The last letter was just a dispatch. Here at the Blito-P3 base they have the usual Officers Council, chaired by the base commander, that is supposed to pass on new projects. But, as Section Chief of 451 and Inspector General Overlord, I surely didn’t need their consent. I just told them that this is what was going to happen and they could lump it. To Hells with their staff recreation. And besides, didn’t the Grand Council Order say to spread a little advanced technology on the planet? So they could go to Hells and do what they were told. I stamped it with my identoplate loud and plain. They knew better than to trifle with me. I even added a postscript to that effect.
It was quite a relief to get all this tedious work done. So I called for the housekeeper.
When she came in, hollow-eyed from no sleep, scared as to what I might want now, I said, “Melahat Hanim” (a very polite way of addressing a woman in Turkey is to add “hanim” to her name — it flatters them; they have no souls, you know), “has the beautiful lady arrived from Istanbul?”
She wrung her hands and shook her head negative. So I said, “Get out of here, you female dropping of camel dung,” and wondered what else I could do to while away the hours before ten. It’s no use going to town too early — the roads are too cluttered with carts.
Then I thought I had better check on Heller. I didn’t much care to know what he was doing in the ship so I hadn’t even bothered to rig the 831 Relayer.
The recorder was grinding away, the viewer was off. So I figured I might as well start early. I turned the viewer on and began to spot-check forward.
Last night he had simply walked home and gone aboard. Limping! Must have hurt his foot.
Speeding forward, I heard a shrill whistle on the strip. So I went back over it at normal speed.
I saw the airlock open and then, way down at the foot of the ladder, there was Faht Bey, holding a hull resonator against the tug’s plates.
“There you are,” said Faht Bey, looking up. “I’m the base commander, Officer Faht. Are you the Crown inspector?”
“I’m on Grand Council orders, if that’s what you mean. Come on up.”
Faht Bey was not about to climb that eighty feet of rickety ladder from the bottom of the hangar to the airlock on the vertical ship. “I just wanted to see you.”
“I want to see you, too,” said Heller, looking down the ladder. “The clothes in your costume section are too short and the shoes there are about three sizes too small for me.” I was disappointed. He hadn’t hurt his foot, it was tight shoes. Well, you can’t always grab the pot.
“That’s what I wanted to see you about,” Faht Bey yelled up at him. “The people in town are looking all over for somebody that fits your description. They say he waylaid two popular characters at different times in an alley and beat them up with a lead pipe. One has a cracked neck and the other a broken arm and fractured skull. They had to be shipped into Istanbul to be hospitalized.”
“How’d you know it fits my description?” said Heller. My Gods, he was nosy. “This is the first time you’ve seen me.”
“Gris said what you looked like,” said this (bleep) Faht Bey. “So please don’t take it badly. It’s my guess you’ll be leaving here in two or three days.” Well, (bleep) him! He must have read Lombar’s order to Raht! “So I’ve got to invoke my authority on the subject of base security and ask you not to leave this hangar while you’re here.”
“Can I wander around the hangar?” said Heller.
“Oh, that’s all right, just as long as you don’t leave the outside-world end of the tunnels.”
Heller waved him an airy hand. “Thanks for the tip, Officer Faht.”
And that was the end of that one. I sped ahead to the next light flash that showed the door was open.
Heller was going down the ladder, zip, zip. He landed at the bottom with a tremendous clank. It startled me until I realized he was wearing hull shoes with the metal bars loose.
He started clickety-clacking around, a little notebook held in his hand, making jots and touching his watch now and then. He went around the whole perimeter of the hangar, clickety-clack, POP. I knew what he was doing. He was just amusing himself surveying the place. These engineers! They’re crazy. Maybe he was practicing his sense of direction or something.
I kept speeding the strip ahead. But that was all he was up to. He’d stop by doors and branch tunnels and make little notes and loud POPs.
Now and then he’d meet an Apparatus personnel. The first couple, he gave them a cheerful good morning. But they turned an icy shoulder to him. After that he didn’t speak to anyone. My rumor was working!
He got into some side tunnels and took some interest in the dimensions of the detention cells. It would be hard to tell they were cells for they were not as secure as Spiteos — no wire. They just had iron bars set into the rock. The base crew who had redesigned the place had overdone it on detention cells — they had made enough for hundreds of people and never at any time were there more than a dozen. They were empty now.
Speeding ahead, I saw that he had stopped and I went back to find what was interesting him so much.
He was standing in front of the storage room doors. They are very massive. There are about fifty of them in a curving line that back the hangar itself, a sort of corridor. The corridor has numerous openings into the hangar itself.
They were all locked, of course. And the windows in the doors, necessary to circulate the air and prevent mold, are much too high up to see through. I was fairly certain he would not even guess what they contained.
Lombar, when the pressure was put on Turkey to stop growing opium, had really outdone himself. He had ordered so much of it bought, it would have glutted the market had it all been released. Now, there it was, nicely bagged in big sacks. Tons and tons and tons of it.
But even if one jumped up and got a look through the windows, there was nothing to be seen. Just piles of bags.
Heller examined the floor. But what was there to find? Just the truck wheel wear.
He bent over and picked up some dust and then, to wipe his hand, I suppose, he put his hand in his pocket and brought it out clean.
Unconcerned, he just went on clickety-clacking along with the occasional POP.
Again he stopped. He was sniffing the air. He was looking at a huge barred door. And he certainly wouldn’t be able to get in there — it was the heroin conversion plant!
He went up to it and knocked. How silly. Nobody was in there. It only operates once in a while. But still he knocked, very sharp raps.
Heller must have given it up. He made some notes. Just some figures. Pointless.
And there he went again, clickety-clacking, POP along.
He’d stop by an exit tunnel, go down it a bit and come back. I had to laugh. He even went up the exit tunnel which led to my room! He could never suspect the villa lay on the other side. He didn’t even try the switch which opened the door, didn’t even see it, apparently. It would have brought him within ten feet of where I was sitting.
Some spy!
It had only taken him an hour.
Then he’d done a little sketch, all neat, very fast. Apparently there was nobody near to give it to, to show them how good he was — or maybe he had understood they weren’t talking to him. He just climbed back up into the ship.