environmentat least, that was how Quist's
speech compositor put it, and she was far too preoccupied to worry about the phrase herself. But there were
some worried faces in the public seats, where Cyclopean
notables, hurriedly summoned to show themselves, sat
listening and scrutinising the offworld delegates arranged
at a long table on the dais of the conference hall.
The matter troubling Quist was the same as it had
been since she first yielded to Rimerley's irresistible
bribe: would or would not the Corps leave enough salvageable material to balance the planetary budget this
year, while they cast around for some other external revenue to replace what was being thrown away?
Gradually, through her mood of anxiety, a noise from
outside the hall began to seep. She started, turning to
gaze at the window which offered a view of the large
square outside. There, thousands of the city's people
were watching on public telescreens the proceedings of
the conference.
They shouldn't be shouting like that. The thought
briefly crossed her mind, and as it passed she leapt in
amazement from her seat.
Down across the frame of the tall window a mon-strous shining shape had moved, like a fish settling
through clear water. A spaceship. A spaceship so large
that the entire square was barely wide enough to afford
it room.
Others in the hall had seen it go by, and the bewildered speaker at therostram one of the lesser delegates
from Earth, heaping praise on Cyclops for its noble self-sacrificebroke off his address. The shouting from outside turned to real screaming now.
The ranked notables started to get up, muttering in
alarm, and then the scene was frozen by the impact of
shock.
The tall main doors of the hall were slammed open
not sliding back into the walls as they were meant to
move, but simply buried from their frames by a tremendous blow from the far side. Over them, with the stolid
tramp of machines, came what most of the people
present had never seen except in historical recordings: a
squadron of the Corps Galactica in full battle equipment,
armour tough enough to repel an energy bolt, so heavy
that it was driven by miniaturised fusion reactors mounted
at the back, and polished to more-than-mirror brilliance
in every band of the spectrum. The crazy reflections
rendered it almost impossible to focus on the wearers,
making them seem like nightmare illusions.
That was why Gus Langenschmidt had insisted it be
worn. He didn't expect any resistance fierce enough to
justify its actual use.
The squadron wheeled right and left and filed around
the hill, taking station to surround it entirely, and he
came in last of all, striding directly towards Quist where
she stood, petrified, among the offworld delegates.
He wanted to get his opening statement out before
any of the news technicians regained enough presence of
mind to switch off the exterior transmissions.
"Alura Quist" he said, and the words rang around the
hall like the knell of doom, "I am Commandant Gustav
Langenschmidt, a duly appointed executive of the Corps
Galactica, and I arrest you for complicity in the following violations of the Unified Galactic Code, to wit: murder with malice, murder by default, conspiracy to"
The screaming and panic began then. Langenschmidt
paused; his squadron was fully-briefed on how to handle
this sort of trouble. It took only a few minutes to restore
calm, with the local notables sitting white-faced in their
chairs, their hands between their knees as though they
were trying to shrink and become too small to be seen,
the offworld delegates muttering frantic unanswerable
questions to each other, and the places of the news technicians taken by Corpsmen to ensure that the transmissions would go on without a break.
Langenschmidt resumed. "Conspiracy to interfere with
the autonomous development of a Zarathustra Refugee
Planet, conspiracy with Aleazar Rimerley and Lors Heim-dall and others to murder one Ekim Hakimi and dismember his corpse, and certain other charges."
He wheeled where he stood, knowing that two armoured men had stamped to Quist's side and pinioned
her arms, and confronted the cowering Cyclopeans in
the public seats. He had intercepted a list of those invited
which was supplied to the news service, and knew that
all those he would name were present.
"Sophy Alt, I charge you with conspiracy with Aleazar Rimerley and Lors Heirndall and others to kill one
Mara Rustum and dismember her corpse. Don Ambon-ine, I charge you with conspiracy with the same parties
to kill one Ali Qurab and dismember his corpse. Ved
Conakry, I charge you"
And so on, the entire miserable tale of Rimerley's rich
clients and their miserable victims, until there were more
than thirty men and women shivering with terror before
him.
Then he handed the documents from which he had
been reading to one of his men, threw back his helmet,
and strode to the dais. With the entire attention of the
planet riveted on him, he began.
"People of Cyclops, and in particular you offworld
visitors who have come here to attend the conference I
so rudely interrupted"he gave them a a sidelong glance
and saw they were listening as inteody as everyone
else"I want to explain the story behind the shocking
scene you have just witnessed.
"You all know about the Zarathustra Refugee Planets.
You perhaps also know that many moreperhaps well
over a million morepeople escaped from the Zarathustra nova than we have to date accounted for.
"Well, we have learned in the past few days that another shipload survived, on a world whose existence was
discovered by accident and not notified to my Corps.
The discoverer was the captain of a tramp space-freighter, named Lors Heirndall. He was making a some-what unusual journey along a route served by no regular
space-lines, when the strain proved too great for his engines and he was forced to make an emergency landing
to conduct repairs on a Class Athat's a tolerably habit-ableplanet in an unvisited system.
"There, he discovered the descendants of a group of
Irani-stock Zarathustrans, making the best of what they
had.
"He kept the discovery to himself and his crew, believing that in some way he would eventually be able to
exploit this secret. Not long afterwards, his chance occurred. A certain Justin Kolb, celebrated on Cyclops for
his part in an accident in space, required the replacement
of his right leg. Although he was in the care of your
planet's leading surgeon, Aleazar Rimerley, the facilities
here were not adequate for full-scale limb regeneration,
and sending a patient to a more prosperous world is
costly.
"Heirndall went to Rimerley with a proposition. He
could secure for Kolb a replacement graft, a limb
matched closely to his own, for a fraction of the cost of
regeneration; Rimerley could charge his clientnot
Kolb; Alura Quist was paying, out of your planetary
fundsthe cost of a regeneration, and Heirndall and Rimerley could split the surplus profit.
"Rimericy accepted the offer. And Heirndall sectired
the limb as promised, by a peculiarly unpleasant decep-tion practised on the unfortunate inhabitants of his private ZRP.
"In the early days of their life there, they had instituted a humane system of quarantine for people suffering
from disease beyond their limited resources to cureand
there were plenty of those. Volunteers acted as what
they called Receivers of the Sick, to convey them away
from their community and the danger of infecting others, and tended them until they recovered or died.
"This system was on the verge of disappearanceso
often had the Receivers died of the same illness as their
patients, the idea seemed no longer practical. But Heim-dall set himself and his men up as a new team of Receivers, worming their way into the natives' confidence
and taking away not the truly ill, whom they preferred
to disregard, but those whose bodily characteristics rendered them suitable as suppliers of spare parts.
"For Rimerley had seen the possibilities in an unlimited supply of graft material. Not many people on Cyclops are rich, but those who are are disproportionately
so, and as greedy for youth as for material wealth. As
you have heard, no fewer than thirty people in this hall
have enjoyed the fruits of Rimerley's butcherynew
limbs, new eyes, new vital organs!
"It is being pleaded that they did no more than offer
euthanasia to the hopelessly sick, a practice tolerated
here and on most inhabited planets. This is not true.
How do we know?
"You may have heard that the Corps base is under orders to close, ostensibly as a symbol of protest against
non-interference with ZRP's." He twisted his mouth
around the words, and knew the irony was not lost on
his hearers. "You may have seen this as an idealistic gesture, since Cyclops can ill afford to lose the revenue
from the base. Or you may equally have wondered what
possessed Alura Quist to issue her ultimatum.
"She issued it because Rimerley offered her a bribe: a
new lease of life. He knew we were within sight of his
secret; he thought to provide us with a distraction that
would make our half-formed suspicions seem not worth
the trouble of investigation. And the bait he dangled before Quist was the body, complete and healthy, of a
young girl named Soraya: a source of new organs to replace her failing ones.
"That girl is aliveby a miracleand in our hands.
And she has told how, perfectly well, she was caused to
appear to her friends as the victim of a fatal disease, a
suitable subject for the ministrations of the Receivers of
the Sick. She was not ill at all; she was not offered an
easy death under the pretence that she was sick and in-curableshe was simply shipped to Cyclops like an animal to the slaughter."
Langenschmidt paused. "People of Cyclops, it is no
part of the Corps's duty to tell you what you should do.
But I have worked on your planet for many years, and
come to know you at least a little. I am sure you will
knowwha.t you should do."
He turned to look at the pale, trembling conference
delegates. "And as for you," he said, "I hardly need say
that you have seen a Zarathustra Refugee Planet 'interfered with'. Think it over. Andgo home."
For long moments, no one moved. Then, as if in a
dream, the old man from ZRP One, Omar Haust, stood
up and approached Quist. He looked at her as though at
something disgusting found under a stone. Pursed his
lips. Spat full in her face.
Langenschmidt snapped his helmet back over his head
and gave the signal to his men. They left their stations
and went to take hold of the men and women named in
the long criminal indictment. Some passive and hopeless,
some struggling and yelling hysterically, they were led
away.
Last of all, with Langenschmidt at her heels, Qnist was
taken to endure the execration of her planet's people as
she was marched towards the waiting spaceship.
"Made up your mind about non-interference?" Langenschmidt said to Maddalena with a tone of false jocularity.
There was no attempt to match it in her reply-depressed, abstracted.
"Gus, that isn't fair. Cyclops isn't a typical civilised
planet, and come to that Heirndall and Rimerley aren't
typical Cyclopeans."
"Granted." He looked down from the wall-length
window of his villa towards the base, now back in full
operation after the cancellation of the evacuation. "On
the other hand, they do seem to be typical of those who
get power, get influence, get wealth simply because they
desire them so greedily. Truly civilised people don't crave
power. They havewhat would one call it?empathy,
perhaps, which holds them back."
"There's another and much older word," Maddalena
said.
"Which is?"
"Conscience." Maddalena stirred as though unable to
find a comfortable position on the luxuriously padded
seat she was using. "But look at it another way, Gus. It's
also empathy which makes me curse when I remember
all the poor sick and crippled people I saw on Thir-teenin twenty solid years, remember. You've never had
an on-planet assignment lasting longer then weeks or
months. We ought to fix a limitwe ought to say if
these people don't show signs of progress within such a
time, we'll recontact them openly and help them."
"Can we define progress?" countered Langenschmidt.
"I thought that was one of the basic precepts behind
non-interference. We must have lost our sense of direc-rion if we can breed Heirndalls and Rimerleys on a so-called 'civilised world'. Maybe the ZRP's will rediscover
what we've lost."
"I've heard all that," Maddalena snapped. "It still
doesn't Well, take a current conspicuous example. That
poor girl Soraya had a boyfriend at home, and a sick
mother. She was going to be married. We apply the non-interference rule strictly, and forbid her to return to
her own planet with the memory of what she's seen since
she was kidnapped. Precious little that must be, if she was
kept in coma, but there the ruling stands, and I can't say
I like it."
"In fact, you've chosen a bad example," Langenschmidt grunted. "Her adoring boyfriend accepted the
payment Heirndall offered as a means of keeping the
people eager to part with their sick kinfolk, took it
home, and was promptly so well off he could take his
pick of the eligible girls. And did, within the week."
"What? How do you know?" Disbelieving, Maddalena stared at him.
"Report came in a few hours ago. Using the information supplied by Heirndall's crew, a Corps party dressed
themselves up as Receivers of the Sick and went to Soraya's home village. It's going to be a very useful disguise for our permanent agents, thatand I think you
can rely on the non-interference rule being bent far
enough to heal a really deserving case, now and again."
He grinned maliciously. "Wouldn't like your next assignment to be a Twenty-two, would you? Or are you
leaving the Corps?"
"Nono, I don't think so. Not yet." Maddalena's attention had been caught by two figures moving beyond
the window: a youth and a girl both with long black
hair. "Is that Bracy and Soraya out there?"
"Haven't you noticed how much time they're spending together? I took Bracy aside and told him what she'd
been through, and gave him his first Corps assignment
looking after her. Not that he needed orders."
"He's already had his first Corps assignment. With
me."
"He hadn't even applied for probationary status
thenexcept verbally, to Nole, and that doesn't count.
This time it's official: rehabilitation of victim of criminal
assault."
Maddalena laughed, and the sound was gratifyingly
unforced to Langenschmidt's keen ears. "Damn you,
Gus! Why do you have to be such a nice guy?"
"Long practice," he retorted. "When you reach my
age-"
"You're also an idiot, but that must be congenital."
Maddalena's face clouded again. "Seriously, you know
. . . I had had it in mind to apply for another on-planet
posting. In spite of what I said when I first came here.
But I feel I wouldn't be able to tackle the )ob ob)ecriv&-
ly. I've been so submerged in dirt and disease and stupidity and barbarism I'm in danger of thinking of galactic
civilisation as the next thing to paradise. Well, I guess in
some senses it is, but it isn't my idea of paradise. Not
basically."
She paused and looked directly at him.
"Gus, I'd like to postpone my leave. I can, if I wish. I
don't much want to go back to Earthif I was attached
to my home world, I'd never have left it in the first
place. At this distance it seems like an illusion. But
planets like Cyclops are all too real. Could you bear to
have me on your staffsay for a yearwhile I catch up
on reality by degrees?"
"I'd be honoured," Langenschmidt said. "Do you
know something? Long ago1 hadn't thought of it in
years until I spoke to Pavel Brzeska the other day1 told
him I thought you were going to make history eventually, and I'd like to be around when it happened. Well,
twenty years passed and no history to speak of. And
then suddenly you orbit back into my sector and things
happen. I want to thank you for staying your hand until
I was present as a witness and could have my wish
granted."
"You're a sweetheart," Maddalena said fondly, and put
out her fingers to meet his.

