“All right,” Wergard said. “That makes it a personal matter. I understand that. And it makes sense to have the thing wind up in the hands of the military scientists. But I don’t want to louse up our operation.”
“It needn’t be loused up,” Danestar said. “You’ve got to get me into the vault, Wergard. Tonight, if possible. I’ll need around two hours to study the thing.”
“Two hours?” Wergard looked doubtful.
“Yes. I want a look at what it’s using for power to cut through standard static shielding, not to mention the Depot’s force barrier. And I probably should make duplos of at least part of the system.”
“The section patrol goes past there every hour,” Wergard said. “You’ll be running a chance of getting caught.”
“Well, you see to it that I don’t,” Danestar told him.
Wergard grunted. “All right,” he said. “Can do.”
She spent her two hours in Dr. Hishkan’s special vault that night, told Wergard afterwards, “It’s a temporal distorter, of course. A long-range communicator in the most simple form—downright primitive. At a guess, a route marker for ships. A signaling device. . . . It picks up impulses, can respond with any one of fourteen signal patterns. Hishkan apparently tripped the lot of them in those blasts. I don’t think he really knew what he was doing.”
“That should be really big stuff commercially, then,” Wergard remarked.
“Decidedly! On the power side, it’s forty percent more efficient than the best transmitters I’ve heard about. Nothing primitive there! Whoever got his hands on the thing should be able to give the ComWeb system the first real competition it’s had. . . . ”
She added, “But this is the most interesting part. Wergard, that thing is old! It’s an antique. At a guess, it hasn’t been used or serviced within the past five centuries. Obviously, it’s still operational—the central sections are so well shielded they haven’t been affected much. Other parts have begun to fall apart or have vanished. That’s a little bit sinister, wouldn’t you say?”
Wergard looked startled. “Yes, I would. If they had stuff five hundred years ago better in some respects than the most sophisticated systems we have today . . . ”
“In some rather important respects, too,” Danestar said. “I didn’t get any clues to it, but there’s obviously a principle embodied designed to punch an impulse through all the disturbances of the Pit. If our ships had that . . . ”
“All right,” Wergard said. “I see it. But let’s set it up to play Dr. Hishkan into our hands besides. How about this—you put out a shortcode description at the first opportunity of what you’ve found and what it seems to indicate. Tell the boys to get the information to Federation agents at once.”
Danestar nodded. “Adding that we’ll go ahead with our plans as they are, but they’re to stand by outside to make sure the gadget doesn’t get away if there’s a slip-up?”
“That’s what I had in mind,” Wergard agreed. “The Feds should cooperate—we’re handing them the thing on a platter.”
He left, and Danestar settled down to prepare the message for transmission. It was fifteen minutes later, just before she’d finished with it, that Wergard’s voice informed her over their private intercom that the entry lock in the energy barrier had been opened briefly to let in a space shuttle and closed again.
“I wouldn’t bet,” he said, “that this one’s bringing in specimens or supplies. . . . ” He paused, added suddenly, “Look out for yourself! There’re boys with guns sneaking into this section from several sides. I’ll have to move. Looks like the word’s been given to pick us up!”
Danestar heard his instrument snap off. She swore softly, turned on a screen showing the area of the lock. The shuttle stood there, a sizable one. Men were coming out of it. It clearly hadn’t been bringing in supplies or specimens.
Danestar stared at it, biting her lip. In another few hours, they would have been completely prepared for this! The airtruck which brought supplies from the city every two days would have come and left during that time; and as the lock opened for it, her signal to set up the trap for the specimen smugglers would have been received by the Kyth Agency men waiting within observation range of the Depot. Thirty minutes later, any vehicle leaving the Depot without being given a simultaneous shortcode clearance by her would be promptly intercepted and searched.
But now, suddenly, they had a problem. Not only were the smugglers here, they had come prepared to take care of the two supposed technicians the U-League had planted in the Depot to spy on Dr. Hishkan. She and Corvin Wergard could make themselves very difficult to find; but if they couldn’t be located, the instrument from the Pit would be loaded on the shuttle and the thieves would be gone again with it, probably taking Dr. Hishkan and one or two of his principal U-League confederates along. Danestar’s warning message would go out as they left, but that was cutting it much too fine! A space shuttle of that type was fast and maneuverable, and this one probably carried effective armament. There was a chance the Kyth operators outside would be able to capture it before it rejoined its mother ship and vanished from the Mezmiali System—but the chance was not at all a good one.
No, she decided, Dr. Hishkan’s visitors had to be persuaded to stay around a while, or the entire operation would go down the drain. Switching on half a dozen other screens, she set recorders to cover them, went quickly about the room making various preparations to meet the emergency, came back to her worktable, completed the message to their confederates and fed it into a small shortcode transmitter. The transmitter vanished into a deep wall recess it shared with a few other essential devices. Danestar settled down to study the screens, in which various matters of interest could now be observed, while she waited with increasing impatience for Wergard to call in again.
More minutes passed before he did, and she’d started checking over areas in the Depot where he might have gone with the spy-screen. Then his face suddenly appeared in the instrument.
“Clear of them now,” he said. “They got rather close for a while. Nobody’s tried to bother you yet?”
“No,” said Danestar. “But our Depot manager and three men from the shuttle came skulking along the hall a minute or two ago. They’re waiting outside the door.”
“Waiting for what?”
“For you to show up.”
“They know you’re in the room?” Wergard asked.
“Yes. One of them has a life detector.”
“The group that’s looking around for me has another of the gadgets,” Wergard said. “That’s why it took so long to shake them. I’m in a sneaksuit now. You intend to let them take you?”
“That’s the indicated move,” Danestar said. “Everything’s set up for it. Let me brief you. . . . ”
The eight men who had come off the shuttle belonged to a smuggling ring which would act as middleman in the purchase of the signaling device from the Pit. They’d gone directly to Dr. Hishkan’s office in the Depot’s main building, and Danestar had a view of the office in one of her wall screens when they arrived. The specimen already had been brought out of the vault, and she’d been following their conversation about it.
Volcheme, the chief of the smugglers, and his assistant, Galester, who appeared to have had scientific training, showed the manner of crack professionals. They were efficient businessmen who operated outside the law as a calculated risk because it paid off. This made dealing with them a less uncertain matter than if they had been men of Dr. Hishkan’s caliber—intelligent, amoral, but relatively inexperienced amateurs in crime. Amateurs with a big-money glint in their eyes and guns in their hands were unpredictable, took very careful handling. Volcheme and Galester, on the other hand, while not easy to bluff, could be counted on to think and act logically under pressure.
Danestar was planning to put on considerable pressure.
“They aren’t sure about us,” she said. “Hishkan thinks we’re U-League spies but that we haven’t found out anything. Volcheme wants to be certain. That’s why he sent in word to have us picked up before he got here. Hishkan is nervous about getting involved in outright murder but will go along with it.”
Wergard nodded. “He hasn’t much choice at this stage. Well, play it straight then—or nearly straight. I’ll listen but won’t show unless there’s a reason. While I’m at large, you have life insurance. I suppose you’re quizproofed. . . . ”
“Right.” Danestar checked her watch. “Doped to the eyebrows. I took it twenty minutes ago, so the stuff should be in full effect now. I’ll make the contact at once.”
Wergard’s face vanished from the spy-screen. Danestar turned the sound volume on the wall screen showing the group in Dr. Hishkan’s office back up. Two sets of recorders were taking down what went on in there and already had stored away enough evidence to convict Dr. Hishkan on a number of counts. One of the sets was a decoy; it was concealed in the wall, cleverly enough but not so cleverly that the smugglers wouldn’t find it when they searched the room. The duplicate set was extremely well concealed. Danestar had made similar arrangements concerning the handful of other instruments she couldn’t allow them to discover. When they took stock of the vast array of miniature espionage devices they’d dig up here, it should seem inconceivable to them that anything else might still be hidden.