…
That was all. Feodor Ilyowicz was dead.
Thoughts flew for minutes; then Deston said, “There may not have to be any scandal. I’ll
yank his first assistant-his nephew, Stepan Ilyowicz, you know-and we’ll see what he’s
like.”
The nephew was deeply shocked at what had happened, but he opened his mind fully
and completely.
While his uncle had always been a solitary, secretive sort of man, one who never opened
his screens fully to anyone, he had always believed him to be thoroughly loyal to the
Galaxian cause. He had always acted that way; had never given any grounds whatever
for suspicion.
Yes, he himself believed fully in Galaxianism and was completely loyal to it. Yes, if
acceptable to the Board, he would be very glad indeed to take his uncle’s place on the
Board.
It was agreed that Maynard would have to know the whole truth, and would have to
decide what to do with it.
Maynard was shocked, too; and for minutes deeply thoughtful. “Well,” he said, finally,
“that teaches us something. There’ll be no more gentlemanliness or courtesy on the
Board with respect to mental privacy. Never again. No, we can’t have a scandal at this
point; it would be disastrous. I’ll take care of it. Thanks, all of you both for this and for the
fine job you’ve done on the whole project.”
And Maynard did take care of it. It was announced with due pomp that Feodr Ilyowicz,
the beloved, revered, and highly honored Second Tellurian Member of the Directorate of
the Galactic Federation, had died almost instantly in his sleep of a massive cerebral
hemorrhage.
Chapter 20
THE ELECTION
“On, Babe, look!” Barbara laughed delightedly and hugged Deston’s arm against her
side. “And she’s four months pregnant, too.”
Deston “looked.” Cecily Train was romping like a schoolgirl with Teddy and Babbsy. She
was on her hands and knees on the rug in the main lounge, shaking her head and
growling deep in her throat; the kids, with all four hands buried in her thick red mop of
curls, were tugging at it and shrieking with glee.
“Uh-huh; nice,” Deston agreed. “And you aren’t quite as sylph-like yourself as you were a
while back.” He glanced down at a slight bulge.
“Uh-huh. Bun, too. It’s catching, I guess. There’s some kind of a germ around, must be.
S’pose we’d better fumigate the ship or something’?” Her voice was solemn, but her eyes
danced. “But that wasn’t what I meant, that she might hurt herself-I’m so happy for her.
Who’d ever have thought that such an out-and-out stinker as she used to be would turn
out to be such a wonderful person? Why, even Bun loves her now.”
“Something made her change her ways, that’s for sure. Love? Psionics? It’s a shame to
break that joyous roughhouse up, but we’ve got a lot of . . .”
“We don’t have to yet, my sweet and impetuous. It can wait a few minutes. I’m going to
join that roughhouse myself-the kids need exercise, you big dope.”
Wherefore it was fifteen minutes later that the Big Six went to work. The fleet englobing
Earth was the first thing on the agenda, and disposing of the multitude of People aboard
those hundreds of huge starships was a problem. So Deston shot a thought across
space and -much to his surprise-Bee-ay and Beedy materialized beside him in the
Explorer.
“You’re that good already?” Deston marveled. The two were in perfect fusion. He had
recovered fully from his fight with the Russians. Her face was no longer hard; it was
beautiful. Both were again wearing platinum headbands mounting shining green jewels,
but no lockets. “And those? Reasonable facsimiles, I suppose?”
“No, duplicates. We felt-well, undressed-so the Four-we won’t call those wonderful
people funny even in fun-showed us all about ’em and we made ’em in about a minute.
We aren’t charged, though, now, of course; but we could be. On most things we’re
getting to be pretty good-the Fourth Nume, even. We can’t do long-distance ‘porting yet,
except on ourselves, but Stella says we’ll be ready for anything in a couple of weeks.
Then Mr. Maynard says we can go back to The World. He said, ‘See if you can work out
a program of rehabilitation that will begin to show results in the generation now being
born.’ He’s wonderful, isn’t he?”
“He’s wonderful at putting people to work, that’s for sure. But what we wanted to know
is, how can we put all those people back on your world without lousing everything up
over there?”
‘Oh, easy-that’ll be perfect! It won’t bother them a bit= Acts of the Company,’ you know.
There’ll he enough of them, maybe . . .” the fusion scanned the fleet, “. . . almost enough,
anyway, to put everything back to normal. The Three-A’s will instruct and take care of
caste, and the Aceys will give them all job transfers, housing coupon books, and so on.
Everything will be perfect. And that was a good idea, putting a psionic shield around The
World, in case the Russians-but wouldn’t it be a good idea to release it long enough to
blow up their headquarters?”
“It would indeed….” Deston began. “But no atomics!” Barbara said, sharply.
“Maybe not, at that. Half a dozen two-thousand pound charges of cyclodetonite will do
the trick, with no more jar than a very small earthquake, and I know where they keep the
demolition stuff. . . .”
They placed the bombs; then watched a small mountain on The World erupt and then
subside. They could find no trace of what had once been there.
“That’s it,” Deston said then. “Now if you two will show us exactly where to put each one
of-but listen! There are thousands of ’em-your Aceys will be running themselves
ragged-and those three-A’s will smell-hell, everybody will smell a rat-they can’t help but
smell such a rough job as that.”
“Oh, no, the two assured him, but they did grin at each other. “The Ways of The
Company are just as inscrutable to them as to everyone else. And after such a mal-such
a disaster-it would be perfectly natural, wouldn’t it, for The Company to do whatever is
necessary to get its World right back into full production?”
“My . . . God . . .” Cecily breathed. “But that does make a weird kind of sense, at that.”
“Another thing,” the Aceys went on. “It’d take simply forever to ‘port them one at a time
to the homes they used to have, even if they still have ’em. There’s a great big recreation
park back of our house-I’ll show you where-so you can ‘port ’em there in what you call
job lots. That would be even more impressive and Company-like, don’t you think?”
“I’ll tell that whole cockeyed world it would,” Deston agreed, and that was how the job
was done.
After it was done Train, who had been looking around on his own, laughed, suddenly.
“Somebody did smell your rat, Babe. Cantwell. He called Punsunby and they’re both
having litters of kittens all over the place.”
They all looked, and Jones and Deston laughed, too; but the girls didn’t think it was funny
to see even two such men as those suffer so much.
“Well, whatever they decide to do, it’ll keep ’em out of mischief for a while,” Deston said,
“so let’s clean it up. Thanks a lot, you two,” and the Aceys ‘ported themselves back to
the University.
Then the six turned the entire fleet, together with its Tellurian officers-and also together
with the whole group of Russian saboteurs to be interned-over to Fleet Admiral Guerdon
Dann. All this, of course, was very much contrary to International and Interplanetary Law
-but what else could they have done?
Deston turned then to Bernice. “Bun, you’re our supersensitive. We’d like to have you find
out all you possibly can about New Russia without touching off any psychic alarms-I
doubt very much if they’ve got anybody in your class for delicacy of touch. The rest of us
will go along, to cover you if we have to, but you’ll do all the feeling around. Okay?”
“I’ll give it the good old college try, Babe,” silver haired Bernice said, and Operation New
Russia was begun.
While all these things were going on, and for some time before, the political campaign
throughout all WestHem had been waxing warmer and warmer. It was now in full, hot
swing. With full prosperity restored-and everyone who could either see or hear knew how
that had come about and who had brought it about-the Galaxians were really making
hay.
They had made so much hay that the Sociocrats and the Consercans, the two major
parties before this unprecedented break-up, had merged as the only way of beating the
snowballing Galaxians; and the Communists and the Liberals had joined them after being
promised a place at the trough. This fusion party, the Party of Freedom and Liberty, was