Mission: Earth "Disaster" (2 page)

"Bridgeport over there," said a pilot. "That's Norwalk dead ahead. Our navigation is dead on." He laughed. "Can I spit in the Royal officer's face if the corpse is still there?"

"Spit away," I said. But I still hadn't felt the joy I should have over Heller being dead.

"Aren't we awfully low?" I said.

"Their radar can't touch us," said Captain Stabb. "Absorbo-coat. We could fly in at thirty thousand and we're at seventy."

The pilot was braking. The antiacceleration and gravity coils in the ship worked so smoothly I didn't even realize it until I saw the lights in the scenery below slowing down. We dropped lower: forty, twenty, ten, five thousand feet. An engineer startled me by opening the doors of the airlock. Captain Stabb answered my startled stare. "Your radio waves can't get through this hull. Call up your man and see if it's all clear."

"Agent Raht," I said into the radio.

"Oh, thank Gods you've come!" Raht's voice sounded weak. "I fell at the bottom of the steps. I've lost so much blood I can't move."

"The Hells with your blood," I said. "Is the area all clear or do we blueflash?"

"Oh, please don't blueflash! I might never again regain consciousness! There's nobody around. Land quickly and save my life."

Stabb had heard it. He made a hand signal to the pilot. Tug One dropped rapidly. The image of the old gangster roadhouse was dim on our screens. The maples and evergreen trees around it were giving off more reflection.

They banged the ship down in the flat place about a hundred yards from the front door. It was very dark. Crickets were making an eerie sound. A bullfrog made a snoring noise in the creek. Fireflies were winking here and there. The smell of Connecticut countryside swept in through the airlock. Captain Stabb reached over an Antimanco pilot's shoulder and twiddled a knob of a screen. A fragmentary infrared view of the porch showed up. Raht seemed to be lying at the foot of the steps, face down. He apparently had passed out. A partially seen mass was on the porch itself. Raht had evidently not had the strength to move Heller's body.

"Busting novas, look at that!" cried Captain Stabb. He was pointing eagerly at a sack on the porch. Diamonds had cascaded from it. A glittering spread even in infrared light!

"Jeeb!" barked Stabb to an engineer, "get over there and pick those up!"

The engineer threw a blastrifle over his shoulder. He leaped out of the airlock and we heard his footsteps recede. I moved over to the airlock. The tug was lying, of course, on its belly, and it was only a step to the ground. But I sure wasn't going out there. My eyes adjusted from the dim red glow inside the tug. There was quite a bit of light, actually: the glow of distant cities against the sky and the glimmer from the sliver of a moon. I watched Jeeb, rifle ready, approach the foot of the porch.

The fireflies winked. The frog croaked again. An eerie scene though. I wondered if it were true that the bodies of dozens of Prohibition gangsters were buried in this terrain. Gods deliver us from their ghosts.

Jeeb was bending over the object at the foot of the steps. I could see him clearly. Suddenly he straightened up and started to shout back at the tug. "This isn't . . ."

A sharp hissing crack!

Jeeb fell apart! . The whole middle of his body was gone!

I hastily withdrew back into the tug.

"A SNIPER!" screamed Stabb. "There he is! There he is! After him!"

He was pointing at the screen. The infrared had a picture of a man with a rifle at the end of the roadhouse. The second engineer sprang out the door. He had his blastrifle ready at the hip. He raced off to one side, mauling the sight controls. I knew what he was doing. He was setting it to infrared. He ran sideways about twenty-five yards.

He leaped behind a shrub. He levelled his weapon and fired. A blastrifle does not flash as it shoots, but splashes of deadly energy laced into the target. Then Stabb was pointing at the screen, trying to shout. On the screen there had appeared THREE MORE INFRARED TARGETS!

The second engineer blazed away.

TWO MORE TARGETS!

Suddenly the second engineer let out a piercing scream.

He leaped into the air.

HIS WHOLE HEAD BLEW OFF!

"Quick, (bleep) it!" cried Stabb to the two pilots. "Grab weapons, set them to body heat and wipe that area flat!"

The two pilots hurtled out the door, slapping at the tops of their weapons.

They spaced out to the right and left.

They dropped into cover.

Stabb had slid into the pilot seat. He was twisting scope dials. He had it on body heat.

A target to the right of the roadhouse.

The pilot furthest from us fired.

A heat target to the left. The furthest pilot fired again.

A heat target much further to the left.

The pilot began to fire on automatic.

Suddenly he let out a shriek.

He leaped into the air.

The whole hip area vanished!

The other pilot was firing hysterically.

Heat target after heat target was popping up all over the field.

Frantically he tried to zero in on them.

Abruptly he screamed and leaped up into the air.

His head and torso disintegrated!

"LET'S GET OUT OF HERE!" cried Stabb.

He was in the local-pilot seat.

I leaped to the star-pilot seat.

Stabb was pulling levers and pushing buttons.

NOTHING HAPPENED!

We were earthbound!

The tug controls wouldn't operate!

Stabb's eyes glazed.

Then he stood up. He looked at me. "You led us into a trap, Officer Gris!" he snarled. "And I'll be dead in minutes. But I've got just one more job to do." He was reaching to his belt and withdrawing a knife and from the way he looked at me, I knew what he intended. He was going to kill me!

I grabbed at my control star. I pressed the top prong, that should have given him an electric shock.

NOTHING HAPPENED!

I hit the center and pressed the top again. It should have thrown him into a trance.

NOTHING HAPPENED!

"Lombar Hisst," said Captain Stabb, "gave me orders that if you fouled up I was to kill you out of hand."

THE UNKNOWN ASSASSIN HAD BEEN CAPTAIN STABB!

He raised the blade to plunge it into my chest.

The expression on his face froze.

He suddenly folded up over a pilot seat, a long Knife Section knife protruding from his back!

Someone had thrown it through the airlock!

Footsteps.

Somebody was coming.

I was trying to get at my gun.

"Just sit there quietly, Gris. I can see in there but you can't see me."

HELLER'S VOICE!

His ghost!

Oh, Gods. I began to shake with every bone.

"Unfasten that gunbelt and throw it out the door."

Moaning, I did just that.

"Put your hands high in the air."

I did that quickly. I was facing front. I did not dare turn and look. I did not know what seeing a ghost would do to my psyche.

A light footstep behind me.

Suddenly a piece of line went around my wrists. They were snapped down. Coils of line went around my body and I was wrapped to the pilot seat and tied.

More footsteps. In the pilot viewports I could see the reflection of the ghost going back through the passageways, kicking open doors, ready to fire if anyone else was there.

Another voice. "So you were trying to get me killed, just like you did my partner, Terb."

RAHT!

I looked sideways. There he was in solid flesh, his mustache bristling out on either side below his nose. He was holding a gun on me!

"Traitor!" I rasped.

"Oh, no, Gris. You're the traitor. When you lured that beautiful woman to her death, you turned my stomach. And ordering me to murder a Royal officer! You must be crazy!"

"Then he’s not dead? He's not a ghost?"

Raht gave a nasty, squeaky laugh. "He's no ghost. He's a REAL officer, the kind you never could be. When he left for Italy, I followed him. I knew he was out of range of the bugs you had on him and I told him what had been going on. He showed me his orders. From the Grand Council, too.

"So I came back here ahead of him, gave the old blind woman a note that her niece read to her, and came on through and set this all up like we planned."

"You mean he actually trusted you out there with a rifle?"

"I didn't have any rifle. Those were just flash charges I set up. I called, he came out. I ignited one by the door. Then another one by a bush. Then he fired and I ignited a third, all by remote. I simply shut off the visio switch on the activator-receiver. And your viewer went blind. Then he threw down a piece of iron so you'd think his gun had fallen and he stamped his foot so it sounded like a body and I cut off the audio switch."

"You mean, you turncoat, that you also set up this battle?"

"No, no. He did that when he knew that you were deaf and blind. He put infrared illusions all around and body heat simulators, all remote. We controlled them from way over in the woods. We were nowhere near you! Oh, he's a real officer, he is—a joy to work with one for a change. Nothing like the trash you are. Terb has been avenged!"

I was still confused. "Why did those men leap up in the air with a shriek?"

"Oh, that was his secret weapon. It found and clawed each man in turn. A remote-controlled, radio-directed cat."

Heller's voice behind me: "Get up there, Mister Calico. Sit on his chest and if he moves or speaks, hit him."

The cat sprang up into the spaceship. It sailed onto my chest. It sat there glaring balefully at me.

I opened my mouth to speak.

The cat raked my face with savage claws.

"I think he knows," said Raht, "that you had a hand in killing his mistress. I'd watch out if I were you. That's a hit cat to end them all! It scares me to death!"

I looked down into its close-up baleful eyes.

It was sort of snarling down deep.

I did not dare move.

Heller said, "Let's get this battlefield cleaned up, Agent Raht. Those shots might attract visitors."

He picked up the corpse of Stabb and dragged it out through the airlock. They worked outside and I could see them making a pile of bodies. I shuddered. I was certain they were going to kill me, too.

Heller came back in. He went into the crew quarters, as I could see in the reflecting port glass. He came out lugging a trash-disintegrator unit. He carried it over to the pile and small blue lights began to glow around the bodies as buttons and bits of metal momentarily resisted disintegration.

An intermittent flash of light appeared on the track to the road-house. It grew stronger. A car! The deputy sheriffs were coming in!

Oh, thank Gods, I would be saved! They would see the spaceship and come over, and I would yell at them that I was a Federal agent and order them to arrest Heller and Raht. I even had my Inkswitch I.D. with me. I wasn't going to be exterminated here after all! I'd even have Heller on a Code break.

The car lights bored straight at the spaceship. Then they veered off and pointed toward the front of the roadhouse.

The cops jumped out on either side of their car. Heller walked up to them.

Ralph said, "Having trouble here, whitey engineer?"

They weren't even looking at the spaceship. And then I realized with a sickening comprehension that it was that (bleeped) absorbo-coat—it hadn't even reflected their car lights back to them. To all intents and purposes, the tug was invisible!

Heller was closer to them now. George said, "We heard some shots and screams."

"Wildcat," said Heller.

"No (bleep)?" said Ralph.

"Must've come down from Canada," said George.

"We missed him clean," said Heller. "He ran down the creek bed, thataway." He was pointing.

The two deputies rushed off down the creek, drawing their guns. They went right off, leaving their car lights on! I groaned. Well, maybe when they came back they'd see something unusual and rescue me.

Heller was stuffing diamonds in the gunny sack on the porch. He tied the neck and threw it in the jeep.

He and Raht went into the house and shortly began to dolly out boxes from the deep mine shaft. They piled them outside the airlock.

Heller came in and spoke to the floorplates in the passageway. It was sort of eerie how the locks were tuned to his voice. "Hold hatch, open up," he said, and the floorplates flopped back with a clang.

He lowered himself down into the limited hold of the tug. In the reflecting glass, I saw him pop back almost instantly. "What's this?" he said. He was holding a sack he'd found. He opened it and peered at the contents. "Junk stones?" It was the flawed glitter I had bought in Switzerland to fool Captain Stabb. Heller took it to the airlock and tossed it to Raht.

He went back into the hold. He came up in a moment. "What the blazes?" He was carrying something heavy. He went to the airlock. "Of all things," he said to Raht. "There's about 750 pounds of gold ingots down there."

I felt like my skull had exploded. Stabb! He was the one who had stolen my first gold shipment. He'd hidden it in the tug hold, meaning probably, when he got a chance, to do away with me and steal the tug.

"Isn't that an awful lot of gold for this planet?" said Raht.

"It sure is," said Heller. "Worth about seven million dollars at current prices. We'll take it out of its boxes and you stack it on the floor of the jeep. Transfer it to my Porsche at the old lady's. She won't be able to see what it is."

I groaned again. Raht hadn't even killed the old lady. What a rotten Apparatus agent. He ought to be fired!