“That’s the package, Dottie,” Seaton said then. “If we want to reach the Chlorans without them reaching us first, there’s how. That makes it a force, wouldn’t you say?”
Dorothy wasn’t sure. “For twenty-four hours, I guess,” she agreed, dubiously. “After which time I think I’ll be screaming for you to come back here and feed that monster some more data. So be mighty darn sure to get some.”
“I’ll try to, that’s for sure. But the really smart thing to do might be to take this wreckage half a dozen galaxies away and put the Brain to work rebuilding her while I’m down there investigating.”
“D’you think I’ll sit still for that?” Dorothy blazed. “If you do, you’re completely out of your mind!”
And even Crane did not subscribe to the idea. “Why?” he asked, “just to tear her down again after you’ve found out what we’ll have to have?”
“That’s so, too.” Seaton thought for a moment, gray eyes narrowed and focused on infinity, translating the imperatives of the Brain into practical measures. Then he nodded. “All right. I admit I’ll feel better about the deal with you people and the Brain standing by.”
And Seaton, now lean and hard and deeply tanned, sat down in his master controller and began to manufacture the various items he would need; exactly as the Brain told him to make them.
And next morning, as the sun began to peer over the crest of the high mountain ridge directly below the Skylark of Valeron, Seaton came to ground, hid his tiny landing craft in a cave at the eighteen-thousand-foot level, and hiked the fifteen miles down-mountain to the nearest town.
He now looked very little indeed like the Doctor Richard B. Seaton of the Rare Metals Laboratory. He was almost gaunt. His skin was burned to a shade consistent with years of exposure to wind and weather. His hair had very evidently been cut — occasionally — with shears by his own hand; his beard had been mowed — equally occasionally with those same shears.
He wore crudely made, heavy, hobnailed, high-laced boots; a pair of baggy, unsymmetrical breeches of untanned deerskin; and a shapeless, poor-grade-leather coat that had been patched crudely and repeatedly at elbows and shoulders and across the back. He also wore what was left of a hard hat.
As he strode into the town and along its main street, more than one pair of eyes looked at him and then looked again, for the people of that town were not used to seeing anyone walk purposefully. Nor was the sloppily uniformed guard at the entrance to City Hall. This wight — who couldn’t have been a day over fifteen — opened his eyes, almost straightened up and said:
“Halt, you. Who’a you? Whatcha want?”
“Business,” Seaton said, briskly. “To see the mayor, Ree-Toe Prenk.”
“Awri’; g’wan in,” and the youth relapsed into semistuporous leaning on his ratty-looking rusty rifle.
It was easy enough to find His Honor’s office, since it was the only one in the building doing any business at all. Seaton paused just inside the doorway and looked around.
Everything was shabby and neglected. The wall-to-wall carpet was stained and dirty, worn through to the floor, in several places. The divider-rail leaned drunkenly, forward here, backward there. The vacant receptionist’s desk was as battered and scarred as though it had been through a war. The place hadn’t been cleaned for months, and not very thoroughly then.
And the people in that office were in perfect sync with their surroundings. Half a dozen melancholy-looking people, men and women, sat listlessly on hard, straight-backed chairs; staring glumly, fixedly at nothing; completely disinterested, apparently, in whether they were ever called into the inner office or not.
And the secretary! She was dressed in what looked like a gunny-sack. She was scrawny. Her unkempt, straight, lank hair was dirty-mouse brown in color. She didn’t look very bright. She was, however, the only secretary in sight, so Seaton strode up to her desk.
“Miss What’s-your-name!” he snapped. “Can you, without rupturing a blood-vessel, come to life long enough to do half a minute’s work?”
The girl jumped, started to rise to her feet at her desk, and blushed. “Why, yes… yes, sir, I mean. What can we do for you, Mister — ?”
“I’m Ky-El Mokak. I want to talk to Hizzonner about turning myself in.”
That brought her to life fast. “About what?” she cried, and her half-scream was followed instantly by a deeper, louder voice from the intercom.
His Honor had not been asleep after all. “You what? All right, Fy-Ly, send him in; but be sure he hasn’t got a gun first.”
“Gun? What would I be doing with a gun?” Seaton patted his pockets, shucked off his dilapidated coat, and made a full turn to show that he was clean. Then, seeing no coat-rack or hangers, he pitched the coat and hat into a corner and strode into the inner office.
It was, if possible, in even worse shape than the outer one. The man behind the desk was fifty-odd years old; lean and bald. He looked worried, dyspeptic and nervous. He held a hand-weapon — which was not the least bit rusty — in workmanlike fashion in a competent-looking right hand. It was not pointed directly at Seaton’s midsection. It evidently did not have to be.
“What I’d ought to do right now,” the man said quietly, “is blow your brains out without letting you say a word. You’re another damn rat. A fink — a spy — maybe a revver or an undergrounder, even. You don’t look like any wilder I ever saw brought in.”
The Brain had not dumped Seaton on a strange and dangerous new planet without providing him with a full “knowledge” of its history, its mores and even its dialects.
Through the educators Seaton had received enough of RaySee-Nee’s cultural patterns to be able to carry off his role. He knew what His Honor was thinking about; he knew, even, very accurately just how far the man could be pushed, where his real sympathies lay, and what he could be counted upon to do about it.
Wherefore Seaton said easily: “Of course I don’t. I’ve got a brain. Those lard-headed chasseurs couldn’t catch me in a thousand years. None of ’em can detect a smell on a skunk. And you won’t shoot me, not with the bind you’re in. You aren’t a damn enough fool to. You wouldn’t shoot a crippled kid on crutches, let alone a full-grown, able-bodied man.”
Prenk shivered a little, but that was all. “Who says I’m in a bind? What kind of a bind?”
“I say so,” Seaton said, flatly. “You’re hitting bottom right now. You’re using half-grown kids; girls, even. How many weeks is it going to be before you don’t make quota and your town and everything and everybody in it get turned into a lake of lava?”
Prenk trembled visibly and his face turned white. “You win,” he said unsteadily, and put his pistol back into the top right-hand drawer of his desk. “Whoever you are, you know the score and aren’t afraid to talk about it. You’d have no papers, of course — on you, at least… Let’s see your arm.”
“No number.” Seaton rolled up his left sleeve and held his forearm out for examination. “Look close. Scars left by good surgery are fine, but they can’t be made invisible.”
“I know they can’t.” His Honor looked very closely indeed, then drew a tremendously deep breath of relief. “You are a wilder! You mean to say you’ve been up in the hills ever since the Conquest without getting caught?”
“That’s right. I told you I’m smart, and the brains of a whole platoon of chasseurs, all concentrated down into one, wouldn’t equip a half-witted duck.”
“But they’ve got dogs!”
“Yeah, but they aren’t smart, either. Not very much smarter than the chasseurs are. Hell, I’ve been living on those dogs half the time. Pretty tough, fried or roasted, but boiled long enough they make mighty tasty stew.”