Drat the fellow, Waverly thought. Why doesn’t he stop rattling his chains and go to bed? He turned on his other side, rearranged the pillow of the consistency of bagged sawdust. Beyond the partition, someone was whistling a strange, unmelodic tune. It was hot in the room. The sheet chafed his neck. Next door, voices muttered with a note of urgency. Waverly made out the words magma and San Andreas fault.
“Geology, at ten minutes past midnight?” he inquired of the mottled wallpaper. Above, bedsprings squeaked faintly. Waverly sat up, frowning at the ceiling. “I thought the clerk said he was putting me on the top floor,” he said accusingly. He reached for the telephone on the bedside table. A wavering dial tone went on for five seconds, then cut off with a sharp click.
“Hello?” Waverly said. “Hello?”
The receiver was dead against his ear.
“If this weren’t the only hotel in town,” Waverly muttered.
He climbed out of bed, went to the high window, raised the roller shade, looked out on a view of a brick wall ten feet away. From the window next door, a pattern of light and shadow gleamed against the masonry.
Two silhouettes moved. One was tall, lean, long-armed, like a giant bird with a crested head and curious wattles below a stunted beak. The other resembled an inverted polyp, waving a dozen arms tipped with multifingered hands, several of which clutched smoking cigars.
“Trick of the light,” Waverly said firmly. He closed his eyes and shook his head to dispel the illusion. When he looked again, the window was dark.
“There, you see?” He raised the sash and thrust his head out. Moonlight gleamed on a bricked alley far below. A rusted fire escape led upward toward the roof. Leaning far out, Waverly saw the sill of the window above.
“No lights up there,” he advised himself. “Hmmmm.”
Faintly, he heard a dull rattle of metal, followed by a lugubrious groan.
“True, it’s none of your business,” he said. “But inasmuch as you can’t sleep anyway . . . ” Waverly swung his legs over the sill onto the landing and started up.
* * *
As he reached the landing above, something white fluttered out at him. Waverly shied, then saw that it was a curtain, billowing out from an open window. Abruptly, a feminine sob sounded from within. He poked his head up far enough to peer over the window sill into darkness.
“Is, ah, something the matter?” he called softly. There was a long moment of silence.
“Who’s there?” a dulcet female voice whispered.
“Waverly, madam, Jack Waverly. If I can be of any help?”
“Are you with the Service?”
“I’m with ISLC,” Waverly said. He pronounced it as a word “islick.” “That’s International Sa—”
“Listen to me, Wivery,” the voice was urgent. “Whatever he’s paying you, I’ll double it! And you’ll find the Service not ungrateful.”
“No payment is necessary for aid to damsels in distress,” Waverly returned. “Er, may I come in?”
“Of course! Hurry up, before one of those slimy Gimps steps out for a stroll up the wall and sees you!”
Waverly climbed quickly in through the window. The room, he saw, was a mere garret, cramped under a low ceiling. It appeared to contain no furniture other than a dimly seen cot against one wall. A vague form moved a willowy arm there. Waverly moved toward it.
“You don’t have a molecular disassociator with you?” the melodious voice queried urgently. “There’s not much time left.”
“Ah . . . no, I’m afraid not. I—”
“They mean to strap me to my own twifler, set the warperators at two and a half busters and aim me toward Neptune,” the feminine voice went on breathlessly. “Can you imagine anything more brutal?”
Waverly groped forward. “Now, now, my dear. Don’t be upset.”
As he reached the cot, his hand fell on stout links looped around the foot rail.
He fumbled, encountered the blocky shape of a hefty padlock.
“Good lord! I thought—that is, I didn’t actually think—”
“That’s right. Chained to the bed,” there was a slight quaver in the voice.
“B-but—this is preposterous! It’s criminal!”
“It’s an indication of their desperation, Wivery! They’ve gone so far now that nothing short of the most drastic measures can stop them!”
“I think this is a matter for the authorities,” Waverly blurted. “I’ll put a call through immediately!”
“How? You can’t get through.”
“That’s right; I’d forgotten about the phone.”
“And anyway—I am the authorities,” the soft voice said in a tone of utter discouragement.
“You? A mere slip of a girl?” Waverly’s hand touched something cool, with the texture like nubbly nylon carpeting.
“I weigh three hundred and seventy pounds, Earth equatorial,” the voice came back sharply. “And we Vorplischers happen to be a matriarchal society!”
A pale shape stirred, rose up from the rumpled bedding. A head the size of a washtub smiled a foot-wide smile that was disconcertingly located above a pair of limpid brown eyes. A hand which appeared to be equipped with at least nine fingers reached up to pat a spongy mass of orange fibers matted across the top of the wide face. Waverly broke his paralysis sufficiently to utter a sharp yelp.
“Shhh!” the sweet voice issued from a point high in the chest. “I appreciate your admiration, but we don’t want those monsters to hear you!”
* * *
2
“Fom Berj, Detective Third Class, at your service,” the creature soothed Waverly. “I’m not supposed to reveal my identity, but under the circumstances I think it’s only appropriate.”
“D—delighted,” Waverly choked. “Pardon my falling down. It’s just that I was a trifle startled at your, ah, unusual appearance.”
“It’s perfectly understandable. A neat disguise, don’t you think? I made it myself.”
Waverly gulped. “Disguise?”
“Of course. You don’t think this is my natural look do you?”
Waverly laughed shakily. “I must confess that what with all this creeping around in the dark, I was ready to leap to conclusions.” He peered at the massive form, more clearly visible now that his eyes accommodated to the dim light. “But what are you disguised as, if you don’t mind my asking?”
“Why, as a native, of course. The same as you are, silly.”
“As I am what?”
“Disguised as a native.”
“Native of where?”
“Of this planet.”
“Oh, of course.” Waverly was backing toward the window. “Of this planet. A native . . . I take it you’re from some other planet?”
The detective laughed a rippling laugh. “You have a jolly sense of humor, Wivery. As if a Vorplischer were native to this patch of wilderness.”
“And the people who chained you up—are they from, ah, Vorplisch, too?” Waverly made conversation to cover his retreat.
“Don’t be absurd. They’re a mixed bag of Broogs, Limpicos, Erwalts, Glimps and Pud knows what-all.” Fom Berj rattled her manacles. “We’d better do something about these chains in a hurry,” she added briskly.
As Waverly reached the window, an eerie, purplish glow sprang up outside, accompanied by a shrill warbling. Waverly retreated hastily.
“I think that’s them arriving with my twifler now,” Fom Berj said tensely. “It’s a brand-new model, equipped with the latest in antiac gear and the new infinite-capacity particle ingesters. You can imagine what that means! My frozen corpse will be three parsecs beyond Pluto before my Mayday beep clears the first boost station.”
“Frozen corpse? Pluto?” Waverly gobbled.
“I know it sounds fantastic, but disposing of an agent of the Service is a mere bagatelle to these operators, compared with what they’re planning!”
“What are they planning?” Waverly choked.
“Don’t you know? I thought you were working for Izlik.”
“Well, he, ah, doesn’t tell us much . . . ”
“Mmmm. I don’t know about that Izlik. Sometimes I wonder just how deep a game he’s playing. By the way, where is he?”
“He was delayed by a heavy cloud cover over Ypsilanti,” Waverly improvised. “He’ll be along later.” His eyes roved the room, searching for an escape route. “You were saying?” he prompted in an obscure instinct to keep the detective talking.
“They’re making a Galacular,” Fom Berj said solemnly.
“A . . . Galacular?”
“Now you see the extent of their madness. An open violation of Regulation 69723468b!”
There was a sharp series of bumping sounds above. “Better hurry with that molecular disassociator,” Fom Berj said.
“What’s a Galacular?” Waverly was close to the door now. He froze as something made a slithery sound beyond it.
“A multi-D thriller,” Fom Berj was explaining. “You know, one of those planetary debacle epics.”
“What sort of debacle?” Waverly recoiled at a sound as of heavy breathing outside the door.
“Floods, quakes, typhoons—you know the sort of thing. Audiences love them, in spite of their illegality. The first scene they’re shooting tonight will be a full-scale meteor strike in a place called Montana.”
“You mean—a real meteor?”
“Of course. According to my informant, they’ve grappled onto a cubic mile or so of nickel-iron that was parked in a convenient orbit a few million miles out, and nudged it in this direction. I would have stopped it there, of course, but I blundered and they caught me,” the detective sighed. “It should make quite an effective splash when it hits.”