Authors: The Plot Against Earth
By
now the troupe was a bedraggled one indeed. Clothing had long since rotted
away to a bare minimum; Catton had sprouted a bushy, startlingly red
beard,
and Royce a straggly gray one.
Sadhig
and the Morilaru male, both coming from races which were not afflicted with
facial hair, had no such adornments.
The women, too, looked seedy and
unkempt. They had no nudity taboo, but they were unhappy about the appearance
of their uncoiled hair, and so wrapped the remnants of their clothing about
their heads to conceal the lack of proper Morilaru hair grooming.
On
the thirty-ninth day, Catton announced that they had covered the estimated five
hundred miles, and that the beacon should be not too far. They set out to
patrol the area. Sadhig built a detector out of equipment that had been taken
from the ship, and a day later they came to the rescue beacon, a tower a
hundred fifty feet high topped by a subspace communicator antenna whose spokes
poked skyward for eighty feet more.
Instructions were posted plainly on the side
of the beacon tower in several dozen tongues—not including Terran, of course,
since the beacon had been erected long before Terra's entry into interstellar
life. Catton read the Morilaru instructions. They were absurdly simple; all he
need
to do was trip a lever, and an
instant-communication beam would go out to the Morilaru space-rescue service.
It would be only a day or so before a pickup ship would arrive.
Catton
prepared to trip the signal. He heard a sudden shout from Royce and one of the
Morilaru women simultaneously, and turned to see what was happening.
Sadhig, a hundred yards away, was casually
training his blaster on his temple. The Skorg was smiling. Catton took two
steps forward, but there was no time to interrupt the act. Sadhig squeezed the
trigger.
They held another funeral that night, while
waiting for the rescue ship to arrive. Sadhig had kept faith; he had served
well on the long trek to the beacon. But he had forfeited his right to live,
in his own eyes, the moment he had entered the lifeship on the doomed
Silver Spear.
Now, with rescue in sight, he had paid his
forfeit.
XII.
A
M
orilaru
ship
picked the five
survivors up early the next morning. Royce and Carton both decided to continue
on to Skorg; the others elected to return to Morilar, where they intended to
bring legal action against the spaceliner's owners for negligence. All five
were taken to a relay point, a Morilaru-colonized planet called Thyrinn, where
Catton and Royce boarded a small passenger vessel bound for Skorg. The trip,
which lasted nine days, was uneventful. It
Was
pleasant to sleep in an air-conditioned cabin again, to shave, to eat
regular meals.
Catton had managed to retain his passport and
identification through all the vicissitudes of the jungle trek. He presented
them now to the authorities at the vast spaceport at Skorgaar, capital city of
the Skorg Confederation. The immigration officer, a wiry, basilisk-faced Skorg,
examined Carton's papers and returned them with a dour smile.
"According
to these you left Morilar more than a month ago. It must have been a slow
trip."
"I came via the
Silver Spear,"
Catton said.
The
Skorg's eyes widened in surprise.
"But—"
Catton
nodded. "Yes. I spent forty days wandering a-round on some jungle planet
five hundred light-years from
Morilar.
But
I'm here, finally. My three Morilaru attaches— there's a notation about them on
the visa, over here—didn't make it. Two died in the wreck, I imagine, unless
they got away in time. The third died in the jungle." "How long do
you plan to stay on this world?" "The visa won't expire for a year. I
don't have any definite plans," Catton said.
A
cab took him to the heart of Skorgaar, and he checked in at a large
metropolitan hotel that catered to aliens. Skorgaar was a city of some twelve
million people; there were always visitors from other worlds here on commercial
trips. Skorg was a large, low-density planet; the gravity,
1.4
Earthnorm, was a bit strong for Carton's comfort, but the climate was
cooler than that of Morilar, for which he was grateful. The worlds were
generally similar culturally; it was a favorite Morilaru theory that the Skorgs
were descended from a pioneer ship of Morilaru spacefarers, thousands of years
in the past, and certainly there were enough biological evidences to support
the notion. Skorgs were gray in color, in contrast to the Morilaru purple, and
their bodies were more elongated, their flesh more sparse. Terran biologists
suspected that they were the same common stock—perhaps both descended from some
ancient race long since extinct, which had colonized the area in the
unimaginable past.
Carton's first official stop on Skorg was at
the office of the Terran Ambassador. He was a lean, short, hardbitten little
professional diplomat named Bryan, who whooped with surprise when Catton
presented his identification.
"They
announced that you were lost on the
Silver Spear!"
Bryan exclaimed. "I got the cable from Morilar weeks ago, from
Seeman."
Catton
shrugged. "I got away in a lifeship, but I was missing until ten days ago.
How many died in the wreck?"
"I
think there were about forty survivors, not counting any who may have escaped
with you. Three lifeships got away before the ship blew.
Four,
altogether.
Including the crew, close to nine hundred died."
"Nine
hundred," Carton repeated softly. Pouin Beryaal had been willing to kill
nine hundred people in order to dispose of one Earthman. If they were that
anxious to kill him, Catton realized, he was going to have to get about his
business swiftly and efficiently.
"I've
come to Skorg for official reasons," Catton said. "I'm investigating
the hypnojewel traffic as a member of the In-terworld Commission on
Crime."
"You think you'll find anything
here?"
"I don't know," Catton said.
"There've been some hints. I mean to look. But I've got another motive for
coming here, besides the official one. You know about Ambassador Seeman's
daughter, of course?"
"The bulletin was spread through the
entire galaxy," Bryan replied. "The Skorg police have been
cooperating to some extent, but there's not much you can do by way of finding
one girl in a galaxy of umpteen trillion people. Or even of finding her on a
single world."
"I
have an idea she may have come to Skorg," Catton said.
"To Skorg?
I told you, we've checked. But with nineteen billion people here, it's
hard to accomplish much. She could be right under our noses and we wouldn't
necessarily find her."
"Maybe 111
be
lucky," Catton said.
"Why
are you so interested? It's nothing personal, is it? I don't mean to pry,
but—"
Chuckling,
Catton said, "It's nothing romantic, if that's what you mean. But I think
her disappearance has something to do with the hypnojewel business. That's why
I'm looking for her."
The
next few days were fruitless ones for Catton. He had Bryan arrange- interviews
for him with the chiefs of the
Skorg
police authorities, but they told him nothing about the hypnojewel trade that
he had not already learned by consulting the Commission's files. And, of
course, no one knew anything about the whereabouts of the girl. They had
searched; but Skorg was a crowded world. Carton got the impression they were
not particularly interested in finding her. They seemed to scoff at the idea
that she might be on Skorg at all, and suggested that she had fled back to
Earth, where she could melt into the billions and never be found.
Carton chafed impatiently. He was getting
nowhere. And, he suspected, time was running out.
He
was sure that Doveril had abducted her. And Doveril was deeply involved in the
hypnojewel trade. Find the girl, find Doveril.
But how?
Where?
And
then there was the business blurted by the dying Morilaru in the jungle. If it
were true, if it had not been merely a fever dream, then Earth lay in imminent
danger. A few matter duplicators, parachuted down from the skies at random,
could crumble a civilization in days. First money, then all material goods
would cease to have value. A world might bring order out of the chaos
eventually, but in how many centuries?
And
Pouin Beryaal was at the heart of the plot, if truth had been told. That was
very neat indeed, thought Catton. Pouin was a figure of major importance on
Morilar. Merikh eMerikh was an influential Skorg noble. Whether Uruod, the
Arenaddin, knew about the scheme or
not hardly
mattered. Enough strength was mustered against Earth as it was.
Where would they get matter duplicators? No
one within the bounds of the accepted galaxy would manufacture them. But
perhaps there was some other source, beyond the hu-manoid worlds. Where, Catton
wondered? He needed an opening. Only luck would give it to him.
Luck did.
It was his sixth night in Skorgaar. He had
been to see the local head of the Crime Commission that day, to find out if
anything significant had been uncovered that might give him a wedge toward
solution of the hypnojewel problem. No help was forthcoming. Catton found
himself far across Skorgaar, in a strange part of the city; it was dinner
time, and he chose a restaurant at random.
It was a plush establishment. The waiters
were not Skorgs but Chennirids, slim green humanoids from a world subservient
to Skorg. The patrons of the restaurant seemed to be largely outworlders on
expense accounts—about half Morilaru, with the rest chiefly Arenaddin and
Dargonid.
Few native Skorgs were to be seen on the
premises. And the menu, when it came, proved to be an exptic one, specializing
in Morilaru cookery. Morilaru food ran to the salty side; Catton ordered a
vegetable dish of Arenadd instead, and got a respectful bow from the Chennirid
waiter.
While
he waited for the food he looked around. The decor was Morilaru. Most of the
patrons were. And there was even Morilaru music playing—tinkling, graceful
music played on that instrument Estil Seeman had been playing that day in the
Embassy. What was its name? Ah, yes—the gondran. He saw now that the player was
seated at the far end of the restaurant, behind him, on a small dais. With some
surprise he noticed that she was an Earthwoman. Then he gasped in shock and
half rose out of his seat, nearly knocking a tray of soup from the waiter's
hand.
The
waiter apologized humbly for his clumsiness. Catton wasn't listening. Currents
of amazement pounded in his mind. Talk about needles in haystacks, he thought!
What luck! What blind luck!
He took a note pad and stylus from his pocket
and printed a note in Morilaru characters, inviting the gondran player to his
table when her stint was finished. He called the waiter over, handed him the
folded note, and said in Skorg, "Take this to the girl playing in the
back. I'd like the pleasure of her company." He gave the man a rip and
watched him cross the room to the girl.
She
played for ten minutes more, having read his note without breaking the thread
of her improvisation. After the final cadence she rose, nodded gracefully in
acknowledgment of the polite applause, and came to Carton's table.
It was Estil, all right.
But
she was no longer the demure, blushing eighteen-year-old of a few months ago.
Carton saw that the moment he saw her eyes. They were woman's eyes. She looked
as though she had found out what misery meant.
It
was her turn to gasp as she recognized Carton.
"You— the
Crime Commission man!"
He
rose, pulled out a chair for her. "Hello, Estil. I didn't expect to find
you so easily."
She
sat, staring at him wordlessly. She seemed unable to speak. Carton said after a
moment, "Shall I order something for you?"
"No—no. Please. I ate before I went
on."
"You played very well."