Federal Reserve Inflation Bulletin
The morning recommended price adjustment for inflation is set at 3.21%. Acting Federal Reserve Chairman L. Dwight German, replacing the late Walter C. Boettger, issued a prepared statement demanding that all banks immediately adhere to the recent eighth increase in interest rates. “Dr. Boettger’s suicide should be a warning to us all,” he said in the statement. “If we do not pull together, we can expect financial anarchy, which will cause great harm to our democratic institutions in this time of public unrest.”
Maybe so, Hilda thought, but she hadn’t forgotten what had happened when this same Jimmy Lin and the others made their first landing on Starlab. It had looked innocent enough then, too; and then, without any foreplay, they’d found themselves captives of the Scarecrows.
The colonel evidently had the same thoughts. He ordered a thorough search of the orbiter, and so the landing party dragged itself through the corridors of the orbiter, looking for-looking for what, exactly? Hilda asked herself. God knew there was a lot to see, for the satellite was full of inexplicable machines and gadgets. The things came in all colors and textures. Some looked like lime Jell-O, some were silver-bright. There was one huge copper-colored thing, like a huge, metal, six-sided pillar, that seemed to be emitting a sullen heat. Some of the objects clicked and whispered to themselves, some glowed, some were silent and dark, and what any of them were for Hilda could not guess.
Still, it could have been worse. The one thing that they feared to find was not there: no living creature, no Docs or Dopeys nor anything else out of the Scarecrows’ menagerie of oddities. And when Colonel duValier was quite sure of that, he got on the radio and commanded, “Bring the beast in,” and the expedition began to earn its pay.
it that point most of the people aboard Starlab became extraneous, which meant that they were free to follow their private agendas, whatever those were. General Delasquez pulled out a camera and, without a word to anyone else, methodically began to photograph everything in sight. Hilda herself retraced her steps around the Starlab, looking for those particle-beam weapons the Scarecrow troops were supposed to have. There weren’t any visible. The Chinese astronaut, Commander Lin, had a priority project of his own; he had stationed himself by the charred wreck of the machine that had brought them there, with his weapon still in his hand. When Hilda came near he pointed the gun at her face. “Back off. Nobody comes near this thing,” he announced. “I’m not taking any chances on letting it get fixed.”
Hilda looked at him curiously. “How would I know how to fix it?”
“I don’t know,” he admitted, “and I don’t care. Maybe the Scarecrows have some way of making you do it-same as they made us forget all this stuff?”
“Then they could just as well do it to you, Lin,” she pointed out.
He scowled. “Stay away. And keep the Doc away from here. I swear, if he tries to touch this thing, I’ll blow his damn head off.”
The Doc showed no such intention. He too had his own program. As soon as he was inside the Starlab he headed down one of the corridors at high speed-startling Hilda; the creature was making faint mewing sounds, the first she had ever heard from him. Clearly he was practiced at getting around in the microgravity environment. Equally clearly he knew just where he wanted to go.
Which wasn’t where the colonel wanted him. “Halt!” Colonel du-Valier commanded, flailing after him with his gun drawn. The alien paid no attention. He didn’t stop until he reached a green-glowing panel. He clutched it for support with one huge arm, reached out with a smaller one to touch on its surface. The panel sprang open, revealing a cubicle filled with racks of what looked like plant matter and smelled faintly peppery. Mewing in excitement, the Doc pulled out a clutch of the stuff and thrust it into his great mouth.
General Delasquez was amused. “The creature is hungry, of course,” he reminded the colonel. The colonel was not amused at all. He took a moment to scowl blackly at Delasquez, then returned to muttering angrily at the Doc in a mixture of English and French.
If the Doc understood either, he showed no sign. He chewed energetically, cramming new fistfuls of the stuff into his mouth before the last batch was quite processed. He was a messy eater, too, for little sprigs of greenery fell off the clumps he was shoving in; some clung to the froth of white around his mouth.
He seemed to be more than merely hungry. Hilda had never thought she could detect any emotion on the face of either of the Docs, but now there were signs that had to be some kind of strain. He was actually sweating, and the great eyes were darting about as though in distress.
Then he pulled a couple of additional clumps of food from the locker and, clutching them in two of his extra arms, abruptly gathered his stubby legs under him and kicked himself down the hall for a dozen meters.
Colonel duValier was taken by surprise. He barely got out of the Doc’s way in time, then clumsily followed after. “Wait!” he ordered. “Come back!” The Doc paid no attention. Munching as he went, he paused in front of a blue-green mirror. Whatever he did Hilda could not quite see, but the mirror vanished, and where it had been was a sort of tool rack. The Doc selected a couple of items, then, still ignoring Colonel duValier, hurried agitatedly back along the corridor until it came to a luminous golden hemisphere. The mewing noises were louder now; they sounded distressed. Agitatedly the Doc slid one of the tools under the edge of the dome. The glow winked out. The dome retracted silently, and a jumble of incomprehensible alien objects appeared behind it.
Alarm bells went off in Hilda’s mind. Were these things weapons? DuValier was having the same thoughts, because he was flailing around, trying to get his body in position to aim his gun at the Doc.
If the Doc knew he was in danger he showed no sign. All his attention was concentrated on his task. He thumbed through the gadgets agitatedly, large arms holding him in place, smaller ones sorting feverishly through the array, until he found a length of what looked like woven cloth of gold. Hurriedly he wrapped it around his head, as though in pain.
Colonel duValier slowly lowered his gun and began talking on his radio to the LuftBuran, watching suspiciously as the Doc relaxed.
The eyes closed. The expression on the broad, pale face turned peaceful. He hung there in silence for a moment, then opened his eyes, turned to Colonel duValier and touched him on the shoulder- was it meant as a pat of reassurance? The Doc tugged at the shawl over his head, awkwardly twisting the ends of it to secure them under his chin. Then he found another square of the brassy fabric, tucked it under one of his smaller arms and stepped back.
Joining the Hundred-Mile-High Club?
Private Eyes gaze is on the LuftBuran that’s on its way to the Starlab orbiter. Who have we got here? There’s the American spook, Hilda (“Hot Pants”) Morrisey, who has never explained what she was doing in a makeout bar not long ago. There’s the Chinese James (“My-Grandfather-Could-Do-It-Better”) Lin, with his little ancestral book of positions and procedures-will he be adding new chapters in zero-G? There are the two French pilots, II and Elle, and you know the French, not to mention the big zombie from space. Sounds like a first-rate rave to us!
Private Eye, London
He gestured encouragingly at the collection of objects and pantomimed carrying them into the LuftBuran. Hilda began to breathe again; whatever had been on the creature’s mind, it seemed he was now finally ready to go to work.
The Doc looked consideringly at a brightly gleaming trapezoid and a pale blue rhombus, but finally began to dissect a purplish pyramid. When he had loosened it from its attachment to the wall he gestured to the colonel to take it away, and immediately began doing the same to a grapefruit-sized blister of orange nearby.
Colonel duValier whispered to himself in words that might have been French or may have been English, but were certainly profane. Then he turned to the others. “The beast is at last doing as he was ordered,” he said. “We can start loading these things into the spacecraft.”
Although the machineries of the Scarecrows weighed nothing at all in the orbiting Starlab, they still had mass; it was sweaty work to try to maneuver them down the narrow corridors of the satellite and through the port-careful not to smash them into the walls, the other machines, the fixtures of the LuftBuran.