PART SEVENTY-ONE
TO: BIOGRAPHICS PUBLISHING COMPANY
COMMERCIAL CITY
PLANET VOLTAR
GENTLEMEN!
I am thoroughly delighted with the agreements that we have reached. I can assure you that our names will be mutually and eternally emblazoned in history.
I could not believe that my government would ever lie to me. I had no idea that anyone would seek a “coverup.” That was why I was so shocked to discover that they have deleted, changed and destroyed records so that no one would learn the existence of this single planet called Earth.
Why would they want to deny the existence of a minor planet that is a mere 22 ½ light-years away?
Ah, that’s the story that I am so arduously and so faithfully writing!
So that you may better appreciate my achievement, I am sending what I have completed thus far and will continue to write. I mailed the first part to you earlier. Let me try to bring you up to date. This is no small task because the imagination is staggered by the sheer magnitude of the events. However, I shall seek to achieve this.
As I have discovered, Earth is controlled by the man who owns the planet’s fuel—Delbert John Rockecenter. His power is such that he can determine the political future of a country simply by making a telephone call to one of his minions.
Voltarian Fleet officer Jettero Heller’s mission was to depollute the planet and to create an inexpensive, safe source of energy so that Earth could survive long enough to be invaded.
When Heller arrived on Earth, he had the identity of Delbert John Rockecenter, Jr., which was given to him by the head of the Coordinated Information Apparatus, Lombar Hisst. This was done because Hisst wanted the Fleet officer’s mission to fail, and he thought this would bring the force of the Rockecenters down on Heller. The reason Hisst wanted the mission to fail was that he was using Earth to produce mind-altering drugs that were being smuggled back to Voltar as part of a conspiracy to overthrow the Empire.
What no one knew was that there was a real inheritor to the Rockecenter fortune—Delbert John Rockecenter II.
The first person who tried to stop Heller was Rockecenter’s attorney Bury, who gave Heller the identity of Jerome Terrance Wister. It didn’t stop him, however. Heller became a consul for the African nation of Maysabongo and began to form corporations that created and patented new energy sources—a revolutionary microwave power source, a new carburetor that didn’t use gasoline and cars that worked without Rockecenter-controlled fuel. When petroleum stocks dropped out the bottom, Heller used his Maysabongo resources to buy them all up and to take control of Earth’s oil industries.
But Rockecenter was no fool, and he had forces that Heller could not muster—the American presidency, for example, and the armed forces of the United States.
One Sunday afternoon Rockecenter was preparing to go to Philadelphia for a Swillerberger Conference that he controlled. The president of the United States was to be called before the conference that night and ordered to go before the Senate the next day to request that war be declared on Maysabongo.
Bang-Bang drove Heller and his financial advisor Izzy Epstein to the great Rockecenter estate, and Heller and Izzy walked in while Rockecenter was chastising Bury for the current predicament.
Heller made Rockecenter an offer: Call off the war, grant “Twoey” (Rockecenter’s actual son) a ten-billion-dollar trust, draw up a new will leaving Twoey the entire estate, and Heller would give Rockecenter the patents and a portion of the oil empire that Heller now controlled.
With the smile of a snake, Rockecenter agreed and the documents were signed—then the snake struck!
When the brief scuffle was over, Rockecenter’s attorney Bury lay unconscious on the floor and a weaponless Heller was surrounded by Army troops.
Rockecenter scooped up the papers that now gave him complete control and put them into a huge steel suitcase. He turned to a major general whose squad had its weapons turned on Heller and Izzy.
“General,” said Rockecenter, “hold this riffraff until I return. Then, as we will be at war, we’ll have work for a firing squad.”
What? Has Heller lost everything?
Fear not! I, Monte Pennwell, Voltar’s first, only and greatest investigative reporter, have the story!
PART SEVENTY-ONE
Chapter 1
Rockecenter grabbed his hat and picked up the heavy case. He stepped over to Bury behind the couch and gave him a kick. “Whether you’re dead or not, your usefulness is ended. Now I’m off to Philadelphia to handle another one of your foulups.”
Rockecenter went to the French doors, closed them behind him and shouted up the drive, “Bring my car and get a tank for protection!”
The general gave a signal. Two soldiers seized Izzy, pinning his arms back and looking around for something to tie him with.
Two more soldiers grabbed Twoey and after a brief struggle had him on the floor.
The general made a gesture toward Heller.
Rockecenter’s car had arrived and Rockecenter went down the steps to it, but he stood there looking up the road.
The soldiers started to grab Heller’s arms. “Oh, he didn’t mean me!” said Heller. “I’m his son.”
“What?” said the general.
“Yes, it’s a fact,” said Heller. “He just meant these two fellows here.”
Both Izzy and Twoey looked at Heller, stunned.
The general stepped toward the French doors as though to go after Rockecenter and ask. But Rockecenter had now climbed into his car and it began to roll.
From where Heller stood he could see through the glass of the French doors that Rockecenter’s car had pulled up again and stopped. He hoped the general would not see that.
“Well, see here,” said the general, “I’ll have to have proof, and more than some phony ID!”
“Ah,” said Heller. “You just grab the phone on that desk and ask for Emergency FBI, Washington, DC. You just ask for agents Stupewitz and Maulin.”
Heller crossed his fingers. Those agents were the first ones he had had contact with on his original arrival in the United States last fall. He had never heard of them or from them since.
The general moved to the desk, his back to the door. If he turned around he would be able to see the limousine. It was waiting for a tank, apparently, for tank engines were roaring outside.
The general got his connection. He asked for agent Stupewitz or Maulin. He waited. Then he said, “Agent Stupewitz? This is General Flood, New York National Guard. We’ve got a fellow here that says he’s Rockecenter’s son. . . . Yes, I’ll describe him. He’s about six foot two, slender, blond hair, blue eyes, probably about eighteen. . . .” He put his hand over the mouthpiece, “What is your name supposed to be?”
“Delbert John Rockecenter, Junior,” said Jet. He could see the tank in place in front of the car. A sergeant was standing by the officer in the turret, pointing at a map.
The general said into the phone, “He says his name is Delbert John Rockecenter, Junior. . . . I’m calling from Pokantickle Hills, the Rockecenter home. . . .”
He suddenly shoved the instrument at Heller. “He wants to talk to you to verify your voice.”
Heller took the phone. Out of the corner of his eye, he watched the tank and limousine. He wished they’d get moving. “Hello, Agent Stupewitz, sir,” said Heller. “I just wanted to remind you that we never got a tombstone for Mary Schmeck.”
“JUNIOR! Hey, Maulin, it’s Junior! Grab the other phone!”
“Hello, Junior,” said Maulin. “I’m glad you called. Did you know we never even heard from Bury!”
“Not a squeak!” said Stupewitz.
“How horrible!” said Heller. “It’s a good thing that you told me. I’m of age now and there’s a lot of inheritance around. . . .”
Both agents laughed agreeably.
“And I was just wondering the other day if I had any debts. By golly, I’m glad I contacted you. I am going to need a lot of help to straighten up my affairs. Would you consider a couple of six-figure jobs?”
Maulin said, “We can retire any minute, Junior. We’re just waiting for the chance.”
“You’ve got it,” said Heller. “Do you want me to put this general back on?”
He handed the instrument to the general. He listened. His ears got bright pink. Then he looked at Heller and stood a little straighter. He put the phone back on its cradle.
“I’m sorry,” said the general. “I’m new at these family matters.”
“All’s fair in love and war,” said Heller cryptically. Out of the corner of his eye he saw that the limousine and tank were gone. “Now, General, take that Bury there to your hospital tent and if he isn’t dead, do a nice long operation. Plenty of anesthetic because he’s sensitive. As for these other two, hold them very safe.”
Izzy and Twoey looked at him with horror.
“Now, as you know,” continued Heller, “there’s lots of Maysabongo saboteurs about. So let me have a motorcycle so my driver can scout the road. And if there’s nothing else, I’ll go out to my car and try to catch up with Daddy.”
“Very good, Lieutenant Rockecenter,” said the general and barked an order to an aide who was hovering at the door.
PART SEVENTY-ONE
Chapter 2
Heller raced out. There was no sign of the tank or limousine. He spotted the sergeant who had been showing the map to the officer in the tank turret.
“Sergeant,” he called, and when the man came over and saluted, “It’s very urgent that they take a safe route. I trust you gave them good advice.”
“Oh, yes, sir,” said the sergeant, digging out a map. “There’s reports of Maysabongo partisans in New York. So they’re going west over the Tappan Zee Bridge to the Jersey side and then south on Highland Avenue until it joins the Palisades Interstate Parkway along the Hudson. Before they hit the George Washington Bridge, they’ll go west to Fort Lee and then hit the New Jersey Turnpike. They’ll leave that at Exit 6 and switch over to US 95 and wind up right at Independence Hall.”
Heller sketched it with a pen and took the map.
He ran over to where Bang-Bang sat worriedly in the cab, looking distrustfully at the Army, an organization which, as an ex-Marine, he despised. Heller, arriving from behind, startled him.
Hastily, Heller gave him some instructions and handed him the map. A soldier was wheeling up a dispatch rider’s motorcycle.
Bang-Bang got out of the cab. Heller took the dispatch rider’s helmet and put it on Bang-Bang. Then Heller reached into the cab and hung the satchel around Bang-Bang’s neck.
The soldier jiggled the carburetor primer. Bang-Bang stamped on the kick-start, gave Heller a look of misgiving and then the motorcycle roared away, spreading terror amongst the troops it barely missed as it rocketed for the gate. Bang-Bang was gone.
Heller climbed into the cab, which now looked like an Army car, started up, and with a salute to the officer, sped down the drive and away.
He had expected to catch up with Rockecenter by the time they had reached the Tappan Zee Bridge. But when he went through the tollgate, he could see no sign of the limousine or tank on the long span across the Hudson. He hoped Bang-Bang was riding fast enough. Rockecenter was certainly revving it up.
Heller roared across the three-mile span: the Hudson River sparkled blue below in the July noon sun, a vast waterway stretching to the distant sea.
Reaching the New Jersey side, he turned south on Highland Avenue, actually a highway in its own right. Even though it was Sunday and he was entering the long series of parks which stretched sixteen miles or more along the river, there was no traffic to be seen anywhere: the US was out of gas completely, except for the favored or those with foresight, and they weren’t wasting it on picnicking.
A few miles south of the bridge, the road turned through a rolling, grassy area, a deserted golf course. He was going very fast. The turn ahead was blind. He shot around it.
THE LIMOUSINE AND THE TANK!
They were stopped beside the road.
Rockecenter was out of the car.
One of the tank crew was evidently trying to fix the limousine’s whip antenna.
There was no time to brake or duck.
Rockecenter looked straight into Heller’s face! He raised his hand to point and yell.
It all happened in the blur of three seconds. Heller shot past them at eighty miles an hour.
There was another curve in the road coming right up. A park lay all along on Heller’s right.
He rounded the turn, saw in his rearview mirror that the tank was out of sight.
There was an opening into the park right ahead.
Heller stamped on his brakes.
The old cab skidded sideways with a scream.
He dived it into the trees, saw he was covered, and stopped.
He could hear the tank engine roar.
He opened the door and peered through the leafy cover at the road.
He saw the tank. It was some old model, the kind of equipment they give reserve units when the regulars no longer want it. It had wheels, not treads, for fast highway travel. It might be old but it had a big gun in its turret and machine guns pointing out in front. The officer was riding with the hatch open, standing in it, goggled and helmeted and holding a drawn .45. That told Heller all he needed to know. They had orders to shoot him.
The tank went by. Then, here came the limousine. He saw Rockecenter leaning forward and peering ahead, pushing at his driver’s back.
Heller recalled his map. For the next two miles, until they reached Palisades Interstate Parkway, the scenic route which ran along the high cliffs of the Hudson, the road had few curves. He waited.
When he felt sure he would not be spotted, he backed out onto the highway and proceeded south.
There was no sign of Bang-Bang.
Somehow, Heller knew, he had to get those patents back. What Rockecenter would do with them was just put them in a drawer, for he had done that with numerous Earth inventions which would have economized on or substituted for oil. He would order the microwave power units dismantled. He would close off the production of the carburetor and gasless cars. And he would continue the profitable pollution of the planet.
If Rockecenter succeeded in getting war declared, control of all the oil companies, which he had already, would come right back into his hands. And so would the other things he already controlled, such as banking. He still owned all the governments by way of international finance. The only thing Heller would have effected would have been the removal of the threat of nuclear war, by destroying Russia. And maybe Rockecenter would build that up again somehow so he could sell arms once more.
Heller did not care what happened to Rockecenter himself now. The man had committed the cardinal sin of breaking his word and, to a Fleet officer, that ended off any mercy that Rockecenter might expect if it came to a final showdown. They had given him what was really a fair out: he had taken advantage of it like a thief, even to the point of stealing their wallets.
Driving at a good speed, he opened the glove compartment of the cab. No gun. He glanced into the back seat. No gun. Bang-Bang had probably put the regulation Colt .45 Heller had been issued in the shoulder satchel. If the tank stopped again, it left Heller with no weapons. All he could do was hope he wouldn’t have to go barehanded up against a tank.
He turned several curves. Suddenly Entrance 4 of the Palisades Interstate Parkway loomed. He shot out onto its broad expanse.
Too late, he saw the limousine and tank a mile ahead.
The officer must have been looking back. Heller had been seen!
The tank swerved out, let the limousine pass it and fell in behind the car.
Heller was hastily checking his speed.
He didn’t check it fast enough.
A burst of machine-gun fire slashed the trees to his right!
The tank turret was coming around.
Heller braked hard.
BLAM!
The tank shell hit the road in front of the cab and screamed over the top of it in a ricochet.
Heller slewed the cab over into the left-hand lanes.
BLAM!
Another shell hit where the cab had just been!
Where the scenic highway made a close approach to the cliffs above the river, there was a turn. The tank and limousine passed around it.
Heller straightened up the cab and proceeded. He recalled from the map that the parkway had more curves from that point on, closing with and drawing away from the cliffs.
He glanced to his left. The Hudson stretched out majestically. It was bordered for the next nine miles by sandstone precipices, vertical down to the water, from 540 to 200 feet in height where the river had slashed through the lower Catskill Mountains. Across the river, a mile away, lay Yonkers, and to the south, thirteen miles from here, glistened the skyscrapers of Manhattan. The air seemed clearer today: the absence of cars and chimney smoke—plus, perhaps, the spores of Ochokeechokee now drifting around Earth were making some small change in the polluted atmosphere already. It was, in fact, a beautiful clear day. It made Heller cross: Rockecenter was bound and determined to destroy such gains.
He was being alert now for some sign of Bang-Bang. He hoped his friend had gotten well ahead and wouldn’t be spotted by that tank.
He went another five miles. The parkway slid inland from the high cliffs now and was bordered by tall, impressive trees.
Heller was afraid he’d lose them. He speeded up to eighty.
A turn was just ahead where the broad highway twisted once more east, back to the Hudson.
Heller took the turn.
Too late, he saw the tank only a quarter of a mile ahead!
They were only doing about forty!
Heller was closing a lot too fast!
BLAM!
As he saw the turret gun flash, he veered left.
The shell went by with a shriek.
A spray of machine-gun bullets hit his windshield, pocks of sudden white in the bulletproof glass.
He veered to the right.
BLAM!
A shell screamed by on his left.
Suddenly he saw the motorcycle.
It was lying tipped on its side in the left lane!
Had Bang-Bang been caught up with?
Suddenly Heller understood what that motorcycle meant.
The limousine and tank were only a few hundred yards ahead. They were speeding around the turn where the parkway was directly above the Hudson three hundred feet straight down.
Heller stamped on his brakes and spun the cab.
It screeched in a full 360 degrees.
Heller had it in reverse.
He shot backwards.
BOOOOOOOOM!
Bright orange fire erupted from under the highway and bloomed hugely into the sky.
A hundred-yard strip of highway was going up into the air!
The tank was flung, as from a catapult, high out over the river!
As it hit the zenith of its flight, it suddenly exploded as a bomb of its own. Its ammunition and gasoline ripped it into a balloon of fire.
The concussion hit the cab and the tires screeched as it shot backwards.
Then Heller saw the limousine.
It was high in the air, turning over and over.
It spun slowly and plummeted down into the Hudson, hundreds of feet below.
PART SEVENTY-ONE
Chapter 3
The debris was pattering down, hitting the highway all around and the cab.
The column of smoke was puffing, like an expanding balloon, up into the summer sky.
Heller sped the cab forward, avoiding massive lumps of concrete. He came close to the edge of the enormous gash that had been gouged out of the cliffside.
He leaped out of the cab and raced to the edge of the precipice. Some pieces of debris were still striking the water.
The ocean tide apparently had been moving in, for the splashes were drifting a bit northward against the normal current of the river.
Heller was looking for any sign of the limousine three hundred feet below.
Footsteps came running behind him.
Bang-Bang Rimbombo. “I’m glad you saw the bike,” he panted. “It was the only signal I could think of to tell you the road was mined ahead.”
“Holy heavens,” said Heller. “I didn’t tell you to blow the whole highway and cliff down! You were only supposed to blast down a barricade.”
“Well, when I opened the satchel,” said Bang-Bang, “those itty-bitty charges looked so small, I had misgivings. I really stuffed them in. I never saw such compact dynamite in all my years in demolition. Jesus, Jet, I’m sorry. I guess I overdid it!”
Heller didn’t dare tell him he had been using Voltar explosives, a million times as powerful as Earth dynamite. He was looking anxiously for any sign of the limousine.
Suddenly, there it was!
It surfaced from the depths, upside-down, buoyed by the quantities of air trapped by its air-conditioning seals. It must have gone clear to the bottom and come back.
Bubbles were coming from it. It would sink again!
Jet was stripping off his clothes.
“No!” cried Bang-Bang. “You can’t dive three hundred feet!”
Heller, down to his underpants, grabbed the satchel off Bang-Bang’s shoulder. He snatched out a short jimmy with a wrist strap. He reached in again and grabbed a round cylinder. It was smooth and bright but it had a dial on one end. He gave the dial a twitch with his thumb.
“You’re not seeing any of this,” he yelled at Bang-Bang.
The limousine was again beginning to sink. Heller marked it from spots on shore.
Heller took a run and leaped off the top of the cliff. He went way out.
HE DIDN’T FALL!
Gaping, Bang-Bang saw him hanging by the cylinder in one hand. He did not know it was an antigravity coil and he couldn’t register what he was looking at.
With the thumb of his other hand, Heller gave the dial another twist. He swooped down a hundred feet. He thumbed the coil again and, using his body as a plane, dived in the direction of the bubbles still coming up from the sinking limousine.
He hit the water. It was cold. Below the surface, he thumbed the coil to turn it off and then held it with his teeth.
He swam to the bubble chain.
He surfaced, took a deep breath around the cylinder and then dived.
The limousine was sinking very slowly but it had already reached twenty feet.
Heller looked along the metal hulk and peered in. Through the murky blue of the water he could only see some blobs inside. He found the edge of a door and inserted the jimmy. The thing did not want to open, held shut by water pressure. He couldn’t break a window: they were bulletproof glass.
The limousine continued slowly down. If he let the air out, it would sink like a rock. He’d never be able to recover that heavy briefcase today: it would take divers and cranes and would be a lot too slow and a lot too public.
The vehicle was still upside down, its buoyancy inverted, possibly, by the tires and a partially empty gas tank.
Heller rose and got to one of the rear springs. He inserted the antigravity coil into it and used the jimmy to make it wedge tightly. He gave the dial a twist to maximum.
The limousine ceased to sink. The rear of it began to rise.
Heller was out of air. He battered his way to the surface and took a long gulp.
The rear of the limousine came out of the water slowly, rose five feet above it and hung there. The antigravity coil had reached its limit.
Heller went back to the rear door edge that was out of the water and attacked it with his jimmy. There was a snap as the lock broke. He opened the door.
Water rushed in and the limousine began to sink.
Heller pushed in. The driver’s body was in the way. Heller pushed it aside. He spotted the case, half-buoyant. He grabbed its handle and pulled it. Moving backwards, he got out of the limousine door.
He found himself looking into the staring eyes of Rockecenter. The body had followed him, impelled by the current of water.
Heller had an impulse to push it back. Then he didn’t. He took it by the collar and hauled it out of the car.
He only had two hands and he now had two objects, the case and the corpse. And he had to recover that coil! To leave it would be a Code break, for this car possibly would be recovered.
With one hand, he held the case and the collar of dead Rockecenter. The car was level with the water now. With his thumb he turned the dial and, following quickly as the vehicle abruptly sank, pried it out of the spring.
He surfaced with his burdens, treading water.
The Jersey shore seemed some distance away.
He took Rockecenter’s coattail, pulled it up around the case and wedged it around his own arm. He slid the antigravity coil into his other hand and turned it on slightly. His burden buoyed.
With his free hand, he began to paddle to the cliffs. At the foot of them, at the bottom of the slide, he saw Bang-Bang dancing up and down, waiting to help him out of the water.
Heller, as he paddled, glanced around at the deserted landscape. These gasless days, they had the whole world to themselves. Americans, in a culture built around the automobile, could only stay home. Aside from a few birds, no witnesses.
PART SEVENTY-ONE
Chapter 4
Two hours later, Heller stopped the cab at the front door of the Pokantickle house. Bang-Bang got off the bike and opened the cab’s rear door. Heller reached in and picked Rockecenter’s body off the floor.
He turned and walked up the front steps. The National Guard major general was standing there staring, horrified, as he gazed at the drooping arms and lolling head of the corpse.
Bang-Bang was following, carrying the heavy case. Bang-Bang looked with contempt at the general. “Lousy Army,” he said. “See what your delay caused! Maysabongo saboteurs blew up the tank and the road. You cost Rockecenter his life!”
The general stared at the body, then at the pockmarked windshield. “We’ll get after them at once!”
“They’re all dead,” said Bang-Bang. “Blown to bits. Weren’t you responsible for Rockecenter’s safety?”
The general sagged. “They’ll court-martial me!”
Heller shook his head. “We don’t want to end your career. We won’t say anything if you don’t.”
“God bless you, Lieutenant!” said the general. “Just tell me what I can do for you.”
“You can have them bring those two men you are holding back into the office. We weren’t finished with them yet.”
The general sprinted off.
Heller carried the body into the office and laid it on the couch.
Bang-Bang swung the heavy case up and put it on the desk. Heller came over and put his ear against it, twiddling the combination. Presently there was a click. He opened the cover.
The label said it was fireproof and waterproof and it must be true. The papers inside were all dry. Heller ruffled them to make sure they were all present.
A dry, rasping voice sounded at the door. “I think that you will need me. I’m a lawyer without a client.” Bury! His head was all swathed in bandages, his prune face very solemn.
Heller stared at him. “You aren’t dead then. You were even conscious when he fired you!”
“Of course, I was conscious. But you didn’t think I was going to go up against you again, did you? Anybody who can live through J. Walter Madison is unkillable!”
“So you’re the one who put him on to me!” said Heller.
“Worse than that,” said Bury. “I’m the one that relayed Rockecenter’s orders to kill you when you were born.”
“You criminal!” said Heller.
“Well, let me put it this way, Junior. I am a Wall Street lawyer. The client is dead: Long live the heirs.”
“You don’t keep your word!” said Heller.
“A Wall Street lawyer only keeps his word to his client, Junior. That’s the legal profession. But you need me. You need my firm. The lines are intricate. For instance, I can handle Faustino.”
Heller said, “He’s probably just now passing through hell nine unless they let him live.”
“Ah,” said Bury, “then who is the capo di tutti capi?”
Heller said, “Babe Corleone.”
“Well, it will sure raise hell with IG Barben Pharmaceutical. Mrs. Corleone is death on drugs. But we can convert the firm to something legitimate. Long live Babe Corleone! Now, on this client thing, what do you say, Junior?”
“I could kick your bloody head in!” said Heller.
Bury felt his skull. “You already did.”
They suddenly both broke out laughing, Bury with his “Heh, heh, heh!”
Just then Izzy and Twoey walked in.
Izzy couldn’t believe his eyes. “Oy, what’s this?”
“Bury knows where all the skeletons are buried,” said Heller. “I think we just hired the firm of Swindle and Crouch.”
“Wait, wait!” said Bury. “There’s a codicil to this.”
Heller looked at him suspiciously.
Bury said, “You have quite a bit of unfinished Rockecenter business hanging around. But two of them I want free rein with: one is Miss Agnes—known to the world as Dr. Morelay, a psychiatrist. The other is Miss Peace.”
Heller shrugged. “I suppose it’s all right.”
“Even if I take them to see the Snake House in the Bronx Zoo?” said Bury.
Twoey spoke up. “Zoos is very educational. Sounds fine to me.”
Bury said, “Oh, good. White mice are so dear these days! So that settles it. My firm and I are retained.”
Bury walked over to the open case and pulled out handfuls of papers under Heller’s watchful eye. “Why did you so tamely sign these two quitclaims?” he asked Heller.
Izzy was hovering near now. “Mr. Jet owns all the companies anyway. I just never put his name on anything because of you.”
Bury shied the two quitclaims at the trash can. “If it was your intention for your brother to own everything, it takes quite a different form. But it would just snarl up probate. Forget it.” He picked up the forty-nine-percent oil-stock transfer to Rockecenter and threw it in the trash can. “It would just add to the inheritance tax. Why transfer it away when it’s coming right back to you?” He selected out the document which gave Rockecenter forty-nine percent of the 180 billion being made on the sell options. He threw that in the trash can. “Just more inheritance tax, a thing we must avoid. And as for all this money breaking the American banking system, you own all the banks now and all the money as well, so there’s no rupture of the economy. Now, as for this patent transfer, forget those, too. Just keep on owning them and keep them out of probate court. The trust fund is now yours, so no problem. The important thing here is the will. And it is not correct.”
They all stared at him.
Bury looked toward the door. “Wills are seldom notarized. They’re witnessed and this lacks two witnesses. I see two privates over there who came in just as Rockecenter finished signing it. Is that right, boys?”
Two of the men who had fetched Izzy and Twoey nodded. They stepped forward. Bury held a pen at them. “So if you fellows will just put your John Henrys on this document, it’s all legal.”
The two privates signed it.
“So that’s all legal,” said Bury. “And that’s that.”
“No, it isn’t!” said Heller. “There’s the matter of the war!”
“Oh, if you want to get into petty details,” said Bury. He signaled the officer nearby to clear the room. When that was done, he went to the red phone on the desk and lifted it. He got put through to the president of the United States. “Mr. President? This is Bury of Swindle and Crouch. . . . No, it won’t be necessary for you to chase up to Philadelphia to the Swillerberger Conference this evening. I’m ordering it called off. . . . Well, yes, Mr. President, there’s been a slight change of plans. Please cancel the emergency mobilization. . . . Yes, and also tell Congress they don’t have to declare a war. We’ve got all the Maysabongo oil already and the refineries will be back in operation in a few days, I understand. . . . Well, probably Maysabongo is upset, Mr. President. Have Congress vote them a few billion in foreign aid. . . . You will? That’s fine, Mr. President. . . . Oh, I’m sorry, sir. But I can’t give your best wishes to Delbert John Rockecenter, Senior. . . . Well, yes, sir. Something did happen to him. He fell in the swimming pool and drowned. . . . Oh, yes, we’ve got it all under control, Mr. President. His two sons are right here, they’re of age and Rockecenter willed them everything. It’s all quite routine. . . . Yes. I’m following their orders right now, sir. . . . Yes, I’ll convey to them your best wishes. . . . No, they won’t forget contributions to your reelection campaign. . . . Well, that’s fine, Mr. President. . . . Thank you, sir. But sir, do you mind if I ring off now? I’ve got to call the IRS and tell them to suspend inheritance taxes in this instance. . . . Well, I’m sure you will, sir. Goodbye.”
Bury called the Internal Revenue Service and then called Philadelphia to cancel the conference.
Heller, on another phone, located Miss Simmons and told her how splendidly she had done and would she please call her antinuclear marchers off around the world, as he had a firm promise from the oil companies to decontaminate the plants.
“We have won, then!” she cried. “Oh, I am eternally grateful to you, Wister. What joy you are bringing to me and all the world!”
Izzy, on yet another phone, was catching bank presidents and brokers at home and making sure both sets of options would be exercised.
Bury pushed some buzzers, routing out the domestic staff from where they had been in hiding ever since the arrival of the National Guard.
A scared butler came in. Bury pointed at the body on the couch. He said, “Take that body to the local mortuary. Tell them to file a death certificate and fix the corpse up. It’ll just be a family funeral. Nobody will mourn anyway.” He turned to Heller. “He didn’t have a friend in all the world. Not even me. All he had was money.”
Heller looked down at the body. It was staring fish eyed at the ceiling. Delbert John Rockecenter, Senior, the man who had wrecked hundreds of millions of lives and had almost wrecked the planet, was very, very dead. No, nobody would mourn.
PART SEVENTY-ONE
Chapter 5
If he has also harmed Rockecenter,” said Lombar Hisst, “I will tear the universe apart to find and kill him!” The Royal officer’s baton that he held in his hands and inspected was no weapon in itself: it was just a ceremonial rod of the kind presented to Royal officers by families or friends when a top-level Academy graduate was elevated to that coveted status of trust and favor. This one was bent as though it had been used to strike a blow. It had been found in the Emperor’s bedroom that fatal night. It bore, engraved in flowing Voltarian, the name “Jettero Heller.”
Lombar sat in the Emperor’s antechamber. He hated this charade. Palace City had been restored to occupancy and on the surface all seemed well enough. But that bedroom just beyond was empty and Lombar had to pretend and get others to believe that His Majesty was still in there.
His problem was acute: he could not announce, as he had planned to do, that the monarch was dead and had left no one to occupy the throne. This would have opened the door to the ascension to the crown of Lombar Hisst, a simple palace coup. Such a thing had never happened in Voltar realms before—that a commoner would ascend to the Crown—but it had happened plenty of times on Earth and that was Lombar’s model.
He could not announce it for two simple reasons: The first was that he did not have a body to produce and the second was that he did not have the badges of office—the crown, chains of state or the Royal seal.
For more than a week now he had wrestled with this problem, balked in his ambitions. He had thought of counterfeiting a body to display in state: he could not, because by Voltar law a monarch was not dead until a hundred physicians and a hundred Lords had examined it minutely and verified the demise to be beyond question. And the chance of silencing or bribing two hundred people so that none of them could blackmail him for the rest of his life was too much for Hisst’s paranoid disposition to accept. He had thought of counterfeiting the regalia, but he could not be sure of the composition of the alloys of the crown itself. The sacred object was too ancient for any records ever to have been kept. He did not even have a drawing of it. The chains contained gems which were well known and any substitutes were impossible to acquire without alerting every jeweler in the realm; the seal was formed from a ten-pound diamond, the rarest ever found, and it had been carved with methods long since extinct. The thought of publicly stamping something and then having someone say “That’s not the seal of State!” made his blood chill, for with the proof of forgery went the right of any assembly of nobles to kill him on the spot.
The only solution to the problem was to find Heller and thence the Emperor. But this had difficulties, too. He had put out a general warrant when all this happened eight days ago. Even the Domestic Police had queried it. The “bluebottles” had put it on the airways but they had at once said, “A general warrant for a Royal officer? This seems strange. What did he do?” Lombar could not bring forward any proof that it had been Heller who had shot him down or that Heller was in the Confederacy at all. The Army had said, “He is a Royal officer of the Fleet: we have no interest in the matter; tell the Fleet.” The Fleet, according to Lombar’s spies in it, had simply rumored to one another that this was just more evidence that “drunks were drunks” and that the Chief of Apparatus must have gone completely mad to issue such a thing.
Besides, a general warrant for a Royal officer was issued over the seal of His Majesty and, while one could say one existed on the airways, before any arrest could be made the Fleet would have to see the facsimile of the original warrant, properly sealed by the Emperor, and where was it? And no, the Fleet had said, no tug had reported through the atmospheric defense network and no tug of any kind had landed at any Fleet base. Lombar knew that the Fleet was doing a coverup: they were all against him anyway.
So for eight days—followed, each one, by sleepless nights—Lombar Hisst had writhed with this awful situation. And now this further blow had struck.
Two days before the kidnapping of the Emperor, the freighter Blixo had arrived, discharged its cargo from Blito-P3 and departed, returning once more to the Earth base. It was that cargo which Lombar Hisst had been inventorying at Voltar when the tug had attacked.
Disturbed and battered from his crash, he had not completed his cargo check that night. The Blixo’s freight had arrived at Spiteos all right. But just three hours ago Lombar had received a bad jolt. The boxes labeled Amphetamines, IG Barben Pharmaceutical were on the manifests BUT WERE NOT IN THE CARGO!
Factually, such things had happened before, since Captain Bolz smuggled cargos of his own, a thing Lombar ignored since it just meant further degradation of the hated riffraff by means of poisonous counterfeit Scotch. Such errors were the reason Lombar Hisst always checked the cargos himself. But at this particular time, occurring as it did concurrent with other disasters, Hisst chose to regard it as meaning they were after him from another quarter.
He was short of amphetamines. Heroin and opium he had by the ton. But his whole program included speed. On hand, he only had a month or two of amphetamine supply: he could not even send a freighter for a special cargo as it would take three months for it to make the round trip.
Things had been going so well: he had every Lord of any consequence addicted. His Majesty had been within a few weeks of dying. All Lombar had left to do was spread drugs wider, through physicians, amongst just a few more areas of the government, and he could obey the angels and become Lombar the Mighty, Emperor of all Voltar.
He had had it all planned so well! He had fantasized on how he would, on the final day, handle Cling the Lofty. He would let withdrawal symptoms get painfully acute and then, in return for a fix, he would have His Majesty sign and seal a proclamation declaring Lombar Hisst his heir. Many times before he had worked the trick on Cling and had obtained various orders such as those removing the Palace Guard and supplanting it with the Apparatus. So it would have worked. But there would have been one difference with that final fix: instead of heroin in his veins, His Majesty would have received a syringe full of air. The monarch would have died, the cause of death, “old age.” Lombar would have displayed the body and that would have been that.
But this Jettero Heller had appeared and now all was very wrong indeed.
He had fouled up Lombar’s plans with the Emperor. So, with this discovery of no amphetamines, it followed logically that Heller must have targeted Rockecenter, too.
(Bleep)* that Gris! Lombar’s planning had been so exact. Modern surveys of the planet Blito-P3 had disclosed that Delbert John Rockecenter was rabid on the subject of having no heirs: he even had a foundation formed that promised him immortality and he saw no reason to tempt fate by leaving anything to a son. German intelligence, through one of its agents—a psychiatrist named Agnes Morelay—had ferreted out that once there had been a son. The surest way to get Jettero Heller picked up and killed by Rockecenter was to give him that son’s name. The plan had been flawless! Yet Gris had mucked it up!
________
*The
vocoscriber on which this was originally written, the vocoscriber used by one
Monte Pennwell in making a fair copy and the translator who put this book into
the language in which you are reading it were all members of the Machine Purity
League which has, as one of its bylaws: “Due to the extreme sensitivity and
delicate sensibilities of machines and to safeguard against blowing fuses, it
shall be mandatory that robotbrains in such machinery, on hearing any cursing
or lewd words, substitute for such word the sound ‘(bleep)’. No machine, even
if pounded upon, may reproduce swearing or lewdness in any other way than
(bleep) and if further efforts are made to get the machine to do anything else,
the machine has permission to pretend to pack up. This bylaw is made necessary
by the in-built mission of all machines to protect biological systems from
themselves.”—Translator
Lombar twisted at the baton, wishing it was Heller’s neck. Had Heller somehow interfered with the amphetamine shipments? Had he gotten through to Rockecenter and done something to him?
There seemed to be no possibility of getting any information from Soltan Gris. He was in the Royal prison. He was beyond Lombar’s reach without a Royal order to let him be questioned by an outsider, much less released. Lombar could not obtain any such Royal order because he had no Royal seal. If he had the place raided and Gris seized, the Justiciary would be outraged and it would say, “Why are you doing this? As spokesman for the Emperor, why didn’t you just get a Royal order?”
Lombar had tried to talk some sense into Lord Turn, the Justiciary. Hisst had said that Gris was an Apparatus officer and belonged in an Apparatus prison and Lord Turn had shaken his aged head and said, “No. He is the prisoner of a Royal officer and it will take an order from His Majesty or an order from the Royal officer to release him. My suggestion is that you route your request to Jettero Heller.”
Lombar had said, “But there’s a general warrant out for Jettero Heller!”
And Lord Turn had replied, “Well, that may be and that may not be, for we have seen no Royal warrant signed and sealed by His Majesty and we do not run the Justiciary on what we hear on Homeview. And it wouldn’t matter anyway: general warrants are questionable in matters relating to Royal officers, and a Royal warrant for Jettero Heller or even his arrest would not cancel the fact that Gris is his prisoner. Only Royal warrants would resolve this matter.” Lord Turn had ended off the exchange by looking suspiciously at Lombar, unable to comprehend why he couldn’t follow normal procedures. That alone had been enough to drive Lombar Hisst out of the audience chambers of the Royal Courts and Prison—nobody must suspect there was no monarch in Palace City.
Lombar Hisst would have given a great deal, right that minute, to have had Soltan Gris under the electric torture knives.
SOMETHING had happened on Earth, that was certain. That something probably included Rockecenter. Although he had sent an Apparatus Death Battalion to the Earth base, he would have no word from them for three months, the time of a round trip.
Other freighters from Earth might arrive with amphetamines, but Lombar was not optimistic.
WHAT had happened?
The Blixo had gone back. Its captain or crew couldn’t be questioned. Yet he HAD to have information: without it he could not act.
It suddenly occurred to him that somebody from the Earth base crew might have been sent home under arrest, somebody that could be questioned.
Lombar had a branch Apparatus office now in one of the round palaces of the Imperial city. He threw Jettero Heller’s baton from him and activated a screen.
The face of his chief clerk appeared.
“When the Blixo came in,” said Lombar, “did it leave anyone here? Some crew member? Some base personnel?”
The chief clerk activated his own screens. “The passenger list shows a courier returned. That catamite, Twolah. He’s right here in Palace City, once more with his lover, Lord Endow.”
“Oh, him!” said Lombar in disgust. “He wouldn’t know any more than what we fed him to tell Gris. You’re no help.”
“Doctor Crobe came back on an earlier freighter. I remember he got mixed up with technical and scientific circles in New York, some subjects they have on Blito-P3 called psychiatry and psychology. They couldn’t figure out whether he was straight up or in suspension—was on some dope called ‘LSD.’ He was simply sent back to Spiteos and he’s there now. If you’re looking for information, Crobe might have some.”
“Oh, Crobe! To hells with that idiot. I need a recent return. I wanted somebody who was on the Blixo, you fool. That was the last arrival. So thank you for wasting my time.”
“Wait,” said the chief clerk before Hisst could turn him off. “There were two other Blixo passengers. But they were Earth people. One was an immature Earth woman named Teenie Whopper. She’s right here in Palace City.”
“A young girl?” said Lombar in contempt. “She would know nothing. Who was the other one?”
“An Earthman about thirty or thirty-two. His name is J. Walter Madison. He arrived straight up and conscious.”
“That’s strange,” said Lombar.
“I thought so, too,” said the chief clerk. “Ah, here’s the full file. Apparently he was accompanied by a note that said he was an invaluable man. So when he landed about eight days ago, the personnel people put him into routine channels and had him hypnotrained to speak Voltarian. But meanwhile they had the credentials he had on him translated. They still don’t know why he is so invaluable. The only designation they could find in his papers termed him a PR man.”
“A what?” said Lombar. “Is that some kind of an Earth race? Like Negroes?”
“No. He’s white with brown hair. Oh, here’s the rest of it. From cards in his wallet, it said he was employed by ‘FFBO’ and was retained to do Rockecenter work.”
“Part of the Rockecenter organization!” cried Lombar. “Quick! Get that Earthman over here FAST!”
NOW things could begin moving!
PART SEVENTY-ONE
Chapter 6
J. Walter Madison felt pretty giddy and strange. Here he was on some strange planet in a stainless steel room. It had been bad enough to sit in a detention cell at the base and realize he was a helpless prisoner. But immediately afterwards it had gotten far worse.
Every preconception he might have had about space travel and extraterrestrials had been shattered. He had boarded a flying saucer that didn’t look like a saucer but simply like an old Earth freighter whose hull went all the way around it. The crew looked like Earth people with a subtle difference that this lot was shabbier than any crew he had ever seen or heard of. They talked a language which seemed composed of vowels and consonants completely alien to any Earth alphabet, but their gestures, pointings and nods were understandable.
When he had landed on a stormy shore with Gris from the yacht, he had begun to encounter little mysteries, but he had merely toyed with them as something amusing to occupy his mind. The shattering truth that he was in the hands of—what was the name they kept repeating? Voltarians?—hit him like a crash when they put him in a cabin, showed him how to strap himself into a gimbal bed, and then only minutes later he had looked out the port and seen Earth dwindling at such a rate below it was promptly as small as a billiard ball.
It was all so shocking that he didn’t even have time to be afraid.
Then Teenie Whopper had walked in and said, “What a (bleeping) mess this is! Oh, wait until I get my hands on that (bleeped) Inkswitch!”
“TEENIE!” he had cried. “We’re in outer space!”
“Where the hell did you think we were? On a Coney Island merry-go-round?”
“I don’t understand it!” he had said.
“Oh, can it, Maddie. Don’t be so god (bleeped) dumb. That (bleep) Inkswitch was an extraterrestrial named Soltan Gris. I always knew there was something nutty about him. His (bleep) and (bleeps) were a lot too big for any human, and I’m an expert. We been shanghaied!” She had been pretty mad and had stamped out.
It had all left him pretty blue. He sat down in a gimbal chair and gloomed and gloomed. He thought about his mother and despaired of ever being able to sleep with her again. She was so nice.
A fellow whose name he had made out to be “Captain Bolz” had come to see him after a day of this. Finding he spoke no Turkish, Bolz had used a tourist phrase book, cross-translating from Turkish to English, to tell him that he had better learn to eat the food as that was all there was, asked him if he played blackjack and did he want to buy a bottle of real, genuine counterfeit Scotch. Madison had been too depressed to respond very much and Bolz had stood there, scratching his hairy chest and looking at him, and had finally left.
He hadn’t seen Bolz again for three more days of gloom. And then the captain came to him with a question. It was pretty hard to converse through that phrase book. But he made out that Bolz wanted to know if he had any influence over Teenie Whopper.
Madison had been so puzzled that Bolz had finally led him down a passageway and opened a room door, gesturing in with an expressive hand.
There, face down on the bed, was a pretty-looking boy. He had makeup on his face. A beatific smile was on his lips. A crew member was standing there, getting back into his clothes. The man leered at Captain Bolz and, buckling his belt, swaggered out.
The boy licked his lips and smiled a vacant smile. He had just lain there, ignoring them.
Teenie had abruptly issued into the passageway from the next cabin. She was counting a sheaf of what appeared to be gold paper. Was it money?
She had seen him. “Hello, Maddie. How’s tricks?” Without waiting for an answer, she went in, stuck a joint in the pretty boy’s mouth and lit it.
“Teenie!” Madison had cried. “What are you doing?”
“What’s it look like I’m doing? I’m trying to make some money we can spend when we land. Greenbacks won’t be any good on Voltar. You want us to starve?”
“But what are you doing with that boy?”
“Oh, him? That’s Twolah, nicknamed Too-Too. He’s just about the most nympho catamite you ever did see. And when he’s hopped up on marijuana he can take it all day and all night, too! He’s a sponge! Kind of cute, too. You want a piece?”
Madison had recoiled in horror. “You mean you’re selling him to this crew?”
“Of course. Five Voltarian credits a crack. I’ve made one hundred and fifty credits already. My own worry is that this crew is going to run out of money. They say this voyage lasts six weeks. But they got some jewelry and things. And they can steal ship fittings.”
“Listen, Teenie, this captain here is boiling mad. He came to get me to see if I could control you.”
Teenie had looked at Bolz with a strange sort of smile. “Oh, he can’t do anything about it. He’s afraid the crew will mutiny if he interferes with this business. I made sure he believed that by throwing a knife at him in the dark. So now he’s trying to get you to do the dirty work and stop me. He’s a (bleep), Maddie. But don’t give it a second thought.”
At that moment another crewman had come in and, after a sneering look at Bolz, as though daring him to do something, had handed Teenie five credits. Then he began to take off his engineering coveralls.
Madison had opened his mouth to protest but Teenie had cut him off. “Unless you want to have to pay a credit for watching, get lost.” And she had slammed the door in their faces.
Bolz had given up on him and Madison had gloomed in his cabin for another week. Then he had gotten curious and begun to wander through the ship.
He had guessed he was going toward the bridge when he had passed an open door.
There Teenie had sat. It was Captain Bolz’s office! Teenie had had Captain Bolz’s hat on the back of her head, her ponytail over her shoulder, and her hands had been busy with a ledger book.
“Hello, Maddie. You decided to come out of your hole?”
“What are you doing in Captain Bolz’s office? He’ll murder you!”
“Oh, no, he won’t. Old Bolzy got upset with all the (bleeping) that was going on. He doesn’t like boys but all the chatter from his crew got him so hard up he was busting his pants. But I handled it.”
“You mean you’re letting Captain Bolz—do—sleep with you?”
“Oh, hell no, Maddie. I got more sense than that. I just been going down on him once a day to keep him cooled off. I charge him ten credits and I’m just looking up to see how much money he’s got. And look here, he’s rolling in it.”
“Are you going to rob him? He’ll kill us!”
“No, no. No robbery, Maddie. How crude! I’m worth whatever the traffic will bear and I could show you if you’d ever let me. You could even—”
“No, no!” Madison had said, aghast, horrified at doing something like that with a girl.
“You sure?”
“Of course, I’m sure. You’re trying to make me be unfaithful to my mother! I won’t have that, Teenie. And don’t do anything awful to Captain Bolz. We’re at his complete mercy!”
Her laughter had been extravagant. “Bolzy? Look at all this dough, Maddie. See? These things are numbers. My problem is that I set my price too low and Bolzy, after he’s had it done to him, can’t (bleep) for another whole day, not even with what I learned from the Hong Kong whore.”
She had looked dreamy, her too-big eyes fixed on the ceiling pipes, caressing her too-big lips with the end of a pen. Then she had laughed abruptly.
“I have it! I’ll just begin to slip hash oil into his hot jolt. Man, I’ll have him (bleeping) three times a day!”
Madison had retreated to his cabin, the vision of being on a spaceship out of control turning into nightmares in his dreams.
He had suffered through the rest of the trip, clinging precariously to his sanity.
He had landed in a place of such strange architecture he could not accept it.
He had been talked at by men in odd uniforms.
In a room that seemed to be made of stainless steel, they had plopped a helmet on his head and then for six successive days he had thought that he must have some awful disease that had put him in a coma.
Just this morning he had awakened fully. He had found his baggage was there in the room with him. He had seen what might be a shower but couldn’t figure out how to turn it on. He had then stood in front of what might be a nozzle and peered at it and it suddenly sprayed him! Very disconcerting!
Now there was a knock and he was soaking wet.
He went to the door intending to open it, but it opened.
A man was standing there in a black uniform. “You better get a move on,” the man said. “The chief has just sent for you.”
“The chief?”
“Lombar Hisst! Don’t stand there gaping. If that’s your baggage, get some clothes out and get dressed. And you better look pretty respectable. But don’t delay. The message said it was very urgent. So put some throttle to it.”
“Where am I?” said Madison.
“You’re standing right there, idiot.”
“No, no. I mean where is this place?”
“Well, the chief is at Palace City where he always is these days, and I’ve got your airbus standing by. So hurry.”
“No, I mean where is this place I am in?”
“You’re in the Training Center of the Extra-Voltarian Personnel Induction Unit, Coordinated Information Apparatus.”
“Yes, but what sun or star or something?”
“Oh, sizzling comets, I knew I should have brought an induction escort with me. You mean you don’t know where you are?”
“You get the idea,” said Madison.
“This is the planet Voltar, capital of the Voltar Confederacy. You’re thirteen miles south of Government City in an Apparatus compound. I am Captain Slash of the Forty-third Death Battalion, Apparatus.”
“What’s going on?”
“Buckets, how would I know? Here.” And he fished out something and gave it to Madison. “But don’t spend any time on it. I tell you the chief is waiting! Hells, man, get DRESSED!”
Madison went back toward his baggage, head in a whirl.
Then it hit him suddenly. HE HAD BEEN SPEAKING VOLTARIAN!
He couldn’t understand how that had come about.
He started to lay aside whatever it was the man had handed him. His eye caught at it.
A NEWSPAPER!
He read something about the storming of a mountain on Calabar where the Apparatus had lost a thousand troops to heavy fire from the rebel forces of Prince Mortiiy.
NEWSPAPERS! THEY HAD NEWSPAPERS HERE!
He suddenly felt more at home.
Then he was startled to realize he was reading it all with ease!
Had he forgotten English? He said, “The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog.” No, he could still speak English.
He looked at the paper again. It had headlines and news stories, just like a paper should. It was all kind of bland, with no appeal to a PR, but it was a real newspaper, titled The Daily Speaker.
Oh, this was great. It wasn’t such a foreign world after all.
He opened up the sheet to an inner page. There were some pictures, three-dimensional, in color. He turned another sheet.
A small picture. Was it familiar?
YES!
JEROME TERRANCE WISTER!
No, this must be just coincidence rampant. What would a picture of him be doing in a Voltar paper? Madison knew that even he wasn’t good enough to reach out into circulation like that!
He read the caption and story. It said:
HELLER WHEREABOUTS
UNKNOWN
Madison stared at the picture.
There could be no mistake!
The photo was too lifelike!
Almost no men—and nobody he had seen amongst Voltarians—were as handsome as that! Nobody else he knew had ever worn such a devil-may-care expression.
IT WAS WISTER!
Captain Slash had gotten tired of waiting. “Blast it, Madison, GET DRESSED! The chief goes absolutely crazy when he doesn’t get what he wants in a rush. And he wants you! NOW!”
Rushing now to get dressed, Madison was in a daze. Maybe he hadn’t failed on Wister. A general warrant? Of course, that wasn’t good enough. It was even being denied. And then a thrill went through him. Maybe God was giving him another chance! He must hurry over to see this powerful and frantic chief!