GETAWAY WORLD
Volume four of The classic Family d’Alembert series
By E.E. ‘Doc’ Smith
With Stephen Goldin
CHAPTER 1
A Chat with Lady A
The young woman looked vastly out of place standing in the line of people waiting to file
through the debarkation gate and receive billeting assignments. Tall and lithe, beautiful
and dignified, she looked like a tulip growing in a cactus garden. The rest of her queue
mates were the scum of a dozen worlds; virtually all of them, male and female alike,
were graduates of the roughest schools in the Galaxy-the imperial prison system. They
were tough and, for the most part, ill educated; one could tell their planets of origin by
the brand of slang they spoke and the choice of obscenities with which they peppered
their conversation.
In contrast, the young woman was striking in her cleanliness. Her clothing fitted her with
fidelity, and had been fashioned by one of Earth’s finest designers. Her eyes had a deep
look of intelligence to them, and her long black hair was neatly trimmed. Her stance, the
way she tilted her head, the expression of cool self-assurance-all testified to the fact that
this woman was something special, born to wealth if not to the nobility itself.
She stood patiently in the corridor that had once been painted white, but was now
scratched and faded to a dismal shade of gray. Her eyes stared straight ahead at the
tables where the computer programmers were feeding the information on people’s cards
into their quietly humming machines. She seemed totally unaware of the lecherous
glances from the men around her, or of the envious stares from the women. When the
person at the front of the line was finished, she moved forward with the rest; but as for
any other interaction with her queue mates, she might as well have been a statue.
Finally her turn came. She handed over her cards to the woman at the front table, who
took them routinely without looking up and began typing them into the computer. “Name?”
the clerk asked in a bored tone.
“Hazel Whiting,” the young lady replied. “It’s on the card, if you’d bother to look.”
The cultured timbre of that voice made the clerk look up. She was obviously startled; she
wasn’t used to seeing people of such obvious quality in this place. “What’s someone like
you doing here?” she asked involuntarily.
“The same as everyone else-looking for sanctuary.” The clerk was doubtful. This young
lady looked too clean, too innocent and too intelligent to be needing this planet’s
specialized services. Her left foot reached out and pushed the hidden button that would
notify the boss that something was not quite right here; the trivision cameras in the
corners would beam the scene to his office, where he could make a decision without the
applicant’s being aware of it. In the meantime, the clerk would carry on with her work.
“What did you ever do to need sanctuary?”
“Again., it’s on the card,” said the woman who called herself Hazel Whiting. “Jewel
robberies, mostly, with a few swindles along the way.” She paused, then added as a
sarcastic afterthought, “It helps to look sophisticated; it gets you into the swanker circles
where the real loot is.”
The clerk shrugged and continued typing silently for several seconds. Then she produced
a retinascope, and Hazel Whiting leaned forward to have her identity checked. When the
clerk was satisfied, she handed Gospozha Whiting a plastic key card, a pamphlet and a
bookreel. “You’ll live solely on your past earnings as long as you’re on Sanctuary,” she
said routinely. It was clearly a speech she’d made many times before. “We don’t steal
from each other here. Report to Room J-5 down the hall for temporary quarters until you
decide where in the city you want to live.”
Hazel Whiting took the proffered materials from the clerk and started away. As she
moved past the line, one. of the men grabbed her arm. “Hey, Hazel Whiting,” he said in a
raspy voice. “How’d you like to move in with me when you get the chance?”
The girl looked him up and down skeptically. The man was a burly sort with more muscle
than brains; he smelled as though he’d missed his bath three months in a row, and his
beard looked to have been trimmed with pinking shears. “I think,” she replied coolly, “I’d
prefer to drink vacuum through a short straw.”
The man gave a coarse laugh and pulled her closer to him. “I’ll teach you not to be so
damned snooty.”
Hazel Whiting let herself be pulled until she stood right next to the man. Then, in a series
of rapid movements, she acted. Her left foot came down hard on her assailant’s right
instep, causing him to howl with pain and let go of her right arm. Her right hand lashed
out, fingers stiff and extended, and jabbed the man just under his ribs. It could have been
a killing blow if she had chosen, but that was not her intention. The man doubled over far
enough for her to lift her right knee and hit him on the chin with it. He went out like a
candle in a gale.
To an accompaniment of whistles and cheers from other men in the line, Hazel Whiting
walked off to Room J-5 to obtain her temporary billeting assignment.
Garst was understandably nervous. Seated across from him was the woman he knew
only as Lady A, the person most responsible for his being in this position right now. She
was easily the most beautiful woman he’d ever seen; the lines of her face had the classic
arrangement of eternal beauty. Her creamy complexion was flawless and her calm green
eyes took in everything worth seeing in the room. Her body was sensuality incarnate, and
her delicate perfume exuded femininity. There was an eternal quality about her. She
could have been any age between thirty and sixty; it was impossible to tell, and Garst did
not dare ask.
She was dressed in a wide-sleeved panne velvet jumpsuit with flared pant legs. The suit
was green, diagonally slashed with black-the left leg and sleeve were black, with thin
lines of emeralds along the edges. A tight green hood-attached to the jumpsuit by a gold
metal collar-covered most of her jet black hair. A pearl dangled over her forehead from
the center of the hood and around her neck she wore an integrated circuit chip on a
golden chain.
Yet despite her physical perfection, there was a coldness emanating from her that made
her seem terribly inhuman. Her manner was brisk, her speech sarcastic and stem. Garst
could not recall ever having seen her laugh in the several months of their acquaintance. It
was as though, being possessed of an ideal body, she had relinquished the option on her
soul.
Lady A sat in the comfortable chair across from his desk, her right leg crossed over her
left and her hands folded neatly into her lap. She stared with piercing intensity at Garst
as she spoke.
“I’m very happy with the operation as you’ve redefined it,” she said. “In only slightly over
three months you’ve taken a marginally working system and turned it into a full-fledged
organization. Our `colony’ is growing by leaps and bounds; we should soon have enough
talent here to launch our recruiting drive effectively.”
Garst nodded his head in acknowledgment of the praise. Though Lady A’s words were
laudatory, her tone of voice had not altered perceptibly; she was still as passionless as
an asteroid. “Thank you. As I told you at our first meeting, organization is my forte. The
system I had built on Vesa worked perfectly for two decades before bad luck destroyed
it last year-and that was working almost entirely on my own. With your backing, there
should be no limit to the things I can accomplish.”
He leaned back in his chair, daring to relax a little. “In fact,” he continued, half joking,
“with my talents and your connections, I wouldn’t be surprised if the two of us were ruling
the Empire within a couple of years.”
The woman snorted. “I doubt it. That particular plum has been within my reach before,
but it’s a harder fruit to pick than it appears. We’ll need a little more time and a lot more
background work completed before that goal is attained.”
Garst did his best not to overreact to Lady A’s statement. His own remark had been
intended in jest; her answer was dead serious. She did have her eyes set on the Throne;
but what did she mean that it had been within her reach before?
A light began flashing on his desk, startling him out of this reverie. Lady A noticed it, too.
“What’s that about?” she asked.
Garst reached across the desktop and punched some computer key buttons. “It’s a
signal from Admissions,” he announced after a moment.