The Invaders Plan (2 page)

So he had been picked, more or less routinely, to undertake a casual scout, a thing rarely considered important in itself.

As Your Lordship may or may not know, the Royal Space Services, in line with long-stated government policy, keeps an eye on neighboring inhabited systems. They send out scouting ships and, without causing any awareness or incidents amongst neighbors – Gods forbid! – keep tabs on things. By sampling the atmosphere of an inhabited planet they can make a fair estimate of its condition and activities and, by very long-range photographs, they can verify suspicions. It could come under the heading of a sensible precaution.

A "combat engineer," according to the definitions in the
Texts of the Royal Services,
is: one who assists and prepares the way for any and all contacts, peaceful or warlike, and serves his respective service in engineering and combat-related scientific matters.

They make battle and weapon estimates, survey possible forward positions and even fight. So there was nothing strange in ordering Jettero Heller to take command of a vessel and update a scene.

There was also nothing unusual at all in the scouting orders he received: they were routine, even in printed form, issued by the Patrol Section of the Fourteenth Fleet, signed for their admiral by a clerk; in other words, it wasn't even important enough to come to the admiral's attention.

There is a system nearby that has an inhabited planet known locally there as "Earth" which has been receiving scouting attention for many, many centuries. That too has been considered routine: so much so, in fact, that even space cadets are sometimes sent there as a training exercise; they do not land, of course, for that would alarm and alert the inhabitants and there is even a regulation in
The Book of Space Codes –
Number a-36-544 M Section B – which states: And no officer or crewmember shall, in any way, make himself known to any inhabited planet population or member thereof before such planet is announced as an acquisition target; further, that should such landing take place accidentally or such contact be otherwise made, all witnesses to the circumstance shall be nullified; violations shall be punished with the severest penalties; exceptions to this regulation may be expressly ordered by the heads of Royal Divisions but in no case shall any such population be made aware prematurely of the existence or intent of the Confederation.

But I am sure Your Lordship is aware that no court cases have ever arisen around this regulation, so easily is it obeyed: if detected, one simply blows the place up in such a way that it appears to have been a natural catastrophe. There has never been any trouble with this.

Jettero Heller's scout of Earth was ordered and conducted in a highly routine fashion. Later, interviewing the small crew who were part of that scout – some of whom may still be prisoners – I ascertained that they had spent most of the fifteen-week voyage playing gambling games and singing ballads. Combat engineers have no reputation for running disciplined crews or getting electrode polish applied.

It is obvious that all they did was go to Earth's outer atmosphere, sample it, take some readings and long-range photographs and return, a thing which had been done hundreds, perhaps thousands of times.

Jettero Heller landed back at Patrol Base and turned in his records and reports.

Routinely, a copy of such reports also goes to the Coordinated Information Apparatus; the original, of course, pursuing its leisurely way up the extensive chain of command to Fleet.

But this time, and for the first time, and to my eternal despair, this routine was broken. One report. One single, stupid, errant scouting report of a single, stupid planet and I end up in prison confessing my crimes.

Of course, it didn't all happen that quickly or that simply. What did happen is the horrifying tale of MISSION EARTH.

I remember when it all began.

It was one half hour after sunset upon that fatal day when an Apparatus guard yanked me into this affair. It was the eve of the Empire holiday: all offices were closed for two whole days. I remember it all too well. A relaxing trip had been planned with friends into the Western Desert; I was dressed in old hunting clothes; I had just climbed into my aircar and was opening my mouth to order the driver to take off when the door crashed open and a guard urgently directed me to get out.

"Chief Executive Lombar Hisst has ordered me to bring you
at once!"
The guard's gestures were frantic.

There was always a certain terror connected with a summons from Lombar Hisst. Unchallenged tyrant of the Coordinated Information Apparatus, answerable only to the Lord of the Exterior and the Grand Council itself – and answering to them hardly at all – Lombar Hisst ruled an empire of his own. A flick of a finger, an almost imperceptible nod of his head and people vanished or died. The guard, of course, knew nothing and we careened at top speed through the fading green twilight. I racked my skull trying to think of something I had done or had not done that a Secondary Executive of the Apparatus could be held accountable for. There was nothing, but I had within me a sick feeling, a premonition that I had suddenly arrived at a turning point in my life. And events were to prove how right I was.

My decade in the Apparatus had been much like that of any other junior executive of that group. After completing my studies at the Royal Military College – where, as Your Lordship has undoubtedly already discovered, I finished at the bottom of my class and was pronounced unfit for Fleet appointment – I was seconded to Spy School and, doing not too well there, was appointed to the lowest officer grade in the lowest service of the Empire: the Apparatus.

In that degraded service, as you know, there are only a handful of actual officers: each officer has under him some numerous array of Apparatus private regiments, informers and spy groups.

It is well known that the Apparatus receives duplicate records of all domestic police and military police identifications, arrests, trials, banishments and imprisonments – in other words, the billions of separate files existing in every other section of the Empire are
also
filed with the Apparatus. You and everyone else may be aware of that. But it may not be known
why.
And this is valuable data that I forward to you.

The Apparatus uses those files to recruit its own ranks. The murderers, the most vicious criminals that can be found in those records, are approached and enlisted into the Apparatus. That the files are also used for blackmail purposes is, of course, obvious, and explains why the Apparatus is so seldom censured or brought to book as an organization, why it is always furnished such extensive funds and why no questions are asked. And I can suggest here, as an aside, that if legal action is being contemplated against the Apparatus as a whole, to prevent retaliation and undue influence, one should first demand and impound their identification and criminal record files – but I am sure Your Lordship has already thought of this.

In any case, my own career in the Apparatus had been no different from that of other bona fide officers. If I had any gift at all that recommended me to such work it was that of languages: I pick them up rather easily. It was my ability to speak "English,"

"Italian" and "Turkish" (these are three Earth languages) that had prompted, more than anything else, my appointment as Section Chief of Unit 451.

It will give you some idea of the complete unimportance of my post when I describe its scope. Unit 451 covers that area of space which holds just one yellow dwarf star designated as
Blito
on the Voltarian Fleet Astrograph-ic Division charts, but locally called "Sol." This star is the center of a planetary system which, while it holds nine or ten planets, only has one that is inhabitable. This world has the chart designation of
Blito-P3,
being in the third orbit out from that star, but known there as "Earth." From an Empire standpoint, it is regarded as a future way-stop on the route of invasion toward the center of this galaxy: but the Timetable bequeathed us by our wise Ancestors does not call for this step immediately, reserving it for the future – there are many other areas that have to be conquered, civilized and consolidated first. These things take time: one can't leave one's flanks wide open or overstrain resources.

I cannot hide from you – and do not intend to – that the Apparatus had private interests connected with Earth. But at the moment of this peremptory summons, I had no idea there could be anything that had gone awry with these. Nothing unusual had crossed through my information center, everything indicated mere routine. So I could not account for the state in which I found Lombar Hisst.

It was not that Lombar Hisst was ever in a pleasant mood. He was huge, half a head taller than myself. He usually carried a short "stinger" in his left hand, a flexible whip about eighteen inches long with an electric jolt in its tip-lash. He had a nasty habit of lunging at one, seizing him by the tunic lapels, yanking him close and shouting as though one was a hundred feet away. He would do this even to say "Good morning," and when he was really agitated he would also flick one in the leg with the stinger to emphasize each point he was trying to get across. It was quite painful. The most casual contact with Lombar Hisst was, at best, very intimidating.

His office looked like a wild animal's den at all times but just now it was worse. Two interview benches were overturned, a calculator had been stamped to bits on the rug. He hadn't turned on his lights and the twilight, coming in through the barred windows, had turned red: it made him look like he was sitting in black blood.

The instant I entered he came out of his chair like a launched missile. He hurled a wadded ball of paper in my face, seized my tunic lapels, snapped me within an inch of his nose.

"Now you've done it!" he roared. The windows rattled.

He hit me in the leg with the stinger. "Why didn't you stop this?" he screamed.

He evidently thought he still had the paper ball in his hand for he opened his fingers. Then he spotted it on the floor where it had bounced and snatched it up.

He didn't let me read it. He smashed it into my face.

Of course, I didn't dare ask what it was all about. I did try to get hold of the paper. I had just gathered that it must be an official report form, from its mangled edge, when he cracked it out of my grasp with the stinger.

"Come with me!" he bellowed.

At the door he roared for the local commandant of the Apparatus Guard Regiment. He howled for his private tank.

Drives roared, equipment clanged and within minutes we were headed out, a convoy bristling with weapons and black with the uniforms of the 2nd Death Battalion.

The Patrol Base was dark. Row upon row of craft stood along the miles of flat terrain, poised for instant flight but unmanned.

The crews were in their barracks along the southern edge of the field. The lighted windows spattered the distant gloom.

A black-uniformed squad crept silently at our backs and, as we prowled along the ships, avoiding sentries and any pools of light, I could not help but think how much Apparatus work was always done like this: skulking, silent, dangerous, like beasts of prey.

Lombar Hisst was looking at each ship for a set of numbers and letters. He was muttering them over and over as he prowled along. It seemed to me he must have eyes like a lepertige for I could not make out the numbers on the sterns of the innumerable craft and, Devils forbid, we would show no light.

Suddenly, he stopped, moved closer to a towering stern to verify and then whispered, "That's it!
B-44-A-539-G.
This is the ship that made the Earth run!" He held a whispered conference with the squad leader. Seconds later they had picked the lock of the patrol craft airlock. Like shadows, fifteen men of the 2nd Death Battalion had melted aboard. It scared me. What were they going to do? Pirate a ship of the Royal Fleet?

A last flurry of whispers with the squad leader, ending with, "... and hide yourselves well until they're in flight." Then Lombar turned to me and said in a voice he forgot to guard, "Why can't you attend to these things, you (bleep)?" He didn't want any answer. As long as I knew Lombar Hisst, he never waited for any answer from anyone about anything. He did all the talking. Suddenly we were running, crouched over, back along the field edge toward the waiting trucks.

We moved under their unlighted bulk and Lombar spat out a name. The starlight and some reflection from the nearby barracks showed me a small figure crawling down from a cab. I did not recognize the face. He was dressed in the duty uniform of a Fleet orderly – red spats, red belt, red cap, white blouse, white pants-unmistakable. But I knew it was no Fleet spaceman: it would be a member of what we called the Knife Section, dressed in a stolen uniform.

Lombar pushed an envelope into his hand. Two Apparatus mechanics pulled a speedwheeler out of the back of a lorry. Lombar checked and then smeared some mud over its side numbers.

"Don't give that envelope over," snarled Lombar. "Just show it!" He snapped his stinger at the bogus orderly and the speedwheeler went whispering off toward the barracks.

We waited, crouching in the dark beside the black lorries. Five minutes went by. Then six. Then ten. Lorn-bar was getting restless. He had just risen to his feet to take some other action when the furthest barrack's doors flashed open. A set of floodlights went on. Three personnel carriers shot out of a garage and drew up before the doors. About twenty Fleet spacemen threw themselves into the transport and even at that considerable distance one could hear their excitement. They roared off down the field to the ship we had just left.

Lombar stood there, watching through a pair of light magnifiers, grunting from time to time as he checked off expected actions.

The lights of
B-44-A-539-G
flared up. Its chargers began to whine. The personnel carriers drew back. The patrol craft leaped like a lightning flash and was gone into the sky.