“I know,” Freya said patiently; this was evening and she obviously wished for a relaxation of the grim reality of their mutual business. “It will regularly release a signal at ultra-high frequency on a none-used band, which will ultimately be picked up here. But that’ll take weeks.”
“Okay.” He had it now. The Lies Incorporated field rep would send back a letter, via Telpor, in the customary manner encoded. It was that simple. If the letter arrived: fine. If not—
“You will wait,” Freya said, “and wait. And no encoded letter will come. And then you will really begin to think that our client, Mr. ben Applebaum, has tripped over something ominous and huge in the long darkness which is our collective life. And then what will you do? Go across yourself?”
“Then I’m sending you,” Matson said. “As the field rep there.”
“No,” she said, instantly.
“So Whale’s Mouth frightens you. Despite all the glossy, expensive literature available free.”
“I know Rachmael is right. I knew it when he walked in the door; I knew it from your memo. I’m not going; that’s that.” She faced her employer-paramour calmly.
“Then I’ll draw at random from the field-personnel pool.” He had not been serious; why should he offer his mistress as a pawn in this? But he had proved what he wished to prove: their joint fears were not merely intellectual. At this point in their thinking neither Freya nor he would risk the crossing via Telpor to Whale’s Mouth, as thousands of guileless citizens of Terra, lugging their belongings and with innocent high hopes, did daily.
I hate, he thought, to turn anyone into the goat. But—
“Pete Burnside. Rep in Detroit. We’ll tell him we wish to set up a Lies Incorporated branch at Whale’s Mouth under a cover name. Hardware store. Or TV fixit shop. Get his folio; see what talents he has.” We’ll make one of our own people, Matson thought, the victim—and it hurt, made him sick. And yet it should have been done months ago.
But it had taken bankrupt Rachmael ben Applebaum to goose them into acting, he realized. A man pursued by those monster creditor balloons that bellow all your personal defects and secrets. A man willing to undergo a thirty-six year trip to prove that something is foul in the land of milk and protein on the far side of those Telpor gates through which, on receipt of five poscreds, any adult Terran can avail himself for the purpose of—
God knew.
God—and the German hierarchy dominating the UN plus THL; he had no illusions about that: they did not need to analyze the crowd-noise track of the time capsule ceremony at Whale’s Mouth to know.
As he had. And his job was investigation; he was, he realized with spurting, burgeoning horror, possibly the only individual on Terra really in a position to push through and obtain an authentic glimpse of this.
Short of eighteen years of space flight . . . a time-period which would allow infinite millions, even a billion if the extrapolations were correct, to pass by way of Telpor constructs on that—to him—terrifying oneway trip to the colony world.
If you are wise, Matson said to himself grimly, you never take one-way trips. Anywhere. Even to Boise, Idaho . . . even across the street. Be certain, when you start, that you can scramble back.
3
At one in the morning Rachmael ben Applebaum was yanked from his sleep—this was usual, because the assorted creditor-mechanisms had been getting to him on a round-the-clock basis, now. However, this time it was no robot raptor-like creditor mechanism. This was a man. Dark, a Negro; small and shrewd-looking. Standing at Rachmael’s door with i.d. papers extended.
“From Listening Instructional Educational Services,” the Negro said. He added, “I hold a Class-A inter-plan vehicle pilot-license.”
That woke Rachmael. “You’re going to take the Omphalos off Luna?”
“If I can find her.” The dark, small man smiled briefly. “May I come in? I’d like you to accompany me to your maintenance yard on Luna so there’s no mistake; I know your employees there are armed; otherwise—” He followed Rachmael into the conapt living room—the sole room, in fact: living conditions on Terra being what they were. “Otherwise Trails of Hoffman would be ferrying equipment to their domes on Mars with the Omphalos as of last month—right?”
“Right,” Rachmael said as he blearily dressed.
“My name’s Al Dosker. And I did you a small side-favor, Mr. ben Applebaum. I took out a creditor-construct waiting in the hall.” He displayed, then, a side arm. “I suppose, if it got into litigation, it’d be called ‘property destruct.’ Anyhow, when you and I leave, no THL device is going to monitor our path.” He added, half to himself, “That I could detect, anyhow.” At his chest he patted a variety of bug chasers; minned electronic instruments that recorded the presence of vid and aud receptors in the vicinity.
Shortly the two men were on their way to the roof field, where Dosker had parked his—as Rachmael discovered—taxi-marked flapple. As they entered he noticed how ordinary it looked . . . but as it arced into the night sky he blinked at its velocity and accepted the fact that this was not the usual thrust which now impelled them; they had hit 3.5 Machs within micro-seconds.
“You’ll direct me,” Dosker said. “Since even we at Lies Incorporated don’t know where you’ve got the Omphalos; you did a good job of berthing her, or perhaps we’re beginning to slip . . . or both.”
“Okay.” At the 3-D Lunar map he took hold of the locating trailing-arm, linked the pivot in position, then swept out a route until the terminus of the arm touched the recessed locus where his technicians worked busily at the Omphalos—worked, while waiting for parts which would never come.
“We’re off course,” Dosker said, abruptly. Speaking not to Rachmael but into his console mike. “Phooed.”
Phooed—a trade term, and Rachmael felt fear, because the word was a condensation of P.U.—picked up. Picked up by a field, and this one was moving Dosker’s small flapple out of its trajectory; at once Dosker fired the huge Whetstone-Milton rockets, tried to reassert with their enormous strength homeo-course . . . but the field continued to tug, even against the millions of pounds of thrust of the twin engines, as both fired in unison, acting as retro-jets against the field exerting its presence unseen but, on a variety of console instruments, registering.
Rachmael, after an interval of strained, wordless silence, said to Dosker, “Where’s it taking us?”
“From a Three to L course,” Dosker said laconically.
“Not to Luna, then.” They would not, the two of them, reach the Omphalos’ place of berth; that was now clear. But—where instead?
“We’re in T-orb,” Dosker said. Orbit around Earth, despite the push of the two W-M engines; Dosker now, reluctantly, cut them. Fuel for them had no doubt dropped to a dangerously low level: if the field let go they would orbit anyhow, orbit without the possibility of being capable of creating a trajectory that would lead to an ultimate landing either on Luna or on Terra. “They’ve got us,” Dosker said, then, half to Rachmael and half into the mike that projected from the ship’s console. He recited a series of encoded instructions into the mike, listened, then cursed, said to Rachmael, “We’re cut off aud and vid, all signal contact; I’m not getting through to Matson. So that’s it.”
“That’s what?” Rachmael demanded. “You mean we give up? We just orbit Terra forever and die when we run out of oxygen?” Was this the fight that Lies Incorporated put up when faced by Trails of Hoffman? He, alone, had held out better; now he was disgusted, astonished and completely perplexed, and he watched without comprehension as Dosker inspected his bank of bug chasers at his chest. At the moment the Lies Incorporated pilot seemed interested only in whether or not monitors were picking them up—as well as controlling, externally, the trajectory of their ship.
Dosker said, “No monitors. Look, friend ben Applebaum.” He spoke swiftly. “They cut my transmission on aud by micro-relay to Matson’s satellite, but of course—” His dark eyes glinted with amusement. “I have on me a dead man’s throttle; if a continuous signal from me is interrupted it automatically sets off an alarm at Lies Incorporated, at its main offices in New York and also at Matson’s satellite. So by now they know something’s happened.” He lowered his voice, speaking almost to himself alone. “We’ll have to wait to find out if they can get to us before it doesn’t matter.”
The ship, without power, in orbit, glided silently.
And then, jarringly, something nosed it; Rachmael fell; sliding along the floor to the far wall he saw Dosker tumble, too, and knew that this had been the locking of another ship or similar device against them—knew and then all at once realized that at least it hadn’t detonated. At least it had not been a missile. Because if it had—