Two days had passed since Pembun's meeting with the leathery man in the fruit stall. The man had been identified: he was Gonzal Estabor, ex-Elysian, a retired tech/3 in the Imperial Marines. He lived on his pension, supplemented by importing and selling novelties from Elysium and Retreat. His known associates had been listed; among them were three more men and two women whom Pembun had contacted during these last two days.
What in the world was the man up to? The dolls, and some other trinkets he had bought since, had all been delivered to an address on South Palisade. They had been rerouted from there by an automatic machine, and it was not known what had finally become of them. The owner of the building was another known associate of Estabor's.
Now Spangler sat watching one of the circular screens on his desk console. The image on the screen wavered and dipped; there was no color, only black and white, but the resolution was good. As if from a moving point three meters in the air, he was looking down at a curiously distorted Pembun—a gigantic Pembun, his head and shoulders immense, his trunk, arms, legs dwindling in perspective. An irrelevant thought obtruded—is this really the way it is? Is Pembun the giant, and are we the insects?
Spangler shifted his position angrily. He was overstrained, irritable; he did not usually find himself thinking nonsense. He concentrated on the screen, and on the sounds coming out of the speakers beside it.
In the screen, Pembun was walking down a narrow, un-powered street. The moving dot on the city map beside the screen indicated that he was on Paterson, moving west from Waterfield Way. The area he had left was a mean shopping center; now he was passing the blank walls of empty warehouses and factories, condemned by UrbRenew and scheduled to be razed. There was no sound except the distant hum of the powered streets behind him, and the squeak of Pembun's footsteps on the old pavement.
The viewpoint tilted up; a dark doorway loomed ahead. Pembun was walking up to it, raising a hand to press a button. The scarred old door slid aside. Pembun's head ballooned, grew gigantic and darkened the screen, as the hovering spy-insect swooped closer.
The scene cleared. Pembun was in a small empty room; plastic drums and other litter were piled against one wall. Flies were droning through the air—perfect cover for the spy-insect. A small, weasel-faced man in a dark tunic emerged from another doorway and approached Pembun, finger to his lips. He grinned wickedly.
"Arro, pelliké!"
"Toud'es pré?"
On the blank translator screen, words began to appear one by one:
HELLO PARROT
IS EVERYTHING READY
"Segí, combé. Ben."
CERTAINLY COMRADE COME
The two men turned toward the inner doorway. The floating eye of the spy-insect followed them. In the screen, Pembun and the weasel-faced man were through the doorway, moving past a man who stood on guard, down a scabrous corridor, into a larger room where Spangler glimpsed confused activity. Then something cloudy and shimmering occluded the screen. Nothing more appeared but a vague shifting of light and dark. The sounds of a number of distant voices continued to come from the speakers, but the screen did not clear.
Spangler swore, hit the intercom button.
"Commissioner?"
"What's the matter with that damned spy-eye?"
A pause. "Sir, the eye does not respond to control."
"Send in another one! Send six!"
"Right away, Commissioner."
Spangler fretted, watching the cloudy screen and listening to the indistinguishable voices. The additional spy devices probably would not be able to enter the building the way Pembun had gone, unless someone happened to open the door; they would have to search the exterior of the building, looking for a crack, or else try to enter through the ventilation system. Either way, time would be lost. He hit the intercom button again.
"Operations." The pale, hard-eyed face of Inspector Makaris appeared on the square intercom screen.
"Inspector, our spy eye at Paterson between Waterson and Cleveland is out of commission. I want you to get a man over there within five minutes—send him in alone with remote recording equipment, but back him up with an armed squad. He is to get in and record, without revealing himself if possible. Get the location from the monitors. Any questions?"
"No, sir," said Makaris, his jaw closing like a trap. Before the screen cleared, Spangler saw his head turn, heard him bark, "Langtree!"
The unmarked copter set TS/3 Chad Langtree down on a roof at the intersection of Urhart and Idris Lane. It took off immediately. Langtree turned, scanning the rooftop and the adjacent buildings with a quick professional glance; then he looked up at the gray-lit dome overhead. Up there, tiny with distance, another copter was hovering. That was the assault squad, armed and ready to come in. Operations had told him it was there, but a good agent learned not to rely on anyone for information he could check himself.
Langtree was a slender pale man with a thread of golden-blond mustache. He wore a blue tunic and slash pantaloons, both garments cut wide enough to conceal the assortment of gadgetry they covered. His spy-eye, set into a filigree pin, was attached to the shoulder of the tunic.
At thirty-eight, Langtree had unlined, almost effeminate features. His pale blue eyes were narrow and expressionless with what seemed stupidity; only a trained observer would see the hardness in them. Inside himself, Langtree was tough, compact and self-sufficient. He did not believe in excess baggage. He did his fob, thoroughly and efficiently. If killing a man should be part of the job, he would do it without hesitation, and sleep soundly afterwards. Summoned from the guardroom, he had picked up his gear and costume, got into the copter, changed clothing and absorbed his briefing in flight, all in less than four minutes. His breathing and heartbeat were steady.
Now he turned to the stairhead. When the door did not open to his touch, he slipped his hand up under his tunic, withdrew an instrument with blunt, powerful jaws. He jammed the blades into the crack of the door, pressed the release. With a ringing snap, the door swung open. Langtree was through the doorway and down the steps even as he slid the tool precisely back into its loop.
He went down the stairs with light, long steps, almost seeming to float. At the ground level, he eased the door open, glanced into the street. It was empty to the corner in the direction he could see. He stepped out casually, glanced the other way. No one was in sight but a bent old woman, bright as a macaw in an absurd red-flowered dress, who was hobbling away from him toward the corner.
Langtree followed her, passed her indifferently just as she reached the intersection. One casual sideward glance was enough to fix her wrinkled, knobby face in his memory: about eighty, dark skin, foreign appearance, probably Outworld.
To his right, halfway down the cross-street on the opposite side, a little group of people in garish clothing was approaching the door of a warehouse. There were two men and a woman, all about fifty, and two children, girl about fourteen, gangling, boy about seven, fat. Langtree registered all this in one glance, kept on crossing the street.
On the opposite corner he began limping slightly, and a look of pain crossed his vapid features. Limping more markedly, he crossed to the corner of the building and supported himself against it with one hand. Leaning over, he raised his left foot and began struggling to get the shoe off. In this position, body turned to the right, he could see the whole length of the street and knew that his spy-eye was recording it as well. The warehouse door was now open and the brightly-dressed group was entering. Langtree's acute vision caught a glint of light as something tiny swooped over their heads through the doorway. The old woman had turned the corner and was now angling across the street, evidently aiming for the same destination. The fat little boy was the last one through; the door closed behind him.