Chapter 4
______“STORM” CLOUD ON DEKA
IN THE VORTEX CONTROL LABORATORY on Tellus, Cloud had just gone into Philip Strong’s office.
“No trouble?” the Lensman asked, after greetings had been exchanged.
“Uh-huh. Simple as blowing out a match. You quit worrying about me long ago, didn’t you?”
“Pretty much, except for the impossibility of training anybody else to do it. We’re still working on that angle, though. You’re looking fit.”
He was. He carried no scars—the Phillips treatment had taken care of that. His face looked young and keen; his hard-schooled, resilient body was in surprisingly fine condition for that of a man crowding forty so nearly. He no longer wore his psychic trauma visibly; it no longer obtruded itself between him and those with whom he worked; but in his own mind he was sure that it still was, and always would be, there. But the Lensman, studying him narrowly—and, if the truth must be known, using his Lens as well—was not sure, and was well content.
“Not bad for an old man, Phil. I could whip a wildcat, and spot him one bite and two scratches. But what I came in here for, as you may have suspected, is—where do I go from here? Spica or Rigel or Canopus? They’re the worst, aren’t they?”
“Rigel’s is probably the worst in property damage and urgency. Before we decide, though, I wish you’d take a good look at this data from Dekanore III. See if you see what I do.”
“Huh? Dekanore III?” Cloud was surprised. “No trouble there, is there? They’ve only got one, and it’s ’way down in Class Z somewhere.”
“Two now. It’s the new one I’m talking about. It’s acting funny—damned funny.”
Cloud went through the data, brow furrowed in concentration; then sketched three charts and frowned.
“I see what you mean. ‘Damned funny’ is right. The toxicity is too steady, but at the same time the composition of the effluvium is too varied. Inconsistent. However, there’s no real attempt at a gamma analysis—nowhere near enough data for one—this could be right; they’re so utterly unpredictable. The observers were inexperienced, I take it, with medical and chemical bias?”
“Check. That’s the way I read it.”
“Well, I’ll say this much—I never saw a gamma chart that would accept half of this stuff, and I can’t even imagine what the sigma curve would look like. Boss, what say I skip over there and get us a full reading on that baby before she goes orthodox—or, should I say, orthodoxly unorthodox?”
“However you say it, that’s my thought exactly; and we have a good excuse for giving it priority. It’s killing more people than all three of the bad ones together.”
“If I can’t fix the toxicity with exciters I’ll throw a solid cordon around it to keep people away. I won’t blow it out, though, until I find out why it’s acting so—if it is. Clear ether, chief, I’m practically there!”
It did not take long to load Cloud’s flitter aboard a Dekanore-bound liner. Half-way there however, an alarm rang out and the dread word “Pirates!” resounded through the ship.
Consternation reigned, for organized piracy had disappeared with the fall of the Council of Boskone. Furthermore, this was not in any sense a treasure ship; she was an ordinary passenger liner.
She had had little enough warning—her communications officer had sent out only a part of his first distress call when the blanketing interference jammed his channels. The pirate—a first-class superdreadnought—flashed up and a visual beam drove in.
“Go inert,” came the terse command. “We’re coming aboard.”
“Are you completely crazy?” The liner’s captain was surprised and disgusted, rather than alarmed. “If not, you’ve got the wrong ship. Everything aboard—including any ransom you could get for our passenger list—wouldn’t pay your expenses.”
“You wouldn’t know, of course, that you’re carrying a package of Lonabarian jewelry, or would you?” The question was elaborately skeptical.
“I know damned well I’m not.”
“We’ll take the package you haven’t got, then!” the pirate snapped. “Go inert and open up, or I’ll do it for you—like this.” A needle-beam lashed out and expired. “That was through one of your holds. The next one will be through your control room.”
Resistance being out of the question, the liner went inert. While the intrinsic velocities of the two vessels were being matched, the pirate issued further instructions.
“All officers now in the control room, stay there. All other officers, round up all passengers and herd them into the main saloon. Anybody that acts up or doesn’t do exactly what he’s told will be blasted.”
The pirates boarded. One squad went to the control room. Its leader, seeing that the communications officer was still trying to drive a call through the blanket of interference, beamed him down without a word. At this murder the captain and four or five other officers went for their guns and there was a brief but bloody battle. There were too many pirates.
A larger group invaded the main saloon. Most of them went through, only half a dozen or so posting themselves to guard the passengers. One of the guards, a hook-nosed individual wearing consciously an aura of authority, spoke.
“Take it easy, folks, and nobody’ll get hurt. If any of you’ve got guns, don’t go for ’em. That’s a specialty that. . . .”
One of his DeLameters flamed briefly. Cloud’s right arm, almost to the shoulder, vanished. The man behind him dropped—in two different places.
“Take it easy, I said,” the pirate chief went calmly on. “You can tie that arm up, fella, if you want to. It was in line with that guy who was trying to pull a gun. You nurse over there—take him to sick-bay and fix up his wing. If anybody stops you tell ’em Number One said to. Now, the rest of you, watch your step. I’ll cut down every damn one of you that so much as looks like he wanted to start something.”
They obeyed.
In a few minutes the looting parties returned to the saloon.
“Did you get it, Six?”
“Yeah. In the mail, like you said.”
“The safe?”
“Sure. Wasn’t much in it, but not too bad, at that.”
“QX. Control room! QX?”
“Ten dead,” the intercom blatted in reply. “Otherwise QX.”
“Fuse the panels?”
“Natch.”
“Let’s go!”
They went. Their vessel flashed away. The passengers rushed to their staterooms. Then:
“Doctor Cloud!” came from the speaker. “Doctor Neal Cloud! Control room calling Doctor Cloud!”
“Cloud speaking.”
“Report to the control room, please.”
“Oh—excuse me—I didn’t know you were wounded,” the officer apologized as he saw the bandaged stump and the white, sweating face. “You’d better go to bed.”
“Doing nothing wouldn’t help. What did you want me for?”
“Do you know anything about communicators?”
“A little—what a nucleonics man has to know.”
“Good. They killed all our communications officers and blasted the panels, even in the lifeboats. You can’t do much with your left hand, of course, but you may be able to boss the job of rigging up a spare.”
“I can do more than you think—I’m left-handed. Give me a couple of technicians and I’ll see what we can do.”
They set to work, but before they could accomplish anything a cruiser drove up, flashing its identification as a warship of the Galactic Patrol.
“We picked up the partial call you got off,” its young commander said, briskly. “With that and the plotted center of interference we didn’t lose any time. Let’s make this snappy.” He was itching to be off after the marauder, but he could not leave until he had ascertained the facts and had been given clearance. “You aren’t hurt much—don’t need to call a tug, do you?”
“No,” replied the liner’s senior surviving officer.
“QX,” and a quick investigation followed.
“Anybody who ships stuff like that open mail ought to lose it, but it’s tough on innocent bystanders. Anything else I can do for you?”
“Not unless you can lend us some officers, particularly navigators and communications officers.”
“Sorry, but we’re short there ourselves—four of my best are in sick-bay. Sign this clearance, please, and I’ll get on that fellow’s tail. I’ll send your copy of my report to your head office. Clear ether!”
The cruiser shot away. Temporary repairs were made and the liner, with Cloud and a couple of electronics technicians as communications officers, finished the voyage to Dekanore III without more interruption.
The Vortex Blaster was met at the dock by Works Manager Graves himself. The fat man was effusively sorry that Cloud had lost an arm, but assured him that the accident wouldn’t lay him up very long. He, Graves, would get a Posenian surgeon over here so fast that. . . .
If the manager was taken aback to learn that Cloud had already had a Phillips treatment, he did not show it. He escorted the specialist to Deka’s best hotel, where he introduced him largely and volubly. Graves took him to supper. Graves took him to a theater and showed him the town. Graves told the hotel management to give the scientist the best rooms and the best valet they had, and that Cloud was not to be allowed to spend any of his own money. All of his activities, whatever their nature, purpose, or extent, were to be charged to Tellurian Pharmaceuticals, Inc. Graves was a grand guy.
Cloud broke loose, finally, and went to the dock to see about getting his flitter.
It had not been unloaded. There would be a slight delay, he was informed, because of the insurance inspections necessitated by the damage—and Cloud had not known that there had been any! When he had learned what had been done to his little ship he swore bitterly and sought out the liner’s senior officer.
“Why didn’t you tell me we got holed?” he demanded.
“Why, I don’t know . . . just that you didn’t ask, is all, I guess. I don’t suppose it occurred to anybody—I know it didn’t to me—that you might be interested.”
And that was, Cloud knew, strictly true. Passengers were not informed of such occurrences. He had been enough of an officer so that he could have learned anything he wished; but not enough of one to have been informed of such matters as routine. Nor was it surprising that it had not come up in conversation. Damage to cargo meant nothing whatever to the liner’s overworked officers, standing double watches; a couple of easily-patched holes in the hull were not worth mentioning. From their standpoint the only damage was done to the communicators, and Cloud himself had set them to rights. This delay was his own fault as much as anybody else’s. Yes, more.
“You won’t lose anything, though,” the officer said, helpfully. “Everything’s covered, you know.”
“It isn’t the money I’m yowling about—it’s the time. That apparatus can’t be duplicated anywhere except on Tellus, and even there it’s all special-order stuff. OH, DAMN!” and Cloud strode away toward his hotel.
During the following days TPI entertained him royally. Not insistently—Graves was an expert in such matters—but simply by giving him the keys to the planet. He could do anything he pleased. He could have all the company he wanted, male or female, to help him to do it. Thus he did—within limits—just about what Graves wanted him to do; and, in spite of the fact that he did not want to enjoy life, he liked it.
One evening, however, he refused to play a slot machine, explaining to his laughing companion that the laws of chance were pretty thoroughly shackled in such mechanisms—and the idle remark backfired. What was the mathematical probability that all the things that had happened to him could have happened by pure chance?
That night he analyzed his data. Six incidents; the probability was extremely small. Seven, if he counted his arm. If it had been his left arm—jet back! Since he wrote with his right hand, very few people knew that he was left-handed. Seven it was; and that made it virtually certain. Accident was out.
But if he was being delayed and hampered deliberately, who was doing it, and why? It didn’t make sense. Nevertheless, the idea would not down.
He was a trained observer and an analyst second to none. Therefore he soon found out that he was being shadowed wherever he went, but he could not get any really significant leads. Wherefore:
“Graves, have you got a spy-ray detector?” he asked boldly—and watchfully.
The fat man did not turn a hair. “No, nobody would want to spy on me. Why?”
“I feel jumpy. I don’t know why anybody would be spying on me, either, but—I’m neither a Lensman nor an esper, but I’d swear that somebody’s peeking over my shoulder half the time. I think I’ll go over to the Patrol station and borrow one.”
“Nerves, my boy; nerves and shock,” Graves diagnosed. “Losing an arm would shock hell out of anybody’s nervous system, I’d say. Maybe the Phillips treatment—the new one growing on—sort of pulls you out of shape.”
“Could be,” Cloud assented, moodily. His act had been a flop. If Graves knew anything—and he’d be damned if he could see any grounds for such a suspicion—he hadn’t given away a thing.
Nevertheless, Cloud went to the Patrol office, which was of course completely and permanently shielded. There he borrowed the detector and asked the lieutenant in charge to get a special report from the Patrol upon the alleged gems and what it knew about either the cruiser or the pirates. To justify his request he had to explain his suspicions.
After the messages had been sent the young officer drummed thoughtfully upon his desk. “I wish I could do something, Dr. Cloud, but I don’t see how I can,” he decided finally. “Without a shred of evidence, I can’t act.”
“I know. I’m not accusing anybody, yet. It may be anybody between here and Andromeda. Just call me, please, as soon as you get that report.”
The report came, and the Patrolman was round-eyed as he imparted the information, that, as far as Prime Base could discover, there had been no Lonabarian gems and the rescuing vessel had not been a Patrol ship at all. Cloud was not surprised.
“I thought so,” he said, flatly. “This is a hell of a thing to say, but it now becomes a virtual certainty—six sigmas out on the probability curve—that this whole fantastic procedure was designed solely to keep me from analyzing and blowing out that new vortex. As to where the vortex fits in, I haven’t got even the dimmest possible idea, but one thing is clear. Graves represents TPI—on this planet he is TPI. Now what kind of monkey-business would TPI—or, more likely, somebody working under cover in TPI, because undoubtedly the head office doesn’t know anything about it—be doing? I ask you.”
“Dope, you mean? Cocaine—heroin—that kind of stuff?”
“Exactly; and here’s what I’m going to do about it.” Bending over the desk, even in that ultra-shielded office, Cloud whispered busily for minutes. “Pass this along to Prime Base immediately, have them alert Narcotics, and have your men ready in case I strike something hot.”
“But listen, man!” the Patrolman protested. “Wait—let a Lensman do it. They’ll almost certainly catch you at it, and if they’re clean nothing can keep you from doing ninety days in the clink.”
“But if we wait, the chances are it’ll be too late; they’ll have had time to cover up. What I’m asking you is, will you back my play if I catch them with the goods?”
“Yes. We’ll be here, armored and ready. But I still think you’re nuts.”
“Maybe so, but even if my mathematics is wrong, it’s still a fact that my arm will grow back on just as fast in the clink as anywhere else. Clear ether, lieutenant—until tonight!”
Cloud made an engagement with Graves for luncheon. Arriving a few minutes early, he was of course shown into the private office. Since the manager was busily signing papers, Cloud strolled to the side window and seemed to gaze appreciatively at the masses of gorgeous blooms just outside. What he really saw, however, was the detector upon his wrist.
Nobody knew that he had in his sleeve a couple of small, but highly efficient, tools. Nobody knew that he was left-handed. Nobody saw what he did, nor was any signal given that he did anything at all.
That night, however, that window opened alarmlessly to his deft touch. He climbed in, noiselessly. He might be walking straight into trouble, but he had to take that chance. One thing was in his favor; no matter how crooked they were, they couldn’t keep armored troops on duty as night-watchmen, and the Patrolmen could get there as fast as their thugs could.
He had brought no weapons. If he was wrong, he would not need any and being armed would only aggravate his offense. If right, there would be plenty of weapons available. There were. A whole drawer full of DeLameters—fully charged—belts and everything. He leaped across the room to Graves’ desk; turned on a spy-ray. The sub-basement—“private laboratories,” Graves had said—was blocked. He threw switch after switch—no soap. Communicators—ah, he was getting somewhere now—a steel-lined room, a girl and a boy.
“Eureka! Good evening, folks.”
“Eureka? I hope you rot in hell, Graves. . . .”
“This isn’t Graves. Cloud. Storm Cloud, the Vortex Blaster, investigating. . . .”
“Oh, Bob, the Patrol!” the girl screamed.
“Quiet! This is a zwilnik outfit, isn’t it?”
“I’ll say it is!” Ryder gasped in relief. “Thionite. . . .”
“Thionite! How could it be? How could they bring it in here?”
“They don’t. They’re growing broadleaf and making the stuff. That’s why they’re going to kill us.”
“Just a minute.” Cloud threw in another switch. “Lieutenant? Worse than I thought. Thionite! Get over here fast with everything you got. Armor and semi-portables. Blast down the Mayner Street door. Stairway to right, two floors down, corridor to left, half-way along left side. Room B-Twelve. Snap it up, but keep your eyes peeled!”
“But wait, Cloud!” the lieutenant protested. “Wait ’til we get there—you can’t do anything alone!”
“Can’t wait—got to get these kids out—evidence!” Cloud broke the circuit and, as rapidly as he could, one-handed, buckled on gun-belts. Graves would have to kill these two youngsters, if he possibly could.
“For God’s sake save Jackie, anyway!” Ryder prayed. He knew just how high the stakes were. “And watch out for gas, radiation, and traps—you must have sprung a dozen alarms already.”
“What kind of traps?” Cloud demanded.
“Beams, deadfalls, sliding doors—I don’t know what they haven’t got. Graves said he could kill us in here with rays or gas or. . . .”
“Take Graves’ private elevator, Dr. Cloud,” the girl broke in.
“Where is it—which one?”
“It’s in the blank wall—the yellow button on his desk opens it. Down as far as it will go.”
Cloud jumped up listening with half an ear to the babblings from below as he searched for air-helmets. Radiations, in that metal-lined room, were out—except possibly for a few beam-projectors, which he could deal with easily enough. Gas, though, would be bad; but every drug-house had air-helmets. Ah! Here they were!
He put one on, made shift to hang two more around his neck—he had to keep his one hand free. He punched the yellow button; rode the elevator down until it stopped of itself. He ran along the corridor and drove the narrowest, hottest possible beam of a DeLameter into the lock of B-12. It took time to cut even that small semi-circle in that refractory and conductive alloy—altogether too much time—but the kids would know who it was. Zwilniks would open the cell with a key, not a torch.
They knew. When Cloud kicked the door open they fell upon him eagerly.
“A helmet and a DeLameter apiece. Get them on quick! Now help me buckle this. Thanks. Jackie, you stay back there, out of the way of our feet. Bob, you lie down here in the doorway. Keep your gun outside and stick your head out just far enough so you can see. No farther. I’ll join you after I see what they’ve got in the line of radiation.”
A spot of light appeared in a semi-concealed port, then another. Cloud’s weapon flamed briefly.
“Projectors like those aren’t much good when the prisoners have DeLameters,” he commented, “but I imagine our air right now is pretty foul. It won’t be long now. Do you hear anything?”
“Somebody’s coming, but suppose it’s the Patrol?”
“If so, a few blasts won’t hurt ’em—they’ll be in G P armor.” Cloud did not add that Graves would probably rush his nearest thugs in just as they were; to kill the two witnesses before help could arrive.
The first detachment to round the corner was in fact unarmored. Cloud’s weapon flamed white, followed quickly by Ryder’s, and those zwilniks died. Against the next to arrive, however, the DeLameters raved in vain. But only for a second.
“Back!” Cloud ordered, and swung the heavy door shut as the attackers’ beams swept past. It could not be locked, but it could be, and was, welded to the jamb with dispatch, if not with neatness. “We’ll cut that trap-door off, and stick it onto the door, too—and any more loose metal we can find.”
“I hope they come in time,” the girl’s low voice carried a prayer. Was this brief flare of hope false? Would not only she and her Bob, but also their would-be rescuer, die? “Oh! That noise—s’pose it’s the Patrol?”
It was not really a noise—the cell was sound-proof—it was an occasional jarring of the whole immense structure.
“I wouldn’t wonder. Heavy stuff—probably semi-portables. You might grab that bucket, Bob, and throw some of that water that’s trickling in. Every little bit helps.”
The heavy metal of the door was glowing bright-to-dull red over half its area and that area was spreading rapidly. The air of the room grew hot and hotter. Bursts of live steam billowed out and, condensing, fogged the helmets.
The glowing metal dulled, brightened, dulled. The prisoners could only guess at the intensity of the battle being waged. They could follow its progress only by the ever-shifting temperature of the barrier which the zwilniks were so suicidally determined to burn down. For hours, it seemed, the conflict raged. The thuddings and jarrings grew worse. The water, which had been a trickle, was now a stream and scalding hot.
Then a blast of bitterly cold air roared from the ventilator, clearing away the gas and steam, and the speaker came to life.
“Good work, Cloud and you other two,” it said, chattily. “Glad to see you’re all on deck. Get into this corner over here, so the Zwilniks won’t hit you when they hole through. They won’t have time to locate you—we’ve got a semi right at the corner now.”
The door grew hotter, flamed fiercely white. A narrow pencil sizzled through, burning steel sparkling away in all directions—but only for a second. It expired. Through the hole there flared the reflection of a beam brilliant enough to pale the noon-day sun. The portal cooled; heavy streams of water hissed and steamed. Hot water began to spurt into the cell. An atomic-hydrogen cutting torch sliced away the upper two-thirds of the fused and battered door. The grotesquely-armored lieutenant peered in.
“They tell me all three of you are QX. Check?”
“Check.”
“Good. We’ll have to carry you out. Step up here where we can get hold of you.”
“I’ll walk and I’ll carry Jackie myself,” Ryder protested, while two of the armored warriors were draping Cloud tastefully around the helmet of a third.
“You’d get boiled to the hips—this water is deep and hot. Come on!”
The slowly rising water was steaming; the walls and ceiling of the corridor gave mute but eloquent testimony of the appalling forces that had been unleashed. Tile, concrete, plastic, metal—nothing was as it had been. Cavities yawned. Plates and pilasters were warped, crumbled, fused into hellish stalactites; bare girders hung awry. In places complete collapse had necessitated the blasting out of detours.
Through the wreckage of what had been a magnificent building the cavalcade made its way, but when the open air was reached the three rescued ones were not released. Instead, they were escorted by a full platoon of soldiery to an armored car, which was in turn escorted to the Patrol station.
“I’m afraid to take chances with you until we find out who’s who and what’s what around here,” the young commander explained. “The Lensmen will be here in the morning, with half an army, so I think you’d better spend the rest of the night here, don’t you?”
“Protective custody, eh?” Cloud grinned. “I’ve never been arrested in such a polite way before, but it’s QX with me. You, too, I take it?”
“Us, too, decidedly,” Ryder assented. “This is a very nice jail-house, especially in comparison with where we’ve. . . .”
“I’ll say so!” Jackie broke in, giggling almost hysterically. “I never thought I’d be tickled to death at getting arrested, but I am!”
Lensmen came, and companies of Patrolmen equipped in various fashions, but it was several weeks before the situation was completely clarified. Then Ellington—Councillor Ellington, the Unattached Lensman in charge of all Narcotics—called the three into the office.
“How about Graves and Fairchild?” Cloud demanded before the councillor could speak.
“Both dead,” Ellington said. “Graves was shot down just as he took off, but he blasted Fairchild first, just as he intimated he would. There wasn’t enough of Fairchild left for positive identification, but it couldn’t very well have been anyone else. Nobody left alive seems to know much of anything of the real scope of the thing, so we can release you three now. Thanks, from me as well as the Patrol. There is some talk that you two youngsters have been contemplating a honeymoon out Chickladoria way?”
“Oh, no, sir—that is. . . .” Both spoke at once. “That was just talk, sir.”
“I realize that the report may have been exaggerated, or premature, or both. However, not as a reward, but simply in appreciation, the Patrol would be very glad to have you as its guests throughout such a trip—all expense—if you like.”
They liked.
“Thank you. Lieutenant, please take Miss Cochran and Mr. Ryder to the disbursing office. Dr. Cloud, the Patrol will take cognizance of what you have done. In the meantime, however, I would like to say that in uncovering this thing you have been of immense assistance to us.”
“Nothing much sir, I’m afraid. I shudder to think of what’s coming. If zwilniks can grow Trenconian broadleaf anywhere. . . .”
“Not at all, not at all,” Ellington interrupted. “If such an entirely unsuspected firm as Tellurian Pharmaceuticals, with all their elaborate preparations and precautions, could not do much more than start, it is highly improbable that any other attempt will be a success. You have given us a very potent weapon against zwilnik operations—not only thionite, but heroin, ladolian, nitrolabe, and the rest.”
“What weapon?” Cloud was puzzled.
“Statistical analysis and correlation of apparently unrelated indices.”
“But they’ve been used for years!”
“Not the way you used them, my friend. Thus, while we cannot count upon any more such extraordinary help as you gave us, we should not need any. Can I give you a lift back to Tellus?”
“I don’t think so, thanks. My stuff is en route now. I’ll have to blow out this vortex anyway. Not that I think there’s anything unusual about it—those were undoubtedly murders, not vortex casualties at all—but for the record. Also, since I can’t do any more extinguishing until my arm finishes itself up, I may as well stay here and keep on practising.”
“Practising? Practising what?”
“Gun-slinging—the lightning draw. I intend to get at least a lunch while the next pirate who pulls a DeLameter on me is getting a square meal.”
* * * * *
And Councillor Ellington conferred with another Gray Lensman; one who was not even vaguely humanoid.
“Did you take him apart?”
“Practically cell by cell.”
“What do you think the chances are of finding and developing another like him?”
“With a quarter of a million Lensmen working on it now, and the number doubling every day, and with a hundred thousand million planets, with almost that many different cultures, it is my considered opinion that it is merely a matter of time.”