Chapter 8
______VESTA THE VEGIAN
IMMEDIATELY AFTER SUPPER Cloud called Vesta and Nadine into his cabin.
“You first, Nadine.” He caught her eyes and stopped talking, but went on thinking. He was amazed at how easy it had been to learn the knack of telepathy with both Luda and the Manarkan. “How did you make out with Tommie? Can’t she read you at all?”
“Not at all. I can read her easily enough, but she can neither send nor receive.”
“How about Vesta, then? Any more progress?”
“No. Just like you. She learned very quickly to receive, but that is all. She cannot tune her mind; I have to do it all.” It also amazed the Blaster that, after learning one half of telepathy so easily, he had been unable even to get a start on the other half. “We might try it again, though, all three of us together?”
They tried, but it was no use. Think as they would, of even the simplest things—squares, crosses, triangles, and circles—staring eye to eye and even holding hands, neither the Blaster nor the Vegian could touch the other’s mind. Nor could the Manarkan tell them or show them what to do.
“Well, that’s out, then.” Cloud frowned in concentration, the fingers of his left hand drumming almost soundlessly on the table’s plastic top. “Nadine, you can’t send simultaneously to both Vesta and me, because we can’t tune ourselves into resonance with you, as a real telepath could. However, could you read me and send my thoughts to Vesta, and do it fast enough to keep up? As fast as I talk, say?”
“Oh, easily. I don’t have to tune sharply to receive—unless there’s a lot of interference, of course—and even then, Vesta can read my shorthand. She learned it before we met you.”
“Hm . . . m. Interesting. Let’s try it out. I’ll think at you, you put it down in shorthand. You, Vesta, tape it in Spanish. Get your notebook and recorder . . . ready? Let’s go!”
There ensued a strange spectacle. Cloud, leaning back in his seat with his eyes closed, mumbled to himself in English, to slow his thoughts down to approximately two hundred words per minute. Nadine, paying no visible attention to the man, wrote unhurried, smoothly-flowing—most of the time—symbols. Vesta, throat-mike in place and yellow-eyed gaze nailed to the pencil’s point, kept pace effortlessly—most of the time.
“That’s all. Play it back, Vesta. If you girls got half of that, you’re good.”
The speaker came to life, giving voice to a completely detailed and extremely technical report on the extinction of an imaginary atomic vortex, and as the transcription proceeded Cloud’s amazement deepened. It was evident, of course, that neither of the two translators knew anything at all about many of the scientific technicalities involved. Nevertheless the Manarkan had put down—and Vesta had recorded in good, idiomatic Galactic Spanish—an intelligent layman’s idea of what it was that had been left out. That impromptu, completely unrehearsed report would have been fully informative to any expert of the Vortex Control Laboratory!
“Girls, you are good—very good.” Cloud paid deserved tribute to ability. “First chance we get, I’ll split a bottle of fayalin with you. Now we’d better hit the sack. We land early in the morning, and since we’re going to stay here a while we’ll have to go through quarantine and customs. So pack your bags and have ’em ready for inspection.”
They landed at the spaceport of Tommie’s home town, which Cloud, after hearing Vesta’s literal translation of its native name, had entered in his log as “Mingia.” They passed their physicals and healths easily enough—the requirements for leaving a planet of warm-blooded oxygen-breathers are so severe and so comprehensive that the matter of landing on a similar one is almost always a matter of simple routine.
“Manarkan doctors we know of old; you are welcome indeed. We see very few Tellurians or Vegians, but the standards of those worlds are very high and we are glad to welcome you. But Chickladoria? I never heard of it—we’ve had no one from that planet since I took charge of this port of entry. . . .”
The Tomingan official punched buttons, gabbled briefly, and listened.
“Oh, yes. Excellent! The health, sanitation, and exit requirements of Chickladoria are approved by the Galactic Medical Society. We welcome you. You all may pass.”
They left the building and boarded a copter for their hotel.
“. . . and part of its name is ‘Forget-me-not’! Isn’t that a dilly of a name for a hotel?” Vesta, who had been telepathing busily with Nadine, was giggling sunnily.
Suddenly, however, she stopped laughing and, eyes slitted, leaped for the door. Too late: the craft was already in the air.
“Do you know what that . . . that clunker back there really thought of us?” she flared. “That we’re weak, skinny, insipid, under-developed little runts! By Zevz and Tlazz and Jadkptn, I’ll show him—I’ll take a tail-wrap around his neck and. . . .”
“Pipe down, Vesta—listen!” Cloud broke in, sharply. “You’re smart enough to know better than to explode that way. For instance, you’re stronger than I am, and faster—admitted. So what? I’m still your boss. And Tommie isn’t, even though, as you ought to know by this time, she could pull your tail out by the roots and beat you to death with the butt end of it in thirty seconds flat.”
“Huh?” Vesta’s towering rage subsided miraculously into surprised curiosity. “But you’re admitting it!” she marvelled. “Even that I am stronger and faster than you are!”
“Certainly. Why not? Servos are faster still, and ordinary derricks are stronger. It’s brains that count. I’d much rather have your linguistic ability than the speed and strength of a Valerian.”
“So would I, really,” Vesta purred. “You’re the nicest man!”
“So watch yourself, young lady,” Cloud went on evenly, “and behave yourself. If you don’t, important as you are to this project, I’ll send you back to the ship in irons. That’s a promise.”
“P-f-z-t-k!” Vesta fairly spat the expletive. Her first thought was sheer defiance, but under the Blaster’s level stare she changed her mind visibly. “I’ll behave myself, Captain Neelcloud.”
“Thanks, Vesta. You’ll be worth a whole platoon of Tomingans if you do.”
The copter landed on the flat roof of the hotel. The guests were registered and shown to their rooms. The Forget-Me-Not’s air was hot and humid, and the visitors wore the only clothing to be seen. Nevertheless, Cloud was too squeamish to go all the way, so he still wore shorts and sandals, as well as the side-arm of his rank, when he went back up to the lobby to meet his crew.
Vesta, tail-tip waving gracefully a foot and a half above her head, was wearing only her sandals. Thlaskin wore shorts and space-boots. Maluleme had reduced her conventional forty one square inches of covering to a daring twenty five—two narrow ribbons and a couple of jewels. Nadine, alone of them all, had made no concession to that stickily sweltering climate. She’d be disgraced for life, Cloud supposed, if she cut down by even one the hundreds of feet of white glamorette in which she was swathed. But Manarkans didn’t sweat like Tellurians, he guessed—if they did, she’d either peel or smother before this job was over!
Cloud scanned the lobby carefully. Were they attracting too much attention? They were not. They had had to pose for Telenews shots, of course—the Chickladorians in particular had been held in the spots for all of five minutes—but that was all. Like any other spaceport city, Mingia was used to outlandish forms of warm-blooded, oxygen-breathing life. Not counting his own group, he could see members of four different non-Tomingan races, two of which were completely strange to him. And Tommie, standing alone in front of one of the row of shop-windows comprising one wall of the lobby—and very close to a mirrored pillar—was intently studying a tobacconist’s display of domestic and imported cigars.
“QX,” the Blaster said then. “We aren’t kicking up any fuss. Do your stuff, Vesta.”
The girl sauntered over to the mirror, licked her forefinger, and began to smooth an imaginary roughness out of one perfect eyebrow. Thus, palm covering mouth—
“He still hangs out here, Tommie?”
“He still eats supper here every night, in the same private room.” Tommie did not move or turn her head; her voice could not be heard three feet away.
“When he comes in, take one good look at him and think ‘This is the one’—Nadine’ll take over from there. Then sneak down to the chief’s suite and join us.”
Vesta, with a final approving pat at her sleek head, sauntered on; past a display of belt-pouches in which she was not interested, pausing before one of ultra-fancy candies in which she very definitely was, and back to her own group.
“On the green,” she reported.
“Then I’ll go on about my business of getting things lined up to blow out vortices. You, Thlaskin and Maluleme, just run around and play. Act innocent—you’re just atmosphere for now. Nadine and Vesta, go down to my suite—here’s a key—and get your recorder and stuff ready. I’ll see you later.”
Cloud came back, however, rather sooner than he had intended.
“I didn’t get far—I’ll have to take you along if I want to get any business done,” he explained to Vesta. “Up to now, I’ve got along very nicely with English, Spanish, and spaceal, but not here. We’re a long ways from either Tellus or Vegia.”
“We are indeed. I don’t know what they do use for an interstellar language here—I’ll have to find out and see if I know it yet.” Vesta then switched to English. “While we wait, do you mind if I zpeak at you in Englizh? And will you ztop me and correct, please, the errors I will make? My pronunziazion is getting better, but I ztill have much trouble with your irregular verbs and pronouns. I come, but I am not yet arrive.”
“I’ll say you’re better!” Cloud knew that she had been studying hard; studying with an intensity of concentration comparable only to that of a cat on duty at a mouse-hole; but he had expected no such progress as this. “It’s amazing—you have scarcely any more accent now in English than in Spanish. I’ll be glad to coach you. What you just said was QX except for the last sentence. Idiomatically, you should have said ‘I’m coming along, but I’m not there yet,’ ” and Cloud explained in detail. “Now, for practice, brief me on this job we’ve got here.”
“Thankz a lot. Tommie’s brother, whom we’ll call Jim, runs a tobacco zhop here in town.” Cloud had had to explain what “briefing” meant, and he corrected many slight errors which are not given here. “A man who called himself ‘Number One’ organized a Protective Azzoziazion. Anyone not joining, he zaid, would zuffer the conzequenzez of a looze atomic vortex in his power plant. When he zhowed he meant buzzinez by exploding one right where and when he zaid he would, many merchants joined and began to pay. Jim did not. Inztead, he . . . I forget the idiom?”
“ ‘Stalled.’ That means delayed, played for time.”
“Oh, yez. Jim ztalled, and Tommie went looking for help, knowing the government here thoroughly corrupt. Impozzible to alleviate intolerable zituazion.”
“What a vocabulary!”
“Iz wrong?” Vesta demanded.
“No, is right,” Cloud assured her. “I was complimenting you, young lady—you’ll be teaching me English before this trip is over.”
The class in English Conversation went on until the Manarkan warned its two participants to get ready; that Tommie, having identified the gangster, had left the lobby, had joined her brother, and was bringing him with her.
“Is that safe, do you think?” Vesta asked.
“For now, before anything starts, yes.” Cloud replied. “After tonight, no.”
The Tomingans arrived; Vesta let them in and introduced Jim to Nadine and Cloud. The brother was taller, heavier, craggier than the sister; his cigar was longer, thicker, and blacker than hers. Otherwise, they were very much alike. Cloud waved them both into comfortable chairs, for there was no time for conversation. Nadine began to write; Vesta to record.
The Big Shot—Nadine took an instant to flash into Cloud’s mind a very good picture of the fellow—was in his private room, but if a dinner were to be on the program it would be later. There were two men in the room; Number One and another man, whom he thought of and spoke to as “Number Nine.” At present the affair was strictly business. Number Nine was handing money to Number One, who was making notes in a book. Twenty credits from Number Seventeen; 50 from No. 20; 25 from No. 26; 175 from No. 29; 19 credits—all he could raise—from No. 30; 125 from No. 31, and so on. . . .
The gangsters thought that they were being very smart and cagey in using numbers instead of names, but neither had any idea of the power of a really good telepathic mind, or of that of a really good linguist. Each of those numbers meant something to either or to both of those men, and whatever it was—a name, a picture, a storefront or address, or a fleeting glimpse of personality pattern—Nadine seized and transmitted, either in shorthand or by force of mind, or both; and Vesta taped, in machine-gun-fast Spanish, every written word and every nuance of thought.
The list was long. At its end:
“Three more didn’t pay up, huh? The same ones holding out as last time, and three more besides, huh?” This was Number One, thinking deeply. “I don’t like it. . . . Ninety Two, huh? I don’t like it a bit—or him, either. I’ll have to do something about him.”
“Yeah. Ninety Two. The others all give the same old tear-jerker that they didn’t have it, that our assessments were too stiff for their take, and so on, but Ninety Two didn’t, this time. He simply blew his top. He was hotter than the business end of a blow-torch.” Not much to Cloud’s surprise, Nadine at this point poured into his mind the picture of excessively angry Jim. “Not only he didn’t fork over, he told me to tell you something.”
There was a long pause.
“Well, spill it!” Number One barked. “What did he say?”
“Shall I give it to you straight boss, or maybe I better tone it down some?”
“Straight!”
“He said for you to go roast, for fourteen thousand years, in the hottest corner you can find of the hottest hell of Telemachia, and take your Srizonified association with you. Take your membership papers and stick ’em. Blow his place up and be damned to you, he says. If you kill him in the blast he’s left stuff in a deposit box that’ll blow all the Srizonified crooked politicians and lawmen in the Fourth Continent off of their perches and down onto their Srizonified butts. An’ if you don’t get him, he says, he’ll come after you with blasters in both hands. Make it plain, he says, that it’s you he’ll be after—not me. That’s exactly what he told me to tell you, boss.”
“Me? ME?” Number One demanded. The towering rage, which he had been scarcely able to control, subsided into a warily intense speculation. “How did he find out about me? Somebody’ll burn for this!”
“I dunno, boss, but it looks like you said a mouthful about having to do something about him. We got to make an example of somebody, boss—or else—in my book it’d better be 92. He’s organizing, sure as hell, and if we don’t knock him off it’ll spread fast.”
“Hm . . . m . . . m. Yes, but just him personally, not his place. I’m not afraid of any evidence he can leave, of itself, but in connection with the other thing it might be bad. His place is too big; too centrally located. No matter what time of night it goes off it’ll kill too many people and do too much damage. Yellow Castle might dump us instead of trying to ride out such a storm.”
“Yeah, they might, at that. Prob’ly would. And the dogooders might get some of them Srizonified Lensmen in here besides. But an ordinary bomb would do the job.”
“No. Got to be a vortex. We promised ’em an atomic flare, so that’s what it’s got to be. It doesn’t have to be 92, though. We can get away easy enough with killing a few people, so I’d say somebody in the outskirts—53 would be as good as any. So tell 53 his place gets it at midnight tomorrow night, and the fewer people in it the more will stay alive.”
“Check. And I’ll take care of 92?”
“Of course. You don’t have to be told every move to make.”
“Just wanted to make sure, is all. What do I do in the big fireworks?” It was clear that the underling was intensely curious about the phenomenon, but his curiosity was not to be satisfied.
“Nothing,” his chief informed him flatly. “That isn’t your dish. Now we’ll eat.”
Number One stopped talking, but he did not stop thinking; and Nadine could read, and Vesta could transcribe, thoughts as well as words.
“Besides, it’s about time for 31 to earn some of the credits we’re paying him,” was the grimly savage thought.
This thought was accompanied by a picture, which Nadine spread in full in Cloud’s mind. A tall, lean, gray Tellurian was aiming a mechanism—the details of which were so vague that it could have been anything from a vest-pocket flash-pencil up to a half-track mobile projector—at a power-plant, which immediately and enthusiastically went out of control in a blindingly incandescent flare of raw energy.
Fairchild!
Cloud’s mind raced. That vortex on Deka hadn’t been accidental, then, even though there had been no evidence—no suspicion—even the Lensmen hadn’t guessed that the radiationist had been anything other than a very minor cog in Graves’ thionite-producing machine! Nobody except Fairchild knew what he did or how he did it—the mob must have tried to find out, too, but he wouldn’t give—but this stuff was very definitely for the future; not for now.
“QX, girls. A nice job—thanks,” he said. “Now, Vesta, please tape the actual facts and the actual words of the interview—none of the pictures or guesses—in Middle Plateau Tomingan. Wherever possible, bracket real names and addresses with the code numbers. Tommie and Jim can help you on that.”
She did so.
When they came to that part of the transcription dealing with Number Ninety Two, Jim stiffened and swelled in rage.
“Ask him if that’s an accurate report,” Cloud directed.
“It’s accurate enough as far as it goes,” Jim boomed. His voice, deeper and louder than Tommie’s, and not nearly as musical, almost shook the walls. “But he left out half of it. What I really told him would have burned all the tape off of that recorder.”
“But they left in that . . . that awful one, three times.” Tommie, tough as she was, was shocked. “You ought to be ashamed of yourself.”
“Srizonified?” Cloud whispered to Vesta. “It sounded bad, but not that hot. Is it?”
“Yes, the hottest in the language. I never saw it in print, and heard it only once, and that was by accident. Like most such things, though, it doesn’t translate—‘descended from countless generations of dwellers in stinking, unflowering mud’ is as close as I can come to it in Spanish.”
“QX. Finish up the tape and make two copies of it.”
When the copies were ready Cloud handed them to Tommie.
“Tell him to take one of these down to the Tomingan equivalent of the D. A.’s office the first thing in the morning,” he instructed Vesta. “The other ought to go to a big law firm—an honest one, if she knows of any. Now ask Jim what he thinks he’s going to do.”
“I’m going to get a pair of blasters and. . . .”
“Yeah?” Cloud’s biting monosyllable, so ably translated by the Vegian, stopped him in mid-sentence. “What chance do you think you stand of getting home tonight in one piece? Your copter is probably mined right now, and they’ve undoubtedly made arrangements to blast you if you leave here any other way, even on foot. If you want to stay alive, though, I’ve got a suggestion to make.”
“You may be right, sir.” Jim’s bluster died away as he began really to think. “Do you see a way out?”
“Yes. Ordinary citizens don’t wear armor here, any more than anywhere else, so ordinary gangsters don’t use semi-portables. So, when you leave here, go to Tommie’s room instead of out. They’ll lay for you, of course, but while they’re waiting Tommie will go out to our ship and bring back my G-P armor. You put it on, walk out openly, and take a ground-car—not a copter—to the ship. If they know armor they won’t shoot at you, because you could shoot back. When you get to the ship go in, lock the port behind you, and stay there until I tell you to come out.”
Jim, influenced visibly by the pleasant possibility of shooting back, accepted the plan joyously; and, after making sure that there were no spies or spy-rays on watch, the two Tomingans left the room.
A few minutes later, with the same precaution, Vesta and the Manarkan went to their own rooms; but they were on hand again after breakfast next morning.
“You know, of course, that you have no evidence admissible in even an honest court,” Nadine began. “You knew it when you changed your mind about having a Tomingan voice, not Vesta’s, on those tapes.”
“Yes. Communicator-taps are out—violation of privacy.”
“Exactly. And telepathy is worse. Any attempt to introduce telepathic testimony, on almost any non-telepathic world, does more harm than good. So, beyond establishing the fact of guilt in your own mind—a fact already self-evident, since such outrages can happen only when both courts and police are corrupt from top to bottom—I fail to see what you hope to gain.”
“Wouldn’t a Tomingan Lensman be interested?”
“There are none. There never have been any.”
“Well, then, I’ll take it up myself, with. . . .”
Cloud stopped in mid-thought. With whom? He could talk to Phil Strong, certainly, but he wouldn’t get anywhere. He knew, as well as Nadine did, that the Galactic Patrol would not interfere with purely local politics unless something of inter-systemic scope was involved. The Galactic Council held, and probably rightly, that any people got the kind of local government they deserved. He certainly couldn’t expect the Patrol to over-ride planetary sovereignty in regard to a thing that hadn’t happened yet! He wrenched his mind away.
“Having any trouble following her, Nadine?” he asked.
“No. She’s just leaving the fast-way now; going into his office.”
Thus, through Nadine, Cloud accompanied Tommie into the office of the District Attorney, saw her tender the spool of tape, heard her explain in stormy language what it was.
“How did you get hold of it?” the D. A. demanded.
“How do you suppose?” Tommie shot back. “Do we have to come down to City Hall and take out a license to hang an ear onto such a stinking crumb, such a notorious mobster and general all-round heel as Number One is? Public Enemy Number One, it ought to be!”
“No, I wouldn’t say that you would,” the politician soothed. He had been thinking fast. “I’ll run this tape as soon as I can take a minute alone in my chambers, and I promise you full and fast action. They’ve gone too far, this time. Just what, specifically, do you want me to do?”
“I’m no lawyer, so I don’t know who does what, but I want this Protective Association junked and I want those murderers arrested. Today.”
“Some of these matters lie outside the province of this office, but I can and will take initiatory steps. No one will be harmed, I assure you.”
Apparently satisfied, Tommie left the D. A.’s office, but Nadine did not leave the D. A.’s mind. This was what the Blaster was after!
Sure enough, as soon as Tommie was out of sight, the official dashed into his private office and called Number One.
“One, they hung an ear on you last night!” he exclaimed, as soon as connection was made. “How come you didn’t. . . .”
“Horsefeathers!” the gangster snarled. “Who d’ya think you’re kidding?”
“But they did! I’ve got a copy of it right here.”
“Play it!”
The tape was played, and it was very clear that it was in no Tomingan’s voice.
“No, it wasn’t an ear,” the D. A. admitted.
“And I was blocked against spy-rays,” said Number One, “so it must have been a snooper. A snooper with a voice. Manarkans are snoopers, but they can’t talk. Most snoopers can’t . . . except maybe Ordoviks. There were a couple of them around last night. Can Ordoviks talk? And Chickladorians—are they snoopers?”
“I don’t know.”
“I don’t know either, but I’ll find out, and when I do I’ll go gunning.”
Tommie came back to Cloud’s room and her serenity, skin-deep at best, vanished completely as the new tape was played.
“Condemn and blast that lying, slimy, two-faced, double-crossing snake!” she roared. “I’ll call out the. . . .”
“You won’t either—pipe down!” Cloud ordered, sharply. “Mob rule never settled anything. That’s what you expected, isn’t it?”
“Well . . . more or less, I suppose . . . yes.”
“QX. We got something to work on now, but we need more, and we’ve got only today to get it. Who’s the crookedest judge in town—the one most apt to be in on this kind of a deal?”
“Trellis. High Judge Rose Trellis of the Enchanting. . . .”
“Skip the embellishments. Take both of these tapes to Judge Trellis and insist on seeing him at once.”
“It isn’t a him—she’s a her.”
“Her, then. Make it snappy. And don’t blow up if she gives you the brush-off. We’re after data. And on your way back, pick up that newspaper editor and bring him along.”