The Second Murray Leinster Megapack (94 page)

Kit’s father said unsteadily: “Your prisoner, here, just heard what you said. Was that wise?”

Brent stared at the trussed-up Rudl. He seemed unconscious. But Brent leaned over him and lifted an eyelid.

A pupil—an eye glared at him. He was awake. An unconscious man’s eyes would have rolled back and showed only white.

Brent laughed.

“It wasn’t wise for him. If I know rotten governments, when they send somebody out to do dirty-work, they give them a psycho test afterward to make sure they didn’t learn anything they shouldn’t. So Rudl, now, is going to learn something he won’t like. If we passengers are killed—which begins to look possible—and if Rudl lives to get back, he’ll be sorry, because when his psycho test shows that he’s found out why you two needed to be killed…”

Kit stared at him. Brent nodded at her.

“There’ve been four planets found with all their cities looted and all their people dead. You, sir,—” Brent looked, at the Earth Commerce Commissioner— “you found out the first clue to what’s happening. You were served
vistek
at a banquet in the palace of the planet ruler of Khem IV. And
vistek
doesn’t grow on this side of the galaxy, and can’t be brought here. It’s just as impossible to have
vistek
on Khem IV as it would be to build a space-fleet capable of murdering and looting whole planets, without a word of the matter leaking out. It’s impossible. But it’s happened. And you’ve guessed the answer, I suppose, just as I have. And now our friend Rudl may guess it too. But if he gets back home with the news, his government will kill him for knowing too much.” Then Brent said grimly, “He probably knows how, too. Just to make sure—”

He bent over the bound man, whose eyes were now open and rolling wildly.

“Rudl, your home planet’s the base from which ships take off to loot and murder. The ships weren’t built there and they aren’t manned there. They come from a long way off in a brand-new fashion which isn’t overdrive. If you get back home, the psycho tests will show you know that much, and I suspect you know they’ll spend a lot of time and effort on you, trying to get you to tell them more.”

The beady eyes of the prisoner were wild with terror.

“I don’t like this man,” said Brent. “I’d intended to turn out the lights and let him wake up in the darkness. In blackness and silence and unable to move a muscle, he’d probably have thought he was dead and in hell. But this is better. Come on—”

He led the way out of the cabin. He locked the door behind him, with one of the keys no passenger was supposed to have.

CHAPTER VI

There was a place on Procus II where the air was very, very, still and the atmosphere was one of utter unreality because there were no noises. There were no noises at all. There was a village a little distance off—quaint, comfortable houses, and a tower for the reception of power for the houses and farms nearby, and there was a highway which was straight and white. But there were no sounds.

It was uncanny. The grass was suitably green, and it grew thriftily. The trees throve. But there were no insects. No birds flew. The barnyards of the farmhouses showed no motion whatever. Nobody moved in the village street. Nothing happened.

The really incredible thing, though, was the stillness. If there had been anyone to notice, the whole landscape would have seemed like an incredibly perfect stereo-view—frozen in color and in silence. There should have been tiny mites crawling feverishly in the: grasses. There should have been flying things in the air. The highway should have had—at least occasionally—a smoothly streamlined vehicle rushing to the sound of high-pitched whistling from beyond the horizon to pass swiftly upon the long white way.

But nothing moved for a long, long time. The village was utterly still. The fields were utterly silent. The air was utterly empty.

Presently a little wind began to blow. Then there were the sounds it made. There were no others. Over all the planet Procus II there was no sound except that of the wind in the trees, and the pattering of rain, and the sound of surf on its beaches.

There would be no other sounds until men came from somewhere and buried its dead people and moved into the empty houses and began to replace the treasures that looters had taken away, and began to live there again. They would bring animals, at first, and then birds and insects too. Men would not like to live on a world where there were no longer any noises except of their own making. They would hear ghosts. And men do not like to live with ghosts.

But the fields were very bright and green in the sunshine…

* * * *

In Brent’s own cabin, Den Harlow, who was an Earth Commerce Commissioner but whose face was bruised and swollen and who had blood down the side of his face—Den Harlow said quietly, “What are you?”

Brent had an open traveling-bag on the bunk. It did not contain clothing. It was a tool-chest. But it contained a very curious assortment of tools and instruments. He chose with some care but more haste. He was stuffing his pockets.

“I’m a man in a hurry,” he observed. “Why do you ask?”

“I want to know,” said Kit’s father mildly. “Because either you are an extraordinary fool, or you are extraordinary in some other way.” He drew out a small medal, hanging on a chain about his neck. He twisted it oddly and showed it to Brent “Does this mean anything to you?”

Brent hesitated. Then he said, “Y-yes. But it doesn’t put me under your orders. I’m afraid I rank you.”

Den Harlow, who was a Very Important Person indeed, turned to his daughter and said drily:

“The Profession.” Then he looked at what Brent showed him and added to Kit, “I am ranked. I do take orders from him.”

“I’d like it,” said Brent, “if you would get this suicide-complex out of your daughter’s mind.”

Kit’s eyes were glowing. She drew in her breath sharply. The Profession, of course, was something wholly unofficial, and wholly unpaid, and it was usually considered fabulous. It was an activity that nobody admitted to exist, because it was contrary to all reason. Not one person in ten thousand had heard even a rumor of it on Earth. Elsewhere it was not even a rumor, but it was very much of a necessity.

There was not, though, any simple way to describe it. It was a loose association. Some of them had official position and rank, like Kit’s father. Some were quite inconspicuous individuals, like Brent. They did things which were often illegal and frequently preposterous, and they were never rewarded at all. Sometimes they were severely punished. But those who were of the Profession were very proud of their membership and their work.

It had started long, long ago. With tens of thousands of colonized planets in the galaxy, an Earth imperium was impossible as a practical matter. Even a planetary government, for so large a population as Earth had, was almost unworkable. There is a limit to the number of people who can actually be represented by any organization with authority. On Earth, the first planetary government proved unwieldy. No government could function efficiently over such great areas and over such masses of people. On Earth, the first planetary government had to subdivide into associated nations of practical size, and the top authority was now a Council with limited powers over individuals. It had to be that way! From the first it was realized that Earth could not rule its colonies. They had to be free in order to exist.

Earth’s colonial governments were ones of every conceivable complexion. But Earth could not interfere with them. It could not fight them without conquering them, it could not conquer them without ruling them, and it could not rule them. An interstellar government was simply not a practical matter if the welfare of the people it ruled, rather than the vanity of its rulers, were to be its prime objectives. And Earth had a quaint tradition that government was instituted for the people.

But there were madmen in the galaxy who wished to rule anyhow. If Earth claimed the right to stop them, it would claim empire itself, and that meant exactly the evil Earth deplored. So the Profession came gradually into being as a form of patriotism owing loyalty to a higher level than nationality or even one’s native planet. The Profession tried desperately—and sometimes with surprising success—to prevent the lunacies of warfare. Only one thing made warfare possible—the development of super weapons, and the Profession worked single-mindedly to prevent just that.

Brent, as a member of the Profession, had absolutely no legal status or authority save to ask for help from other members of the Profession. He had only the obligation—given him by his training—to move about the galaxy and try to make sure that no one world anywhere acquired new weapons it did not share immediately with its sister worlds. Perhaps it was absurdly idealistic, but—as history has shown since, and all too clearly—it was the way by which civilization endured.

As now…

He closed his tool-kit carefully and said: “I was working in the Cephis star cluster. They were building a big fleet of new-type spaceships there. I got into the construction-crew to make sure there were no new tricks being included that were kept secret. My papers are in order for that work. But I heard about Procus II—everyone on the fourth planet killed and its wealth looted by unknown enemies. I headed back to Earth through this section, trying to pick up rumors. On Khem IV, I’ll admit, I didn’t find a thing. It’s a beastly tyranny, of course, but if people stand for that sort of thing, they invite it. That wasn’t my business. But I didn’t find a whisper of evidence that a space-fleet could be built and armed on that planet, not one able of doing what has been done.”

Den Harlow said briefly: “It wasn’t built there. It wasn’t armed there. It couldn’t be! I made my Commerce Commissionership an excuse for traveling about—just as you manufactured an excuse. But Kit and I were served
vistek
at an official banquet. And I’ve tasted
vistek
before, over on the other side of the galaxy.”

Brent said: “I’ve heard it couldn’t be shipped, even frozen. When cosmic rays hit it, it goes bad. Even the seeds rot when cosmics get at them. So it’s only able to be eaten within a week’s space-journey from the planet where it grows normally.”

Den Harlow nodded. “It’s a wonderful fruit,” he said, with the ghost of a smile. “I enjoyed it heartily—even though when I tasted it I knew it hadn’t been brought across the galaxy by a spaceship. It was so inconceivably foolish to serve it to me, though, that I couldn’t believe the Khem IV planet ruler knew where it came from I thought it might have been given to him as a gift—something like that. So I asked. But he knew! He looked deadly. Later, I heard he had his cooks executed for serving it to me.”

“And then,” said Kit ruefully, “we knew that we’d be murdered so we couldn’t take word back that a fruit which can’t be shipped from the planet it grows on had been brought clear across the galaxy. We’ve been extremely careful. The only hope we had was that we could be so careful that our murders would look suspicious to the Profession. After all, my father’s official position made it awkward to murder us outright. That would have been suspicious!”

“Now, though,” he told her, “you two will try to stay alive.”

She nodded, her eyes bright.

“I’m going to see if I can do something practical,” he added.

“Yes… Be—careful, will you?”

He opened the cabin door and went out. He was halfway across the passengers’ lounge before he realized that it was not quite necessary for one person in the Profession to ask another to be careful. It wasn’t Professional. It was—well—personal. And she’d looked at him with bright eyes…

The bedlam in the bar was dying down, now, with Rudl no longer on hand to stimulate it. Badly beaten men wanted fresh drinks. Victors in battle wanted to celebrate. But there were some bodies lying on the floor. They might be sunk in drunken sleep, or they might not. A woman was dancing tipsily, casting sickeningly inviting glances about her.

He went into the dining salon. Into the kitchen. Both were empty. Presently they were empty even of him. He had returned to the empty spaces between the balls of metal-plate inside the
Delilah
’s skin. When he went out the airlock, he had a blaster ready in his hand.

Not quite an hour later, a simultaneous and unanimous gasp sounded in the passengers’ lounge. It was almost a cry, choked and incredulous, from every throat among the passengers.

Each of them had exactly the same experience. The cosmos had seemed to them to whirl dizzily in an expanding spiral. Then their stomachs turned over, twice.

The ship’s overdrive had come on again. The passengers who’d seemed nearest to madness from terror and despair now seemed closest to going out of their minds with joy.

The
Delilah
was again moving through space in overdrive.

They did not realize that there was a great difference between this overdrive and the one that had been cut off.

CHAPTER VII

The message came in on a very tight beam, and it was a double-transmission. It could be received only on a very special instrument.

An answer went out. It would take time to reach its destination in emptiness. The answer was similarly complex in its transmission, but its meaning was quite simple. No, there were no ships due from anywhere. No, there was no reason for a space-fleet not to come in. Yes, the apparatus on the ground was quite ready.