Part 2
"Thorpe showed me. He--he--" she straightened her skirt managing to look flustered--"he's been very friendly."
"Where are we?"
"In another dimension, I think. The blue door is a--a stasis, Thorpe called it. Don't ask me how they do it. They came through in space suits and built this hermetically-sealed fortress."
Vickers was silent. After a moment, he said: "All right, you win. I'll break out your father if it can be done."
* * * * *
Vickers sat in a chair facing a blank wall; his nictitating lids were raised, the pupils of his eyes like lambent flame. Beyond the wall lay the embassy of the Arab Federation.
"What do you see?" demanded Tani in a suppressed voice.
Vickers and the girl were in the house of Seth Adda, an ex-senator and a friend of Tani's father. He had been happy to lend Tani his house, which was on the eighth level flush against the Arabian Embassy.
Vickers was dressed in a snuff-brown burnoose, the national Arab costume. He said:
"There's a sleeping room just beyond the wall. This part of the embassy must be the private quarters of one of the officials. The room opens on a hall. There are six--seven--eight other bedrooms along it. I think it's the harem. There's a swimming pool to the left."
"Can you see him?" Tani pleaded.
"Yes. But not very plainly. He's in a tiny cell almost in the center of the embassy. There's a guard in front of the door."
"Is--is he all right? They haven't hurt him?"
Vickers concentrated on the vague outlines of the man lying on his bunk. A thin man, elderly, with hollow cheeks. "So that's Doctor Fralick," he thought, "greatest theoretical physicist since Einstein."
He said aloud:
"He seems okay."
Tani expelled her breath in relief. Vickers looked at her suddenly and saw that tears were running down her cheeks. Involuntarily he started to reach out his hand to comfort her, remembered the repugnance normal humans felt toward him and let his hand drop to his knee.
The girl disturbed him. She was wearing practical gray coveralls instead of the filmy creation she'd had on yesterday. She was beautiful even in the baggy garment, but it wasn't altogether that. With the strides that had been made in eugenics, an ugly man or woman was the exception and, perversely, often had more appeal than the uniformly handsome ones.
No, he was hungry for a woman, hungry for companionship and admiration.
He frowned, catching himself up with a jerk. Self pity! He'd better watch himself. That way led to neurosis, manic depression and insanity.
He wished Tani would go away and leave him alone. He worked better alone. But he knew she'd been set to watch him. The Ring probably thought she'd do a better job of it since it was to her interest to see that he didn't double-cross them.
She said, "Clyde."
"Yes?" He was startled and dropped his nictitating lids. She'd never called him by his first name before.
"You resent being forced into this job, don't you? I'm sorry. Honest I am, Clyde. But it was father's life or--or...."
"Or mine," he supplied dryly.
"That isn't fair."
"Isn't it?"
"No. You'll be protected and alibied--"
He said: "How much do you know about International Spy Ring, Inc.?"
She looked startled, her eyes widening. "Not--not very much, I guess. I've heard father speak of them. They're big, Clyde. You don't know how big. They've offices on Earth and Mars and Venus, too. The ISP can't do a thing. They can't get past the blue doors. You can't fight the Ring. They're invulnerable."
"Nothing's invulnerable."
"Clyde!" Her hand started towards him, dropped.
She can't bring herself to touch me, he thought. They're friendly now--because I'm necessary; they can't do without my help. But what about afterwards? What then?
If he were lucky, he'd be set free, to work in the moon pits where his double was now. If he were lucky! He shivered a little. He knew too much about International Spy Ring, Inc. As soon as he was of no more use to them, they'd dispose of him. Permanently. Probably in that dimension where their office was located. That beautiful little world with the atmosphere of chlorine.
"Clyde," Tani repeated. "What are you going to do? You're not planning to double-cross the Ring, are you? Not that, Clyde?"
"No." But he filed the idea away. The ISP might be willing to forget his record, let him start out with a clean slate if he could deliver the Ring into their hands.
"Why did the Arabs kidnap your father?" he asked Tani suddenly.
* * * * *
The girl hesitated. "He--he was working on teleportation. And somehow they got wind of it. It would have made space ships outdated. Armies could be transported instantly behind enemy lines. It would have made the United States supreme. He was about to succeed." She shook her head. "But I don't see how the Arabs learned about it."
"Don't you?"
"No." She looked puzzled, then her brown eyes widened in comprehension. "The Ring! But they're helping to rescue him."
"Why not? They're getting paid by both sides. You heard Thorpe admit that they'd sold the space drive to every one of the seven countries."
"No. I can't believe it, Clyde." She bit her lip. "They're not like that. Not really."
"Rubbish."
The girl's face had grown very white. "You won't let me down, Clyde. You'll get father out, whatever you do?"
He opened his nictitating lids, peered through the wall into the embassy. There were two women in the swimming pool. The sleeping chamber was empty. So was the hallway.
He said, "Yes." Then, "Check the route. This is it."
He heard her gasp. Then she began to talk hurriedly into a tiny radio strapped about her wrist.
Vickers looked up and down through the various floors of the embassy next door, checking the position of the guard details, the officials and their families. It was going to be tricky, he saw, a matter of split second timing.
He got up and examined the sleek air taxi. It was a transparent plastic tear drop and filled a fourth of the room.
One outer wall of the room had been removed outright. It had been simulated with cloth flats like stage props so that it looked normal enough from the outside. But when the time arrived, the air taxi could burst right through it into the street.
The Ring was thorough, Vickers had to admit. And ruthlessly efficient.
He said: "Get in the taxi and start the motor. Tell them we'll crack out of here in exactly fifteen minutes."
He heard her catch her breath and wheeled on her suddenly.
"What's wrong?" he demanded sharply. "Good Lord, don't go into a funk now!"
"Hold it!" she said, the radio to her ear. He saw the blood drain out of her face as she listened. Then she clicked it off, turned frightened eyes on him.
"It's your double." Her voice sounded lifeless. "The ISP has discovered the substitution. They have the net out for you now. You couldn't get a block without being caught."
Vickers could feel his stomach knot with shock. He stared at her, his blazing eyes probing straight through her. Anywhere else in the system, he might have been able to escape.
But Luna City! It was like a hermetically-sealed gold fish bowl with the ISP blocking all the exits. Sooner or later they'd dig him out.
Sterilization and a life sentence to the Jupiter Penal Mines! There was no leniency shown third offenders, no matter how minor the infraction.
He got a grip on himself with an effort.
"Tell them," he said to the girl, "we'll crack out of here according to schedule."
Her mouth made a soundless O.
"Get in the taxi and start the motor," he said with a grim sparkle of humor. "I might as well be hanged for a sheep as a lamb!"
"But how'll we slip through the ISP net?" Tani protested.
"Get in there," Vickers said in a voice that brooked no questions. He swung back to the wall separating them from the Arabian embassy. The adjoining bedroom, he saw, was still empty.
* * * * *
He drew the atomic knife from its holster beneath his burnoose, pressed the stud. A long blade of coruscating atomic energy shot from the handle.
The blade went into the wall as if the tough plastic had been butter. With infinite caution, Vickers cut a four foot window into the next building, lifted out the block.
"Don't fumble your part," he said over his shoulder. "We may be in a hurry when we come back this way."
Without waiting for a reply, he stepped through, fitted the block back into place.
His last glimpse of Tani revealed her crouched in the transparent plastic air taxi, her eyes round and frightened as two new moons.
* * * * *
Vickers didn't hurry. Hope for success lay in two factors: audacity and his peculiar vision which allowed him to see what his opponents were doing and so keep a number of jumps ahead.
The Arabs were a mixture of the old and the new. Scientifically, they were on a par with any of the seven great nations, but they clung with superstitious fanaticism to the old customs, the old way of life.
The harem was still inviolate, and Vickers knew there would be a guard outside its door.
He located him through several walls that acted like layers of cheesecloth to his eyes, dimming the guard's figure but not obscuring it. He found the women. There were four, and half a dozen servants besides. But they were congregated at the pool and in two of the rooms.
He could watch them laughing and chatting or swimming in the limpid water. Dark-eyed houris with slender waists and full hips and breasts. It was like a silent film of the ancients. But infinitely more real.
And deadly.
There was no one in the hall. Satisfied, Vickers left the bedroom, walked swiftly down the carpeted hall until he reached the door at the end.
He could see the harem guard leaning against the wall, a burly bearded figure with a hawk nose and a hawk's fierce eyes. An automatic was belted outside his blue and white striped burnoose.
Without hesitation or haste, Vickers ran the atomic knife through the lock, forced open the door.
The guard spun around, gaping in surprise. He caught sight of Vickers, reached for the automatic.
"By Allah!" he began.
Vickers cut off his head.
The head hit the floor with a thump, rolled a little, came to rest on its stump, staring at Vickers out of open, startled eyes.
It upset Vickers, made him a little sick at his stomach. He swallowed, glanced about quickly.
Three men, he discovered, were approaching around a bend in the corridor. He had perhaps a minute or a minute and a half before they came into sight.
He stuffed the guard's body into a closet, threw the head in after it. He covered the bloodstains with a carpet, welded shut the harem door with the tip of the atomic knife. Then he ran up the corridor away from the approaching men.
This whole wing must be the living quarters of the embassy staff. It was preternaturally quiet like the upper floors of a hotel. He could see a few people in their rooms, one or two in the corridors, which he avoided automatically.
The cell block where Fralick was being held was located in the main building. The traffic was considerably heavier there, and Vickers' eyes were never still. They darted here, there, watching one person's progress, judging how many seconds it would take another to reach a certain intersection.
His ears were alerted for the first outbreak of the alarm bell. He didn't have time to notice the antique hangings, the exquisite decorations, though he did catch an impression of sumptuousness.
The rear of Fralick's cell butted against the back of an office. In advance Vickers had determined to cut through the wall between office and cell and so avoid killing the guard. If he were lucky, he would avoid detection for precious minutes also.
He had almost reached his objective when a heavy-set bearded official entered the office and sat down behind the desk.
Vickers could see him mistily as he set to work with some papers. He swore furiously under his breath, but didn't pause. Throwing open the door, he jumped into the chamber.
In the feeble gravity of the moon, Vickers' leap carried him across the room to the top of the Arab's desk.
The official gasped, tried to rise and call out. His face was turned up to Vickers--a long frightened face with skin like yellow leather.
Vickers kicked him on his pointed chin.
The Arab went over backwards with a crash. Vickers didn't glance at him, but shut the door, attacked the far wall with the atomic knife.
He lifted out a four foot segment. Fralick was on the other side staring at the opening like a startled cat.
"What--" he began, catching sight of Vickers.
Vickers said low voiced: "Shut up. Come on!" Holding out his hand, he half-helped, half-yanked the physicist from the cell.
"Who are you?" Fralick's clothes were wrinkled and he needed a shave. He was gaunt, pale, excited. "I know! You're Vickers!"
Vickers' eyes narrowed in surprise, but he only said: "Hurry!"
The passage outside was still deserted, thank the gods. He pulled the physicist after him, sprinted toward the living quarters in the wing.
There were voices ahead. Two men going in the same direction they were, Vickers saw. He slowed down in order not to trample their heels.
He was nervous now. He could feel the time running through his fingers.
Still no alarm! They burst out of the corridor into an enormous hall, crossed it swiftly, ducked down another passage. Damn place was a rat run. Fralick was panting. "Hold out, old man!" Vickers thought. "Hold out!" Still no alarm. They were going to make it. They had to--
All the bells in the world seemed to cut loose at once!
* * * * *
Vickers jumped as if he'd been shot.
Fralick clutched his chest. For a moment Vickers was afraid the scientist would pass out.
The bell rang frenziedly.
Hundreds of bells! Everywhere. Bells and shouts and trampling feet. Through the misty walls Vickers could see running soldiers, frightened officials, women and children. A vast terrifying pandemonium like a disturbed ant nest--like a glass ant colony kept for observation.
Then the doors began to whoosh shut. Automatic doors closing off the passages. Blocking escape! One rammed shut just behind them.
A party of guards caught sight of them. Steel jacketed bullets ricocheted and whined down the corridor.
Vickers threw a gas grenade. The guards were blotted out by a fountain of pale green mist. It wasn't deadly, but it would knock out the Arabs, close off the passage temporarily.
Fralick was sobbing for breath. Suddenly Vickers grabbed him by the shoulder.
"Here! This way! Through the harem."
With the atomic knife he freed the door which he'd sealed a few minutes before. A few minutes! He glanced at his watch. Eighteen minutes exactly; it seemed like hours! He was over his time. He put his shoulder to the door, threw it back with a crash.
There was a cluster of frightened women in the corridor. When they saw Vickers and Fralick, they began to scream and fled screaming like chickens from a hawk.
Vickers paid no attention to them, but rushed to the bedroom where he had cut through the wall. Kicking out the segment he almost hurled Fralick through the opening.
Tani was waiting in the air taxi with the door open. A white, strained Tani with a face like a mask.
"Dad," she cried.
Fralick tumbled into the taxi. Vickers started to shut the door, but Tani held it open.
"Get in," she begged in a tight voice. "Quick!"
"No," he said. "The ISP would spot me in that air taxi and stop us. You can get through all right by yourselves."
Consternation mirrored itself on Tani's waxen features. She shook her head. "We're not going without you."
"Yes, you are!" he said; "no time to explain. I'll meet you at the blue door."
She was almost in tears. "Clyde, we're not going to leave you behind!"
Through the gaping hole in the wall behind them, Vickers could hear the sounds of pursuit closing in, but he didn't look around.
"You little fool!" he said brutally, "do you want to get me killed? Do what I say. This is my kind of work!"
Suddenly she leaned from the air taxi, kissed him hard on the mouth. Her eyes were wet.
"I'll be waiting," she said, catching her breath; "you crazy Quixotic idiot. I'll wait forever."
Then she slammed the door. The taxi roared, bull throated, and leaped forward, bursting a hole in the false wall.
Vickers stared after the diminishing air cab, rubbing his mouth with the back of his hand.
"I'll be damned," he said softly; "I'll be damned." Then he turned around.
He was just in time to see the first of the Arab guards lunge through the hole in the wall of the embassy.
Vickers hurled his other gas grenade. The egg-shaped glass bomb smashed against the floor. Plumes of the pale green paralysis gas shot upward. But Vickers didn't wait to see its effect.
He left through the hole torn by the air taxi, reached the pavement, began to walk rapidly toward the corner, the snuff-brown burnoose flapping about his ankles.
He had seconds only before the pursuit would develop again. The bomb was a delaying action, no more.
* * * * *
Up ahead he could see a road block, and pedestrians milling around in the street. A net hung from the level above, halting the air traffic. The ISP was on the job.
"Out of the frying pan into the fire," he thought grimly. He glanced back toward the house, although the Arabs couldn't possibly come through the room until they'd procured a fan and blown the fumes clear.
An ISP patrol boat was gliding slowly up the street behind him. It was manned by two men and was traveling just above the surface traffic. A shallow, heavily armed and armored craft, it reminded Vickers of a giant ray as it floated lazily through the air.
He jumped to the edge of the pavement, waved the patrol boat down frantically.
It gave a low moan on its siren, swung in to the curb. The door opened.
The two men inside wore uniforms--smart blue breeches and blouses trimmed in gold with the ISP insignia--three interlocking worlds representing Earth, Venus and Mars--emblazoned on their shoulders. They were both young and clean cut. Only their eyes looked old and hard.
"What's the trouble?" the officer nearest Vickers asked shortly.
"I saw him!" Vickers sounded excited. "I saw him!"
"Saw who?"
"The mutant!"
The ISP agents exchanged glances. At that instant Vickers hit the one on the outside in the temple. He hit him with the handle of the atomic knife. The man slumped forward, bumped his head against the slanting windshield. Vickers was already sliding in beside him.
He shoved the unconscious agent to the floor boards, pressed the stud on the knife handle. The blade of sparkling flame glittered into life.
"Take us up!" he said to the startled man at the controls; "and don't touch the radio!" Almost as an afterthought he added softly: "I'm Vickers. I'd just as soon die now, all at once, as be sent back to the Jupiter Mines to die by degrees."
The ISP man blanched. He lifted the patrol boat into the air, sent it scooting down the street. He kept dropping his eyes to the shimmering blade of flame.
"Don't get that thing too close," he pleaded hoarsely.
Vickers said: "B624-1/2 Water Street, level 3. And I won't get the blade too close if we get through without trouble."
"But suppose I'm ordered in?"
"That's your tough luck."
The ISP man was sweating. But he didn't dare remove his hands from the controls. Beadlets of perspiration rolled down his cheeks and chin unheeded.
As they approached the roadblock, he touched the siren. At its eerie wail, a man hauled up the net, and the patrol boat slid beneath it.
Vickers let his breath escape. He was sweating too, he realized. His forehead felt clammy as a dead fish.
They reached the blue door without being bothered, though. Vickers stared at the sign:
INTERNATIONAL SPY RING INCORPORATED Secrets Bought and Sold
It was the one place in Luna City where the ISP couldn't reach him. But would the ring give him sanctuary? He didn't know.
"They will," he thought; "they will, by Heaven, or take the consequences!"
He said: "Here's where I leave you, officer. Thanks for the lift," and slid out of the patrol boat.
The ISP man had guts. Vickers had taken his automatic, but the agent reached for the emergency guns in the locker. Before he could shoot, though, Vickers had disappeared through the blue door.
He sprang from the patrol boat, started after him. He was three feet from the blue door when it vanished.
* * * * *
Inside the reception room, Vickers balanced on the balls of his feet, the ISP agent's automatic in his hand. His mouth was a thin line. Except for Vickers, the room was empty.
He was about to raise his nictitating lids when the door of the inner office opened and Tani flew to meet him. Involuntarily, he jerked up the automatic, but the girl didn't even notice it.
"Clyde!" she said, and threw her arms about him, clinging desperately as if she were afraid to turn loose. "I've been so afraid." There was a funny little catch in her voice.
Vickers stared down at her, refusing to believe his senses. Then she tilted her head back, and he could see the relief and happiness shining in her eyes--and something besides.
Vickers kissed her. All his doubts were suddenly swept away and somehow the old hurts along with them.
"Mr. Vickers," the receptionist said.
He hadn't noticed her enter the room. But he looked up and she was smiling too. There was no repugnance in her eyes.
He said: "Yes."
"They're waiting to see you, Mr. Vickers. If you'll just step this way."
He glanced questioningly at Tani, who nodded. Together they entered Thorpe's office.
Fralick was there, looking old and tired and a little messy. He was sitting behind the big desk with Thorpe at his elbow. There were two others in the office, a tall, parchment-faced Chinese, obviously of Manchu descent and an Arab with the features of a Biblical patriarch. They were smiling, all except Thorpe, who couldn't very well with his jaw in a cast.
Doctor Fralick put the palms of his hands on the desk and leaned forward. He said, "I'm very glad you made it, Vickers. I haven't had a chance to express my appreciation."
Vickers wrinkled his forehead. There was an air of hopeful friendliness tinctured with awe in their attitude that puzzled him. He didn't say anything.
Fralick looked vaguely embarrassed. "I--we've another favor to ask you, Vickers. We want you to come in with us."
"What?" said Vickers in a stunned voice.
"We want you in International Spy Ring, Inc. Need you. We--well, we wouldn't expect you to accept a minor position of course. Not a man of your calibre. If you'll join us, Vickers, you can take charge of the field work. None of us is so well fitted for active duty as you with your enviable vision, your resourcefulness."
Vickers didn't know what to say. That anybody envied him, wanted him around, considered him an asset, knocked a hole in his armor. He had no defenses against friendliness.
"But you," he said; "Doctor Fralick, you're head of the U.S. Bureau of Research--"
"I'm also the head of International Spy Ring, Inc."
At Vickers' expression, Fralick allowed a smile to flit across his visage.
"Don't judge us too harshly. Science is international, not the property of one individual or one nation, even. It must belong to everybody.
"We don't want power. We're after peace and tolerance and the dissemination of knowledge. We're united, Vickers. The scientists, the technicians, the engineers of the seven great nations. Not all of us, but enough of us."
He gave Vickers a shrewd penetrating look. "Our way may not seem ethical, but it works. When there are no secrets between countries, war is almost impossible. And there are no secrets anymore; we see to that.