Mission: Earth "Villainy Victorious" (36 page)

"Well, those that commit crimes like that," said the Countess Krak, "will often turn completely around and campaign against such deeds. What I want to do is send Colonel Gaylov to France with the two little boys."

"You must be awfully mad at France. They'd corrupt the whole nation!"

"No, I don't think so," said the Countess. "You see, I've been talking to the colonel and he's absolutely spinning with the glory of it."

"Of what?"

"To show up in France and use the old KGB network to convince everybody he's the reincarnation of Joan of Arc. I didn't even touch the helmet. He's sure he can be the greatest Joan of Arc that ever lived!"

Heller gave her a sizable draft on the Grabbe-Manhattan Bank in Paris, to be paid out to Gaylov, month by month for years.

When she put him and the two boys on the plane the following morning, there was a holy gleam in ex-Utanc's eye. Standing there in a silver travelling gown, he/she said, "You are an angel and I bless the day I met you. I can in truth say that I was visited by the Lord of Hosts on high. France is about to become the holiest and most drugless place on Earth." And they were gone.

Handling Babe was not quite as happy an occasion for Heller.

He got her on the phone and said, "Mrs. Corleone, I'm terribly sorry to have to cancel out on the wedding you had planned for the cathedral next month."

Babe, startled, said, "She's left you?"

"Oh, no," said Heller. "It's just that things got pretty urgent."

"Oh, I get it. You're going to pull a fast justice of the peace before those nine months and the stork catches up with you. Well, all right, son, Mama understands. Just don't forget to name the baby Giuseppe after 'Holy Joe' if it's a boy, or Alma Maria after me if it's a girl. And get that beautiful countess into bed and resting as soon as you're hitched and you leave her alone until she delivers. You hear me now, Jerome, and don't interrupt. You're not doing me out of a grandchild, do you hear?"

"Yes, Mrs. Corleone."

"And can this 'Mrs. Corleone' stuff. You can't soft-soap your own mother. Get that girl to the justice of the peace quick, you hear me?"

"Yes, ma'am."

"All right, then. And come back when the coast is clear and she can be seen in public again. You're a dear

boy, Jerome, but you sure as hell take a lot of guidance. Keep your nose clean, kid." There was an audible sniff. "I got to run off now, something's in my eyes. Bye-bye, son."

Heller's own eyes, as he hung up, were wet. He doubted that he would ever see her again.

Regulations required that an installation on a foreign planet could not be abandoned without being destroyed. There were many reasons for this: included amongst them was the misuse of such a base for piracy and smuggling.

Jettero Heller, as a competent combat engineer, did a competent job of setting it up. He used metal-disintegrator mines. These, inserted near connection boxes and along conduits, would cause an atomic shift of heavier metals to silica: with a surge of enormous heat from the converted atoms, every piece of metal that comprised the hangar area would become sand. This meant that the tension-beam boxes would go and the twist and stresses in the rocks that had been restrained through a thousand earthquakes would no longer be braked. The result would be a furious flash of fire and then a wall collapse. It would simply appear that an earthquake had caused the mountain to collapse into an unsuspected fissure.

He attached the fuses to a central firing box and this he triggered to a remote control.

"Bolz," he said to the captain of the
Blixo,
"Iam going to have to trust you. You will not join the Fleet. Your cargo will not arrive until the day after we are gone. When you have loaded and exited spaceward, your last act must be to push this button." And he gave him the very small box.

"What will happen?" said Bolz.

"Well, don't experiment," said Heller. "The
Blixo
had better be up there a couple miles when you do it. Every piece of metal in this hangar will disintegrate. A human body contains a lot of iron and anybody standing around will also become sand. So don't leave anybody in here."

Bolz looked at the remote. "It doesn't have a safety catch."

"Why should it?" said Heller. "You'll find it pretty hard to push. It won't go off by accident. But my order to you is
don't delay in having here.
And when you do, push it."

Bolz smiled quietly to himself: not only would it not go off by accident, it would not go off at all. Contrabanding was too lucrative, he was becoming rich; he could buy an old space tub, retire from the Apparatus and smuggle to his heart's content. "All right," he said, "I'll be glad to do you this favor in return for my liberty and life. You have my word on it, Officer Heller." And he put the remote in his pocket.

They were almost ready now. The freighters were loaded with every piece of repair equipment and supplies they could salvage. They had even dismantled the line-jumper and stowed it in a hold. The thousand details were coming to an end. It was the evening of the third day.

Heller called Izzy, Bang-Bang and Twoey and told them guardedly that he had to take a trip and rang off quickly so that they would not suspect this "little trip" was forever.

According to arrangements with Prahd, an ambulance brought Cling the Lofty in the fluid container with all connections active. The Emperor was still unconscious. The tub was masked by an opaque cover and no one could see who was in it.

The tug was in the deepest recess of the overcrowded hangar.

Heller got hold of Bolz and Oh Dear. Without seeming to do so, he positioned them so they could see the fluid container with an unidentified being in it being loaded aboard the tug.

"Odur," said Heller to the catamite, "you are a courier. I have something for you that must arrive in no other hands than those of Lombar Hisst." He produced a triple-sealed packet.

Oh Dear stared at it, unwilling to touch it. He was stunned at this irregularity. Something from Royal Officer Heller to Hisst who was his bitterest enemy?

"Take it," said Heller. "Do not tamper with the seals or he will suspect you have opened it. And if he suspects that, he may very well kill you when he reads it."

"Oh, no!" shivered Oh Dear. "I don't want to take it if it's that dangerous!"

"Well," said Heller, "I'm very afraid that you would find it very dangerous not to take it. If Hisst found out you had it and didn't deliver it, then he certainly would kill you."

Oh Dear let out a small scream. But he took hold of the packet, holding it like it was burning his fingers.

Heller pointed up to where Prahd was carefully getting the fluid tub into the tug airlock. "Also, you and

Bolz should both notice the fact that a sick person is being put aboard the
Prince Caucalsia
with a doctor in attendance."

The significance of it did not register with either one. But they dutifully noted it.

The Countess Krak came out of the tunnel from the villa, pushing mounds of luggage and boxes on a cart. The hangar crew who had been handling the fluid container with Prahd assisted her in loading them.

Heller, going over to give her a hand up the ladder, suddenly stopped. "What's that yowling?"

"I don't hear anything," said the Countess Krak.

"Lady, what are you up to?" said Heller.

"It's just the cat."

"We've only got one cat. It can't be making that much noise."

"Jettero, you are cruel. You expected poor Mister Calico to go all the way off to Voltar and leave Earth forever without a lady friend."

Heller looked at the boxes now being swung into the airlock. "A lady friend? But that sounds like more than two cats."

"Lady friends, then. It just accidentally happened that Mudur Zengin brought down half a dozen female calico cats yesterday. There's also a couple of males. You wouldn't want them getting inbred, would you? But if you don't like the yowling, maybe I can teach them to sing. Good. I knew you would agree." And she went on up the ladder.

Heller shook his head over the cargo he was carrying. An Emperor, a cellologist and nine cats.

He walked across the jammed spaceship hangar: made for five freighters, it now held six and the tug. A knot of officers that carefully excluded Bolz was waiting for him. They were the captains of the five ships and Faht Bey.

Heller motioned for them to bring their heads in close. "Your rendezvous point is coordinates 678-N/567B/ 978R. Write it down. 678-N/567B/978R." He watched while they did so. "It is a seven-week voyage. I will be five days on the way so I will land and make arrangements and then come out to the rendezvous point in space and guide you in."

"Sir," said one of the captains, "these coordinates are on the edge of the star Glar. I have to inform you that there is war in that area."

"I know," said Heller. "That is where we are going. The Confederacy is under the control of Lombar Hisst; the safest place we can go is to take sanctuary under Prince Mortiiy on Calabar."

A shock went through them.

"We will be welcome, I think," said Heller, "because we carry repair tools, technicians and men. Mortiiy has managed to hold out for five years. The Apparatus is the only force pressing the attack there. Calabar is an awfully big planet."

"Sir," said another captain, "there must be some other reason."

"Well, yes there is," said Heller. "I have reason to believe that if Lombar Hisst knows I have gone there, he will commit all his forces to the attack of Calabar."

"Is there some benefit in this?" said Faht Bey.

"Yes," said Heller. "He will not then attack Earth. You have a right to know that the reason we are going there is to save this planet."

They looked at him doubtfully. Then one said, "Maybe you figure he will whittle down all his forces throwing them against Calabar."

"That he will," said Heller. "Unless something happens to sour my relations with the Fleet and Army, neither one will cooperate in what they will consider to be an insanity-f-scale war just to get hold of me. But I don't want to seem to have such a grandiose idea of my own importance. I happen to have something Hisst wants very badly. He'll come for us, all right, and unless by some fluke he gets Fleet and Army help, he'll shatter himself against the hundred-thousand-foot peaks of Calabar."

"Well, we've all wanted to get out of the Apparatus and be free men again," said another captain, "and we're willing to work for the chance. But how will Hisst know that you have gone to Calabar?"

"That's why we didn't seize the
Blixo,"
said Heller. "I just gave the courier on it a letter to Lombar Hisst. I told him what I have. And I told him we would be waiting for him on Calabar. He'll go crazy and throw in everything he's got. And, without help from the other services, that will be the end of Lombar Hisst."

They grinned suddenly. They rushed off to their ships.

One by one Heller watched them as the spaceships shot up into the night.

Heller waved a hand to the captain of the
Blixo,
"Be sure you have a good passage to Voltar!" he shouted. He went into the tug's airlock, closed it and sent the
Prince Caucalsia
spaceward ho!

Captain Bolz smiled and scratched his hairy chest. The hangar and base, empty now of everything except the
Blixo,
had ceased to exist as an extension of Apparatus authority. He had his own plans.

In his cabin he got dressed in Western clothes. He put a wad of Turkish lira in his wallet. A frightened Oh Dear stared at him.

"We're supposed to wait for our cargo and go," said Oh Dear. "I'm certain Officer Heller is right. If I don't deliver this and Hisst finds I have not, I'll be dead."

"To Hells with Officer Heller," said Bolz. "They left that Daimler-Benz in the yard of the villa. Even that old driver with the funny laugh is still hanging around. I'm going out there, stop him from stealing the car and go on up to Istanbul and see my friend the widow."

Bolz stopped to give his mate orders to pick up the cargo when it arrived by air and load it and then, with a jaunty air despite his bulk, went out and found Ters who, for a consideration, was shortly rolling him in luxury through the night to Istanbul.

Throughout the entirety of the next day, a frightened Oh Dear waited. He hardly concerned himself with the arrival of the cargo when it was brought in by the mate and crew from the airport in the afternoon. Oh Dear conceived that Bolz might be deserting and this would leave him captainless and unable to get back to Voltar. He didn't speak a single Earth language: he saw himself stranded.

Dusk came, the light vanishing above the electronic illusion. No Bolz. If he had been there, they could leave in an hour.

The upper hole in the mountain went black. The hours dragged. Oh Dear began to be afraid of the hangar. It was so empty that his footfalls as he paced scared him with their echoes. He began to get the idea that the place was peopled now with ghosts.

Midnight came and went. One o'clock took forever to arrive. The digitals of his watch seemed to be motionless and refusing to move onward toward two. Then it became two and then two-thirty.

A loud sound somewhere made Oh Dear scream.

It was Bolz.

He had brought a truckload of counterfeit Scotch. He got his crew out and they got it aboard.

Bolz was himself pretty drunk and considerably smeared with lipstick.

It was three o'clock in the morning when the captain finally began to mount the ladder to the airlock as the last one aboard.

There was an abrupt roar overhead.

Wonderingly, thinking a freighter might have come back, Bolz got down off the ladder and stared up at the hole through the mountaintop.