"Now should I have shot her, or not?" Jack demanded. "Not whether I could have or not I couldn't but should I have, Spud?"
"I don't know." Costigan thought for minutes. "I don't think so. No not in cold blood. I couldn't have, either, and wouldn't if I could. It wouldn't be worth it. Somebody will shoot her some day, but not one of us unless, of course, it's in a fight."
'Thanks, Spud; that makes me feel better. Off."
Costigan–Jones' desk was already clear, since there was little or no paper– work connected with his position in Department Q. Hence his preparations for departure were few and simple. He merely opened the safe, stuck the package into his pocket, closed and locked the safe, and took a company ground–car to the spaceport.
Nor was there any more formality about his leaving the planet. Eridan had, of course, a Customs frontier of sorts; but since Uranium Inc. owned Eridan in fee simple, its Customs paid no attention whatever to company ships or to low– number, gold–badge company men. Nor did Jones need ticket, passport, or visa. Company men rode company ships to and from company plants, wherever situated, without let or hindrance. Thus, wearing the aura of power of his new position and Gold Badge Number Thirty Eight George W. Jones was whisked out to the uranium ship and was shown to his cabin.
Nor was it surprising that the trip from Eridan to . Earth was completely without incident. This was an ordinary freighter, hauling uranium on a routine flight. Her cargo was valuable, of course the sine qua non. of interstellar trade but in no sense precious. Not pirate–bait, by any means. And only two men knew that this flight was in any whit different from the one which had preceded it or the one which would follow it. If this ship was escorted or guarded the fact was not apparent: and no Patrol vessel came nearer to it than four deters Virgil Samms and Roderick Kinnison saw to that.
The voyage, however, was not tedious. Jones was busy every minute. In fact, there were scarcely minutes enough in which to assimilate the material which Isaacson had given him the layouts, flow–sheets, and organization charts of Works Number Eighteen, on Tellus.
And upon arrival at the private spaceport which was an integral part of Works Number Eighteen, Jones was not surprised (he knew more now than be had known a few weeks before; and infinitely more than the man on the street) to learn that the Customs men of this particular North American Port of Entry were just as complaisant as were those of Eridan. They did not bother even to count the boxes, to say nothing of inspecting them. They stamped the ship's papers without either reading or checking them. They made a perfunctory search, it is true, of crewmen and quarters, but a low number gold badge was still a magic talisman. Unquestioned, sacrosanct, he and his baggage were escorted to the ground–car first in line.
"Administration Building," Jones–Costigan told the hacker, and that was that.
Chapter 16
It has been said that the basic drive of the Eddorians was a lust for power; a thought
which should be elucidated and perhaps slightly modified. Their warrings, their strifes, Click here to buyABBYYPDFTransformer2.0www.ABBYY.com Click here to buyABBYYPDFTransformer2.0www.ABBYY.com Click here to buyABBYYPDFTransformer2.0www.ABBYY.com Click here to buyABBYYPDFTransformer2.0www.ABBYY.com their internecine intrigues and connivings were inevitable because of the tremendousness and capability and the limitations of their minds. Not enough could occur upon any one planet to keep such minds as theirs even partially occupied; and, unlike the Arisians, they could not satiate themselves in
a static philosophical study of the infinite possibilities of the Cosmic All. They had to be doing something; or, better yet, making other and lesser beings do things to make the physical universe conform to their idea of what a universe should be.
Their first care was to set up the various echelons of control. The second echelon, immediately below the Masters, was of course the most important, and after a survey of both galaxies they decided to give this high honor to the Ploorans. Ploor, as is now well known, was a planet of a sun so variable that all Plooran life had to undergo radical cyclical changes in physical form in order to live through the tremendous climatic charges involved in its every year. Physical form, however, meant nothing to the Eddorians. Since no other planet even remotely like theirs existed in this, our normal plenum, physiques like theirs would be impossible; and the Plooran mentality left very little to be desired.
In the third echelon there were many different races, among which the frigidblooded, poison–breathing Eich were perhaps the most efficient sad most callous; and in the fourth there were millions upon millions of entities representing thousands upon thousands of widely–variant races.
Thus, at the pinpoint in history represented by the time of Virgil Samms and Roderick Kinnison, and Eddorians were busy; and if such a word can be used, happy. Gharlane of Eddore, second in authority only to the All–Highest, His Ultimate Supremacy himself, paid little attention to any one planet or to any one race. Even such a mind .as his, when directing the affairs of twenty million and then sixty million and then a hundred million worlds, can do so only in broad, and not in fine.
And thus the reports which were now flooding in to Gharlane in a constantly increasing stream concerned Classes and groups of worlds, and solar systems, and galactic regions. A planet might perhaps be mentioned as representative of a class, but no individual entity lower than a Plooran was named or discussed. Gharlane analyzed those tremendous reports; collated, digested, compared, and reconciled them; determined trends and tendencies and most probable resultants. Gharlane issued orders, the carrying out of which would make an entire galactic region fit more and ever more exactly into the Great Plan.
But, as has been pointed out, there was one flaw inherent in the Boskoniaa system. Underlings, then as now, were prone to gloss over their own mistakes, to cover up their own incompetences. Thus, since he had no reason to inquire specifically, Gharlane did not know that anything whatever had gone amiss on Sol Three, the pestiferous planet which had formerly caused him more trouble than all the rest of his worlds combined.
After the fact, it is easy to say that he should have continued his personal supervision of Earth, but can that view be defended? Egotistical, self– confident, arrogant, Gharlane knew that he had finally whipped Tellus into line. It was the same now as any other planet of its class. And even had he thought it worth while to make such a glaring exception, would not the fused Elders of Arisia have intervened?
Be those things as they may, Gharlane did not know that the new–born Galactic Patrol had been successful in defending Triplanetary's Hill against the Black Fleet. Nor did the Plooran Assistant Director in charge. Nor did any member of that dreadful group of Eich which was even then calling itself the Council of Boskone. The highest–ranking Boskonian who knew of the fiasco, calmly confident of his own ability, had not considered this minor reverse of sufficient importance to report to his immediate superior. He had already taken steps to correct the condition. In fact, as matters now stood, the thing was more fortunate than otherwise, in that it would lull the Patrol into believing themselves in a position of superiority a belief which would, at election time, prove fatal.
This being, human to the limit of classification except for a faint but unmistakable blue coloration, had been closeted with Senator Morgan for a matter of two hours.
"In the matters covered, your reports have been complete and conclusive," the visitor said finally, "but you have not reported on the Lens."