Authors: The Plot Against Earth
"We don't know," Pouin Beryaal
said. "They almost seem to enter the galaxy of their own accord."
"We
have suspicions," the Skorg interjected. "There are races in the
universe—non-humanoid races—which do not respond to the hypnotic effect of
these jewels. One of those races might be manufacturing them and filtering them
to the humanoid worlds. We do not know. But the trade in these jewels must be
wiped out."
Carton
nodded weakly. He was a strong man; yet a few seconds' exposure to the gem had
left him limp. "Yes. Earth will do its best in fighting this trade,"
he said.
"The
jewels are absolutely deadly," exclaimed the Arenad-din. "Men have
been known to mail them to their enemies— who look at them and are immediately
trapped. And there are others, voluntary addicts who escape this life by giving
themselves up to the dreamworld the stones offer. Within an hour, the hold is
unbreakable."
Catton
said, "You did well to invite an Earthman to join this Commission. This is
a matter that threatens the well-being of all worlds. It transcends what little
differences of thinking there may be between Earth and the other humanoid
cultures of the galaxy."
"Well
spoken!" Pouin Beryaal said. It seemed to Catton that there was more than
a trace of cynicism in Beryaal's tone. The hypnotic jewels were dangerous, of
course. But the unvoiced enmity between Earth and the Morilar-Arenadd-Skorg
axis would not vanish overnight in response to this threat to universal
well-being. Only a fool would think so, and neither Catton nor the people who
had chosen him for this journey could lay claim to the title of fool.
"Have
you any other—ah—
demonstrations
for me?" Catton asked.
"Just
this," the Morilaru said. He drew a thick portfolio from a drawer in the
table. "It is a file of our investigations and deliberations previous to
your arrival. It may help you to read this, in order to bring yourself up to
date. We will have it coded for your retinal patterns."
Catton
was conducted to a laboratory elsewhere in
the building, and there a technician took readings of his eyes with an
elaborate measuring device. It was a familiar security measure among the
Morilaru. From the retinal readings, a print of his retinal pattern—unique in
the universe, as all were—was taken. The pattern was then embedded through a
simple process on every page of the portfolio Beryaal had given him. As he
turned each page, it would be necessary for Catton to stare at the sensitive
patch for a few seconds, until the correspondence could be established. If he
failed to perform the desensitization, or if any eyes but his scanned the page,
the entire portfolio would char and burn beyond readability within half a
minute.
When
they had finished preparing the portfolio for him, there was no further reason
for Catton to remain in the building. He could not function as a member of the
Commission until he had familiarized himself with the situation and with their
previous conclusions. So, locking the portfolio carefully into his attache
case, Catton made polite but distant farewells to his three fellow
Commissioners and stepped out once again into the blazing heat of Dyelleran,
capital-city of the world Morilar.
It
was early afternoon, now. The daily siesta-period was coming to its end. The
temperature, Catton estimated, was still well over a hundred. He had been
assured before he left Earth that there would be few days when the mercury
dropped as low as ninety.
In a way, he realized, Pouin Beryaal had been
discourteous in calling the meeting for noonday. The heat was at its worst
then; it had been deliberately tacdess to force him to travel from his lodgings
at that time. But Catton was prepared for rudeness on Morilar. Earthmen were
not excessively popular here.
He hailed a cab. It was android-operated,
according to the sign on the door. The android, of course, was of the Morilaru
type, with dark bluish-purple skin and the vestigial bony spikes on its
shoulders. Each race created androids in its own image.
"Take me to the Terran Embassy,"
Catton said.
The
cab pulled away. It was cool inside; he loosened the throatband of his doublet.
Traffic was heavy at this hour, and the trip across town, which had taken less
than fifteen minutes in the morning, now lasted nearly three times as long. At
length, though, the cab drew up outside the high gates of the Embassy. Catton
pulled a couple of Morilaru coins from his pocket and dropped them into the
pay-slot. The android automatically released the door-catch and Cat-ton stepped
out.
Ten
minutes later, he was in his room on the fifth floor of the Terran Embassy,
climbing out of his sweat-soaked clothes and heading for the shower. After a
quick freshening-up, he stretched out on the lounger and rang Service for
something to eat.
He was tired. The Morilaru gravity was about
1.2 that of Earth, and the heat was never-ending. But no one had ever implied
he was going on an easy mission.
There
were rumors circulating in the galaxy that the three established humanoid races
were planning some maneuver that would seriously damage the Terran economy.
None of the talebearers could be very specific; no one had any concrete
evidence. But the rumor persisted, and the Terran World Government was getting
worried.
Coincident
with the rumors about an alien plot against Earth had
come
the request from Morilar for a Terrestrial delegate to a Commission whose job
it would be to investigate and control the illegal interstellar traffic in
hypnojewels. Catton, specially trained for his job, had been chosen as the
delegate—with the additional task of keeping his eyes open and trying to detect
some substance behind the rumors of an anti-Terran conspiracy. What better way
was there to camouflage a special investigator than as a special investigator—for
something else? Catton would be only superficially interested in uncovering the
sources of the hypnojewel trade; his real job was to find out what plans the
Morilar-Arenadd-Skorg worlds might have for bedeviling Earth.
For they were troubled worlds, despite all
their outward signs of calm.
It was only ninety years before—2214, by Earth reckoning—that Earthmen
had broken out into interstellar space. And now a dozen Terran colony-worlds
hung in the sky; Terran traders operated with skill and efficiency on the
planets of the older cultures; Terra had won a place as a ranking galactic
power.
All in ninety years.
Not
surprising, then, that Morilar—whose interstellar era was more than a thousand
years old—feared Earth. Or that Skorg, which once had been dominant in half the
galaxy before the rise of Arenadd, viewed the newcomers with alarm. Nor, for
that matter, that the fleshy people of Arenadd, themselves relatively late
arrivals in the galactic scheme of things, with only a few hundred years of
star travel behind them, should be worried about the rise of a new galactic
power.
Perhaps
the three worlds schemed some way of throttling the Terran expansion.
Which was why Catton had been sent to the outworlds.
He was
an observer; he was to watch, and see, and possibly to discover what steps the
threatened worlds meant to take to maintain their galactic supremacy.
After Catton had refreshed himself and eaten,
he turned his attention to the portfolio Pouin Beryaal had given him.
He lifted the metal hasp and stared at the
solemn warning on the first page:
NOTICE!
This
book is for use by authorized persons only. It is coded to prevent unauthorized
persons from obtaining access to its contents. Turning this page without taking
the proper precautions will result in instantaneous destruction of the entire
volume.
Catton
turned the page to look at the words that were meant for his eyes alone. In the
margin at the upper left-hand comer of the page was a small pinkish oval patch,
about the size of a man's thumb. As he had been instructed to do, Catton stared
at the patch, counting off five seconds. Then he began to read. The code had
been keyed in; for the next ten minutes, he could leave that page of the
portfolio open without fear of its destruction. A longer look would require
him to desensitize the protective patch a second time.
He
read with care, pausing each time he turned the page to desensitize the
marginal patch. It developed from the reports that the Commission had already
uncovered considerable data. Included in the papers he had been given were
details on the number of hypnojewels in the galaxy-more than a thousand were
known to exist, and many of these had already been located and confiscated. But
each year a dozen or more new gems entered the galaxy. The problem was not so
much to track down and confiscate those jewels that already were in
circulation, as to cut off the pipeline at its beginning.
There
were speculations that the jewels originated in the fringes of the galaxy, on
one of the worlds populated by non-humanoid beings. Eleven different
non-humanoid races had been found to suffer no ill effects as a result of
handling the jewels. But any humanoid who stared at one for more than a few
seconds found
himself
drawn inextricably into the
hypnotic web.
Carton finished leafing through the
collection of transcripts. The situation seemed a genuine one: the aliens were
troubled about the spread of this hypnojewel thing, and they had decided to
enlist the aid of Earth by inviting an Earthman to join the Commission. There
was no actual state of hostility between Earth and the other three galactic
powers, of course; there was only a chill incordiality that had led a Terran
historian to revive an old term, and dub the present galactic situation a Cold
War.
Cold
War it was. Terra and her few colonies versus the seventy worlds controlled by
the Morilar-Arenadd-Skorg axis. Diplomatic relationships still prevailed, and
the worlds still engaged in friendly trade. But there was no telling when some
crucial act of hostility might touch off an open war. And the advent of Earth
onto the galactic scene had driven the other three worlds into their closest
alliance in centuries.
Catton decided to test the effectiveness of
the Morilar secrecy precautions. Leafing through the portfolio once a-gain, he
selected one page—it contained some unimportant data on budgetary
appropriations for the Commission—and ripped it loose from the binding.
Carefully, Catton closed the portfolio, and placed the loose page on the table
before him, deliberately neglecting to key in the sensitized patch.
He got results in less than thirty seconds.
The sheet of paper began to turn brown along the tear; then, almost
instantaneously, its entire surface was swept with a wash of blue flame, and
within moments nothing but crumpled ash lay on the table. Catton nodded and
cleared up the mess. He was going to have trouble carrying on his investigation
if
all
secret Morilaru documents were as proof to
spying as this one obviously had been.
Rising,
he locked the portfolio away in the privacy-cabinet in his closet, and
proceeded to dress, formally, in a stiff tunic of green with gold trim, a wide
orange sash, and high polished boots. This evening there would be a reception
at the Embassy in his honor.
When he was dressed, Catton locked his room
and strolled down the wide, carpet-cushioned corridor of the Embassy's floor.
It was a spacious and attractive building.
The sound of music was in the air—tinkling
alien music, played on a strange instrument that produced a plangent tone not
unlike that of a harpsichord. Following the music, Catton rounded the bend in
the corridor and found himself at the entrance to a drawing-room which was
occupied by several people. The music came to an abrupt halt at his arrival.
Catton saw that the people in the room were
not all human. There were five: two Morilaru, lean and angular in their tight
clothing, and three Terrans. Catton recognized two of the Terrans—Estil, the
Ambassador's eighteen-year-old daughter, and her tutor, an elderly woman named
Mrs. Larch. The remaining person was a Terran of dignified aspect who wore
formal business clothes.
It
had been Estil who had been playing, it seemed. She was seated at a wide
keyboard connected to a complex stringed instrument of alien design.
"Pardon me," Catton said. "I
didn't mean to intrude. I simply heard music, and—"
"Please
be welcome here," Estil said. She spoke well, but formally; she had the
accents of a child who had been raised with care, by a too-devoted governess.
Catton had formed that impression the night before, during their brief meeting
when he had arrived at the Embassy from the spaceport.
The
girl rose from the keyboard and, graciously taking Catton's hand, led him all
the way into the room. "This is Mr. Lloyd Catton, of Earth," she*
announced. "He arrived on Morilar last night. He's—uh—a member of the new
Inter-world Commission on Crime. Am I right, Mr. Catton?" "Precisely,"
he told her.
She
made introductions. "This is Doveril Halligon," she said.
"My music teacher.
And his friend,
Gonnimor Cleeren."
"How
do you do," Catton said gravely to the two aliens. They bowed in return.
"I
think you know Mrs. Larch," Estil said. "And this," she went on,
pointing to the somber, middle-aged gentleman in business clothes, "is Mr.
Bartlett, a friend of my father's from Earth."
Catton
and Bartlett shook hands. Catton felt vaguely uncomfortable about the entire
little scene. It was more convenient for him to stay at the Embassy than
anywhere else on Morilar, but he was not easily at home in the milieu of
drawing-room music recitals.
He
said a trifle awkwardly, "The music sounded charming from a distance, Miss
Seeman. I'd appreciate it if you'd continue playing."
Estil
flushed prettily and returned to the keyboard. Her governess said, "The
instrument is known as the gondran. Estil has been studying with Doveril
Halligon for two years now. She has become quite proficient."
Catton
stared at the alien music teacher for an instant. Doveril Halligon did not meet
the glance. Instead he signaled to Estil, who began to play—falteringly, at
first, but gaining in confidence after the first few measures. The piece
seemed, to Catton's untutored ears, to be a difficult one; the keyboard
technique was tricky, and the harmonies were strange. He joined politely in the
applause when the last tinkling note had died away.
An Embassy android entered the drawing-room
bearing a little tray of cool drinks, and a few minutes of sociability followed
the end of Estil's recital. Catton, improvising desperately, managed to keep
the conversation going as he discussed musical techniques with the two aliens,
while Mrs. Larch and Estil exchanged sentences with Bartlett. Then the
groupings broke up. Catton and Estil started across the room toward each other.
Suddenly the girl stumbled and began to fall to her knees.