I didn't want to look or listen anymore. I hastily shut the equipment off.
I needed something to distract me, quick. I didn't want to think what could happen to me if they found out my real intentions.
I had information. I knew when the tug could leave.
I fled from the room.
At a message center at the corner, I got a connection to Lombar's chief clerk and, in code, imparted the information that the scheduled departure of Mission Earth was day after tomorrow at noon.
When I started up the stairs, Meeley was blocking the way. She screamed at me, "Don't you ever bring no more rifles into my house! Of all the tenants I have ever had, you, Soltan Gris, are easily the most ..." It went on and on. All of it false. Her tenants were Apparatus officers. They were none of them different than any others, including me and she knew it.
Safely in my room again and the door bolted and barricaded, I caressed the bugging equipment. It certainly worked. I had no doubts at all I could run Heller from Turkey.
I got to thinking of the late Spurk. It was an awfully good thing he was dead. I was a benefactor of the race. Suppose this kind of stuff got installed in everybody! Even I shuddered at the thought.
Chapter 5
When I got the call the next evening, even though he had told me he wanted to see me twenty-four hours before departure, I felt scared. When summoned to see Lombar, one never knew what he was being invited to: his own funeral or somebody else's.
Sometimes he was pleasant, sometimes so agitated you felt he was going to fly apart in screaming bits.
All day I had been sort of putting the idea aside that he might send for me. I had occupied myself with last minute bits. Heller had told me in the morning of the approximate departure time and I had to pretend I didn't know already. All day he was busy making tests of recently refurbished or installed equipment, always at the center of a boil of contractors. It had all made me very nervous.
Food trucks had been coming and going, putting supplies aboard. When Heller asked me where the crew was and how many there would be, I couldn't tell him as I didn't know – Lombar hadn't told me.So I said I would put stores aboard for the number of bunks and stamped food orders to that effect. Enough food and drink for a crew of eleven and two passengers for two years was what I put down. It was a silly purchase – he wouldn't be around anywhere near that long. I charged it off to necessary deception.
Even before noon I had gotten sort of nervous around the ship. I tried to take refuge in a retreat to the Blixobut Bolz wasn't aboard. I drove off on some unnecessary errands and even went to my office and stamped things for a while. But old Bawtch was making so many nasty cracks about how pleasant it would be around there shortly with me gone that I even retreated from my office.
So I was in no real shape for an interview with Lom-bar when, about seven that evening, two Apparatus guards loomed up outside my room door and beckoned. One always tries to read something in their faces: one notes how they are carrying their rifles – on sling or at ready. But it really tells you nothing. So, with no inkling as to the temper of the coming meeting, I found myself further unsteadied by being taken, not to his town office and not to Spiteos, but outside the city. I had no idea where we were going or why.
At length, the patrol van in which we had been riding stopped and the exit panel flew up. A black bulk stood near us in an open field.
It was a type of ship called, by the Fleet, "the gun." Its proper name is "Spacebattle Mobile Flying Cannon." It holds two pilots, it has regular warp drives and it carries the largest caliber blastcannon made. It has no frills, no comforts: it is just that, a gun. And that gun can wrap a whole planet into a ball of flame.
I knew this ship. Ordinarily it was hidden in the underground hangar near Spiteos. It was Lombar's own ship. He had illegally and secretly modified a Fleet version long ago. This one, unlike the standard model, was armored so well that no ground defenses and not even a battleship could knock it down. It made it slower, it reduced its interplanetary range, but it made it the most dangerous weapon in the Voltarian Confederacy. I had heard that from time to time he took it out and flew it, usually at night, baffling normal surveillance with a perversion of return responses.
The guards simply gave me a boost up into the underbelly entrance lock and I climbed in the dark to find myself, still in the dark, in the two-man control deck. I groped to the copilot seat I knew must be there but before I could even buckle myself in, the engines throbbed and the ship took off. For all I knew, anybody could have been at the controls, even a Manco Devil!
"I am going to let you in on a secret. I am taking you to where you can hear something that will convince you." It was Lombar's voice from the pilot seat. At least it wasn't a Manco Devil. But, on the other hand, a Manco Devil might be more trustworthy.
We were gaining in altitude. One of the twin moons of Voltar was just rising, spreading a greenish hued and long-shadowed light across the ground below. As we turned, the beams struck through the heavy armored windscreen and eerily lit the control deck. Yes, it was Lombar. He was wearing no helmet so we must not be going far.
He seemed in a friendly if somewhat covert mood. "I found the leak, you know. The one to the press the night Heller was seized. I had a man being followed. He didn't suspect it. It took a lot of work but we finally saw him and a reporter bump into each other on the street. They didn't pass anything but it was enough.
"The reporter was Blat Mortif. He wasn't the one who wrote the article but of course reporters have friends. You'll never guess who leaked it. The Knife Section man that acted the part of the Fleet orderly, the one that was so clumsy he let Heller break his wrist. Of course he denied it. But you can't trust anybody these days. They're all against us, plotting, plotting, plotting.
"So last night we had Blat Mortif picked up and he denied everything so we had to pick up his wife. He finally broke down. So the Knife Section man, the reporter and his wife were all executed. I knew you were concerned about it so I thought I had better tell you. One has to get rid of traitors and people who talk too much. They're riffraff anyway." I not only had not been concerned, I had completely forgotten about it. Further, I knew of many ways the press could have learned of Heller's mission: even Fleet Intelligence knew. And also, the press had never mentioned any kidnapping. I wondered why Lombar was telling me. But then Lombar lives in a secret world of his own.
We were not flying very fast. We were not very high. He had not even turned on internal air. The green, long-shadowed moonlight turned the world below into a weird panorama.
Abruptly, Lombar, a sort of greenish shadow close by, began a sort of singsong lecture, like an Academy professor. "Any successful revolution or successful coup d'etat requires that the revolutionaries possess an operating or supply base beyond the reach of the forces they seek to overthrow. Without such a base, one cannot overthrow an existing regime." Yes, yes. That was elementary. If a revolutionary did not have a point beyond the knowledge or control of the regime they were attacking, a place from which they could secretly operate, a revolution normally failed. Textbook.