“Yar.”
Arhava took a deep breath. “Who d’you want killed?”
“One—for a start.”
“Are you serious?”
“I’ve just given you a thousand guilders and that’s not funny. Besides, you can put the matter to the test. Cut a throat and collect it’s as easy as that.”
“Just for a start, you said?”
“I did. By that is meant that if I like your work I’ll offer further employment. I’ve got a list of names and will pay twenty thousand per body.” Watching him for effect, Mowry put a note of warning into his voice. “The Kaitempi will reward you with ten thousand for delivering me into their hands. That’s money for the taking and with no risk attached. But to get it you’ll have to sacrifice all chance at a far bigger sum, maybe a million or more.” He paused, finished with pointed sarcasm, “One does not flood one’s own goldmine, does one?”
“Nar, not unless one is cracked.” Arhava became slightly unnerved as his thoughts milled around. “And what makes you think I’m a professional killer?”
“I don’t think anything of the sort. But I know you’re a shady character, probably with a police record, otherwise you wouldn’t have swiped that gun and neither would you dive into a crummy joint like this. That means you’re just the type who’ll do some dirty work for me or, alternatively, can intro-duce me to someone who is willing to do it. Personally, I don’t care a hoot who performs the task, you or your Uncle Smatsy. I reek of money. You love the scent of it. If you want to go on, sniffing it you’ve got to do something about it.”
Arhava nodded slowly, stuck a hand in his pocket and fondled the thousand guilders. There was a queer fire in his eyes. “I don’t do that kind of work, it’s not quite in my line. And it needs more than one, but—”
“But what?”
“Not saying. I’ve got to have time to think this over. I want to discuss it with a couple of friends.”
Mowry stood up. “I’ll give you four days to find them and chew the fat. By then you’d better have made up your mind one way or the other. I’ll be here again in four days time at this hour.” Then he gave the other a light but imperative shove in the shoulder. “I don’t like being followed either. Lay off if you want to grow old and get rich.”
With that; he departed: Arhava remained obediently seated and gazed dreamily at the door. After a time he called for another zith. His voice was strangely hoarse.
The barman dumped the drink at his elbow, said with no great interest, “Friend of yours, Butin?”
“Yar Datham Hain.”
Datham Hain being the Sirian version of Santa Claus.
CHAPTER V
In the early morning Mowry went to another and different agency, rented a dynocar under the name of Morfid Payth with an address in Radine. He couldn’t risk using the same agency twice in succession; it was highly likely that already the police had visited the first one and asked pointed questions. There they’d recognise him as the subject of official investigation, detain him on some pretext while they used the telephone.
He drove out the town carefully, with circumspection, not wanting to draw the attention of any patrol-cars lurking around. Eventually he reached the tree with the abnormal branch formation and the mock-tombstone beneath it. For a few minutes he stopped nearby pretending to tinker with the dynamo until the road became completely clear of traffic in both directions. Then swiftly he drove the car over the grass verge and in between the trees for as far as he could get it.
After that he went back on foot and satisfied himself that it could not be seen from the road. With his feet he scuffed the grass and thus concealed the tyre-tracks entering the forest. That done, he headed for the distant cave, moving as fast as he could make it.
He got there in the late afternoon. When still deep among the trees and eight hundred yards from his destination the ornamental ring on the middle finger of his left hand started tingling. The sensation grew progressively stronger as he neared. This caused him to make a straight and confident approach with no preliminary skirmishing around. The ring would not have tingled if Container-22 had ceased to radiate and that would happen only on the breaking of its beam by the invasion of the cave by something man-sized.
Yes, if accidentally or otherwise the enemy had found the hidden dump and made a trap of it, the quarry would have faded away with a half-mile running start. And they’d have been left to sit on their butts and wait for him who never arrives.
Also in the cave was something more spectacular than an invisible warning system. Probably the discoverers’ curiosity would have got the better of them and they’d start prying open the stacked duralumin cylinders including Container-30. When they interfered with that one the resulting bang would be heard and felt in faraway Pertane.
Once in the cave he opened Container-2, got busy while daylight lasted and treated himself to a real Earth-meal concocted of real Earth-food. He was far from being a guzzle-guts but shared with exiles a delight in the flavours of home. A small can of pineapple seemed like a taste of heaven, he lingered over every drop of juice and made it last twenty minutes. The feed gave quite a lift to his morale, made the growing forces out there among the stars seem not so far away.
Upon the fall of darkness he rolled Container-5 out the cave’s mouth, upended it on the tiny beach. It was now a tall silver-gray cylinder pointed at the stars. From its side he unclipped a small handle, stuck it into a hole in the slight blister near the base, wound vigorously. Something inside began to murmur a smooth and steady zuum-zuum.
He now took the top cap off the cylinder, having to stand on tiptoe to get at it. Then he sat on a nearby rock and waited. After the cylinder had warmed up it emitted a sharp click and the zuum-zuum struck a deeper note. He knew that it was now shouting into space, using soundless words far stronger and more penetrating than those of any spoken language.
Whirrup-dzzt-pam! Whirrup-dzzt-pam!
“Jaimec calling! Jaimec calling!”
Now he could do nothing more save bide his time in patience. The call was not being directed straight to Terra which was much too far away to permit a conversation with brief time-lags. It was being squirted at a spatial listening-post and field headquarters near enough to be on or perhaps actually within the rim of the Sirian Empire. He did not know its precise location and, as Wolf had remarked, what he didn’t know he couldn’t tell.
A prompt response was unlikely. Out there in the dark they’d be listening for a hundred calls on a hundred frequencies and be held on some of them while messages passed to and fro. He’d have to wait his turn.
Nearly three hours crawled by while the cylinder stood on the pebble beach and gave forth its scarcely hearable zuum-zuum. Then suddenly a tiny red eye glowed bright and winked steadily near its top.
Again he strained on tiptoe, cursing his shortness, felt into the cylinder’s open top and took out what looked exactly like an ordinary telephone. Holding it to his ear, he said into the mouthpiece, “JM on Jaimec.”
It was a few minutes before the response came back in the shape of a voice that sounded as though speaking through a load of gravel. But it was a Terran voice speaking the wel-come-sounding Terran language. It said, “Ready to tape your report. Fire away.”
Mowry tried to sit down while he talked but found the connecting cord too short. So he had to stand. In this position he recited as fast as he could. The Tale of a Wasp by Samuel Sucker, he thought wryly. He gave it in full detail and again had to wait quite a while for the come-back.