"Keep her in your sights. I'll send someone out to take over." Cardale clicked off the screen.
He ruminated a moment, then summoned the image of his secretary. "Get me Detering at Central Intelligence."
The polychrome whirl of color rose and fell to reveal Detering's ruddy face.
"Cardale, if it's service you want-"
"I want a mixed squad, men and women, in a fast ship to pick up a fugitive. Her name is Isabel May. She's fractious, unruly, incorrigible-but I don't want her hurt."
"Allow me to continue what I started to say. Cardale, if you want service, you are out of luck. There's literally no one in the office but me."
"Then come yourself.**
"To pick up a reckless woman, and get my hair pulled and my face slapped? No thanks ... One moment. There's a man waiting outside my office on a disciplinary charge. I can either have him court-martialed or I can send him over to you."
"What's his offense?"
"Insubordination. Arrogance. Disregard of orders. He's a loner. He does as he pleases and to hell with the rule book."
"What about results?"
"He gets results-of a sort. His own kind of results."
"He may be the man to bring back Isabel May. What's his name?"
"Lanarck. He won't use his rank, which is captain."
"He seems something of a free spirit ... Well, send him over."
Lanarck arrived almost immediately. The secretary ushered him into Cardale's office.
"Sit down, please. My name is Cardale. You're Lanarck, right?"
"Quite right."
Cardale inspected his visitor with open curiosity. Lanarck's reputation, thought Cardale, was belied by his appearance. He was neither tall nor heavy, and carried himself unobtrusively. His features, deeply darkened by the hard waves of space, were regular and dominated by a cold directness of the gray eyes and a bold jutting nose. Lanarck's voice was pleasant and soft.
"Major Detering assigned me to you for orders, sir." "He recommended you highly," said Cardale. "I have a ticklish job on hand. Look at this." He passed over the sheet with the photograph of Isabel May. Lanarck scrutinized it without comment and handed it back.
"This girl was imprisoned six months ago for assault with a deadly weapon. She escaped the day before yesterday into space-which is more or less trivial in itself. But she carries with her a quantity of important information, which must be retrieved for the economic well-being of Earth. This may seem to you an extravagant statement, but accept it from me as a fact."
Lanarck said in a patient voice: "Mr. Cardale, I find that I work most efficiently when I am equipped with facts. Give me details of the case. If you feel that the matter is too sensitive for my handling, I will retire and you may bring in operatives better qualified."
Cardale said crossly: "The girl's father is a high-level mathematician, at work for the Exchequer. By his instruction an elaborate method of security to regulate transfer of funds was evolved. As an emergency precaution he devised an over-ride system, consisting of several words in a specific sequence. A criminal could go to the telephone, call the Exchequer, use these words and direct by voice alone the transfer of a billion dollars to his personal account. Or a hundred billion."
"Why not cancel the over-ride and install another?" "Because of Arthur May's devilish subtlety. The over-ride is hidden in the computer; it is buried, totally inaccessible, that it might be protected from someone ordering the computer to revealuate the over-ride. The only way the over-ride can be voided is to use the over-ride first and issue appropriate orders." "Go on."
"Arthur May knew the over-ride. He agreed to transfer the knowledge to the Chancellor and then submit to a hypnotic process which would remove the knowledge from his brain. Now occurred a rather sordid matter in regard to May's remuneration, and in my mind he was absolutely in the right"
"I know the feeling," said Lanarck. "I've had my own troubles with the scoundrels. The only good bursar is a dead bursar."
"In any event there follows an incredible tale of wrangling, proposals, estimates, schemes, counter-proposals, counter-schemes and conniving, all of which caused Arthur May a mental breakdown and he forgot the over-ride. But he had anticipated something of the sort and he left a memorandum with his daughter: Isabel May. When the authorities came for her father, she refused to let them in; she performed violent acts; she was confined in a penal institution, from which she escaped. Regardless of rights and wrongs she must be captured, more or less gently, and brought back-with the override. You will surely understand the implications of the situation."
"It is a complicated business," said Lanarck. "But I will go after the girl, and with luck I will bring her back."
Six hours later Lanarck arrived at Lunar Observatory. The in-iris expanded; the boat lurched through.
Inside the dome Lanarck undamped the port, and stepped out. The master astronomer approached. Behind came the mechanics, one of whom bore an instrument which they welded to the hull of Lanarck's spaceboat.
"It's a detector cell," the astronomer explained. "Right now it's holding a line on the ship, you're to follow. When the indicator holds to the neutral zone, you're on her track."
"And where does this ship seem to be headed?"
The astronomer shrugged. "Nowhere in tellurian space. She's way past Fomalhaut and lining straight out"
Lanarck stood silent. This was hostile space Isabel May was entering. In another day or so she would be slicing the fringe of the Clantlalan System, where the space patrol of that dark and inimical empire without warning destroyed all approaching vessels. Furthar it opened on a region of black stars, inhabited by nondescript peoples little better than pirates. Still farther beyond lay unexplored and consequently dangerous regions.
The mechanics were finished. Lanarck climbed back into the boat. The out-iris opened; he drove his craft through, down the runway, and off into space.
A slow week followed, in which distance was annihilated. Earth empire fell far astern: a small cluster of stars. To one side the Clantlalan System grew ever brighter, and as Lanarck passed by, the Clantlalan space-spheres tried to close with him. He threw in the emergency bank of generators and whisked the warboat far ahead. Someday, Lanarck knew, he would slip down past the guard ships to the home planet by the twin red suns, to discover what secret was held so dear. But now he kept the detector centered in the dial, and day by day the incoming signals from his quarry grew stronger.
They passed through the outlaw-ridden belt of dark stars, and into a region of space unknown but for tales let slip by drunken Clantlalan renegades-reports of planets covered with mighty ruins, legends of an asteroid littered with a thousand wrecked spaceships. Other tales were even more incredible. A dragon who tore spaceships open in its jaws purportedly wandered through this region, and it was said that alone on a desolate planet a godlike being created worlds at his pleasure.
The signals in the detector cell presently grew so strong that Lanarck slackened speed for fear that, overshooting his quarry, the cell would lose its thread of radiation. Now Isabel May began to swing out toward the star-systems which drifted past like fireflies, as if she sought a landmark. Always the signals in the detector cell grew stronger.
A yellow star waxed bright ahead. Lanarck knew that the ship of Isabel May was close at hand. Into that yellow star's system he followed her, and lined out the trail toward the single planet. Presently, as the planet globed out before him, the signals ceased entirely.
The high clear atmosphere braked the motion of Lanarck's space-boat. He found below a dun, sun-baked landscape. Through the telescope the surface appeared to be uniformly stony and flat. Clouds of dust indicated the presence of high winds.
He had no trouble finding Isabel May's ship. In the field of his telescope lay a cubical white building: the only landmark visible from horizon to horizon. Beside the building sat Isabel May's silver spaceboat. Lanarck swooped to a landing, half expecting a bolt from her needle-beam. The port of the spaceboat hung open, but she did not show herself as he came down on his crash-keel close by.