Mission: Earth "Villainy Victorious" (19 page)

"I hope you know what you're doing," the warder said. "The people you selected were not the ones
I
would have picked for parole. You passed over many a bird down there that have maybe reformed. Some of these you picked are probably killers we never got the goods on. Those women are a bad lot-capable of anything. I think they fooled you with their looks. But you guys in the Apparatus always have been crazy. We pick 'em up and you turn 'em loose. The government pays us to prevent crime and pays you to commit it. Funny world."

Madison handed the now-stamped papers back.

"You got forty-eight killers there," the warder said. "Don't turn your back on them. Good luck."

He walked a few paces toward the prison doors and then changed his mind and faced the tattered, filthy group grinning at him in the wind and spotlight glare. In a loud, harsh voice he said, "Listen, you bird droppings. If any one of you show up here again, I'll put you in the iron box and down in the darkest hole and we won't even bother to bury you when you die. You'll stay free only as long as this Apparatus officer here is still alive. Your papers say you are to be returned here any time he says so. If you run away from him, a warrant goes out for you and back here you come. You belong in Hells, not in free air." He pointed emphatically at Madison. "Obey that man, you (bleepards), or you're dead!"

Madison watched the warder tramp away. The fellow had earned his money: he had turned total control of these convicts to Madison with that speech even though he might suspect that Madison would order them to commit crimes.

Earlier, from the prison, Flick had called Chalber and out of the night here came three air-coaches and an airbus to ferry back the Zippety-Zip drivers. They flashed down out of the night and into the glare of the wall spotlight. They were shiny new vehicles, sparkling and sleek.

A driver popped out of the Zippety-Zip ferry airbus, spotted Madison and came over with papers to be stamped. While he waited, the driver stared at the prisoner group.

Flick had begun to sort them out and move them to stand beside different vehicles. The convict drivers were getting genned in by the ferry people.

"Ouch," the man beside Madison said. "What a Hellish lot! You're actually putting them in clean, new air-coaches!" He looked closer. "What a bunch of killers!" Then he shrugged and took the papers back. "Well, they're your vehicles now. Carry whom you please. Wow!"

Madison went over to the groups as the ferry airbus took off hastily.

Looking into the faces, he began to check his list. It was composed of:

Madison finished his body check and despite the stench, a pulse of exultation began to course through him.

One thing they had in common. It was chief amongst the several quick tests he had used. If they tried hard, they could lay aside the killer stamp and appear totally honest and sincere. If they concentrated, they could even talk in persuasive voices. Oh, they would require some work and practice, that he understood. But he always expected that. A master at it like himself could drill it in.

A glow of eagerness built up to a fiery excitement within him. What luck!

HE HAD HIS CREW!

The exact people he needed to get on with his job!

He felt he could rise to heights now never before achieved!

Oh, how lucky Heller was, to have him for his PR!

He must not let anything stop him now!

There was a holdup on departure.

The convicts were all loaded. The felon drivers were at the controls of the air-coaches. No Flick.

Madison looked around the black and gritty courtyard, noting there was a turret gun still trained on them from the wall. He wanted to get out of there before something untoward happened. He didn't want to shout and raise a commotion.

Then he saw a glow was coming from the Model 99. He raced over to it.

Flick was bent over one of the panel screens: three-dimensional colored maps were stopping, shifting, blurring on it. They were all of mountains.

"You're keeping us waiting," said Madison impatiently. "Let's get out of here. What on
Earth
are you doing NOW?"

"I'm looking for a place to take this gang," said Flick. "There's a lot of mountains but it's not like on Calabar. On Voltar, I can't find any caves."

"And what do you want caves for?"

"To train! You got to train a gang. You can't just let them blunder into a job. It all has to go off like clockwork-clip, clip, clip! Now, there's some old ruins on the other side of the Blike Mountains-some town that got knocked out in a revolt ten thousand years ago, it says. And it would do, except only this airbus can cross the Blike Mountains. Those air-coaches can't fly at fifty thousand feet. I got PROBLEMS!"

"Well, Flick, I don't see why we don't go to the town-house in Joy City."

"Oh, no! That would be cheating!"

"Well," said Madison, "you can do what you please, but I'm going to take MY gang there."

"YOUR gang-MY gang! What's this? Are we splitting up? Hells, that could cause a gang war!"

"Oh, we should do anything to avoid that," said Madison. "Look, I've got a compromise. The 76th floor is said to be just ordinary. It's the rest of the upper floors that all the loot is in. I promise faithfully not to let anybody go up to the upper four floors."

Flick frowned. He thought it over. Then he said, "All right. Nobody goes into the upper four floors until we're ready to rob them. So that's settled. We go to the 76th floor of the townhouse."

Madison started to withdraw to signal the air-coaches. "Wait a minute," said Flick. "It will look awful suspicious going into the townhouse in that swank neighborhood with a bunch of prisoners in rags. The cops would be all over us like a blanket. We'll go rob a clothing warehouse first."

"NO!" said Madison.

"Yes!" said Flick. "I compromised on the 76th floor of the townhouse. Now you can compromise on something. I know of the swankiest men and women's clothing outlet you ever heard of. HUGE. Even noblemen's stores get their stock from that place. Besides, I need to put my footwoman in a uniform: she's got awful big breasts and is going to need a big selection to choose a uniform from, or we won't get a fit. So, as long as I've got to get her one, we'll just outfit the whole gang in one go."

Madison looked at him aghast.

"Classy Togs Warehouse is the name. It's in the outskirts of Commercial City, whole area deserted at this time of night. I cased the joint. It's only got one watchman and he's old."

Seeing the determination, Madison felt helpless. "I'm afraid that I'll wait outside."

"Oh, good. You be the whistle man!" And Flick leaped out and raced to the air-coaches, ordering the drivers to follow him, whispering to each they were off to do their first job and get some clothes.

Shortly they soared into the air out of the courtyard and strung out, streaking down the coast. A moon had risen and was bathing the night with a soft green glow. The Domestic Confederacy Prison's bulk disappeared behind. Then even the mountains were gone.

Flick was chortling happily. "Man, we're off on our first job!"

Madison looked down. They were speeding along moon-bathed beach, the surf long ribbons as it purled against the sand.

Madison looked back.

NO COACHES!

"HALT!" he screamed at Flick. "You were going too fast!"

"WHAT?" said Flick. "No air-coaches? I only been doing three hundred. Those coaches can do four hundred easy! They've escaped!"

He flipped the Model 99 around in the air and sent its scanners flashing all around the sky.

NO BLIPS!

No sign of air-coaches on the screen.

"Well, (bleep) them!" raged Flick. "That's gratitude! The lousy (bleepards) have taken off to do their own job!"

"Let's go back the way we came," said Madison. "Maybe they crashed. Can you do a ground search with something?"

Flick punched around and got a metal-detector beam working and registering.

They sped back up the moonlit sand. The tips of the mountains to the north rose once more as they headed back.

Then, A BLIP. TWO BLIPS. THREE BLIPS!

Three air-coaches down there on the sand!

Fearing the worst, they speeded near and did a fast pass.

THE COACHES WERE EMPTY!

"Oh, Gods," said Flick. "They've escaped inland! We'll never find them in that scrub. Where the Hells is the body-heat detection button?"

"You don't need one," said Madison. He was pointing.

The group wasn't inland. It was down in the surf, Were they fighting?

The Model 99 swooped nearer and landed with a thunk in the sand. Madison leaped out.

Convicts were running everywhere!

"WHEE!" they were shouting. "WHEE!"

Madison caught an arm of a naked woman as she raced by. But she was gone, shouting, "Whee!"

He spotted another one who had stopped to catch his breath and quickly went over. It was one of the cooks/ logistic personnel.

"What's going on here?" demanded Madison of the naked man.

He was catching his breath. He finally said, "I'm afraid it's all my fault, Chief. Your Lieutenant Flick told us we were going to get new clothes tonight so I said, 'Let's throw all these rags away!' I think they got a little enthusiastic."

A voice was at Madison's elbow. The director, naked as the day he was born, said, "Isn't it great? If my cameraman just had a camera, I could really get it in the can. And show it as the 'Rites to the Goddess of the Sea.' Hells, I'll direct it anyway. YOU THERE! GRAB THAT WOMAN AND PITCH HER OFF THOSE ROCKS!"

Madison raced back to the Model 99. It had every known kind of noisemaker: sirens, klaxons, scream-beams, moans and bomb blasts. He pushed them all. A dreadful assortment of sound racketed across the waves and sand. Naked convicts came streaming out of the water and rushing in from the dunes to see what was up.

Madison found a floodlight knob and pushed it. The immediate scene went a glaring yellow.

He was surrounded now by a mob of naked bodies. He rapidly made a count. The last one was just arriving: he now had forty-eight.

"Blast!" cried Flick, above the thunder of the surf, "How we going to do our job with no clothes?"

"You said the job was to get clothes," somebody yelled.

"That's right!" cried another.

A woman shouted, "You can beat us and we won't put those rags back on!"

Madison saw mutiny in the air. He motioned Flick to be silent. "I think you did just great!" he shouted. "Just be sure you don't leave those rags lying around.

People will think somebody has escaped. So gather them up and we'll be on our way."

The throng disintegrated.

Shortly a pile of rags was gathered in one heap just above the water's edge. Somebody got a laser-lighter from an air-coach and touched off a blaze.

That would have been all right but somebody else promptly found some driftwood and piled it on the flame and then somebody else found some more and they had a bonfire. They thought that was great and, grabbing hands, began to dance around it in two rings going opposite ways.

Then, mysteriously, sweetbuns and sparklewater from the lockers of the Model 99 began to get tossed from hand to hand. They had robbed the airbus!

Then they were all sitting, toasting sweetbuns on long sticks and guzzling sparklewater from jugs. And somebody began to sing a song!

Flick was seething. "Some gang! Lay into 'em, Chief. Kick some sense into their heads. They've got a job to do tonight!"

"You
lay into them and kick some sense into their heads," said Madison.

"You're the boss. They've got to learn to respect you."

"You're
the lieutenant. You've got to teach them respect for me."

"I'm too disgusted," said Flick. "I'm going over and sit in the airbus."

The sweetbuns had vanished. The sparklewater jugs were empty. They had finished the hot jolt and were smoking the puffsticks.

Madison got up. He said, above the surf, "All right. It's getting late. Let's be on our way."