Part 1

TEMPTRESS OF PLANET DELIGHT

By B. CURTIS

A sears-monkey flew to vend his wares On a planet strangely groomed. Lo and behold, he lost all his cares As the genetic experiment bloomed.

[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Planet Stories May 1953. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]

When the alarm signalled the first whiff of the atmosphere of the next planet on his route, Herl Hofner stopped chinning by his strapping six-foot self and left the little gym. Slipping into the swivel chair at the desk he clipped the pile of loose papers into an empty niche at the side of the desk, spun the chair around to the instrument panel of the _Krylla_. Dialing with his left hand, he swept the bank for incoming signals while his right hand adjusted the microphone frequencies.

"Class M-for-Mary ship requesting permission to land. Do you have automatic beam landing device? Class M-for-Mary ship requesting permission to land. Do you have automatic beam landing?" His dial pointer swept back and forth.

"Come in, class M-for-Mary."

Herl's left hand moved to the autobeam switch. "What band for M-for-Mary landing? What band for M-for-Mary landing?"

"Come in on seventy-three point eight, M-for-Mary. Come in on seventy-three point eight, M-for-Mary."

Herl's left hand now centered the needle neatly on the appropriate setting as his right pressed the stud for extending the wings with their powerful atmosphere motors; and he sank back into the chair cushions with a relieved sigh. This was still a civilized planet. He'd be able to get back maybe a month sooner than he'd expected after the most recent setback. Forty years, he frowned, was too long between visits from Galactic Central, even if Central had no responsibility for autonomous groupings. A lot could happen in forty years on these isolated planets. The unprecedented mutation leaving half the population deaf and dumb had made the last call a long and tedious one. But by the signs so far, this planet was still ticking along satisfactorily with radio and radar and standard language, a space-port and all the comforts of civilization.

The speaker hummed into activity. "Please state vessel name, registration, number of crew, destination, and nature of business, M-for-Mary entering on band seventy-three point eight."

Herl grinned comfortably to himself. Familiar red tape had a homelike ring. "This is the _Krylla_, registered J-John five two L-Lomax one five on Earth Sol at headquarters of Galactic Coordination, on routine round trip of thirty planets carrying only Captain Herl Hofner, your sears-monkey, to governmental centers for trading coordination."

He heard the snort from the speaker before the bellow. "What in seven light years is a sears-monkey?" He could visualize the veritable bull of a man at the port control tower.

"Traditional term on Earth for a trading catalogue, now used to signify the man who carries it. I've got five hundred thousand feet of microfilm of the latest manufactured articles and raw materials and their descriptions and prices from about three thousand planets in the galaxy. Anything you need?"

"I don't know. Nobody tells me anything." A pause. "How long do you wish to remain on Delight?"

"That depends on what's needed and how long it takes me to find out. How long has the planet been called Delight? I have it listed as Geescow, or maybe that was my predecessor's idea of a joke."

"That was no joke. We only settled here eighty years ago and there was a little bug in the water that made the whole place stink like a garbage scow. We've got that pretty well cleaned up and renamed the place." Another pause. "Do you need hotel accommodations?"

Hotel. Herl felt his chin. He'd better redepil on the way down. Sears-monkeys were expected to go the local culture one better on everything to keep up Galactic Coordination's reputation. And he should wear the red dress uniform tunic and black trou. The more civilized they were, the harder they fell for a little routine glamour.

"How far is the port from the capital?"

"Not more'n ninety, hundred miles from the middle of town. Plenty of taxi service for the little bit of business we get here. Only twelve spaces and eighty-three jets registered for the whole planet."

Well, that explained the volubility of the control man. Evidently just busting for somebody to talk to. Not first-class security, being so gabby, but pleasant to come in out of the black to.

"I may need an office where I can play the samples. Can you get me something?"

"No. You gotta have a clearance permit to rent, a commercial visa, a set of ration cards for food ... do you need one for clothes?... a transportation permit to hire a vehicle ... an application blank for health examination, an application for personal insurance, vehicle insurance, theft insurance, credit bonding, driver's license, secretarial assistance (will you need a secretary?), _and_, the most important of the kaboodle, application for permission to make additional applications for permission."

"Leaping Luna! I don't expect to be here longer than a couple of weeks at the most. I don't need clothes unless the ones I have are offensive to your planetary taboos; and I certainly don't need a secretary. Can't I just hire a cab and let the driver worry about the insurance and driver's license and all the rest of that stuff?" Herl mentally withdrew his grin at the comfort of red tape. "I can eat food from the ship if I have to."

"Can't unload any food without special permission two weeks in advance of unloading date to give time for federal inspection." The heavy voice was firm if regretful. "You'd better just pick up this book of forms and fill them out while you wait for clearance to enter the city."

"Clearance," Herl almost yelped. "How long will that take?"

"Depends. You might be able to get it in four, five hours if the video bands are fairly free. You're almost down now. Don't forget the 1.3 earth gravity. Buckle your belt: the field's jet-pitted and you're coming in on wheels. Be seeing you."

* * * * *

Herl was still seeing him six hours later, sitting across a castered utility table from almost exactly the bull of a man he'd visualized ... about Herl's own height but broader all the way from shoulders to beam. Where he'd half expected a close-cropped head, however, the tower man, Saem Berry, wore his hair in ragged brown locks falling almost to his jacket collar.

Herl had looked up at him curiously in the midst of asking a question relevant to a three-page form describing his employment status and waiving unemployment compensation during his stay on Delight.

"Let my barbering permit lapse," admitted Berry, sheepishly. "Can't re-apply for six more months, so I have to hack it off when it gets in my way."

"Earth months or Delight months?" Herl asked as he wrote.

"Delight months. That's about a year and a half, earth time." Saem Berry opened the desk drawer and took out a pair of office shears. Holding his head over the waste-basket he snipped off a few of the longer strands; then he sat up and replaced the shears. "Good thing I learned to shave myself."

Filling out forms and returning to the _Krylla_ for a snack had taken only five of the six hours: waiting for vizor connections had taken the last hour along with a game of tri-di chess to kill the time. Berry had been surprisingly uncommunicative about the state of Delight culture and technology.

"Better see it for yourself," he'd said. "I don't know half of what goes on in town, living way off here."

He had been politely curious about Herl and Herl's job.

"Go around from planet to planet and system to system selling stuff, eh?" He tilted his head at the captain. "What made a smart young fellow like you want to wander around the galaxy instead of settling down to a steady job and raising a family? Lot of money in it, or are you staying away from something you don't like?" he asked penetratingly.

Herl responded in kind. "Don't know as I ever thought of it just that way," he admitted. "I guess I like to see things getting tied together in some sort of organization. I like to see people getting what they want and need ... and I'm good at it. There's no great income in it. Maybe I just like going from place to place and seeing how things are there."

"Looking for something you need yourself, I'll bet. Got a girl?" the controlman grinned slyly.

"No girl," Herl grinned back. "Do the girls on Delight need a man like me? I might be able to arrange for a shipload."

Saem shook his head. "I've got a daughter," he said, "who yearns for far places ... marriageable gal ... I'm always on the lookout." He laughed. "That's the kind of thing she'd say, not me, the little brat."

"Do I have to get a special permit to take her to dinner?" Herl asked, just as the vizor connection was completed.

The major official in a conservative blue tunic, who looked like half the civil officers in the galaxy, peered apologetically out of the screen. "You can come right to my office in the city, Captain Hofner," he urged. "I'll get some of our leading men together to meet you at once. I understand you're a busy man. Uh ... have you all your applications filled out?"

The towerman assented quickly for Hofner. "Yes indeed, Mr. Commissioner. He's alone and planning to stay only a few weeks, so he didn't need most of the big ones like permanent housing or shopping assignment or resident tax registration and like that. Will you be sending a temporary driver for him till he's got his permit?"

"Oh, yes. I'll send a man out as soon as I can clear one."

Saem's tone was deferent. "Thank you, Mr. Commissioner." The connection was broken and the screen went dark. "Pretty obliging guy, Commissioner Crawford. He doesn't forget a thing. Never has. That's an impressive record." The controlman nodded his head; his hair swung down over his eyes; and he fumbled in the drawer for the scissors again. "Now I'd forget my head if it wasn't dogged down."

"It can't be that bad," Herl objected.

"Right again," the other admitted. "That's a joke around here at any rate. You can't afford to forget anything around here."

"I won't forget," smiled Herl.

"You'd better not. It would be awkward as hell if you did and got stuck here."

"They couldn't hold me here just for forgetting something. I'm an employee of Galactic Coordination, you know, and not a local citizen."

The brown locks swung from side to side. "I don't know but I wouldn't risk it. It might be a good many years, from what you tell me, before anybody came out from the Sol system looking for you if they're as understaffed as you say."

"I'll be careful, then." And Herl Hofner patted his pile of applications and turned back to the chess game.

* * * * *

The driver of the cabter was even less communicative about the state of things on Delight. Captain Hofner tried to get him to talk about what the planet might be able to use in the manufactured line but the young driver only pursed his lips and shook his head slowly and said, "I don't know a thing about it and I can't afford to forget that I don't get paid for looking around and then griping about it. Commissioner Crawford will tell you what you want to know. He gets paid for it." And he would say no more.

Crawford sounded like quite the little despot. Herl shivered in the open cabter as it plowed through a thin cloud and turned up the heating element in his scarlet uniform tunic. The driver seemed very thinly clad, but he gave no sign of being cold except for a whiteness around the lips and fingers.

"Don't you draw enough clothing ration here? Maybe Delight will be in the market for synthetic fabrics if you're short here."

The young man turned a look of fury on Hofner. "None of your damn business if I haven't got enough clothes and I wouldn't say anything about it to Crawford either if you know what's good for you!"

Hofner shrugged, and the silence held till after the cab had alighted on the outskirts of the city and proceeded through a number of blocks of moderate-sized residences and stores. Realizing the probable public pride of the driver, Herl made no mention of the occasional fetid whiffs that blew through the cabter reminding him that Delight had once been called Geescow, but instead turned his attention to the city. The houses were brick or stone boxes, solidly built, drab-colored, set behind lawns of silvery gray mossy looking stuff. Great trees lined the street at precise intervals: the pavement, though lightly serrated for friction, was as smooth as the newest roads on Earth. Hofner noticed that the cabter stopped automatically at certain intersections and was obviously equipped with a radar braking device. Technicians here might have something to list in the catalogue.

Suddenly the driver stiffened in his seat, slammed on the cab's own brakes and swore simultaneously. "Those blankety blank damned irresponsible Eyefers!" He leaned out of the window and yelled, "Where in hell do you think you're going? Do you want to get killed?"

Hofner, who had been looking at the buildings on his side of the street, looked out the front of the cab and saw a vacant-faced, middle-aged woman almost touching the bumper. She turned her head at the driver's voice, looked at him as if she hardly saw him, and walked slowly to the opposite kerb. The driver pulled in his head and muttered under his breath, "They ought to declare an open season on Eyefers around here. They'd just as soon smash up a good cab as get killed."

"What's an Eyefer?" Herl asked, hoping to get some crumb of information from the surly young man.

"Short for 'I fergot,'" answered his companion brusquely.

"I fergot what?"

The reply was bitterly sarcastic. "Fergot to get a license, Fergot to get the next ration card, Fergot to apply for compensation.... Fergot to do practically anything but eat ... and be a drag on everybody else. I got three of them myself to look out for and if I don't look out I'll be going Eyefer myself and then what?"

"All right, then what?"

The young man clenched his teeth, thinned his lips. "There won't be any 'then what.' I'd hang myself."

Concealing his startlement, Herl asked as coolly as he could, "Tell me about these Eyefers. We don't have them where I come from and I can't say I exactly understand the score."

"No Eyefers, huh. Ask Crawford." And the driver clenched his teeth again and drove on. Herl was unable to get anything more out of him until the cabter turned and drew up a long ramp into the side of a pretentious pseudo-Greek edifice that filled a whole block.

"Civil Building. Crawford's office is here. Straight ahead," he stopped the cabter beside a gateway in the railed concrete walkway paralleling the road, which apparently went clear through the building, "and take the fourth elevator to your right. Crawford has the whole sixth floor."

Herl grabbed his case full of credentials and applications, opened the door, and stepped onto the walkway. He turned to thank the driver, but the cab was already gathering speed along the way.

II

He looked after the dwindling cab a moment, then walked quickly along the concrete toward the elevators. To his left, a procession of assorted vehicles hurried in either direction through the tunnel. Occasional cabters, long-cars, and congyribles pulled up to openings in the railing to let out passengers who approached one or another of the elevator doors. Herl passed three clumps of people waiting for transportation to other floors and noticed that the panels beside the doors, which listed the offices to be found on the ninth, eighth, and seventh floors respectively, were all listings of headquarters of some sort of civil control ... health insurance, building permits, fire inspection, inoculations, etc.

There were both men and women among those waiting, most of them in what Earth would call informal dress (a pair of simple trousers and knitted shirt in gray or brown, often topped off with a heavy furred cape or swathing capelike coat); and most of them were much more warmly dressed than the driver of his cab. Apparently there was not such a shortage of heat-holding fabrics as he had assumed.

As he reached the fourth elevator, the door opened and the group was sucked into its recesses. Herl joined it and the doors closed. "Express to the sixth floor: face the rear of the car please," said the tinny voice from an overhead speaker. Twenty people stood glumly motionless as the car glided up with the faintest of vibrations but with a heavy pressure against the soles of Captain Hofner's feet.

A door opened at the rear of the elevator chamber and the crowd pushed out and spread wide in the large lobby ahead. Herl Hofner shifted his case to his left hand and looked around for some clue to the whereabouts of Crawford's office. That worthy might have the whole floor, but he must have his particular sanctum at some particular place.

Most of the lobby was filled by comfortable looking upholstered couches and chairs, and these in turn were filled by what Herl judged to be a couple of hundred people talking, reading pamphlets, or glancing preoccupiedly through pages of forms that looked like the ones he'd filled out earlier. In a chair near him, Herl saw an old man gazing blankly ahead and approached him.

"I wonder if you would be so good as to tell me where I could find Commissioner Crawford," he requested hopefully.

"What say?" the man blinked and turned his gaze on the red uniform jacket at about the level of Herl's floating ribs.

"Where would I find Commissioner Crawford?"

"Down that way somewhere, I suppose." The man's voice was toneless as he indicated direction with one elbow.

Yes, almost at the corner of the room was a broad paneled door on which the stencilled name Mr. Commissioner A. G. Crawford became legible as Herl approached it. He knocked briskly just below the letters; and the door swung slowly inward to admit him.

Inside sat a receptionist at a switchboard. She looked up at Herl's entrance; and he could see that she was a homely brunette with dull skin and a shapeless figure. Her glance at his trim scarlet uniform was approving and she said, "You're Captain Hofman from Galactic Information, aren't you?"

"Hofner, from Coordination," he corrected. "May I see the Commissioner? I believe he's expecting me."

"The Commissioner is in conference at the moment with some of the men he wants you to talk to. If you could wait in the lobby a few minutes, I'm sure he'll be ready to see you soon."

"Can't I wait in here?"

"I'm afraid not," she replied reluctantly. "It's a rule that no one can wait in the offices. They'd be filling the place to the ceiling if we let them get in this far. Not," she added with what she seemed to think was a fascinating smile, "that you'd try to get in ahead of your turn ... but some would."

* * * * *

Herl retreated with his case of papers to the lobby and took the nearest of two vacant chairs about fifteen feet from Crawford's door. He sat down and pulled a stilo and permanote pad from his breast pocket. Using his case as a writing desk he noted down several questions he wanted to ask somebody. There were vacant planets in his catalogue: maybe he had a market for one of those: and while there wasn't any commission on such a 'sale', there was usually a lot of kudos.

He glanced up at Crawford's door again, and a motion on his left drew his eye. There was someone in the chair next to him only ten feet away ... a woman, no, a girl. The thought flitted through his mind that she was a quiet one to slip into the chair without his noticing. She was looking at him, and he turned his head to look directly at her.

Shock like a heavy charge of electricity gripped and tingled in him. This was no girl, it was a ... a ... a ... who knows what. Wrapped in a thin golden haze, she sat, as if in the midst of an incandescent cloud, through which her face shone as if it, too, were illumined from inside. One bare arm lay along the upholstered arm of the chair, but not quite touching it, as though the cloud gave a little support; but the perfect arm was merely the lower frame for the exquisitely lovely face with its blue eyes that seemed to penetrate his awareness to its depths and the smile that smoothed his irritation at another tedious wait into nothingness.

Herl sat and regarded her a long instant, a foreverness of perhaps ten seconds. Then he came fumblingly to himself and smiled back at her. "Waiting for Crawford, too?" he asked lamely.

The tones of her voice were rippling water, a chord on a stringed instrument. "No."

Herl had a moment of ridiculous longing to stand up and see over the thick arm of the chair to find out what the rest of her looked like. Then embarrassment came and he lowered his eyes. "Excuse me," he apologized, "I'm a stranger to Delight. I didn't mean to pry."

The voice was two tones of a flute. "I know."

"By the uniform?" He raised his eyes again to look at hers.

"By everything." The smile faded, replaced by a look of sober gravity.

Questions raced through Herl's mind: who she was; what the cloud was; what she knew about him; even what she was wearing, for the cloud thickened near the shoulder and neck and he could glimpse only a few shining strands of waving amber hair through the concealing haze.

"You may ask me," she said.

"Ask you what?" he returned, surprised.

"Any of those questions. I will tell you."

Crawford's door opened and the receptionist came toward them. One thought rose imperatively in Herl's mind.

"Will you be here when I come out?"

"No."

He grasped his case and got up. He could see now that she was literally wearing nothing but the half-concealing haze that left her slim legs and bare feet visible. "Will I ... can I ... see you again?"

"Yes."

Herl turned his head toward the receptionist.

"Commissioner Crawford can see you now," she smirked.

He looked back to ask the vision when and how he would find her but the chair was as empty as when he came out of the office.

* * * * *

Confused, like a man suddenly awakened from a fascinating dream, Herl walked after the receptionist through the outer door and to the inner one. She returned to her switchboard and he went on toward the door, which slid into the wall at his approach. He gave his head a quick clearing shake and looked inside the long, austere, uncarpeted office, with its one window at the far end.

Directly ahead of him was a group of men sitting on both sides of a long conference table ... little men, serious-faced, important, earnest. At the far end, a man faced him ... a small, pleasant, but harried-looking middle-aged man, almost bald. Herl identified his outline against the window as that of Commissioner Crawford of the vizor call.

"Come in, Captain Hofner," the Commissioner invited cordially.

Herl did so and looked curiously at the sober faces of the men at the table while the door slid shut behind him.

"Come and sit down," Crawford indicated with his palm the empty chair at Herl's end of the table. His voice was still mellow and cordial. "We are all ready to discuss your officers and see your samples. You will find that we are accustomed to doing business promptly on Delight ... an agreeable feature of our culture, I think you'll find."

Herl smiled, pulled out the heavy chair and sat, pulling it back to the table as he did so. Promptness would indeed be an agreeable feature after those deaf mutes. He put his case upon the table.