Within his room he flopped fully dressed on the bed and summarised the day’s doings. He had escaped a trap but only by the skin of his teeth. It proved that such traps were escap-able—but not for ever. What had caused them to take after him he did not know, could only guess at. Probably the intervention of an officious character who had noticed him walking through the cordon.
“Who’s that you’ve let go?”
“An officer, Captain.”
“What d’you mean, an officer?”
“A Kaitempi officer, Captain. I do not know him but he had a correct card. He said that he had just been drafted from Diracta.”
“A card, hi? Did you notice its serial number?”
“I had no particular reason to try remember it, Captain. It was obviously genuine. But let me see… yar… it was SXB80313. Or perhaps SXB80131. I am not sure which.”
“Major Sallana’s card was SXB80131. You half-witted soko, you may have had his killer in your hands!”
“STOP HIM!”
Now, by virtue of the fact that he had evaded capture, plus the fact that he had failed to turn up at headquarters to gain photographic identification, they’d assume that Sallana’s slayer really had been in the net. Previously they had not known where to start looking other than within the ranks of the mysteriously elusive D.A.G. But they had gained three welcome advantages. They knew the killer was in Pertane. They had a description of him. One Kaitempi agent could be relied upon to recognise him on sight.
In other words, the heat was on with every likelihood of getting hotter. Numberless eyes would be keeping watch for anyone bearing close resemblance to himself. The snap-search technique would be intensified, the net spread wider and with greater frequency. In these conditions he’d have to go around daytimes carrying stuff guaranteed to make the Kaitempi lick their chops like hungry tigers. Some evenings he’d have to go to the Cafe Susun bearing a load of money that no searcher in his right mind would regard as a beggar’s alms.
Henceforth, in Pertane at least, the going would be tougher with the pressure-cell and the strangling-post looming ever nearer. He groaned to himself as he thought of it. He had. never asked much of life and would have been quite satisfied merely to sprawl on a golden throne and be fawned upon by sycophants. To be dropped down a Sirian-dug hole, dead cold and dyed purple, was to take things too much to the opposite extreme.
But to counterbalance this dismal prospect there was something heartening—a snatch of conversation.
“The revolutionary movement… as big a menace here as on any other planet. You know how things are on Diracta—well, they’re not one whit better on Jaimec.”
That told him plenty; it revealed that Dirac Angestun Gesept was not merely a Wolf-concocted nightmare designed to disturb the sleep of Jaimecan politicos. It was empire-wide, covering more than a hundred planets, its strength or rather its pseudo-strength greatest on the home-world of Diracta, the nerve-centre and beating heart of the entire Sirian species. It was more than a hundred times greater than had appeared to him in his purely localised endeavours.
To the Sirian powers-that-be it was a major peril hacking down the back door while the Terrans were busily bashing in the front one.
Cheers! Blow the bugle, beat the drum! Other wasps were at work, separated in space but united in purpose. And in this sense he was not alone.
Somebody in the Sirian High Command—a psychologist or a cynic—worked it out that the more one chivvied the civilian population the lower sank its morale. The constant stream of new emergency orders, regulations, restrictions, the constant police and Kaitempi activity, stoppings, searchings, questionings all tended to create that dull, pessimistic resignation demonstrated by Fatty. in the cake shop. An antidote was needed. The citizens had bread. They lacked the circus.
Accordingly a show was put on. The radio, video and newspapers combined to strike up the band and draw the crowds.
GREAT VICTORY IN CENTAURI SECTOR
Yesterday powerful Terran space forces became trapped in the region of A. Centauri and a fierce battle raged as they tried to break out. The Sirian fourth, sixth and seventh fleets maneuvering in masterly manner frustrated all their efforts to get free and escape. Many casualties were inflicted upon the enemy. Precise figures are not yet available but the latest report from the area of conflict states that we have lost four battleships and one light cruizer, the crews of which have all been rescued. More than seventy Terran warships have been destroyed.
And so the story went on for minutes of time and columns of print, complete with pictures of the battleship Hashim, the heavy cruizer Jaimec, some members of their crews when home on leave a year ago, Rear-Admiral Pent-Gurhana saluting a prosperous navy contractor, the Statue of Jaime casting its shadow across a carefully positioned Terran banner and—loveliest touch of all—a five centuries old photograph of a scowling, bedraggled bunch of Mongolian bandits authoritatively described as “Terran space-troops whom we snatched from death as their stricken ship plunged sunward.”
One columnist, graciously admitting lack of facts and substituting so-called expert knowledge, devoted half a page to a lurid description of how heroic space-marines had performed the snatch-from-death in vacuo. How fortunate were the lousy Terrans, he proclaimed, in finding themselves opposed by so daring and gallant a foe.
Mowry absorbed all this guff, found himself unable to decide whether casualty figures had been reversed or whether a fight had taken place at all. Dismissing it with a sniff of disdain, he sought through the rest of the paper without really expecting to find anything worthy of note. But there was a small item on the back page.
Colonel Hage-Ridarta, officer commanding 77 Company SM was found dead in his car at midnight last night. He had been shot through the head. A gun was lying nearby. Suicide is not suspected and police investigations are continuing.
So the Gurd-Skriva combination worked mighty fast; they’d done the job within a few hours of taking it on. Yar, money was a wonderful thing especially when Terran engravers and presses could produce it in unlimited supply with little trouble and at small cost. Money was a formidable weapon in its own right, a paper totem that could cause losses in the enemy’s ranks millions of miles behind the fighting front.
This unexpected promptitude set him a new problem. To get more such action he’d have to pay up and thereby risk falling into another trap while on the way to the rendezvous. Right now he dare not show Pigface’s card in Pertane though it might prove useful elsewhere. His documents for Krag Wulkin, special correspondent, might possibly get him out of a jam provided the trappers didn’t search further, find him loaded with guilders and ask difficult questions about so suspiciously large a wad.
Within an hour the High Command solved the problem for him. They put on the circus in the form of a victory parade. To the beat and blare of a dozen bands a great column of troops, tanks, guns, mobile radar units, flame-throwers, rocket-batteries and gas-projectors, tracked recovery vehicles and other paraphenalia crawled into Pertane from the west, tramped and rumbled toward the east.
Helicopters and jetplanes swooped at low level, a small number of nimble space-scouts thundered at great altitude. Citizens assembled in their thousands, lined the streets and cheered more from habit than from genuine enthusiasm.
This, Mowry realised, was his heaven-sent opportunity. Snap-searches might continue down the side streets and in the city’s tough quarters but they’d be wellnigh impossible on the east-west artery with all that military traffic passing through. lf he could reach the crosstown route he could head clean out of Pertane with safety. After that he could dance around elsewhere until the time was ripe to return attention to the capital.