Guy shook his head, his hand on the doorknob of his suite. “Thanks for the information. I’ll know, next time, to be more careful. I’d appreciate it if you didn’t tell the major about my little jaunt. She had already told me to stay put.”
Podner fluttered a hand. “Oh, don’t you worry. I’m no tattletale. We boys have to stick together.”
Guy Thomas closed the door behind him and looked warily in the direction of his still unrumpled bed. But then he did a quick double-take. His eyes were suddenly wide, sleep forgotten.
The room was a shambles. His things had been ransacked, and no effort made to disguise the fact. He stood rooted, his mind whirling. This made no sense at all. It made no more sense than his being shot at on his way to contact the Sons of Liberty. There was no reason for him to be an assassin’s target. There was no need to ransack his belongings.
He began gathering them together. He had had no time, earlier, to properly unpack, and his clothes and personal belongings had remained in his luggage. Now they were scattered about the bed, on the table, on chairs. Some of them thrown to the floor.
His tool kit had been emptied, helter skelter, on the table top where he himself had assembled his gun, earlier, from its disguised component parts. He went over each item he had brought with him from Earth, in careful memory. For a time, he could find nothing missing, but then a cold fear went through him. He sought frantically.
His communicator. It wasn’t actually gone. He found it, or rather its remains. Someone had obviously crushed it under heel and then kicked it under the bed, deliberately, as though in contempt.
His communicator.
He had lost his only method of contact with either the UP Embassy on its artificial satellite, or with Earth itself. He was stranded on the planet Amazonia, from which no man had ever been known to escape, save the revolutionist Sarpedon, in the memory of any living person.
Guy Thomas was baffled. But who? It made no sense. No sense at all. Podner Bates came to his mind. The only person who knew he was here, save the major and her underlings. The major? But why? They had searched his things with painful care on the ship. There was hardly reason to search them again. Besides, who could possibly have known he wasn’t in his room? Who could have expected to come burgling without resistance on his part?
Burgling? No. Nothing was gone, nothing bothered, save his communicator. The only thing that made sense at all was that someone had known he wasn’t in his rooms and had entered deliberately to find and destroy his communicator.
And there was just one hole in that theory. The sophisticated communication device was not even known to exist outside the bounds of his own department, and his department was a close-knit, dedicated outfit, far beyond all others in UP.
Guy Thomas had had too much tossed at him in the past twenty-four hours. He threw himself, face down, on his bed. He was asleep in moments. He awoke surprisingly rejuvenated, at half-past eight. He made his way into the elaborate refresher room, shedding his slept-in clothing as he went and was fully under the spray before allowing himself to dwell on the past and the future.
The past twenty-four hours bewildered him, and after only a quick mental review, he refused to dwell further on what had developed. He had too much to consider in the future.
When he had allowed the refresher to bathe, shave, trim his hair and massage him to glowing pinkness, he issued forth and began opening closets and drawers in search of fresh local raiment. He assumed that they had outfitted him with a supply and found he was correct.
In slipping into a tunic, he tried for a time to adjust the shoulder in the manner that Podner Bates had his. It didn’t work. The tuck was built in. He was going to have to remain a potential prey to any Amazon on the prowl.
Dressed, he went over to the orderbox which sat on the table next to his bed and flicked on the switch. He noted that the instrument was almost identical to those on Earth or on any of the other most advanced worlds. The Amazonians, obviously, kept up with developments. He was again impressed.
He said into it, “My breakfast, please, and if Bachelor Bates is available, could he come to my rpom?” And then he added, “Are there newspapers?”
“No, Bachelor Thomas.”
“Well, how do I tune on newscasts? What’s the drill for getting the news?”
“I do not understand what you mean by news, Bachelor Thomas,” the orderbox said. The voice was feminine, he noticed. Or what passed for feminine on this forsaken planet.
“New, news,” he said, surprised. “The day’s developments on Amazonia and throughout United Planets, for that matter. Political events, scientific developments, sports results, fires, wrecks, air and spacecraft crackups if any, criminal cases, that sort of thing. News.”
There was a pause. After a moment, the orderbox said, “We are sorry, there is no such service on Amazonia, Bachelor Thomas. Such material is issued in weekly magazines and submitted to those involved.” The voice faded away, leaving him taken aback.
In all his career, he had never even heard of a planet which had no method of dispensing fresh news. He shook his head. Could the Amazonians be so self-satisfied with themselves and their way of life that they had no interest in interplanetary affairs? But even so, they’d certainly want to know of the developments on their own world. It was just one more for the book, from a culture that had already surprised him beginning at chapter one.
Podner Bates arrived with the breakfast, which was pushed into the room on a small cart powered by a youth of perhaps eighteen. A youth who giggled. Evidently, he found Guy Thomas almost unbearably amusing. The hell with it, Guy decided. He waited until the giggler left.
Podner said archly, “Well, darling, did we spend a restful night, finally?”
Guy, even as he shot a disdainful glare at the other, sat down to his food. Bachelor Bates was the prime suspect, so far as the burgling of his room was concerned. If it hadn’t been for the mystery of the earlier assassination attempt, which he didn’t think Bates could have possibly pulled off, and which he suspected was connected with the robbery, he would have accused him outright.
“Have some coffee,” he said. “That is coffee, isn’t it?”
“Oh yes, but I never touch it, darling. I’ve heard its simply terrible for the complexion, and a boy my age has to watch himself, you know.”
Guy grunted. There was enough food on the table for a squad of men his size. What was undoubtedly a citrus fruit drink, eggs, sausages, enormous slices of bacon, bread, toast, rolls, various jellies, coffee and cream. Evidently, he decided, the early colonists of Amazonia hadn’t depended on local flora and fauna but had brought both animals and plants from Earth. There had been some adapting to the new world, but the food was still highly recognizable. There was an extremely delicate, nutty taste to the bacon. Gourmets would have drooled over it back on Earth.
Guy downed a sizeable glass of citrus juice and began to load his plate. After yesterday’s activity, he was famished. He said to Podner, who was eyeing him tolerantly, “I don’t know when the major’s going to turn up but until she does, I’d appreciate it if you’d brief me on the workings of Amazonia.”