Cities in Flight (33 page)

"You're kidding me. I can tell. Dead men don't kid. Move!"

"Calling the flying city—"

The sparks spread over the sky like a Catherine wheel whirling into life. The watery quivering of the single point of light that was the Hruntan planet dimmed among them, shivered, blended into the general glitter. From Astronomy, Jake added his voice to the general complaint.

"Thirty seconds," Amalfi said.

From the speaker which had been broadcasting the puzzled, fearful inquiries of the Utopians, Hazleton's voice said calmly, "Amalfi, are you out of your mind?"

"No," Amalfi said. "It's your plan, Mark. I'm just following through. Twenty-five seconds."

"I'm not pleading for myself. I like it here, I think. I've found something here that the city doesn't have. The city needs it—"

"Do you want off, too?"

"No, hell no," Hazleton said. "I'm not asking for it. But if I had to take it anyhow, I'd take it here—"

A brief constriction made Amalfi's big frame knot up tightly. Nothing emotional:-no, nothing to do with Hazleton; probably some spindizzy operator was hurrying things. He staggered to his feet and threw up in the little washstand. Hazleton went on talking, but Amalfi could hardly hear him. The clock grinned and rushed on.

"Ten seconds," Amalfi gasped, a little late.

"Amalfi, listen to me!"

"Mark," Amalfi said, choking, "Mark, I haven't time. You made your choice. I ... five seconds ... I can't do anything about that. If you like it there, go ahead and stay. I wish you, I wish you everything, Mark, believe me. But I have to think of—"

The clock brought its thin palms together piously.

". . . the city—"

"Amalfi—"

"Spin!"

The city vaulted skyward. The sparks whirled in around it

THE flying of the city normally was in Hazleton's hands. In his absence-though it had never happened before-a youngster named Carrel took charge. Amalfi's own hand rarely touched the stick except in spots where even the instruments could not be trusted.

Running the Earth blockade to the Hruntan planet was no easy job, especially for a green pilot like Carrel, but Amalfi did not greatly care. He huddled in his office and watched the screens through a gray mist, wondering if he would ever be warm again. The baseboards of the room were pouring out radiant heat, but it didn't seem to do any good. He felt cold and empty.

"Ahoy the Okie city," the ultraphone barked savagely. "You've had one warning. Pay up and clear out of here, or we'll break you up."

Reluctantly Amalfi tripped the toggle. "We can't," he said uninterestedly.

"What?" the cop said. "Don't give me that. You're in a combat area, and you've already landed on Utopia in defiance of a Vacate order. Pay your fine and beat it, or you'll get hurt."

"Can't," Amalfi said.

"We'll see about that. What's to prevent you?"

"We have a contract with the Hruntans."

There was a long and very dead silence. At last the police vessel said, "You're pretty sharp. All right, proof your contract over on the tape. I suppose you know that we're about to blow the Hruntans to a thin haze."

"Yep."

"All right. Go ahead and land if you've got a contract. The more fools you. Make sure you stay for the full contract period. If you do get off before we reduce the planet, make sure you can pay your fine. If you don't- good riddance, Okie!"

Amalfi managed a ghost of a grin. "Thanks," he said. "We love you, too, flatfoot."

The ultraphone growled and stopped transmitting. There was a world of frustration in that final growl. The Earth police accepted officially the Okie cities' status as hobos-migratory workers-but unofficially and openly the cities were called tramps in the wardrooms of the police cruisers. Opportunities to break up a city did not come very often, and were met with relish; it must have been quite a blow to the cop to find the vanadium-clad, never-varying Contract in his way.

But now there were the Hruntans to cope with. This was the penultimate and most delicate stage of Hazleton's plan-and Hazleton wasn't on deck to administer it. As a matter of fact, if his Utopian friends had heard Amalfi admit to a contract with the Hruntans, he was probably in the hottest water of his career right now. Amalfi tried not to think about it.

The plan originally had not included signing any contracts with either planet; so long as the city was not committed legally, it could refuse jobs, leave them when it pleased, and generally exercise the freedom of the unemployed. But it hadn't worked out that way. The speed with which the police had been reinforced had made it impossible even to approach the Hruntan planet without uncrackable legal protection.

At least the city's stay on Utopia had accomplished some part of its purposes. The oil tanks were a little over half full, and the city's treasury was comfortable, though still not exactly bulging. That left the rare-earth and the power metals still to be attended to; collecting and refining them was unavoidably time-consuming, and would take even longer on the Hruntan planet than on Utopia-the Imperial world, farther out from its sun than Utopia, had been given a correspondingly smaller allowance of heavy elements.

But there was no help for it. To stay on Utopia while the Hruntans Were being conquered-or "consolidated," as it was officially called on Earth-would have left the city completely at the mercy of the Earth forces. Even at best, it would have been impossible to leave the system without paying the fine for violating the Vacate order, and Amalfi was constitutionally unwilling to part with the money for which the city had labored. Even at the present state of the treasury, it might easily have bankrupted them, for work had been very scarce lately.

The intercom had been modestly calling attention to itself for several minutes. Answered, it said, "Sergeant Anderson, sir. We've got another visitor."

"Yes," Amalfi said. "That would be the Hruntan delegation. Send 'em up."

While he waited, chewing morosely on a dead cigar, he checked the contract briefly. It was standard, requiring payment in germanium "or equivalent"-the give-away clause which had prevented its use on Utopia. It had been signed by ultraphone-the possession of that tight-beam device alone "placed" the Hruntans as to century-and the work the city was to do was left unspecified. Amalfi hoped devoutly that the Hruntans would in turn give themselves away when it came to being specific on that count.

The buzzer sounded once more, and Amalfi pushed the button that released the door. The next instant he was not sure it had been a wise move. The Hruntan delegation bore an unmistakable resemblance to a boarding party. First of all, there were an even dozen soldiers, clad in tight-fitting red leather breeches, gleaming breastplates, and scarlet-plumed casques; the breastplates, too, were emblazoned with a huge scarlet sun. The men snapped to attention in two files of six on each side of the door, bringing to "present arms" weapons which might have been copies of Kammerman's original mesotron rifle.

Between the files, flanked by two lesser lights as gorgeously and unfunctionally clad as macaws, came a giant carved out of gold. His clothing was interwoven with golden threads; his breastplate and helmet were gilded; even his complexion was tanned to a deep golden tone; and he sported a luxuriant golden-blond beard and flowing mustache. He was altogether a most unlikely-looking figure.

He spoke two harsh-sounding words, and boot heels and weapons slammed against the floor. Amalfi winced and stood up.

"We," the golden giant said, "are the Margraf Hazca, Vice Regent of the Duchy of Gort under his Eternal Eminence, Arpad Hrunta. Emperor of Space."

"Oh," Amalfi said, blinking. "My name's Amalfi; I'm the mayor here. Do you sit down?"

The Margraf said he sat down, and did. The soldiers remained stiffly "at ease," and the two subsidiary nobles posed themselves behind the Margraf s chair. Amalfi subsided behind his desk with a muffled sigh of relief. "I presume you're here to discuss the contract."

"We are. We are told that you have been among the rabble of the second planet."

"An emergency landing only," Amalfi said. "No doubt," the Margraf said dryly. "We do not concern ourselves with the doings of the Hamiltonians; we will add them to our serfs in due time, after we have driven off these upstarts from decadent Earth. In the meantime, we have use for you; any enemy of Earth must be friends with us."

"That's logical," Amalfi said. "Just what can we do for you? We have quite a variety of equipment here—"

"The matter of payment comes first," said the Margraf. He got up and began pacing slowly up and down with enormous strides, his golden cloak streaming out behind him. "We are not prepared to make any payment in germanium; we need all we have for transistors. The contract speaks of equivalents. What counts as equivalent?"

It was remarkable how the regal manner was snuffed out when it got down to honest haggling. Amalfi said cautiously, "Well, you could allow us to mine for germanium ourselves—"

"Do you think this planet's resources will last forever? Give us the equivalent, not some roundabout scheme for being paid in the metal itself!"

"Equipment, then," Amalfi said, "or skills, at a mutually agreed valuation. For instance, what are you using for lubrication?"

The big count's eyes glittered. "Ah," he said softly. "You have the secret of the friction-fields, then. That we have long sought, but the generators of the rabble melt when we touch them. Does Earth know this process?"

"No."

"You got it from the Hamiltonians? Excellent." The two minor nobles were beginning to grin wickedly. "We need babble no further of 'mutually agreed valuations,' then." He gestured. Amalfi found himself looking down a dozen rifle barrels.

"What's the idea?"

"You are within our defensive envelope," Hazca said with wolfish gusto. "And you are not likely to survive long among the Earthmen, should you by some miracle break free of us. You may call your technicians and tell them to prepare a demonstration of the friction-field generator; also, prepare to land. Graf Nand6r here will give you explicit instructions."

He strode toward the door; the soldiers parted deferentially. As Amalfi's hand reached for the button to let him out, the big man whirled. "And you need not attempt to trip any hidden alarms," he growled. "Your city has already been boarded in a dozen places and is under the guns of four cruisers."

"Do you think you can win technical information by force?" Amalfi said.

"Oh yes," said the Margraf, his eyes shining dangerously. "We are-experts."

Carrel, Hazleton's protege1, was a very plausible lecturer, and seemed completely at home in the echoing, barbaric gorgeousness of the Margraf s Council Chamber. He had attached his charts to the nearest tapestry and had propped his blackboard on the arms of the great chair in which, Amalfi supposed, the Margraf usually sat; his chalk traced swift symbols on the slate and squeaked deafeningly in the groined vault of the room.

The Margraf himself had left; five minutes of Carrel's talk had been enough to arouse his impatience. The Graf Nand6r was still there, wearing the suffering expression of a man delegated to do the dirty work. So were four or five other nobles. Three of these were chattering in the back of the room with muffled sniggers, and a raucous laugh broke in upon Carrel's dissertation every so often. The remaining peacocks, evidently of subordinate ranks, were seated, listening with painful, brow-furrowing concentration, like ham actors overregistering Deep Thought.

"This will be enough to show the analogy between atomic and molecular binding energies," Carrel said smoothly. "The Hamiltonians"-he had seen that the word annoyed the peacocks and used it often—"the Hamiltonians have shown, not only that this binding energy is responsible for the phenomena of cohesion, adhesion, and friction, but also that it is subject to a relationship analogous to valence."

The appearance of concentration of the nobles became so grave as to be outright grotesque. "This phenomenon of molar valence, as the Hamiltonians have aptly named it, is intensified by the friction-fields which they have designed into a condition analogous to ionization. The surface layers of molecules of two contiguous surfaces come into dynamic equilibrium in the field; they change places continuously and rapidly, but without altering the status quo, so that a shear-plane is readily established between the roughest surfaces. It is evident that this equilibrium does not in any sense do away with the binding forces in question, and that a certain amount of drag, or friction, still remains-but only about a tenth of the resistance which obtains even with the best systems of gross lubrication."

The nobles nodded together. Amalfi gave over watching them; the Hruntan technicians worried him most. There were an even dozen of them, a number of which the Margraf seemed fond. Four were humble, frightened-looking creatures who seemed to regard Carrel with more than a little awe. They scribbled frantically, fighting to take down every word, even material which was of no conceivable importance, such as Carrel's frequent pats on the back of the Hamiltonians.

All but one of the rest were well-dressed, hard-faced men who treated the nobles with only perfunctory deference, and who took no notes at all. This type was also quite familiar in a barbarian milieu: head scientists, directors, entirely committed to the regime, entirely aware of how crucial they were to its successes, and already infected with the aristocratic virus of letting lesser men dirty their hands with actual messy laboratory experiments. Probably some of them owed their positions as much to a ruthless skill at court intrigue as to any great scientific ability.

But the twelfth man was of a different order altogether. He was tall, spare, and sparse-haired, and his face as he listened to Carrel was alive with excitement. An active brain, this one, doubtless politically unconscious, hardly caring who ruled it as long as it had equipment and a free hand. The man would be tolerated by the regime for his productivity, but would be under constant suspicion. And he was, by Amalfi's judgment, the only man capable of going beyond what Carrel was saying to what Carrel was leaving unsaid.

"Are there any questions?" Carrel said.

There were some, mostly dim-witted, from the techies- how do you build this, and how do you wire that; no one with any initiative would have wanted to be led by the nose in such a fashion. Carrel answered in detail. The hard-faced men left without a word, as did the nobles, who lingered only long enough to save face. The scientist-he was the scientist for Amalfi's money-was left alone to launch into an ardent stammering dispute over Carrel's math. He seemed to consider Carrel as an equal as a matter of course, and Carrel was beginning to look uncomfortable by the time Amalfi summoned him to the back of the hall.

The scientist left, pocketing his few notes and pulling thoughtfully at his nose. Carrel watched him go.

"I can't hide the kicker from that boy long, sir," he-said. "Believe me, he's got brains. Give him about two days and he'll have the whole thing worked out for himself. He won't get any sleep tonight for thinking about it; I know the type."

"So do I," Amalfi said. "I also know barbarian council halls-the arrases have ears. Just pray you weren't overheard, that's all. Come on."

Amalfi was silent until they were safe within the city and in a cab. Then he said, "You have to be careful, Carrel, in dealing with outsiders. You take to it well, but you're inexperienced. Never say anything outside the city, even to me, that doesn't fit your part. Now then-I agree with you about that scientist; I was watching him. And now he knows you, so I can't use you against him. Is there someone in your organization who's done undercover work for Mark who hasn't been out of the city since we hit Gort? An experienced hand?"