It is a sound maxim in covert operations that when you find you are acting on the orders of an insane person, you take complete stock of your own position in the mess. I had found that, without any slightest doubt, Lom-bar Hisst was a paranoid schizophrenic, compounded by pronounced megalomania, confirmed by aural hallucinations, complicated by probable heroin addiction and consolidated with a consumption of amphetamines: in other words, stark, staring mad. Nuts. Executing any of his commands could be very dangerous.
So I did a little resume of position. I even did it in the proper resume form. I wrote:
1. Lombar Hisst needed drugs on Voltar to undermine and overthrow the Voltar government and take power.
1-a. Blito-P3 was the only known source of such drugs.
1-b. The Earth base existed to keep the drugs coming.
2. Delbert John Rockecenter, by nominee, ownership and other means, controlled the pharmaceutical companies of the planet.
2-a. Delbert John Rockecenter, through his banks and another means, controlled, amongst the rest, the Government of Turkey.
2-b. Delbert John Rockecenter’s wealth depended upon oil and the control of all Earth’s energy sources.
2-c. Delbert John Rockecenter could go broke if anyone monkeyed with his energy monopoly.
2-d. Conclusion of 2: If the pharmaceutical monopoly passed into other, less criminal hands, we could be out on our stinking ear!
3. From the viewpoint of Earth, Jettero Heller’s presence here would be extremely beneficial.
3-a. Earth would have cheap and abundant fuel.
3-b. As economic stresses are caused by scarce fuel, then Heller’s technical assistance would, as a side benefit, abruptly end the raging inflation and bring about wide prosperity.
3-c. If Heller changed the fuel type, the air would clean up.
3-d. If Heller did not succeed, the planet would be liable to self-destruct from pollution.
3-e. If word got to the Grand Council that Heller had failed, it would launch an immediate and bloody invasion, costly to Voltar and fatal to Earth, just to prevent the present inhabitants from rendering the target worthless with their filthy housekeeping.
3-f. If Heller succeeded, the threatened invasion would go back on schedule to be undertaken a hundred years from now per the original Invasion Timetable.
3-g. In a hundred years, during which it had abundant and practical fuel, the planet could probably raise itself to a higher technological level and the type of “invasion” Earth would experience then is known as a “PC Type Invasion,” meaning “Peaceful Cooperation” wherein Voltar would just want some bases and would minimally interfere in the planet’s internal affairs. There would be no blood or destruction and everybody would be happy.
3-h. Jettero Heller’s presence on Earth was a Godsend both to Earth and Voltar.
4. Soltan Gris had evidence that Lombar Hisst had put an unknown assassin close to one Soltan Gris.
4-a. If said Soltan Gris did not carry out the orders of said Lombar Hisst, said assassin would emphatically terminate the life of said Soltan Gris with malice aforethought and ferocity!
CONCLUSION: Carry out the exact orders of Lombar Hisst cleverly, painstakingly and with enormous care! And with no questions whatever!
If I do say so myself, it was a brilliant resume of the situation. It covered not only the essentials but every salient point of any importance. A masterpiece!
So down we slid, undetected by the crude surveillance equipment of the primitive planet’s military forces. They have what we call “bow and arrow”-type radar. Easily nullified.
We went through the electronic illusion of the mountaintop right on target. And I will say this, pirate or not, Captain Stabb was a good spaceship handler. We came down on the trundle dolly with only a severe jolt.
The ship vibrated as the trundle dolly moved us over to the side, into a bay within the mountain, clearing the landing target for other arrivals and take-offs.
I patted Captain Stabb on the back. We were fast friends now. “A good groundfall,” I said. “Couldn’t have done it better myself.”
He beamed at me.
“Now, what I want you to do,” I said, “is warn, as a friend, any Apparatus people you meet, that this bird we’re carrying is actually a Crown agent armed with secret orders to execute anybody he finds anything out about. Just tip them off they’d take their life in their hands if they talked to him.”
Oh, Captain Stabb went for that! The moment the airlock was opened, all three hundred pounds of him were down the landing ladder like an earthquake to spread the word while he pretended to be concerned only with clearing us in. A real jewel.
A door swung open down the passageway and Heller climbed up the rungs. “Any objection if I wander around?”
“None, none,” I said cheerfully. “You can even absorb some local color. Here’s a slip so they’ll hand you appropriate clothes at the Garb Section, right down that passageway over there. And why not take a spin around town? It’s early yet. Here’s a transport authorization slip: you can hook on to one of the trucks. Lots of people speak English in Turkey, so that’s okay. You haven’t any papers yet, but nobody will bother you. Just say you’re a new technician at the satellite tracking station. Feel free, have fun, live it up!” I added in commercial English with a gay laugh.
I watched him as he went smoothly down the ladder and disappeared into the Garb Section tunnel. He was just a stupid baby at this game, but after all, I had been a professional for a long time.
My baggage was all ready. I barked for a hangar handler and in minutes I had a motor dolly loaded up and was on my way.
There is one flaw in the Blito-P3 hangar. Earthquakes are common and severe in Turkey and this big of a space disintegrated out of solid rock needs an awful lot of pressure-beam supports. They turn off the cone ones when ships arrive and depart and then they turn them on again. I had not been down here for nearly a year and I had forgotten about them. I was right in the path of one when they were turned back on and it almost knocked me flat. Perhaps this made me a little more exacting and severe than I would have been, for truthfully, I was awfully glad to be out of that (bleeped) tug!
I stopped by the Officers’ Section and grabbed me a trench coat.
Using the exit through the “archaeological workman’s barracks,” I ordered up a “taxi,” piled in my baggage and had the Apparatus driver take me directly to the base commander’s office. It is in a mud hut near the International Agricultural Training Center for Peasants. It seems to be accepted that he is its superintendent. That excuses all the traffic in and out of his place, for peasants come there to be trained — in how to raise a lot more opium for a lot less price.
The Turks are actually Mongols. The word Turk is really a corruption of their original name, “the T’u-Kin,” which is Chinese. They invaded Asia Minor in about the tenth century, Earth time. But they don’t look Chinese and they invaded and commingled in an area that already had hundreds of other racial types, so it is very simple to find, in the Voltar Confederacy of a hundred and ten planets, vast numbers of people who can pass for Turks.
The base commander was one of these. His real name was Faht, so he calls himself Faht Bey — the Turks put “Bey” after their names for some reason. He had grown pretty plump on his easy post. He had a fat wife and an oversized old Chevy car and western-style over-stuffed furniture that would take his weight and he was pretty comfortable. He was wanted for a mass murder on Flisten and any thought of being relieved as base commander scared him into waves of shaking fat.