The radio said, "We now have a request from our armed forces in Turkey, 'Join the Big Round Up in the Sky.'"
"Oh, Gods, turn it off," I begged.
He did.
Wait a minute. Radio! I was suddenly hit by a brilliant idea!
I untied the sack from my belt and spilled its contents out on the floor. I picked up the two-way-response radio.
Oh, thank Gods! Raht answered!
In rapid military Voltarian, I said, "Listen and get this straight. Put a message through to the base. Order Captain Stabb to take off in the tug and pick me up quick!" Hope was surging in me. That flat space back there might serve as a landing place. Stabb could whisk me to the depths of Africa or someplace safer than here.
Raht said, "Got the message. But where are you?"
"I think I'm on the southeast end of the Greek island of Chios."
"You think" said Raht. "If a spaceship is going to pick you up, you better be sure where you are and right down to a pinpoint. They're not going to wander all over the place trying to locate you. They'd have to kill any inhabitants they ran into if they made a mistake. You're risking a Code break."
"Look," I said, "I have not got much time. They are running a race with dawn. Pinpoint me with that radio."
"It's not that accurate at such ranges. Tell you what. I'm not at the office but I'll rush over there. I can put your carrier beam on the grid analyzer if you transmit to it. Hold on. I'll get right over there." He clicked off.
"What language were you speaking?" said Madison. "It didn't sound like any lingo I ever heard."
I masked the flashlight and looked at him. He knew too much already. If the Countess Krak ever got her hands on him, I was dead for sure!
Before I could stop him, Madison took the flashlight and began to paw around in the mound of papers I had spilled out of the sack to get my radio. "Well, look at all the passports!" he said. "Inkswitch, Federal Investigator; Achmed Ben Nutti, United Arab League; Sultan Bey... I don't see any here for Smith." He looked up. "What is your real name, anyway?" He looked back at the papers. "And what's this writing?" I had used a blank Apparatus gate pass to scribble amounts of money on: the printing was three-dimensional, of course, and it plainly said, Coordinated Information Apparatus, Voltar Confederacy. It even had the logo the Fleet called the "drunks." "Three-dimensional printing?" he said. "That's out of this world, man."
At first I hadn't stopped him because I was thinking of something else: about what to do with him. Then I hadn't stopped him because the gesture of doing so would have alerted him to the fact that he was into something secret. And when he hit the gate pass blank he had gone beyond mere stopping. Code break. Madison would have to be shot.
Then, much as it was unlike me, I stayed my hand as it reached instinctively toward the machine gun. Madison was too valuable. Madison could wreck men's lives and start wars and raise Hells in a way Voltar had never heard of: PR. Lombar was always looking for ways to ruin people and this was one he had never heard of.
Despite my condition, decision was swift. When the tug picked us up, I would simply order Captain Stabb to take Madison back to base, put him in detention and ship him off to Lombar with a note. Maybe it would make Lombar less brutal on me if I gave him such a gift. It would not only get Madison safely beyond any Krak interrogation-which would be extremely fatal now that he knew my other names-it would also put me in good with Lombar Hisst.
I had to dissimulate. But I am trained in that. I forced a chuckle. "Your instincts as an investigative reporter will get you in trouble yet, Madison," I said. "Just don't spread it around and you'll find out all about it someday."
"Oho!" he said. "I smell a story! Eighteen-point Mystery Man Tells All."
He sealed his fate right there.
After a tense interval that seemed hours my radio went live. Raht's voice: "I'm in the New York office now."
"What the Hells was the delay?"
"This analyzer hasn't been used for years," said Raht. "I couldn't find a power pack. But it's operating now. Just hold down your transmit plate and I'll get it into the computer."
I did. There was a pause. Then Raht came on again. "It's a good thing I checked before I called the base. You're not on Chios."
"You must be making a mistake," I said. "I am definitely on Chios, right beside the ruins of Emborios. Check again, you idiot!"
There was a pause. "I rechecked. You're not on Chios. I have the Voltarian grid map of this planet right on the scope. You're at 43-17-4.1052 exactly."
"That doesn't tell me anything. Give it to me in Earth geography."
"Let me get a blowup of an Earth globe, get it to the same scale and superimpose... Here it is. You're 340.2 yards up from the beach and 9.1 miles west by south of Karaburun."
"WHAT?"
"You're just across a narrow strait from Chios. You're on the Turkish mainland."
Oh, GODS! I had gotten turned around in the rain and dark! And ruins were a dime a dozen in this land!
The ground under me went suddenly hot.
"Raht," I pleaded, "please, please tell them at the base to send that tug quick. I've GOT to get out of Turkey!"
"All right," he said. "I'll relay the message. But don't go running off. They'll have my head if they make a fruitless trip. I'm gone."
Madison said, "Who is that you're talking to?"
I was numb from shock of finding where I was. "New York," I said.
"On that little thing?" said Mad. "It's not much bigger than a cigarette lighter."
I didn't answer him. He'd find out all about real electronics soon enough. On Voltar. I was more interested in that blackness out there. I couldn't see much but I had to be alert for the tug.
I hoped they didn't direct their blueflash this way when they settled down on that expanse of pavement. It was around a shoulder of the hill but still, I must take care to protect my eyes with my arm. I didn't care if
Mad got a pupil full of it. He'd be knocked out soon enough anyway, for shipment.
It seemed like hardly any time at all before I saw a haze of light. But wait, there was something wrong. The whole terrain was getting gray.
IT WAS DAWN!
With a sudden sickening I realized I had been too late! They couldn't make it in the short span of darkness that had been left.
I moaned softly.
The intensity of morning twilight increased. Bushes began to take on detail. The waves in the surf below were no longer just white streaks.
It stopped raining. There were clouds but even these were thinning.
The ships!
The Golden Sunset, two or three miles away, was growing distinct. It was obscuring nearly all of another craft beside it. I could not make out the kind of vessel the other was. A fishboat? A yacht? A patrol craft? All I knew for certain about it was that it wanted me! And here I was pinned down, hidden it is true, but trapped in Turkey, the very place I must not be.
To my left, lying out in the water, three islets emerged from the twilight. And then directly before us but some miles away there seemed to be a bulk of land.
Suddenly a random shaft of sunlight moved in under the scudding clouds. It was from directly behind us.
The sun rises in the east, I told myself. My cave in the cliff was facing due west. I was looking across the narrow strait at Chios. Any hope I had that Raht might be wrong collapsed. Even the sun said I was in Turkey.
There is something discouraging about having a thing you already know pounded home with sledgehammer force.
Chios was only a few miles away. A wild plan to swim for it folded up like a popped paper bag.