The Search for Zei
L. Sprague De Camp
CHAPTER I
Dirk Barnevelt hunched his mooselike form over his typewriter and wrote:
Twenty-five degrees north of the equator on the planet Krishna lies the Banjao Sea, the largest body of water on this planet. And in this Sea is found the Sunqar, home of legend and mystery.
Here under the scorching rays of the hot high sun, the beaked galleys of Dur and the tubby roundships of Jaz-murian slowly rot in the unbreakable grip of a vast floating continent of the terpahla sea vine. Even the violent storms of the Krishnan sub-tropics no more than ruffle the surface of this immense floating swamp— which, however, sometimes heaves and bubbles with the terrible sea life of the planet, such as the gvam or harpooner.
Barnevelt sat back to wonder: For a couple of years he'd been writing about the places that Igor Shtain explored; would he ever see any of them? If his mother died… But that was unlikely. With modern geriatrics she'd be good for another century. He still had a great-great-grandfather alive in the Netherlands. Besides, he thought guiltily, that was no way to think about one's mother. He resumed:
Nothing, once caught in this web of weed, can escape unless it can fly like the aqebats that wing over from the mainland to prey on the smaller sea life of the Sunqar. Here time means nothing; nothing exists save silence and heat and the stench of the strangling vine.
At least, thought Barnevelt, this hack writing was better than trying—as he had once tried—to ram the glories of English literature down the unwilling throats of rural adolescents with only two interests: sex, and escape from the toils of the public school system.
To the heart of this forbidding place Igor Shtain, most celebrated of living explorers, plans to penetrate on his forthcoming Krishnan expedition, to clear up once and for all the sinister rumors that for years have issued from this undiscovered country.
Barnevelt gazed into space, like a moose that has heard the mating cry of its kind, while waiting for the next sentence to form. A hell of a thing if Shtain never showed up to carry out his expedition! He, Dirk Barnevelt, couldn't release this publicity puff until the missing explorer was found.
Well, you may say, why cannot Shtain simply ask the skipper of a spaceship to set him down near the Sea, and fly over it in his helicopter, cameras whirring and guns ready? Because Krishna is a Class H planet, and the Interplanetary Council regulations forbid visitors from other planets to reveal mechanical devices and inventions to its egg-laying but human-looking natives, who are deemed on one hand too backward and warlike to be trusted with such things, and on the other intelligent enough to take advantage of them.
So there will be no helicopter, no guns. Dr. Shtain will have to do it the hard way. But how? For the Sunqar can neither be walked over nor sailed through…
Barnevelt jumped like a tripped mousetrap as Mrs. Fisch-man said over his shoulder: "Time for the meeting, Dirk."
"What meeting?"
Mrs. Fischman, the secretary of Igor Shtain, Ltd., rolled her eyes up as she always did when Barnevelt showed his balmier side. "The directors. They want you."
He followed her into the board room, bracing himself for unpleasant surprises like a man summoned to hear the verdict of a court-martial. The three directors of Igor Shtain, Ltd. were present: Stewart Laing, who was also vice-president and business manager; the banker Olaf Thorpe; and Panagopoulos, also treasurer. Mrs. Fischman, the secretary, completed the list of executives since Shtain had disappeared.
Even though the firm's president was missing, his likeness looked out at them from the colored bathygraph on the walclass="underline" a square-jawed brick-red face seamed with many small wrinkles; coldly glittering china-blue eyes; a close-cut brush of coppery hair speckled with gray.
On the unofficial side there were, besides Barnevelt, the little Dionysio Perez the photographer, the large brown George Tangaloa the xenologist, and Grant Marlowe the actor, looking much like the picture on the wall even without the makeup he wore when impersonating Shtain on the lecture platform.
"What ho, ghost!" said Tangaloa, grinning.
Barnevelt smiled feebly and slouched into the remaining chair. Though he, like the others, was a stockholder in the company, his holdings were so small that he, a minnow among muskellunges, did not speak with any authority. However, this was not a formal directors' or stockholders' meeting, but an informal assembly of worried specialists who cooperated to put before the public that synthetic entity known as "Igor Shtain," of which the real Shtain was only a part—albeit the most important part.
"Well, Stu?" said Marlowe, lighting his pipe.
Laing said: "No news of the Old Man."
Mrs. Fischman rasped: "Those damn detectives! Hundreds of bucks a day for weeks, and not one lousy thing do they find. I bet they never did anything but trail wayward husbands before we hired them."
"Oh, no," said Laing. "Ugolini has fine references."
"Anyway," she continued, "if we don't get going, that contract with Cosmic Features won't be worth a last year's snowball."
Laing said: "Ugolini does have a theory that the Old Man has been taken to Krishna."
"How does he figure?" said Marlowe, puffing.
"Igor was hoping to clear up those rumors about a connection between the Sunqar and the janru racket. The Division of Investigation hasn't been able to get a man in there— or rather those they sent never came out. So the W.D.I, hoped that the Old Man, as a private citizen, could learn something. Well, thanks to Dirk, Igor gets plenty of publicity about his safari. Now, let's suppose the main connection of the janru ring are on Earth because of the effect of the stuff on human beings."
(Perez looked as if he were going to cry.)
Laing continued: "Then why shouldn't the ring, hearing of this expedition, decide to put the Old Man on ice?"
Barnevelt cleared his throat, his long equine face taking on the embarrassed look it always assumed before his superiors. "How d'you know they haven't murdered him? I've often wanted to myself."
"We don't, but it's not easy to dispose of a body completely, and there's no trace of his body on Earth."
Tangaloa's organ-bass voice broke in: "Blokes have been smuggled past the Viagens Interplanetarias security measures before."
"I know," said Laing. "However, we've got private, city, state, national, and international police looking for Igor, and that's all we can do in that direction. Our immediate concern is that contract. All I can see is for some of us to go to Krishna and carry out Igor's plans. Get the 50,000 meters of film—a quarter of it in the Sunqar—turn it over to Cosmic, and by then we shall know if the firm's going to continue. If Shtain's on Krishna, rescue him if possible."
Laing's sharp eyes swept the room. All nodded.
"So," he continued, "the next question is: Who?"
Most of those present looked away, assuming the detached air of people who didn't work there at all, but had just dropped in for a visit.
George Tangaloa patted his paunch. "Dio and I can do it."
Perez jumped up. "I no go! I no go until thees trouble with my wife is feexed. That damn drug, thees damn woman use on me, not my fault…"
"Yes, yes," interrupted Laing. "We know about your trouble, Dio, but we can't send one man alone."
Tangaloa yawned. "I presume I could manage by myself. Dio has checked me out on the Hayashi camera."
Mrs. Fischman said: "If we send George alone we won't get enough film to wrap around your finger. He'll settle down the first place they got good steaks and beer and…"
"Why Ruth!" said Tangaloa with ostentatious innocence. "Are you insinuating I'm indolent?"
"Damn right you're indolent," said Marlowe the actor. "Probably the laziest hunk of meat that ever came out of Samoa. You need somebody like Dirk to keep an eye on you…"