Retief and the Rascals (14 page)

            " 'Collapse'?" Magnan gasped.
"Tell me, Jim, just what did I do, or am I about to do that's so clever?
Actually, I don't know what to do about Shish's little surprise in the form of
a battalion or more of seasoned troops about to descend on the port and grab
all the credit."

            "Never mind, Ben, I mentioned the matter to
Buck Muldoon, and I imagine he has the matter in hand."

            "But how could you have known?" Magnan
gasped. "I hadn't even explained it to you yet!"

            "Just a hunch,' Retief told him. "A
hunch that developed when I saw the Bill of Lading for today's GFU shipment—it
had been crudely altered."

            "Why, the nerve!" Magnan gasped.
"Tampering with the virtually holy mission of my proud bureau!"

            "We'd better get out to the port,
pronto," Retief suggested. "When those crates clear Customs—"

            "Look here, Shish ..." Magnan turned
to the spot where the Groaci had been crouched against the wall.

            "Why!" Magnan blurted. "Where's
the scamp gotten to? He's gone, Jim!"

            "Right," Retief confirmed. "He
did a sneak down the service passage while you were being indignant about the
Bills of Lading."

        "Why didn't you stop
him?"

            "I thought it would be a good idea to
follow him," Retief explained.

            "Heavens, Jim!" Magnan nagged. "I
don't imagine Shish will stop with waylaying our cargo; he'll be up to further
mischief, I don't doubt!"

        "Not if we catch
him," Retief offered.

            "He might even start a rumor that we
Terries are at fault!" Magnan grieved, as Retief led the way along the
dark passage to a side exit.

            "Wait, Jim!" Magnan yelped. "I've
heard that once lost in the tortuous maze of secret passages which riddle the
Groaci Embassy, one is never seen again!"

            "Then let's not get lost," Retief
proposed as he forged ahead.

            After ten minutes' groping progress along the
dark, rubbish-littered passage, during which Magnan lost count of the splits
and side-turns, they emerged in the garage of the Terran Embassy.

            "Jim!" Magnan yipped.
"We're—we're in the garage!
Our
garage! I mean, this is the bay His
Ex leased to his Old Car Club! See, there's Herb Lunchwell's restored 1936
Hupmobile! Shish must have come here to steal a car! Where—?"

            "Over there," Retief suggested, as the
groan of an early self-starter sounded from the shadowy corner where Hy Felix's
1913 Stutz three-passenger coupe was parked With a creak of ancient springs, it
moved.

            "That Bendix is an aftermarket item some
owner installed," Magnan muttered. "Pity. If he'd had to hand-crank
it, we'd have laid the thief by the heels."

            The voice of Bob, the motor pool chief, rang out
abruptly. "Hey, you, in the Stutz! Hy never said—!"

            "That's right, Bob," Retief told the excited
guard. "Better lock the main doors."

            This Bob hastened to do, and the Stutz fetched
up impotently before the closed portal. Shish was honking the Klaxon
frantically, but the audioelectric cell failed to respond by swinging the steel
portal wide. The frustrated Groaci hopped down and scuttled around to search in
the gloom for the manual override, muttering, "Drat!" and casting
murderous glances from entwined oculars.

            "Don't give
me
that G-142-c If Looks
Could Kill, Shish!" Magnan yelled, forging ahead; and Shish, abandoning
the effort, fumbled with his hip-pouch and brought out a Model F all-band
tuner, which he used to open the adjacent door. Even as Magnan rushed the final
yards, Shish hopped into the stately Stutz and gunned away into the crowded
avenue, the crowd parting so reluctantly that more than one luckless Bloorian
was forcibly propelled from its path, yelling.

            As Magnan turned to notify Retief that Shish had
made his escape, he was forced to leap back as the Mercer Raceabout which was
the apple of Ambassador Swinepearl's eye squealed to a halt beside him and
Retief motioned him in.

         "Quick!"
Magnan squalled. "I mean 'quickly'!"

            "I won't count that one, Ben," Retief
told him. "Anyway, 'quick' is correct."

            "Bother grammar!" Magnan snapped.
"I'm surprised, Tim, that you'd even mention so esoteric a matter in this
moment of crisis!"

            The Stutz was almost lost among the crowd of
towering locals, all, it appeared, eager to lay hands on the driver thereof to
express doubtless legitimate grievances.

            "The little wretch will be lucky if he's
not torn apart by the mob!" Magnan bleated, then winced as a hard-shot
rang out and the most aggressive of the Bloorians assaulting the Stutz fell
back, still yelling.

            "He wouldn't!" Magnan moaned.
"Jim, he
shot
that fellow! Now—"

            Retief, following the relatively open trail
Shish had cleared through the riot, gunned ahead in time to see the wounded
Bloorian jump up and point an accusing finger directly at the oncoming Mercer.
The mob at once coalesced, blocking the way.

            "Hang on, Ben," Retief advised. The
elderly four-banger roaring, he steered directly toward the biggest loudmouth,
who shut down that organ and leaped for safety, starting a general stampede
which opened the way effectively. The little topheavy Stutz three-seater was
just rounding a corner into a side alley known as Civvy Street. At it leaned
perilously, Shish almost lost control, veering up onto the sidewalk, where he scattered
a cluster of fruit-and-veggie stands. As the squashes and eggplants showered
down, the sturdy peasants who had trundled the produce into town shook their
fists, some clutching pitchforks, after the departing Groaci.

            "Heavens, lucky Herb's aunt didn't leave
him a Bearcat," Magnan observed. "We'd never have caught him."

            "We still haven't," Retief pointed
out—but, on the straightaway, he was rapidly closing on the fleeing car.

            "He's headed for the port," Magnan
observed, as they thundered past the last retail establishments and scattered
houses and entered the open countryside.

            "Nice country," Magnan commented,
hanging on desperately as the ancient sports car leaped over the potholed and
rutted road. Pity there aren't enough industrious Bloorians to keep it all
under cultivation."

            "If they did that," Retief pointed
out, "there'd be no need for GFU."

            "True," Magnan mused. "I suppose
one shouldn't question the established order."

            "Except when it's shooting at us,"
Retief demurred, ducking as a sharp report rang out. Magnan pointed. "Over
there, Jim! Behind the shed! It's a fellow with a blast rifle!"

            Retief nodded and concentrated on his driving.
Ahead, Shish veered off down a side road, shaking a puny fist from his side
window toward the rifleman.

            "Seems he was aiming at the
Counselor," Retief noted, and followed into the farm road, which was even
worse maintained than the highway. Shish had halted and was out of his stolen
car, nastily setting up a tripod-mounted apparatus through which he sighted
toward the bam, like a student surveyor. The Groaci jittered as more hardshots
kicked up dirt nearby, but persisted in his twiddling with a cable-linked box.

            "Good Lord!" Magnan yipped. "It's
a Glavian implosion-gun! He's gone insane! If he fires that thing—!"

            The shed where the gunman had been hiding
erupted in a white actinic blast, accompanied by a
clap!
like thunder
near at hand. A column of dust rose over a wide crater. The Bloorian, having
jumped clear, was running at a brisk pace across the unplowed pasture.

            "Help! Stop!" Magnan was yelling,
treading the floorboards in an instinctive effort to apply the brakes. Retief
slowed and pulled up by a sagging fence. The erstwhile shooter veered away and
made for a clutch of buildings across the field, from which a crowd was
emerging to intercept the Bloorian.

        "Let's let him
go," Magnan offered.

            "We don't have much choice," Retief
pointed out. "Unless you feel like climbing that fence and chasing him on
foot right into the midst of a lynch mob."

            Shish had folded his potent weapon and tossed
the compact pack into the backseat of the Stutz. Now he was back in the
driver's seat, gunning his engine. The ungainly coupe lurched, freed itself
from the ruts, and rolled briskly off along the bumpy road.

            "Look!" Magnan yelped. "It's not
the Bloorian they're after, it's Shish! They'll cut him off!"

            The unpaved track curved to the left, and half
the strung-out mob had split off and was streaming toward an intercept point a
quarter of a mile ahead where the path squeezed between two parallel fences.
Shish was rolling along briskly but not frantically, apparently unaware of the
mob closing on his right flank.

            "Hurry, Jim!" Magnan pled. "After
all, he is a fellow diplomat. We can't let them tear him to pieces before our
very eyes!" he moaned.

            Retief gunned the Mercer, while Magnan
frantically worked the outboard bulb-horn. When they had closed to within fifty
feet of the Stutz, Shish looked back indignantly, making "go away"
motions, but the movement on the right caught one of his outer eyes and he
gunned ahead, ignoring the Mercer closing in on him; he seemed intent on
beating the mob to the ambush point. The first of the locals was already over
the fence when Shish slammed through the narrow point, sending eager attackers
back over the barbed wire. The Mercer masted through the shaking fists of the
thinning crowd in the road. Looking ahead, Magnan saw the unruly mob that had
forged ahead of the Mercer was pouring over, through, and under the fence to
block them off.

            "They don't seem picky as to
whom
they
menace," Magnan commented. "They ought to be
helping
us! After
all, we're pursuing their exploiter! Can't they see it was Shish who committed
the atrocities, while we're merely benign bystanders?"

            "Maybe they thought it was rude of us not
to stop and inquire after their health," Retief suggested, clinging grimly
to the Stutz as it executed a sharp right slalom and vaulted the embankment of
the modern Terran-built approach-road to the port. Once on the hardtop, the
little Stutz showed its horsepower, the same as that of its close relation, the
race-winning Bearcat, and quickly receded into the cloud of dust raised by the
main body of the mob as they swarmed over the guardrails into the right-of-way.
Shish ignored them, sending a number back over the rail in headlong dives.
Retief followed him closely, skidding the big Mercer around the sharp turn.

            "Keep going, Jim!" Magnan cried.
"We can't stop now!"

            The would-be living barricade melted away as
they realized the oncoming Mercer had no intention of halting to be assaulted.
Magnan got a glimpse of bared teeth, flaring eyes, and shaken fists as the
Raceabout flashed past them. Ahead, Shish, in his Stutz, was just doing a turn
on two wheels into the parking area.

            "We've got him now!" Magnan exulted,
when he stops to get his ticket—"

            Shish sheared off the ticket dispenser at ground
level and went careening, not toward the flag-decked reviewing stand, where a
crowd of Bloorians was already gathered, but around it, making for the service
area. Retief stopped and allowed Magnan to debark beside the Terran
ambassador's stretch Turbocad.

            Magnan released a sigh of relief. "Safe at
last!" he breathed, and ducked as a shot rang out. "Jim! A shot rang
out!"

            Retief nodded. "It came from the cargo pick-up
area," he commented. "Save me a place, Mr. Magnan; I'll be
back." He drove off, leaving Magnan staring after him.

            As he rounded the end of the long, low
Operations Building, a spindle-legged Groaci peacekeeper in tarnished greaves
and plain GI eyeshields stepped from between stacked crates and unlimbered a
Bogan-supplied blast-rifle.

            To halt your conveyance and descend
instanter!" he hissed. "To display proper ID, and to go to Perdition,
Soft One!"

            Retief halted the Mercer, stepped down, and
brushing the rifle aside, seized the sentry by the neck and upended him in a
rubbish barrel. He then extricated the weapon and bent the barrel into a U,
while the non-com screeched in fury.

            "Quiet, Tish," Retief ordered the
irate peacekeeper. "Just hang loose while I put the lid on. Looks like a
nice airtight fit, too," he commented as he settled the heavy steel slab
in place.

            "To be destroying issue property of the
Groacian Autonomy!" the Groaci's weak voice echoed inside his can.