He stood up, moved back from the table. “Now then, you’ve got the equipment to administer a subcutaneous injection somewhere around the lab. You’ll get it out while I keep this gun on you. You’ll show Welk exactly what you’re doing, describe the exact amount of drug that is required for each injection. And you’ll do all that while you’re within range of the lie detector. So don’t make any mistakes at this stage or, believe me, you’ll get hurt abominably!
“Finally, you’ll give me the initial four-month injection. I shall then give Welk an identical injection under your supervision. After that, we’ll just wrap up the container with the rest of the drug and be on our way . . .”
* * *
Ten minutes later Mantelish sat at the table, gloomily watching Fiam store the container, along with several other of the finished products on the table which had caught his fancy, into the suitcase. Welk stood behind the professor’s chair, gun pointed at Mantelish’s neck.
“Now let me give you the rest of the story on this, professor,” Fiam said. He picked up Mantelish’s chemical gun, looked at it and placed it on top of the suitcase. “You’ve mentioned several times that I can’t expect to get away with this. Let me reassure you on the point.
“For one thing, we set up a temporal scrambler in this room as soon as we came in. It’s on one of those shelves over there. It will remain there and continue in action for thirty minutes after we’ve left, so no one will be able to restructure the events of the past few hours and identify us in that way. We’re wearing plastiskin gloves, of course, and we haven’t made any foolish mistakes to give investigators other leads to who might have been here.
“Also we enjoy—under other names—an excellent reputation on this planet as legitimate businessmen from Evalee. Should foul play be suspected, we, even if somebody should think of us, certainly will not be suspected of being involved in it. As a matter of fact”—Fiam checked his watch—”twenty minutes from now, we shall be attending a gay social function in Ceyce to which we have been invited. As far as anybody could prove, we’ll have spent all evening there.”
He smiled at Mantelish. “One more thing; you will be found dead of course; but there will be some question about the exact manner in which you died. We shall leave an interesting little mystery behind us. The Tang container will be missing. But why is it missing? Did you discover, or fancy you had discovered, some gruesome reaction to the drug in yourself, and drop it out over the sea so no one else would be endangered by it? Did you then perhaps commit suicide in preference to waiting around for the inevitable end?”
“Suicide—pfah!” growled Mantelish. “No one is lunatic enough to commit suicide with a pain-stimulant gun!”
“Quite right,” Fiam agreed. He took up the professor’s chemical gun from the suitcase again. “I’ve been studying this little device of yours. It functions in a quite simple and obvious manner. This sets the triggering mechanism—correct? It is now ready to fire.” He pointed the gun at Mantelish, added, “Stand aside, Welk.”
Welk moved swiftly four feet to one side. Mantelish’s eyes widened. “You wouldn’t—”
“But I would,” Fiam said. And as the professor started up with a furious bellow, he pulled the trigger.
Mantelish’s body went rigid, his face contorting into a grisly grin. He thumped sideways down on the table, rolled off it on the side away from Fiam, went crashing down to the floor.
“Ugh!” Welk said, staring down in fascinating incredulity. “His whole face has turned blue!”
“Is he dead?” Fiam inquired, peering over the table.
“I never saw anyone look deader! Or bluer!” Welk reported shakenly.
“Well, don’t touch him! The stuff might hit you even through the gloves.” Fiam came around the table, laid the gun gingerly on the floor, said, “Shove it over by his hand with something. Then we’ll get ourselves lost . . .”
The ComWeb was shrilling again as they went out into the hall, closed the door behind them. After it stopped the laboratory and the rest of Mantelish’s house was quiet as a tomb.
* * *
“It’s a miracle,” Trigger said, “that you’re still alive!” She looked pale under her tan. The professor had lost the bright cerulean tint Welk had commented on by the time she and Commissioner Tate came rushing into the house a minute or two ago. The skin of his face was now a nasty green through which patches of his normal weathered-brick complexion were just beginning to show.
“No miracle at all, my dear,” Mantelish said coolly. “Paes Fiam has encountered the kind of misfortune the uninformed layman may expect when he ventures to challenge the scientist on his own ground. He had lost the game, literally, at the moment he stepped into this laboratory! I had half a dozen means at my disposal here to foil his criminal plans. Since I was also in the laboratory at the time, most of them might have been harmful—or at least extremely disagreeable—to me. So as soon as I saw he intended to use the chemical gun, I decided to employ that method to rid myself of his presence.”
Commissioner Tate had been studying the gun’s label.
“This says the gun kills instantly,” he observed.
“It does kill instantly,” Mantelish said, “if aimed at an attacking Rumlian fire roach. I designed it to aid in the eradication of that noisome species. On the human organism it has only a brief paralyzing effect.”
“It makes you look revolting, too!” Trigger said, studying him fascinatedly.
“A minor matter, my dear. Within an hour or two I shall have regained my normal appearance.”
Holati Tate sighed, placed the gun back on the table. “Well, we should be able to pick up your friends since we know who they are,” he said. “I’ll alert the spaceports immediately and get Scout Intelligence on the job. We’re lucky though that they didn’t get more of a head start.”
Mantelish held up his hand. “Please don’t concern yourself about the Tang drug, Holati,” he said. “I’ve notified the police and Fiam and Welk will be arrested very shortly.”
The Commissioner said doubtfully, “Well, our Maccadon police—”
“The matter will require no brilliance on their part, Holati. Fiam informed me he and Welk intended to be enjoying themselves innocently at a social function within twenty minutes after leaving this laboratory. That was approximately half an hour ago . . .” Professor Mantelish nodded at the ComWeb. “I expect the police to call at any moment, to advise me they have been picked up.”
“Better not take a chance on that, Professor,” Trigger warned. “They might change their plans now they have the stuff, and decide to get off the planet immediately.”
“It would make very little difference, Trigger. If Paes Fiam had waited until the official report on the Tang planet was out he would have known better than to force me to inject him with the immortality drug. Aside from their savage ways the Tang are literally an unapproachable people while under its influence. I and the various members of our expedition who experimented with it on ourselves had to wait several months for its effect to wear off again before we were able to return to civilization. We would not have been able to live among the Tang at all if we had not had our olfactory centers temporarily shut off.”
“Olfactory centers?” said Trigger.
“Yes. It was absolutely necessary. Within half an hour after being administered to an animal organism, the Tang drug produces the most offensive and hideously penetrating stench I have ever encountered. Wherever Paes Fiam and Welk may be on the planet, they have by now been prostrated by it and are unmistakably advertising their presence to anyone within half a mile of them. I have advised the police that space helmets will be needed by the men sent to arrest them, and—”
He broke off as the ComWeb began shrilling its summons, added, “Ah, there is the call I have been expecting! Perhaps you’ll take it, Trigger? Say I’m indisposed; I’m afraid the authorities may be feeling rather irritable with me at the moment.”
Forget It
1
At best, Major Heslet Quillan decided, giving his mud-caked boot tips a brooding scowl, amnesia would be an annoying experience. But to find oneself, as he had just done, sitting on the rocky hillside of an unfamiliar world which showed no sign of human habitation, with one’s think-tank seemingly in good general working order but with no idea of how one had got there, was more than annoying. It could be fatal.
The immediate situation didn’t look too dangerous. He might have picked up some appalling local disease which would presently manifest itself, but it wasn’t likely. An agent of Space Scout Intelligence for the Federation of the Hub’s Overgovernment was immunized early in his career against almost every possible form of infection.