Agent of Vega and Other Stories by James H. Schmitz

* * ** * *

A boat from the ranger station at the south end of Thursday Lake chugged into the bay forty minutes later, with fire-fighting equipment. Pete Jeffries, tramping through the muddy woods on foot, arrived at about the same time to find out what was happening at Hogan’s camp. However, there wasn’t really much to be done. The lodge was a raging bonfire, beyond salvage. Hogan pointed out that it wasn’t insured, and that he’d intended to have it pulled down and replaced in the near future, anyway. Everything else in the vicinity of the camp was too sodden after a week of rain to be in the least endangered by flying sparks. The fire fighters stood about until the flames settled down to a sullen glow. Then they smothered the glow, and the boat and Pete left. Hogan and Julia had been unable to explain how the fire got started; but, under the circumstances, it hardly seemed to matter. If anybody had been surprised to find Julia Allison here, they didn’t mention it. However, there undoubtedly would be a good many comments made in town.

“Your Pa isn’t going to like it,” Hogan observed, as the sounds of the boat engine faded away on the lake.

“Pa will have to learn to like it!” Julia replied, perhaps a trifle grimly. She studied Hogan a moment. “I thought I was through with you, Hogan!” she said. “But then I had to come back to find out.”

“Find out whether I was batty? Can’t blame you. There were times these weeks when I wondered myself.”

Julia shook her head.

“Whether you were batty or not didn’t seem the most important point,” she said.

“Then what was?”

She smiled, moved into his arms, snuggled close. There was a lengthy pause.

“What about your engagement in the city?” Hogan asked finally.

Julia looked up at him. “I broke it when I knew I was coming back.”

It was still about an hour before dawn. They walked back to the blackened, twisted mess that had been the lodge building, and stood staring at it in silence. Greenface’s funeral pyre had been worthy of a Titan.

“Think there might be anything left of it?” Julia asked, in a low voice.

“After that? I doubt it. Anyway, we won’t build again till spring. By then, there’ll be nothing around we might have to explain, that’s for sure. We can winter in town, if you like.”

“One of the cabins here will do fine.”

Hogan grinned. “Suits me!” He looked at the ruin again. “There was nothing very solid about it, you know. Just a big poisonous mass of jelly from the tropics. Winter would have killed it, anyway. Those red spots I saw on it—it was already beginning to rot. It never really had a chance here.”

She glanced at him. “You aren’t feeling sorry for the thing?”

“Well, in a way.” Hogan kicked a cindered two-by-four apart, and stood there frowning. “It was just a big crazy freak, shooting up all alone in a world where it didn’t fit in, and where it could only blunder around and do a lot of damage and die. I wonder how smart it really was and whether it ever understood the fix it was in.”

“Quit worrying about it!” Julia ordered.

Hogan grinned down at her. “Okay,” he said.

“And kiss me,” said Julia.

Rogue Psi

Shortly after noon, a small side door in the faculty restaurant of Cleaver University opened and a man and a woman stepped out into the sunlight of the wide, empty court between the building and the massive white wall opposite it which bordered Cleaver Spaceport. They came unhurriedly across the court towards a transparent gate sealing a tunnel passage in the wall.

As they reached the center of the court, a scanning device in the wall fastened its attention on them, simultaneously checking through a large store of previously registered human images and data associated with these. The image approaching it on the left was that of a slender girl above medium height, age twenty-six, with a burnished pile of hair which varied from chestnut-brown to copper in the sun, eyes which appeared to vary between blue and gray, and an air of composed self-reliance. Her name, the scanner noted among other details, was Arlene Marguerite Rolf. Her occupation: micromachinist. Her status: MAY PASS.

Miss Rolf’s companion was in his mid-thirties, big, rawboned and red-haired, with a formidably bulging forehead, eyes set deep under rusty beetle-brows, and a slight but apparently habitual scowl. His name was also on record: Dr. Frank Dean Harding. Occupation: marine geologist. Status—

At that point, there was an odd momentary hesitancy or blurring in the scanner’s reactions, though not quite pronounced enough to alert its check-mechanisms. Then it decided: MAY NOT PASS. A large sign appeared promptly in brilliant red light on the glassy surface of the wall door.

* * *

WARNING—SOMATIC BARRIERS!Passage Permitted to Listed Persons Only

* * *

The man looked at the sign, remarked dourly, “The welcome mat’s out again! Wonder if the monitor in there can identify me as an individual.”

“It probably can,” Arlene said. “You’ve been here twice before—”

“Three times,” Frank Harding corrected her. “The first occasion was just after I learned you’d taken the veil. Almost two years now, isn’t it?” he asked.

“Very nearly. Anyway, you’re registered in the university files, and that’s the first place that would be checked for an unlisted person who showed up in this court.”

Harding glanced over at her. “They’re as careful as all that about Lowry’s project?”

“You bet they are,” Arlene said. “If you weren’t in my company, a guard would have showed up by now to inform you you’re approaching a restricted area and ask you very politely what your business here was.”

Harding grunted. “Big deal. Is someone assigned to follow you around when you get off the project?”

She shrugged. “I doubt it. Why should they bother? I never leave the university grounds, and any secrets should be safe with me here. I’m not exactly the gabby type, and the people who know me seem to be careful not to ask me questions about Ben Lowry or myself anyway.” She looked reflective. “You know, I do believe it’s been almost six months since anyone has so much as mentioned diex energy in my presence!”

“Isn’t the job beginning to look a little old after all this time?” Harding asked.

“Well,” Arlene said, “working with Doctor Ben never gets to be boring, but it is a rather restrictive situation, of course. It’ll come to an end by and by.”

Harding glanced at his watch, said, “Drop me a line when that happens, Arlene. By that time, I might be able to afford an expert micromachinist myself.”

“In a dome at the bottom of some ocean basin?” Arlene laughed. “Sounds cozy—but that wouldn’t be much of an improvement on Cleaver Spaceport, would it? Will you start back to the coast today?”

“If I can still make the afternoon flight.” He took her arm. “Come on. I’ll see you through the somatic barrier first.”

“Why? Do you think it might make a mistake about me and clamp down?”

“It’s been known to happen,” Harding said gloomily. “And from what I hear, it’s one of the less pleasant ways to get killed.”

Arlene said comfortably, “There hasn’t been an accident of that kind in at least three or four years. The bugs have been very thoroughly worked out of the things. I go in and out here several times a week.” She took a small key from her purse, fitted it into a lock at the side of the transparent door, twisted it and withdrew it. The door slid sideways for a distance of three feet and stopped. Arlene Rolf stepped through the opening and turned to face Harding.

“There you are!” she said. “Barely a tingle! If it didn’t want to pass me, I’d be lying on the ground knotted up with cramps right now. ‘Bye, Frank! See you again in two or three months, maybe?”

Harding nodded. “Sooner if I can arrange it. Goodbye, Arlene.”

He stood watching the trim figure walk up the passage beyond the door. As she came to its end, the door slid silently shut again. Arlene looked back and waved at him, then disappeared around the corner.

Dr. Frank Harding thrust his hands into his pockets and started back across the court, scowling absently at nothing.

* * *

The living room of the quarters assigned to Dr. Benjamin B. Lowry on Cleaver Spaceport’s security island was large and almost luxuriously furnished. In pronounced contrast to the adjoining office and workrooms, it was also as a rule in a state of comfortable disorder. An affinity appeared to exist between the complex and the man who had occupied it for the past two years. Dr. Lowry, leading authority in the rather new field of diex energy, was a large man of careless and comfortable, if not downright slovenly personal habits, while a fiendish precisionist at work.

Pages: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68 69 70 71 72 73 74 75 76 77 78 79 80 81 82 83 84 85 86 87 88 89 90 91 92 93 94 95 96 97 98 99 100 101 102 103 104 105 106

Leave a Reply 0

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *