And that night, I slept with her photo on my pillow and, oh, did I dream beautiful dreams!
I felt so good that when, in the dawn, I made out Faht Bey beside the bed, I wasn’t even annoyed.
“Raht radioed in,” he said. “He’s all set. You can leave for America as soon as it is dark.”
I didn’t even hear him as he left, probably he was saying he would tell the tug crew.
I clutched the photo in my hand and kissed it passionately. Gods bless the raping Russian troops if they were delivering into my hands such a treasure as this! There’s a lot to be said for communism!
Chapter 6
We took off as soon as dusk thickened into deep black.
There are some — persons with hypercritical attitudes and chronically given to nitpicking — who might try to say that the heady prospects of owning a real, live dancing girl distracted me from my duties. But this would be the purest cabal.
That day before take-off I was the slave of duty. I browbeat Faht Bey into giving me all the money I would need and then some. I armed myself thoroughly with Earth weaponry. I collected all the necessary equipment. I threatened the villa staff thoroughly and even had one of the small boys throwing up again.
I connected up the 831 Relayer and, slave of duty that I was being, inspected what Heller was up to inside the ship.
He was making candy!
That’s right! He was standing in the after-galley with pots and pans. He even had an apron on! He was using a big spoon to test a simmering mess of the gooiest, most nauseating-looking candy I have ever seen!
I thought, well, well, he must have learned it from his sister. He was being so precise, I thought, isn’t that sweet? And actually was so revolted that I didn’t even spot it was an English pun until much later.
A little later, I checked again. He had a whole bunch of little papers and he was putting the candy down on them in blobs.
When I came back from threatening the staff again, Heller had the pieces all wrapped up in wax paper. They seemed to be very hard and had a spiral pattern of red and white stripes.
I knew he was being silly. There’s lots of candy just like that in America. You can buy it all over the place. It’s even advertised in big colorful ads in the crew’s hangar library, foreign magazine section.
Oh, good, I said sarcastically, he’s preparing for his trip. And I dismissed it.
Oh, I was very busy that day before take-off. I spent at least two hours on Apparatus business which more than made up for the ten I spent reclining on the lawn, daydreaming about Utanc.
The launching went off without a hitch. It is very simple to travel on Earth: it has only one moon and even it is not all that bright. So all one has to do is launch in the darkness and then follow the night as it creeps along the planet surface. One dawdles along about three hundred miles up and then descends quickly to find himself at the same local time as that of one’s departure point.
Captain Stabb certainly showed an expertise in such things. The Apparatus school could well add some lectures on piracy and smuggling. He told me several amusing stories as we descended, including one about wiping out a whole city. Uproarious!
We followed the textbook landing procedure, however.
Below us was the deserted plantation: the empty, fallow field, the ruined house with two front pillars gone, the slave shacks passed to ruin.
About five hundred feet up, Stabb hit the paralysis button. A heavy flash of bright blue light struck down from the ship in a cone, lasting only a split second; if seen by anyone they would suppose it to be the reflection of headlamps of a turning car or a lightning flash on the horizon.
Stabb thudded the tug down right on target, within the screen of trees, horizontally, on its belly.
The second pilot slammed open the airlock door. The second engineer, in combat dress, was on the ground in a second. He was carrying a heat detector which he pointed in a sweep at the terrain.
The bright blue light knocks any living thing in the area unconscious. The heat detector tells one if there is now anyone lying there. Standard operation. Saves one from having some nasty surprises. And actually is quite humanitarian: one doesn’t have to kill a chance observer, one can just go off and let the person come to, wondering what hit him, not running around screaming, “Voltar pilots have just violated Code Number a-36-544 M Section B!” Dead bodies are hard to get rid of on the spur of the moment and bring in nosy sheriffs and things.
The second engineer’s detector flashed red! Something had been knocked out by the blueflash!
The first pilot, blastrifle at ready, sprinted in the direction of the indicator beam. Stabb was tensed at the tug controls, ready to take off again in case the alert turned out to be an ambush.
The Virginia night was August, muggy hot. A thin sliver of moonlight silhouetted the copse of trees. A wind sighed through the weeds around the spaceship.
Then a bark of laughter. The first pilot came running back. He was holding an opossum by the tail! He threw it to one side. “Seems all clear,” he said.
“All clear!” said the second engineer, tossing his heat detector back into the airlock.
Stabb peered into the night, his close-set eyes intent. “Where the Hells are they? We’ve got to be back at the base before the sun rises there!” He glanced at his watch. “We’ve only got twenty-five minutes to hang around here!”
Suddenly, running feet in the distance, coming down a weed-grown road.
Raht burst into view. He was lugging two enormous suitcases.
He is the most unremarkable-looking Earthman one ever cared to see. Aside from a bristling mustache he affects, there is not one other feature to make him stick in memory. The perfect spy. He is from the planet Modon and glad they were to get rid of him.
He boosted the suitcases into the airlock. He was panting with exertion. But he saw me in the dim shimmer of interior light. “Cripes!” he said, “It’s Officer Gris himself.” He always has a bit of a complaining note when he speaks.
“What have you got in these suitcases?” I demanded. “The orders were to get expensive luggage filled with clothes.”
He pushed them further into the airlock. “Clothes cost money. You’ve no idea what inflation is, I made up the weight with rocks!”
He had made up the weight with money in his own pocket, I said to myself. But I hit the buzzer to the back and picked up the bags to take them to Heller. I did not want him to see the agents that would be tailing him from here on out.
Heller had released the passageway doors. I struggled through and dumped the two huge suitcases in the salon. They were expensive-looking cases.
He was sitting at the table. I said, “You’ll find clothes in there. Get dressed fast. Take no clothes of your own. You only have a little over twenty minutes, so don’t dawdle.” I left him, closing the doors behind me.
Raht was still breathing hard. I drew him into the crew salon. He took out a sheaf of documents. “Here’s his military school diploma.”
I read:
SAINT LEE MILITARY ACADEMY
Greetings: DELBERT JOHN ROCKECENTER,
JUNIOR
has completed his education to the
level of JUNIOR COLLEGE.
Signed, sealed (etc.)
It was a very imposing diploma. It had Confederate soldiers holding rifles at port arms. It had banners and cannons. Very fancy.
“Here’s the rest of the papers,” said Raht. They were attested transcripts of subjects and grades.