A riot of light bathed the floor as attendants dragged off the corpse of the female dancer. Suddenly, a new light struck Gardner’s eyes, a sharp, insistent flash of green.
He glanced down at the indicator band on his wrist. The green panel was pulsating brightly.
Deever Weegan had just arrived on Lurion.
“Is there something wrong, Roy?” Lori asked. “You look so pale all of a sudden.”
“I’m not used to public bloodshed, that’s all,” he said in a hoarse voice. “After all, I’m not an anthropologist, you know.”
His fingers were quivering. He looked at the firm green light again.
Three fifths of the chain that would destroy Lurion had been forged.
Chapter IX
They left the bar without incident, hailed a cab, and returned to the hotel. As ever, Gardner made his goodnights as quick as possible.
In his room, he stared for a long while at the green band on the indicator. Weegan was here, somewhere. So now only Kully Leopold and Damon Archer remained to complete the link.
The days of the next week passed smoothly. Gardner had developed into a skilled trader of jewels by this time; he kept his stock moving around, buying some jewels, selling others, appearing active at all times. He rented a visi-screen and had it installed in his hotel room, ostensibly for the benefit of customers who might have some need to get in touch with him.
At least, that was the reason he gave to the management in answer to their persistent inquiries. But in truth he had no interest in receiving calls from clients. He anticipated calls from the newly-arriving members of his team and, aside from finding it awkward and incovenient to do his communicating in an open alcove in the hotel lobby, he preferred to see their faces as he spoke. He was something more than a figurehead leader; it was part of his job to see that each of the other four was alert, stable, and ready to do his share of (he job when the time came.
Gardner wondered what might happen if one of them weren’t ready. Himself, for instance. Doubt loomed large in his mind. But he told himself that he would find the strength he needed, when he needed it.
He saw Lori frequently during that week, too. She gallantly insisted on paying her share of their entertainment costs, as if tacitly acknowledging the fact that Gardner was not getting full measure from her. Gardner made the proper protests, but allowed her finally to win the argument.
And at the end of the second week, the blue panel on his indicator flashed into glowing life. Kully Leopold had arrived, one day prematurely. The pattern was taking shape. Four out of five were present, scattered over the planet. Only Damon Archer, the anchor man on the team, was yet to be heard from, and he would be arriving in another week.
It was necessary that the team members spaced their arrivals. There was a regular pattern of coming and going between Lurion and Earth, just as there was between Earth and every other world of the civilized galaxy. The five team members would not be noticed if they entered Lurion one at a time.
And, since their landings were scheduled for five different spaceports on five different continents, it was unlikely that the sonic generator each one was carrying would cause much excitement, unless the customs officials at such widely separated points bothered to compare notes on strange devices.
Smee had arrived with a tourist group six months earlier. His generator had been accounted for as a souped-up camera, which it had been redesigned to resemble. Gardner’s generator had gone through customs as a jeweler’s apparatus. The others each had their alibis too. The Security planning had been excellent. Only the human factor in the plan was variable.
The day after Kully Leopold had landed, Deever Weegan called Gardner. The hotel management gave Weegan the number of Gardner’s private room visi-screen, and the call reached him there.
Gardner stared at the image in the screen, comparing the flinty face he saw with the photo of Weegan he had been shown back on Earth in Karnes’ office.
“You’re Gardner, aren’t you?”
“Right. Weegan?”
The man in the screen nodded. “Of course.”
Weegan had an ascetic look about him, Gardner thought. The man’s eyes were so stony they seemed almost to glitter; his cheekbones jutted sharply beneath each ear, and his thin, bloodless lips were set in an austere line. Gardner wondered if the inner man were as coldly bleak as the exterior.
Gardner said, “What’s on your mind, Weegan? You’re set up all right where you are, aren’t you?”
“Yes.”
“Well, then?”
“I’m simply checking.”
Gardner blinked. “Checking on me?”
“Checking on the project in general,” Weegan said blandly. “I’m anxious for its success.”
Gardner gasped and went pale. He scowled into the visual pickup. Was Weegan out of his mind, talking of “the project” so loosely over a public communicator?
“The sale of gems is going well,” Gardner said icily, stressing each word. “I imagine we’ll all return to Earth as rich men.”
Weegan hesitated momentarily. He seemed to recognize the mistake he had made.
“Oh, of course,” he said. “Are the other members of the corporation prospering?”
“I believe so,” Gardner said. “Dudley and I were in contact the other day, and he said that vegetables were getting set for a rise. Also mining shares. Better check with your stockbroker about it. And Oscar told me his wife is better.” He glared tightly at Weegan. Catch wise, you idiot, he implored silently. Don’t ask a foolish question now.
“I’m glad to hear it,” Weegan said. Gardner let out his breath in relief. The other went on, “Well, we’ll be in touch again soon, won’t we?”
“In ahont a week, I think. Is that soon enough?”
“No. Nit i*’ll have to do,” Weegan said. “I’ll be looking forward to it.”
“Right.”
Weegan broke the contact.
Gardner sat back and stared at the dying swirl of color on the screen for a moment, letting some of the blood seep back into his face, letting the butterflies in his stomach settle down into place.
The idiot, he thought.
Weegan had nearly collapsed the whole show. If Gardner hadn’t managed to shut the thin-faced man up in time, Weegan might easily have gone prattling right on, inquiring after Smee and Leopold and the not-yet arrived Archer, linking the five of them neatly in one breath. Weegan’s blunder might not have wrecked the project, but anything that tended to link the team was dangerous.
The deaths of five Security agents could be important to nobody but those agents. But if the Lurioni discovered what the generators were capable of doing, they wouldn’t be content merely to devise unpleasant deaths for the five plotters. They would plaster news of the conspiracy all over the known universe. Earth’s name would soon become something to spit at, a curse.
Naturally, Earth would deny that there was any official connection with the Five, but who would be naive enough to believe that? Five men don’t decide on their own initiative to destroy a planet.
Shuddering, Gardner cursed Weegan, cursed Karnes, cursed the computer whose inexorably clicking relays had gotten them into this unholy business in the first place. And a new thought occurred to him.
The computer, presumably, had had a hand in choosing the first, the unsuccessful team. Well, Gardner thought, the computer had been eighty percent wrong that time; only Smee, out of the five men who were sent out, had the stuff to survive.
So now another team had been despatched, of whom at least one—Weegan—had the possibly fatal flaw of failing to reason out the consequences of his words. And one other, at least—Gardner—was given to serious interior misgivings about the validity of the whole project.