Pacing rapidly home, he was within half a mile of his destination when two cops stepped from a dark doorway the other side of the street.
“Hey, you!”
Mowry stopped. They came across, stared at him in grim silence. Then one made a gesture to indicate the high-shining stars, the deserted street.
“Wandering around pretty late, aren’t you?”
“Nothing wrong with that, is there?” he answered, making his tone slightly apologetic.
“We are asking the questions,” retorted the cop. “Where’ve you been to this hour?”
“On a train.”
“From where?”
“Khamasta.”
“And where’re you going now?”
“Home.”
“You’d have made it quicker in a taxi, wouldn’t you?”
“Sure would,” Mowry agreed. “Unfortunately I happened to be last out. Someone always has to be last out. By that time every taxi had been grabbed.”
“Well, it’s a story.”
At this point the other cop chipped in. He adopted Technique Number Seven, namely, a narrowing of the eyes, an out-thrusting of the jaw and a harshening of the voice. Once in a while Number Seven would be rewarded with a guilty look or at least a hopelessly exaggerated expression of innocence. He was very good at it, having practised it assiduously upon his wife and the bedroom mirror.
“You wouldn’t perhaps have been nowhere near Khamasta, hi? You wouldn’t perhaps have been spending the night taking a nice, easy stroll around Pertane and sort of absentmindedly messing around with walls and windows, would you?”
“No, I wouldn’t,” said Mowry. “For the reason that nobody would pay me a bad guilder for my trouble. Do I look crazy?”
“Not enough to be noticed,” admitted the cop. “But somebody’s doing it, crazy or not.”
“Well, I can’t blame you fellows for wanting to nab him. I don’t like loonies myself. They give me the creeps.” He made an impatient gesture. “If you’re going to search me how about getting the job done? I’ve had a long day, I’m dog-tired and I want to get home.”
“I don’t think we’ll bother,” said the cop. “You show us your identity-card.”
Mowry dug it out. The cop gave it no more than a perfunctory glance while his companion ignored it altogether.
“All right, on your way. If you insist on walking the streets at this hour you must expect to be stopped and questioned. There’s a war on, see?”
“Yes, officer;’ said Mowry, meekly.
He pushed off at his best pace, thanking heaven he had got rid of his luggage. If he’d been holding that case tbey’d have regarded it, rightly enough, as probable evidence of evil-doing. To prevent them from opening it and inspecting the contents he’d have had to subdue them with the Kaitempi card. He didn’t want to make use of that tactic if he could help it until sometime after Pigface’s killing had been discovered and the resulting uproar had died down. Say in at least one month’s time.
Reaching his apartment, he undressed but did not go immediately to sleep. He lay in bed and examined the precious card again and again. Now that he had more time to ponder its full significance and obvious potentialities he found himself torn two ways—should he keep it or not?
The socio-political system of the Sirian Empire being what it was, a Kaitempi card was the prime scare-device on any Sirian-held planet. The mere sight of this dreaded totem was enough to make ninety-nine percent of civilians get down on their knees and salaam, their faces in the dust. That fact made a Kaitempi card of tremendous value to any wasp. Yet Terra had not provided him with such a weapon. He’d had to grab it for himself. The obvious conclusion was that Terran Intelligence lacked an original copy.
Out there amid the mist of stars, on the green-blue world called Earth, they could duplicate anything save a living. entity—and could produce a very close imitation even of that. Maybe they needed this card. Given the chance, maybe they’d arm every wasp in existence with a mock-majorship in the Kaitempi and by the same token give life to some otherwise doomed to death.
For himself, to surrender the card to Terran authority would be like voluntarily sacrificing his queen while playing a hard-fought and bitter game of chess. All the same, before going to sleep he reached his conclusion: on his first return to the cave he would beam a detailed report of what had happened, the prize he had won and what it was worth. Terra could then decide whether or not to deprive him of it in the interest of the greater number.
The wasp buzzed alone, unaided, but was loyal to the swarm.
At noon he made cautious return to the station, hung around for twenty minutes as if waiting to meet an incoming traveller. He kept sharp, careful watch in all directions while appearing bored and interested in nothing save occasional streams of arrivals. Some fifty or sixty other people were idling about in unconscious imitation of himself, among them he could detect nobody maintaining a sly eye upon the lockers. There were about a dozen who looked overmuscled and wore the deadpan hardness of officials but these were solely interested in people coming through the barriers.
Finally he took the chance, ambled casually up to his locker, stuck his key in its door while wishing to God that he had a third eye located in the back of his neck. Opening the door he took out the case and had a bad moment as he stood with the damning evidence in his hand. If ever it was going to occur, now was the time for a shout of triumph, a sudden grip on his shoulder, a bunch of callous faces all around.
Still nothing happened. He strolled away looking blandly innocent but deep inside as leery as a fox who hears the dim, distant baying of the hounds. Outside the station he jumped a crosstown bus, maintained a wary watch for followers.
Chances were very high that nobody had noticed him, nobody was interested in him, because in Radine the Kaitempi were still running around in circles without the vaguest notion of where to probe first. But he could not take that for granted nor dare he underestimate their craftiness. There was one chance in a thousand that by some item he’d overlooked or hadn’t thought of he’d given them a lead straight to the lockers and that they had decided not to nab him on the spot, hoping that if left to run loose he’d take them to the rest of the presumed mob.
So during the ride he peered repeatedly backward, observed passengers getting on and off, tried to see if he could spot a loaded dynocar tagging along somewhere behind. He changed buses five times, lugged the case along two squalid alleys, walked into the fronts and out the backs of three department stores.
Satisfied at last that there was no surreptitious pursuit he made for his apartment, kicked the case under the bed, let go a deep sigh. They’d warned him that this kind of life would prove a continual strain on the nerves. It sure was!
Going out again, he bought a box of envelopes and a cheap typewriter. Then using the Kaitempi paper he spent the rest of the day and part of the next one typing with forceful brevity. He didn’t have to bother about leaving his prints all over this correspondence; Terran fingerprint treatment had turned his impressions into vague, unclassifiable blotches.
When he had finished that task he devoted the following day to patient research in the city library. He made copious notes, went home, addressed a stack of envelopes, stamped the lot.
In the early evening he mailed more than two hundred letters to newspaper editors, radio announcers, military leaders, senior civil servants, police chiefs, prominent politicians and key-members of the government. Defiantly positioned under the Kaitempi heading and supported by the embossed seal of its winged sword, the message was short but said plenty:
Sallana is the first.
There are plenty more to come.