Part 1

Respectfully Mine

By RANDALL GARRETT

Illustrated by JOHN SCHOENHERR

_Leland Hale was undoubtedly the cleverest crook in the universe. But how could even he crack that closely-guarded time capsule?_

[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Infinity August 1958. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]

_Thieves respect property. They merely wish the property to become their property, that they may more perfectly respect it._--The Man Who Was Thursday, _by G. K. Chesterton._

Tracing the path of a human being over a million parsecs of space and a half century of time isn't easy, even when the subject makes no effort to conceal his route or confuse his contemporaries. The difficulty increases by a factor of at least ten when the subject is a wily, clever, and thoroughly ruthless scoundrel like Leland Hale. If it was difficult for the Interstellar Police to track down Hale a century ago, it is easy to see why it would be almost impossible today. The records are too sketchy.

But while it is virtually impossible to give any coherent chronological account of the life of Leland Hale, it is certainly possible to deduce what did happen during those periods of his life which are accurately documented. Modern psychometric analysis enables us to pinpoint his character down to the seventieth decimal place, and that, in turn, enables us to see what he _must_ have done in a given circumstance, being the kind of man he was.

Folk legend has a tendency to make heroes of even the vilest of villains, provided they are colorful enough, and no amount of fact ever quite smothers the romantic legend. Such mythical or semi-mythical characters as Robin Hood, Jesse James, Billy the Kid, John Dillinger, Captain Hamling Fox III, and Hilary Boone were all rascals to the core, but even today they have their practicing cults. But the _cultus_ peculiar to Leland Hale seems to outshine them all, and for the singularly perverse reason that he was worse than all the rest rolled together. Indeed, he has been touted throughout the galaxy as a sort of super Simon Templar, who "robbed from the rich and gave to the poor." Rob from the rich he did, but the recipient was Leland Hale, who was rarely, if ever, in penurious circumstances.

If there is any way in which the legends of Leland Hale do not exaggerate, it is in the descriptions of his physical size. Here, there is no need to exaggerate; Hale stood six feet six in his bare feet and had an absolute mass of some one hundred thirty-eight kilograms--very little of it fat. His hair was black and his skin was deeply tanned; his face was hard, blocky, and handsome. Mentally, he was brilliant; morally, he had one philosophy--"Leland Hale deserves to own the galaxy." He knew the goal was unobtainable, but he worked steadily at it.

What he wanted, he took, and if it wasn't available, he took the next best thing--all of which brings us around to the peculiar incident on the planet Apfahl.

* * * * *

A century ago, Apfahl was just one of those little backwater planets that cluttered the fringes of the main streams of galactic trade. During the early colonization of the planet, the great southern continent was the only section of the new world that seemed worth colonizing. By the end of the first three centuries, it was fairly well covered with people, and those people had divided themselves into two groups.

The southernmost part of the continent, being closer to the pole, and higher in altitude, was occupied by semi-nomadic herdsmen who kept animals that could graze on the almost untillable tundra. The northern peoples, on the other hand, became farmers.

As a result, the Apfahlians quarrelled over the rightful seat of the colony government, and, after much strife, _two_ capitals were set up, and the country of Sudapfahl and the country of Nordapfahl glared at each other across the boundary that separated them.

Just where the name _Apfahl_ came from, no one is quite sure. Since it was originally colonized by people from Vega IV, which in turn was colonized directly from Earth by people of Old Germanic stock, an attempt has been made to trace the name through that language. The attempt has resulted in two schools of thought.

One school contends that the word comes from the Old Earth German word _Apfel_, which means "apple"; the other school, with an equally sound basis, insists that the name is derived from _Abfall_, meaning "garbage." Which school of thought one follows seems to be entirely dependent on whether one is an inhabitant of the planet or has merely visited there.

Leland Hale was, perhaps, an exception to that rule; the first time he saw it, hanging in the blackness a couple of hundred thousand miles out of the forward plate of his expensive private ship, the planet looked very much like an apple--ripe and ready for plucking. Naturally.

Now, about all the average galactic citizen knows about Apfahl these days is that it was the birthplace of Dachboden; as a matter of fact, that's all anybody thought of it as a hundred years ago. Someone says: "R. Philipp Dachboden, the Painter of Apfahl," and everyone nods knowingly. But it would be worth your while to give five-to-one odds against any given person being able to tell you what sector it's in. And, actually, that's as it should be; aside from the fact that R. Philipp Dachboden was born there, Apfahl has no claim whatever to galactic prominence.

But it almost did. If it hadn't been for Leland Hale--

* * * * *

In order to understand exactly what happened, we'll have to look over our cast of main characters. Aside from Leland Hale himself, there are two gentlemen who played no small part in the Apfahlian farce.

Hinrik Fonshliezen was a tall, dark, lean specimen with a corvine nose, a vulpine mind, and a porcine greed. Lest this list of characteristics smack too much of the animalistic, let it be said that Fonshliezen's memory was _not_ elephantine, which was too bad for him.

Hinrik's great grandfather, one Villim Fonshliezen, had managed, through dint of much hard labor and much underhanded business, to amass one of the biggest ranches in Sudapfahl. By the time Hinrik's generation rolled around, the Fonshliezen holdings were great enough to make it worth Hinrik's while to enter politics--which, of course, he did. In what is known as due time, he reached the position of State Portfolio, a chancellorship second only to the Prime Chancellor himself.

It is easily understandable that his ambitions included the Primacy itself. He knew, however, that his chances of actually getting the office were slim. He was efficient; he could handle any of the Portfolios in the File with ease. He had been elected to the File from his own country because he had financial control of that country, but winning a General Election was something else again, because he was not a popular man.

That is not to say he was _un_popular; probably he was no more generally disliked than any other politician. But he simply didn't have the knack of attracting favorable attention to himself; he was not, to put it bluntly, a lovable man. He had very carefully avoided doing anything that would make the public angry with him, but avoiding hatred is not the same thing as attracting love.

Having come to this realization, Hinrik Fonshliezen found himself looking for either a good deed to do or a good press agent--or both.

Let's leave him looking for the moment, and skip up above the border into the country of Nordapfahl. In the city of Grosstat, we will find the Museum of Cultural History, and within that museum, seated in a comfortable, book-lined office, we find the museum's director, Dr. Rudolf Mier.

Physically, Dr. Mier was easily distinguishable from Fonshliezen. To parallel the previous trope, Mier was porcine in build, bovine in manner, and lupine in business matters.

Mier liked the good things of life--food, liquor, women, fine art, good music, and well-tailored clothes. He overindulged in all of them except liquor and women. He was moderate in his use of the former because he found drunkenness repulsive, and of the latter because women found _him_ repulsive.

The Museum of Cultural History was his great love, however; as long as he had it and his work, he could dispense with many of life's little luxuries--if it became absolutely necessary to dispense with them. The Museum wasn't much by galactic standards. It had only been in existence for a couple of centuries, and, in a scanty civilization such as that of Apfahl, two hundred years isn't much time to pick up a museum full of really valuable and worthwhile exhibits. The faded uniform of Field Marshal So-and-so might excite the beating, patriotic heart of an Apfahlian, but it was of very little worth as a cultural relic.

But to Dr. Mier, the Museum was one of the great landmarks of human history. He envisaged a day, not too far distant, when his small collection would be known as the Apfahlian Division of the Interstellar Museum of Natural and Cultural History. According to the records of the Interstellar Museum, Dr. Rudolf Mier actually made tactful, cautious reaches toward such a goal. He was tactfully reminded that it would be necessary to "improve the general standards" of the Apfahlian museum before any such recognition could be granted.

Dr. Mier did not actually think that such recognition would come in his own lifetime; he was somewhat of an idealist, and we must give him credit for that. But one day certain papers--very old-looking and yellowed papers--came to his attention, and he sent off a hurried spacegram to the Board of the Interstellar Museum.

In view of the fact that the Interstellar Museum's directors did not get around to considering the spacegram for nearly two months, it is unusual that Mier got an immediate reply to his communication. But Mier didn't know that, and he was very pleased to hear that an art expert, Dr. Allen H. Dale, was being dispatched immediately to appraise the situation.

The eminent Dr. Dale had some trouble in reaching the planet; big space liners did not--and still do not--make regular stops at Apfahl. Dr. Dale did, however, manage to get the captain of the I.S.S. _Belvedere_ to veer aside from his predetermined course and drop his passenger to Apfahl in a small flitter. It cost Dr. Dale a goodly sum, but it was worth it.

When they were near the planet, the _Belvedere_ stopped, and Dr. Dale went aboard the flitter with the pilot.

Dr. Dale, the art expert, had a full, graying beard that covered half his face, and a large shock of graying hair. He might have been a muscular man, but the cut of his clothes made his six and a half feet of body seem fat and clumsy. He gave the impression of a man who could neither fight nor run, but who depended on superior pomposity to stare down his opponents.

The flitter pilot strapped himself down and said: "Not much money on Apfahl. Still, I hear there's something stirring." He adjusted Dr. Dale's seat. "Something about art, eh?" He looked at his passenger as if expecting some comment.

He was not disappointed. Dr. Dale cleared his throat and said: "Yes. There has been some excitement in artistic circles of late. Of course, the news only came out a few weeks ago, and it takes time for anything like that to spread around the galaxy, even among the civilized planets."

The pilot twiddled switches and control knobs as he eased the little ship into a landing orbit. "Well, whatever it is, it must be important for a man to lay out all the extra cash it costs to get Captain Gremp to stop the _Belvedere_ and drop you off." Again he glanced at his passenger.

"Young man," said Dr. Dale, "if you are trying to pump me for information, that is no way to go about it; on the other hand, if you are merely trying to keep a conversation going, there is no need to be coy. I am not on a secret mission for the Interstellar Police, nor am I normally a close-mouthed man. If you are curious, say so; I can give you a full explanation before we land."

The pilot reddened a little. "Well--uh--yes. I _was_ sort of wondering what's supposed to be so important about a piece of wood." Gingerly, he applied power as the ship dropped toward the cloud-flecked surface of Apfahl.

"Piece of wood!" Dr. Dale seemed in agony. His gray beard bristled in indignation. "Young man, I presume you have heard of R. Philipp Dachboden?"

The sarcasm in his voice was light, but even so the pilot reddened more deeply. A hundred years ago, the brilliant genius of Dachboden was perhaps not quite as widely appreciated as it is today, but even then, two centuries after his death, the name of R. Philipp Dachboden ranked with those of Da Vinci and Matisse.

"You are aware, I think," continued the pompous doctor, "that Dachboden did all his sculpture in the wood of the _dynak_ tree, which is native to Apfahl?"

"Sculpture?" asked the pilot. "I thought he was a painter."

"He was," said Dr. Dale sourly. "His paintings are worth tens of thousands. But his carvings are worth hundreds of thousands. There are only eighteen examples of his work known to be in existence. Now there is reason to believe there may be a nineteenth."

"Oh yeah," said the pilot. "He left one in the time capsule, eh?"

"Presumably. We'll know in a few weeks."

"I guess there'll be a lot of art experts coming in pretty soon, then, huh?" the pilot asked.

"I expect my colleagues to arrive on the _Quinsen_, out of Denebola. It's the next scheduled liner to make a stop here at Apfahl. I, however, wanted to get the jump on them. Get in on the ground floor, so to speak," the doctor told him.

"I getcha," said the pilot. It didn't occur to him to wonder what good it would do to get in early when the time capsule wouldn't open until the scheduled time, anyway, and by then all the art experts for a thousand parsecs around would be clustered on the spot.

* * * * *

When the flitter landed, the self-important Dr. Allen H. Dale supervised the unloading of his luggage at the third-rate little spaceport near the city of Grosstat, a few miles from the shores of the Kaltvosser Sea. It hadn't been grounded ten minutes before a big, black, newly-made automobile of quaintly antique design rolled up to the edge of the landing pit. Two uniformed men got out and stood at attention at the rear door, which opened to disgorge a third man, a civilian. The civilian was almost as broad as Dr. Dale, but not nearly so tall; he looked well-fed, almost oily, and he had a smug expression on his round face.

Flanked by the two uniformed men, the portly civilian moved ponderously toward the heap of traveling bags and the gray-bearded man who was standing beside them.

"Dr. Allen Dale?" he asked respectfully.

If, by this time, the astute reader has begun to suspect that Leland Hale might perhaps be lurking behind that gray beard and that anagrammatical alias, that reader may give himself a small pat on his back. Leland Hale was perfectly capable of posing as an art expert for the very simple reason that he _was_ an art expert. Therefore, it was with perfect and utter aplomb that he turned to the fat civilian, evinced moderate surprise, and said: "I am Dr. Dale, sir. And whom have I the honor of addressing?"

The civilian bowed very slightly, a mere angling of the spine and a slight bob of the head. "I have," said the chubby one in slightly accented Standard, "the honor to be the director of the Grosstat Museum of Cultural History, Dr. Rudolf Mier."

Leland Hale looked pleasantly surprised. "Ah! Dr. Mier! A very great pleasure to meet you, sir."

"We received your subradiogram, Doctor," said Mier. "Naturally, I, myself, came to meet you."

"Naturally," agreed Leland Hale.

"We get very few extra-planetary visitors here," Dr. Mier continued apologetically. "Apfahl is, I fear, a little off the--ah--beaten path. Of course, we expect--"

"--to be more widely recognized after the opening of the time capsule," Leland Hale finished for him. "Of course. And it's only right. The galaxy must give due respect to the birthplace of the great Dachboden--and they shall, never fear."

The Director looked like a freshly-petted cocker spaniel.

"We have arranged for your stay here, Dr. Dale. The Kayser Hotel is holding a suite for you. Your instruments--" He gestured toward the pile of luggage. "--will be taken there. I wonder if you would honor me with your presence at lunch?"

"By all means, my dear Director--but the honor will be entirely mine."

Within three minutes, Leland Hale was firmly planted in the rear seat of the car beside the Director of the Museum of Cultural History, while the uniformed men sat in front, one of them tooling the vehicle off down the narrow concrete roadway toward the city of Grosstat.

"Tell me," said Leland Hale, "how did all this come about? The news releases were very sketchy."

Rudolf Mier leaned back comfortably in his seat and allowed a look of semi-concentration to envelope his face.

"Well, it all began a couple of centuries ago--back during Dachboden's lifetime. That's when the Museum was founded, you know." Then he stopped and looked at Hale. "Ah--_do_ you know? I mean, are you acquainted with the history of Apfahl?"

Hale looked properly embarrassed, "I'm afraid I know very little, Doctor. In spite of Dachboden's fame, Apfahl has not shared that fame as it properly should. Let us say that, although Apfahl basks in the glory of her renowned son, she doesn't reflect too much of it. You will have to assume I know absolutely nothing, I'm afraid."

"I see," said Mier. "Well, then, at any rate, the Museum was founded by a group of our forefathers for the purpose of preserving the unique heritage that is Apfahl's. In accordance with this ideal, they proposed to bury a time capsule containing contemporary artifacts. You are acquainted with the practice, I assume?"

"It's quite common," said Hale.

"As it should be. Each age should take pains to be sure that the ensuing age does not lose its heritage."

"Of course." Hale honestly didn't see why it should--if Hale could ever be said to do anything honestly. Anything worth preserving was not the sort of junk that was usually put in a time capsule. Oh, well--

"The capsule is of the standard type," Mier continued. "Hermetically sealed, with a tamper-proof time lock activated by a radio-decay clock. It's set to open at ----" He rattled off a string of numbers, and then went on to explain the Apfahlian calendar, winding it up with: "Our calendar is very scientific."

"Very," said Hale.

"At any rate, the capsule was buried underneath the Museum and then practically forgotten. Oh, we knew it was there, but little notice has been taken of the fact over the past century and more. We don't even know what is in it--that is, not in detail. The official list, for instance, simply says that 'various objects of art' are included, but it makes no mention of Dachboden. That's not too strange, really, since the great man's contemporaries didn't recognize his genius.

"But recently we have uncovered a book--a very old book, which we believe was owned by Dachboden himself. Inside it, there was the beginning of a letter addressed to a friend, in which Dachboden mentioned that one of his dynak-wood statues had been picked to be put in the time capsule, and had been sealed in just the day before the letter was written.

"Naturally, as soon as we heard of that, we of the Museum exhumed the time capsule to check again the exact date upon which it is due to reopen. It is now under careful guard within the Museum itself."

As the car rolled into the outskirts of Grosstat, Hale looked around and remarked: "So this is the birthplace of the famous Dachboden."

The expression on the face of the Director changed slightly; he looked a little flustered.

"Well, not exactly," he said.

Hale turned on him, surprise showing in his eyes. "Not exactly? Oh, come now, my dear Director; either it is or it isn't--eh?"

"Ah--well, yes. It isn't. Uh--what I mean to say is that, although Dachboden spent most of his life in Grosstat, he was actually born in Grunfelt."

"Oh?"

"Yes." He waved a hand in a little nervous circle. "You must understand that Apfahl is, as I said, a rather--ah--well, _backward_ is too strong a word, but--" He stopped, swallowed, began again. "You see, Dr. Dale, Apfahl does not yet have a united planetary government. We have--ah--_two_ sectors, each independently governed. Of course, we who are more enlightened deplore such a state of affairs, but--" He stopped again and smiled weakly. "However that may be, Dr. Dale, it so happens that R. Philipp Dachboden was born, not in this nation of Nordapfahl, but in the country of Sudapfahl."

"But he came here to work, eh?"

Mier bobbed his head in an emphatic _yes_. "Of course! No man of his brilliance could have been expected to stay in the art-smothering atmosphere of Sudapfahl as it was two hundred years ago. Or even, for that matter, as it is today."

"Well, well," boomed Leland Hale with pompous heartiness, "you are certainly fortunate. Very fortunate indeed, Dr. Mier. To think that there, in your museum, you have an art treasure worth many hundreds of thousands of stellors--possibly a million. Marvelous!"

Dr. Rudolf Mier positively glowed. "Well--yes--I suppose we are pretty lucky at that." A slight frown came over his face. "It has always been--ah--somewhat of a thorn in the side of Apfahl--especially Nordapfahl--that Dachboden was a little ungrateful in not allowing us to keep at least one example of his art."

Leland Hale placidly refrained from pointing out that Dachboden would have starved to death trying to sell his material on Apfahl two centuries before. In the first place, no one there appreciated him, and in the second place, there wasn't much money to be spent on art. Even the little amount Dachboden got for his work off-planet was a tremendous sum as far as Apfahl's economy was concerned.

* * * * *

The luncheon was typically Apfahlian fare--rough, tasteless, but nourishing. Hale ate it stolidly, neither liking nor disliking it; he was merely indifferent to it. Dr. Mier on the other hand, complained that it wasn't properly cooked and still managed to put away enough for three men.

"Tell me, Doctor," said Hale, when he found a lull between courses, "have you considered the idea that someone might steal such a valuable object?"

Mier finished chewing a bite, swallowed it, and shook his head. "There is not much chance of that, Dr. Dale. In the first place, it is locked within the capsule. Oh, I'll admit that the entire capsule could be stolen; it is big, but not so big that it couldn't be taken by someone with the proper equipment.

"However, that kind of equipment isn't available to the average man here on Apfahl. And besides, it is thoroughly guarded. After we dug it up from the basement, our government provided the Museum with a full battalion of armed troops to surround the building day and night. No unauthorized person can get in, and they certainly couldn't get the time capsule out."

"Wouldn't it be possible to break into the capsule?"

Dr. Mier chuckled deeply. "You have not seen this capsule. Oh, I'll grant that it might be broken into, but doing so would involve so much damage that the contents would be ruined, rendering the attempt useless. No, Dr. Dale; no one will steal our little treasure." He chuckled again, and, as the next course was brought on, he began shoveling it in. The silence was unbroken save for the sounds of eating.

After a few moments, Leland Hale glanced casually at his watch and compared it with the big mechanical clock on the wall of the hotel cafe. He hoped his timing was correct.