Part 11

"And there isn't anyone else in this neighborhood they could be interested in," said a deeper voice. "Well, MacLean, what did you let him get his hands on from your secret file?"

Gerson rolled over very quietly and started to drag himself along the floor. He had actually moved a yard before they noticed him.

They were gentle about turning him on his back again. The discussion about the papers was dropped while the medical worker cut his shirt away from the bleeding wound in his side. Hushed comments were made, but Gerson paid no attention. He was concerned with the fact that one of the Terrans had planted a foot between his legs, above the rope around his ankles, so that he was quite securely anchored to the spot.

"Looks like a broken rib besides," said the Terran examining him. "Do you think we could get him upstairs?"

"I'm no doctor," said the deeper voice, "but even I can see you'd never make it in time."

The voice came closer, though the vision in Gerson's eyes was blurring.

"Tell me, boy, what happened? How did they make you do it? What do they want?"

"Gerson!" said the man in the dark uniform. "Did you know what you were after when you took these papers?"

He was a dark blur to Gerson, who felt as if the weight on his chest had been increased. His lips were dry. He thought it would be nice to have a little water, but could not find words to ask.

The deep voice was flinging a question at the dark blur.

"Why, no, sir," said the Terran with the papers. "Nothing important at all. Just a few old shipping lists, a record of the planetary motions in this system that anybody could obtain, and an article on shortcuts to learning the Yoleenite language. I think I had the batch lying around the top of my desk."

"Why did he take them?" someone asked.

"Damned if I know. You fellows had me scared to death. From what you said, I thought he must have pinched the deadly top secret code and my personal address book to boot!"

"Simmons!" shouted the deeper voice. "Are you getting this? Are you making a tape for Terra? Oh ... right out, eh? Scrambled, I hope--it's not the kind of thing to publicize to the galaxy."

The mechanical voice boomed in the background. Gerson paid it no attention.

He felt the doctor's hands touching the old injections and heard the man swearing. Whoever was holding his left arm was actually squeezing and stroking his hand. The taste of failure was in his mouth.

"That's what they must have started with," said the doctor. "In the end, they put an awful mental twist into him, poor guy."

"I told you they were up to something," said the dark blur. "Those little bastards had big ideas, but they won't catch us napping with any more spies, conditioned or not! Now maybe they'll read my reports on Terra."

Gerson opened his mouth to breath better. He rolled his head from side to side on the hard floor. Somewhere deep inside him, a little, silent voice was crying, frightened. He had failed and there would be no other chance.

The little voice took leave of its fear to laugh. _They_ had not let him remember how to read.

And so he died, a tall, battered Terran lying on a hard floor and grinning faintly up at the men who had helped him die.

SIXTEEN

In the communications room of department 99, Westervelt could actually hear people around him breathing, so hushed was the gathering. Someone was leaning on his shoulder, but he was reluctant to attract attention by moving.

Static sounds and the clicking and humming of various mechanisms about the room suddenly became unnaturally noticable. Glancing this way and that, he discovered that the entire staff had drifted in during the transmission from Yoleen. There were at least two people behind him, to judge by the breathing and the weight on his shoulder. So intense had been the excitement that he did not remember anyone but Smith arriving.

He saw better to the left than to the right, and became conscious of his eye again. Westervelt had drawn up his chair behind and to the left of the operator, and Smith had perched himself on the end of a table behind Joe. Beside the chief stood Simonetta, with Beryl behind her. Parrish was to Westervelt's left, so he concluded that Lydman and Pauline must be behind him. The grip on his right shoulder felt small to be Lydman's, but he could not see down at the necessary angle because of the puffiness under his eye.

The broad-shouldered, stocky man on the screen moved to the stairway and looked up straight into their eyes.

"Is this still going out to Terra, Simmons?" he asked.

He had dark hair with a crinkly wave in it, which permitted him to appear less disheveled than the men about him or standing over the body of Gerson. He pulled out a large white handkerchief to wipe the streaming perspiration from his face.

"Yes, sir," answered the voice of the distant operator. "You're looking right into the concealed pick-up. I'll switch the audio from Terra to the loud speaker system, and you can talk to them."

Westervelt glanced at the other men in the embassy on Yoleen. Several of them obviously suffered from minor injuries. All of them wore expressions of tragedy.

One man in his shirtsleeves was standing with his shoulders against the base of the stairway, head thrown well back, trying to staunch the flow of blood from his nose. Another, with his back to the lens, knelt beside the body of Gerson. A couple of others, looking helpless, were lighting cigarettes.

"I suppose you saw the end of it," the man on the stairs said.

Smith cleared his throat and leaned over Joe Rosenkrantz's shoulder.

"We saw," he answered. "I ... is there any doubt that he's dead?"

The man on the stairs looked to the group around the body. The doctor shook his bandaged head sadly.

"As much from strain and exhaustion as anything else," he reported. "The man belonged in a hospital, but some uncanny conditioning drove him on. In the end, his heart gave out."

The stocky man turned back to the lens.

"You heard that. Except for one man who didn't know at the time what was going on, we did the best we could. I'm Delaney, by the way, in charge here."

Smith identified himself, and agreed that Gerson had looked to be unmanageable.

"Do you think you can find out what they used?" he asked. "I gather that you never got anything out of him since the time you picked him up. Did that part of it go according to plan?"

"Oh, yes," said Delaney. "We even got back the little torch we sent him, the way you plotted for us. It looked used, too; but now I'm wondering if they let him cut his way out."

"I wouldn't doubt it," said Smith gloomily. "I'm afraid we didn't look very bright on this one. We seem to have underestimated the Yoleenites badly. There isn't too much information on them available here."

"Nor here, to tell the truth," said Delaney. "Which reminds me--our Captain MacLean has been after me for a long time to put more pressure on the D.I.R. about that. Could you duplicate your tape and send them a copy? It would save us another transmission, and you might like to add your own comments."

Smith promised to have it done. He also offered, to soothe Captain MacLean, to send an extra copy to the Space Force.

There seemed to be nothing more to say. The scene on the screen blanked out, as the distant operator spoke to Rosenkrantz on audio only from his own shot-up office. Then it was over.

Westervelt, aware that the pressure on his shoulder was gone, looked around. Lydman had his arm about a shaken Pauline. The ex-spacer's expression was blank, but the hardness of his eyes made the youth shiver. For a second, he thought he detected a slight resemblance to the man who had come bounding down the stairs on Yoleen, leaving criss-cross trails of rocket smoke in the air.

_That's crazy!_ he thought the next instant, and he lost the resemblance.

He blinked, fingered his tender eye, and looked around at the others. Everyone was subdued, staring at the blank and quiet receiver or at the floor. Westervelt was surprised to see that Beryl was crying. She raised a forefinger to scrub the tears from her cheek.

Hesitantly, Westervelt took the neatly folded handkerchief from his breast pocket and held it out.

Beryl scrubbed the other cheek, looked at the handkerchief without raising her eyes to his, and accepted it. She blotted her eyes, examined the cloth, and whispered, "Sorry, Willie. I think I got make-up on it."

Smith stirred uncomfortably at the whisper. He stood up and spoke one short word with a depth of emotion. Then he kicked the leg of the table to relieve his feelings.

Rosenkrantz swiveled around in his chair, waiting to see if any other calls were to be made. Smith took a deep breath.

"You'll make copies of the tape when you can, Joe?"

"Sure," said the operator, sympathetically.

"Well," said Lydman, at the rear of the group, "that's another one lost. Tomorrow we'll open a permanent file on Yoleen, as Pete suggests."

"Yes, I imagine they'll give us more business," agreed Parrish.

Lydman growled.

"I'll give _them_ the business next time!" he threatened. "Well, that kind of damps the pile for tonight. I don't know about the rest of you, but I'm in no mood now to be clever."

Smith straightened up abruptly.

"Now ... now ... wait a minute!" he spluttered. "I mean, we all feel pretty low, naturally. Still, this wasn't the main ... serious as this was, we were trying to push on this other case, to get a start anyway."

_Here we go again,_ thought Westervelt. _Shall I try to trip him up if anything happens, or shall I just get out of the way?_

He recalled the man in the embassy on Yoleen, holding a stained handkerchief to his bloody nose, and measured the size of his own with the tip of a forefinger. On the other hand, if there should be a melee, it would certainly cover a little item like a puffy eye. He wondered if he would have the guts to poke out his head at the proper instant, and was rather afraid that he would.

Parrish was murmuring about sticking to the job in hand, trying to support Smith without arousing the antagonism of an open argument. Lydman seemed unconvinced.

"Why don't we all have a round of coffee?" suggested Simonetta. "If we can just sit down a few minutes and pull ourselves together--"

Smith looked at her gratefully.

"Yes," he said. "That's the least we can do, Bob. This was a shock to us all, but the girls felt it more. I don't believe any of them wants to hit the street all shaken up like this. Right Si?"

"I _would_ like to sit down somewhere," said Simonetta.

"Here!" exclaimed Westervelt, leaping up. He had forgotten that he had been rooted to the chair since before the others had crept into the room during the transmission from Yoleen.

"Never mind, Willie," Simonetta said. "I didn't mean I was collapsing. Come on, Beryl, let's see if there's any coffee or tea left."

"Wait for me," said Pauline. "I've got to take this phone off the outside line anyway."

Smith stepped forward to plant one hand behind Lydman's shoulder blade.

"I could use a martini, myself," he called after the girls. "How about the rest of you? Pete? Willie?"

Parrish seconded the motion, Westervelt said he would be right along, and trailed them slowly to the door. He paused to look back, and he and Joe exchanged brow-mopping gestures.

The rest of them were trouping along the corridor without much talk. He ambled along until the men, bringing up the rear, had turned the corner. Then he ducked into the library.

He fingered his eye again. Either it was a trifle less sore or he was getting used to it. He still hesitated to face an office full of people and good lighting.

"There must be something around here to read," he muttered.

He walked over to a stack of current magazines. Most of them were technical in nature; but several dealt with world and galactic news. He took a few to a seat at the long table and began to leaf through one.

It must have been about fifteen minutes later that Simonetta showed up, bearing a sealed cup of tea and one of coffee.

"So that's where you are!" she said. "I was taking something to Joe, and thought maybe I'd find you along the way."

Westervelt deduced that she had phoned the operator.

"You can have the coffee," she said, setting it beside his magazine. "Joe said he'd rather have tea this time around."

Westervelt looked up. Simonetta saw his eye and pursed her lips.

"Well!"

"How does it look?" asked Westervelt glumly.

"Kind of pretty. If I remember the ones my brothers used to bring home, it will be ravishingly beautiful by tomorrow!"

"That's what I was afraid of," said Westervelt.

Simonetta laughed. She set the tea aside and pulled out a chair.

"I don't think it's really that bad, Willie," she told him. "I was only fooling."

"It shows though, huh?"

"Oh ... yes ... it shows."

"That's what I like about you, Si," said Westervelt. "You don't ask nasty, embarrassing questions like how it happened or which door closed on me."

Following which he told her nearly the whole story, leaving out only the true origin of the quarrel. He suspected that Simonetta could put two and two together, but he meant to tell nobody about the start of it.

"Ah, Willie," she said with a grin at the conclusion, "if you had to fall for a blonde, why couldn't you pick little Pauline?"

"I guess you're right."

"Now, don't take _that_ so seriously too! Beryl's a good sort, on the whole. In a day or two, this will all blow over. Come on with me to see Joe, then we'll go back and say you got something in your eye."

"But when?"

"Oh ... during the message from Yoleen. You didn't want to bother anybody at the time, so you foolishly kept rubbing until it got sore."

"That's all right," said Westervelt, "but Beryl knows different."

"If she opens her mouth, I shall personally punch _her_ in the eye!" declared Simonetta.

She giggled at the idea, and he found himself grinning.

They went along the corridor to deliver the tea to Rosenkrantz, and then returned to the main office. An air of complete informality prevailed, a reaction from the scene they had witnessed. There was a good deal of wandering about with drinks, sitting on desks, and inconsequential chatter.

No one seemed to want to talk shop, and Westervelt guessed that Smith was just as pleased to be able to kill some time. He himself quietly slipped around the corner to his own desk, where he propped his heels up and sipped his coffee.

Westervelt listened as Parrish and Smith told a few jokes. The stories tended to be more ironic than funny, and no one was expected to laugh out loud.

Pauline, from her switchboard, buzzed the phone on Simonetta's desk, since most of those present had gravitated to that end of the office. Smith looked around in the middle of an account of his struggles with his radio-controlled lawn mower.

"Want to take that, Willie?" he said, with a bare suggestion of a wink.

Westervelt lifted a hand in assent. He climbed out of his chair and went to the phone on Beryl's desk, where he would be as nearly private as possible.

"Who is it, Pauline?" he asked when she came on.

"It's Joe. He wants to talk to Mr. Smith."

"Give it here on number seven," said Westervelt. "The boss is talking."

Pauline blanked out and was replaced by the communications man. Rosenkrantz showed a flicker of surprise at the sight of Westervelt.

"Smitty's in a crowd," murmured the youth. "Something up?"

"Not much, maybe," said the other. "A message came in by commercial TV. I guess they didn't think it was too urgent, but I'll give you the facts if you think Smitty would like to know."

"Hold on," said Westervelt. "Let's see ... where does Beryl keep a pen?"

He dug out a scratch pad and something to scribble with, and nodded.

"One of our own agents," said Joe, "named Robertson, signed this. You've seen his reports, I guess."

"Yeah, sounds familiar."

"It says, after reading between our standard code expressions, that two spacers and a tourist were convicted of inciting revolution on Epsilon Indi II. They gave the names, and all, which I taped."

"That's practically in our back yard," said Westervelt. "Maybe he just wants to alert us, but the D.I.R. ought to be working on that publicly. Sure there wasn't any hint it was urgent?"

"No, and like I said, it came by commercial relay."

"Okay. The boss has enough on his mind at the moment. Let's figure on having a tape for him to look at in the morning. I'll find a chance to mention it to him, so he'll know about it. All right?"

"All right with me," grinned Rosenkrantz. "If anything goes wrong, I'll refer them to you. Be prepared to have your other eye spit in."

He cut off, leaving Westervelt with his mouth open and his regained aplomb shaky. The youth waited until he caught Smith's eye, and shook his head to indicate the unimportance of the call. He wondered if he ought to take time to phone downstairs for a report on the situation. It did not strike him as worth the risk with all the people in the same room.

He saw Beryl strolling his way and rose from her chair.

"That's all right, Willie," she said calmly, setting her packaged drink on the desk. "I just wanted to give you back your handkerchief."

She produced it from the purse lying on her desk and said, "Thanks again. I'm sorry about the make-up marks."

"Forget it," said Westervelt.

"I'm sorry about the eye too," said Beryl, raising her eyes for the first time to examine the damage. "It ... doesn't look as bad as Si said."

"Well, that's a comfort, anyway. I got something in it and rubbed too hard, you know."

"Yes, she told me," said Beryl. "To tell the truth, Willie, I didn't know I could do it."

"Aw, it was a lucky swing," muttered Westervelt.

"Yes ... I, well ... you might say I was a little upset."

"I'm sorry I started it all," said Westervelt. "How about letting me buy you a lunch to make up."

Beryl shrugged, looking serious.

"I don't mind, if we make it Dutch. It was as much my fault. I hope we're both around to go to lunch tomorrow. It gives me the creeps."

"What does?" asked Westervelt.

"The way Mr. Lydman looks. Something about his eyes...."

Westervelt turned his head to stare across the room, wondering if the worst had occurred.

SEVENTEEN

John Willard set a brisk pace through the streets of First Haven, as befitted a conscientious public servant. Maria Ringstad kept up with him as best she could. When she lagged, the thin cord tightened around her wrist, and he grumbled over his shoulder at her. Naturally, she carried her bag.

He had explained that they would have been most inconspicuous with her walking properly a yard behind him. Anyone would then have taken them for man and wife or man and servant--had it not been for her Terran clothing.

"To walk the street with you in that rig would attract entirely too much attention," was his explanation. "The only thing we can do is use the public symbol of restraint, so that everyone will know you are a prisoner."

"What good will that do? Won't they still stare."

"It is considered improper, as well as imprudent. No law-abiding citizen would wish to risk being suspected of a sympathetic curiosity about a transgressor."

"You make it sound dangerous," said Maria, holding out her hand obediently.

_Anything to be inconspicuous_, she had thought.

Now, turning a corner about three hundred yards from the jail, she had to admit that the system seemed to be working. The Greenies whom they met were nearly all interested in other things: a shop in the vicinity, another Greenie across the street, a paving stone over which they had just tripped, or the condition of the wall above Maria's head.

Willard led her to the far side of a broader avenue after they had negotiated the corner that put them permanently out of sight of the jail. Maria tried to recall the scanty information he had whispered to her against the outside wall of the prison.

There had been time for him to tell her he was sent by the Department of Interstellar Relations of Terra to get her out, since it had proved impossible to alter the attitude of the Greenie legal authorities. Maria was not quite sure whether he was really the prison officer he said he was, in which case he must have been bribed on a scale to make her own "crime" ridiculous, or whether he was an independent worker friendly to the Terran space line, in which case the payment might more charitably be regarded as a fee.

She knew that he planned to deliver her to a spaceship due to leave shortly. There had been no opportunity for her to ask the destination.

_To tell the truth_, she reflected, _I don't care where it is. Anything would be a haven from Greenhaven!_

She began to amuse herself by planning the article she would write when back on Terra. "How I escaped from Paradise" might do it. Or "Prison-breaking in Paradise." Or perhaps "Greenhaven or Green Hell."

_Whatever I call it_, she promised herself, _I'll skin them alive. And I'll find a way to send the judge and the warden copies of it, too!_

Maybe, she pondered, it might even be better to stretch it out to a whole book and get someone to do a series of unflattering cartoons of Greenie characters.

The cord jerked at her wrist. She realized that she had fallen behind again, and made an apologetic face at Willard when he looked back.

"Don't do that!" he hissed. "They'll wonder why I tolerate disrespect."

"Sorry!" said Maria, shrugging unrepentantly. "You take this pretty seriously, don't you."

"You'd better take it seriously yourself," he growled. "It's your neck as much as mine!"

He glared at a young Greenie who had glanced curiously from the opposite side of the avenue. The abashed citizen hastily averted his eyes. Willard gave the cord a significant twitch and strode on.

They turned another corner, to the right this time, and went along a narrow side street for about two hundred yards. Waiting for a moment when he might meet as few people as possible, Willard crossed to the other side. A little further on, he led the way into what could almost be termed an alley.

Willard stopped.

"Now, we are going into this small food shop," he informed Maria. "You would call it a cafe or restaurant on Terra. It will seem normal enough for an officer to provide his charge with food for a journey, so that will be reasonable."

"Is the food any better than what I've been getting?" asked Maria.

"It doesn't matter. We won't stop there, since it would be impolite to inflict the sight of you upon honest citizens at their meal. I shall request a private room, and the keeper will lead us to the rear."

"Humph! Well if that's the way it is, then that's the way it is. So in the eyes of an honest Greenie I'm something to spoil his appetite. What can I do about that?"

"What you can do is keep that big, flexible, active mouth of yours _shut_!" declared Willard. "Otherwise, I shall simply drop the end of the cord and take off. You can find your own way out."

"I'm sorry," apologized Maria, a shade too meekly. "I promise I'll be oh-so-good. Do you want me to kneel down and lick your boots? Or will it be enough if I open a vein in the soup?"

"It will be enough if I get out of this without committing murder," mumbled Willard. "Now, the expression is fine; just wipe that grin off your mind and well go in!"

He pulled her along the few yards to the entrance of the food shop.

He opened the door and entered. Maria followed at the respectful distance.

There were half a dozen Greenies eating plain, wholesome meals at plain, sturdy tables and exchanging a plain, honest word now and then. The sight of the cord on Maria's wrist counterbalanced the sight of her lascivious Terran costume, and they kept their eyes on their food after one startled glance.