The best of e e doc smi.., p.27
The Best of E.E. Doc Smith, page 27
She looked at him admiringly. "I'm for it; strong. And then we go to Gastonia, or wherever?" "No. Then we go to Earth." She looked puzzled for a moment, then her face cleared. "I see. It would have to be a Grand Duke, at that, to get an agent into-and especially out of-the Head's own office... and the brains would almost have to be on Earth. You are smart, Julie; maybe we're getting somewhere, after all." The ship docked and the two, after killing half an hourthey expected real trouble, and preparations were being made to handle it-made their way to the middle-class dive that was the favorite hangout of the lower offices and the highest crewmen of whatever subspacers happened to be in port. That was all they had-the name of the dive and a cryptic recognition signal bought for them by nitrobarb at the cost of a man's life. But it was enough.
Since the latest ship to come to ground was DesPlainian, the six bouncer-guards of the place-it was a somewhat unusual fact that all six of them were DesPlainiansthought nothing of it when half a dozen leather-clad DesPlainian spacemen came bouncing in, shouting for strong drink and friendly girls.
How could the guards have suspected anything? Or the brains, either, since the d'Alemberts had pitched them such a nice curve? There was no evidence that the Velasquez pair had anything to do with what had happened on Algonia.
And if they had had, what were they skyshooting off into the middle of nowhere for?
The renegade Puritans came in-it was quite evident that they were renegades, since no Puritan in good standing would ever enter a bar-and looked unconcernedly around. Since it was early in the afternoon" only one bartender was at work and only a few waitresses and B girls were on hand. The two strolled up to the bar and Jules said, "I was told to ask for the Blinding Flash and say the Deafening Report sent me." The entire room exploded. The six guards tried, but before any of them could get his blaster half into action he was struck by over an eighth of a ton of the hardest meat be had ever felt. In the same instant Jules put his left arm around the bartender's throat and, with the blaster now in his right hand, drilled a half-inch hole through the PBX operator's head. He then whistled sharply at the terrified girls and waved his weapon at a corner; into which they and the few noncombatant customers were very glad indeed to run.
In the meantime Yvette had dived at the PBX board. She snatched the single earphone off the man's head, put it on her own, let the body fall and sat at the board.
In two minutes the place was a shambles. When a five-hundred-pound pair of DesPlainian freestyle brawlers strikes furniture it is the furniture that breaks, not the men. Two tables and half-a-dozen chairs remained intact; one savagely warring pair had gone straight through the heavy yellow-wood bar.
And Jules, standing at ease with his blaster hanging at the loose, studied with keen appreciation the battles going on. He was not worried about the outcome. Only one result was possible. The guards were good, but they were not d'Alembert-and those six d'Alemberts were the pick of the hardest-trained troupe of no-holds-barred fighting wrestlers known to man.
In three and one-half minutes the place was practically a total loss" but the battle was over. The six survivors sported a few eyes that would soon be black, some contusions and abrasions, and several cuts, tears, scratches, gouges and bites that were bleeding more or less freely, but there had been no real damage at all.
"Nice work, fellows; thanks," Jules said, as the sixth spaceman came to his feet, grinning hugely. "Drink up. There'll be at least some ginger ale left in whole bottles-I think. And break out some champagne for the cuties. I wouldn't know whether they're still in the mood for fun and games or not, but at least we'll do the gentlemanly thing about the drinks. "Now" barkeep my friend-" he lifted that wight one-handedly over the bar" set him on his feet and put both big hands uncomfortably tight around his throat--"Do you want to tell me all about all the gizmos between here and the boss upstairs or do I wring your neck exactly like a chicken's?" "I'll tell, I'll tell!" the man squawked. "Don't wring my neck-please don'tl It's all on the board there-really it is-the whole works !" "He isn't lying, Julie," Yvette said. "There's a whole row of special red indicators that doesn't belong on a standard PBX. It looks like the boss rings down and they set the traps from the board here."
"That's it, that's itl" the man babbled. "There are blacklight beams across the halls up there, set to trigger blasters and stunners. The boss calls down and the man on the boards sets up whatever he orders." "Okay. What's his door like-wood or steel? Locked? And how about guards up there?" "Wood. Not locked. No guards-no trouble ever gets to where he is" sir. He would've set 'em, of courses--" nodding his head at the dead man beside the PBX-"but you blasted 'im too quick." "Okay. Lead the way. That's so in case of trouble you'll get it first from me, if necessary." Nothing happened until they reached the Boss's door. The bartender knocked-no code, Jules noticed. A voice from inside the room called "Come in," and the pilot opened the door and led the way into the office. The man behind the desk was alone in the room. He gasped once, turned pale and reached for a row of buttons; but stopped the motion halfway as Jules' blaster came to bear.
"Go ahead, push 'em," Jules said, but the boss, except for twitching muscles, made no move whatever as Jules gave the bartender a tap on the jaw, taking a hypodermic kit out of his pocket, went up to the desk. The man's eyes widened in panic fear.
"Not that-please not nitrobarb!" he pleaded, desperately. "I'm allergic to the stuff-it'll kill me sure, my doctor says."
"What makes you think this is nitrobarb? It could be plain distilled water!" "Don't mace me, mister! I think I probably know what you want... and you don't need to give me anythingl I'll tell you everything I know without it, honestly I will!" And he did, and once again the d'Alemberts listened to the secrets of a traitors' nest. And it was, as Jules bad expected it to be, a clear, straight lead to one man in one city of the planet Durward.
"Okay," Jules said, finally. "I won't kill you this time. Just tell your boss on Durward I'm coming; loaded to the gills with stuff he never even beard of." Then the eight d'Alemberts went back to their ship; where Jules and Yvette spent all the rest of the day and almost all of the night in the control room" the most secure spot they could find, composing and encoding a long message to the Head.
When it was done, Jules rose" stretched and walked over to the galactic chart. His eyes brooding, he set it for maximum span and turned on the activating circuits. As the great wispy star-clouds of the galactic lens took form, each surveyed star positioned with minute accuracy, he keyed the index locators for Durward, the planet to which all their hard-earned information pointed so surely, and for old Earth. Quickly the taped data spools whined and spun and printed out course and the dizzying distance in parsecs between the two planets. He said slowly, "All the signs say Durward is where the action is..." "I know, Julie," said his sister, covering a yawn. "So, of course we go to Earth. Well, what are we waiting for?" All explored space was divided into 36 wedge-shaped sectors; the line common to all sectors being the line through the center of Sol perpendicular to the plane of the Earth's orbit. Each sector was owned, subject only to the Throne, by a Grand Duke. Earth, by far the most important planet, did not belong to any sector, but was the private property of the Throne. Each Grand Duke had a palace, several residences and a Hall of State on Earth. Because of these facts the nobility of Earth were far more powerful than their titles indicated. The Principal Palace, in which all Grand Imperial Courts were held, was in Chicago; hence the Count of Chicago had more real power than most Earls and Marquises. More, in fact, than many Dukes. (Manley, Feudalism; Reel I, Intro See viii).
The Massagerie In his private office the Head was talking with a greyhaired man who, while old, was in no sense decrepit. Grand Lady Helena sat, shapely legs crossed, working on a twelveounce glass of cherry-ice-cream float.
"But what does it mean, Zan?" the older man asked. "Route the Circus to Durward-with instructions not to do anything whatever except circus routine. Carlos and Carmen Velasquez will not report and nothing they do, however wild, will be of any importance. And now this beautyparlor business, right here on Earth! It doesn't make sense." "Not a beauty parlor, Bill. A massagerie de luxe. Or rather, "The House of Strength of Body and of Heart."' "But don't you know what they're doing?" "Very little; and I don't want to know more. I give them a job; they do it their own way. I would hazard a guess that they have some reason to believe that a specific person they are interested in is likely to take an interest in bodybuilding. This, you will note, implies that they have reached the point of being interested in specific persons...
but I don't know who. That is to the good.
"As a recent event proved, the less I know of detail, the better." "That's true. No trace of your missing person?" "None. There probably won't be any until the d'Alemberts crack the main case. While they're working on it they get anything they want, with no questions asked." "As they should, especially since they want so little from us. I know that Circus taxes are rebated, but surely they spend more than that on Empire business?" "My guess is, they don't. The Circus is so successful that its taxes are very high, but the Duke won't say how high. I asked him once if we didn't owe him some money and he told me if I wanted to count pennies I'd better go get myself a job in a dime store." The old man laughed. "That sounds exactly like him. But DesPlaines is a rich planet, you know, and Etienne d'Alembert is a tremendously able man-as well as being one of my best friends. Well, I'll leave you to your work. I like to talk to you when I'm feeling low, Zan; you give me a lift." He raised his glass. "Tomorrow, fellow and friend.
May we all live to see it." They drank the toast and Emperor Stanley Ten, erect and springy, left the room.
Helena grinned up at her father. "You didn't exactly lie, either; but if he knew as much as we do he wouldn't feel so uplifted." .
"He has troubles enough of his own without having to carry ours. Besides, we don't know who they're after. It could turn out to be someone outside those six, as well as not." The girl nodded. "If we had even a good suspicion, he'd get a shot of nitrobarb. All we know is that they haven't got a shred of evidence of anything. But bow under the sun and moon and eleven circumpolar stars can this glorified gymnasium help solve anything?" "I haven't the most tenuous idea, my dear-and just between us two, I'm just as curious as you are." A ten-story gravity-controlled building in the Evanston district of Chicago had been remodelled from top to bottom. All the work had been done by the high-grav personnel who now occupied the building. Over its splendidly imposing entrance a triple-tube brilliant sign flared red: DANGER-THREE GRAVITIES-DANGER and on each side of the portal, in small, severely plain obsidian letters on a silver background, a plaque read: duClos For weeks before the opening it had been noised abroad that this House of Strength would cater only to the topmost flakes of the upper crust; and that was precisely what it did. It turned down applicants, even of the nobility, by the score. Its first clients, and for some time its only clients, were the extremely powerful Count of Chicago, his Countess and their two gangling teen-age daughters. Since this display of ultra-snobbishness appealed very strongly to the ultra-snobbishness of the high nobility of the Capital of Empire, "duClos" raised snobbery to a height of performance very seldom seen anywhere.
"How're you doing, sis?" Jules asked, one evening. "I'm getting a few bites, but nothing solid. But there's a feel about Sector Twenty that I don't like-I'm sure we're on the right track." "So am I, and I'm getting an idea. I wasn't going to mention it until I could thicken it up a little, but here goes. You know that Duchess of Swingleton? That snooty stinker that's supposed to be the daughter of the Grand Duchess?" Jules came to attention with a snap. "Supposed to be?" "Well, is then. Maybe I shouldn't have put it quite that way-but you know how I've learned to sneer, in my own inimitable ladylike way?" "I wouldn't put that 'quite that way,' either. If it was me on the receiving end I'd sock you right in the middle of your puss." "She'd really like to. I've been giving her the royal snoot all along and she's burning like a torch. But her mother, Grand Duchess Olga, takes it in stride. So why wouldn't Swingleton... unless she's bursting at the seams with something she's bottling up?" "My God, Eve! You think she's the Bastard's daughter?" "I'm not that far along yet, it's just a possibility.
Not daughter; sixty-seven he would be; she's only about twenty. Still in the silly age-which may account for her touchiness and everything. She's beautiful, athletic, rich, talented, noble and spoiled rotten. Her hobby is men.
She works hard at it. So my thought is this: if she gets the idea from somewhere that duClos. himself is the one and only Mister Big in this business I'm positive that she'll insist on you coaching her yourself-personally. You take her on, but instead of bowing down and worshipping, you act like and say that you wouldn't be caught dead with her at a catfight, to say nothing of in bed. If I'm right she'll blow up like a bomb and say something she shouldn't." Jules whistled piercingly through his teeth. "Wowl" he said.
Three days later, Jules accompanied Yvette into the apartment of the Duchess of Swingleton, who proved to be a tall girl-two inches taller than Jules-beautiful of face and figure, with dark blue eyes and a mass of wheat-strawcolored hair piled high on a proudly-held. Jules, after being presented, walked slowly around her once, studying her from head to foot from every angle. He scowled and then said, "Maybe I can do something with this, but there doesn't seem to be much of anything there to work on. Peel, you, and I'll see." "Peel?" The girl's head went even higher, her eyes blazed. "Are you talking to me?" she flared.
"I'm talking to a mass of fat and a little flabby meat that ought to be muscle but isn't, he replied caustically. "Do you expect a master sculptor to make something of a tub of clay without touching it? Wear a bikini or tights if you like-although how you can imagine that I, duClos, would get the thrills over such a slug's body as yours is completely beyond my comprehension." "Get out!" Trembling with rage, she pointed at the door. "Leave this castle at once!" He gave her his choicest top-deck sneer. "Madame, nothing could possibly please me more." He executed a snappy about-face and made for the door.
"Wait, you! Turn around!" "Yes?" he asked, coldly.
"I am the Duchess of Swingleton!" "And I, madame, am duClos. There are hundreds and hundreds of duchesses, but there is only one duClos." She fought her anger down. "I'll put on a swimsuit," she said. "After all, I do want to find out whether you're any good or not." But when she came back, dressed in practically nothing, duClos was even less impressed than before.
"Lard," he said, when his talented fingers had reported their preliminary findings to his brain. "Flabby, unrendered lard; but I'll see what I can do with it. Well go to your gymnasium now." "Why, aren't you going to take me to your place?" He looked at her in amused and condescending surprise. "Are you that stupid? You'd fall flat and could hardly get up. It'll take a month of work here before you'll be able to work in the House of Strength. To your gymnasium, I say." In the castle's gymnasium, he said, "First, we'll show you what we, accustomed to three Earth gravities, can do easily here on Earth," and he and Yvette went through a routine of such violence that the apparatus creaked and groaned and the very floor shook.
"Now what a fair Earth gymnast-such as perhaps I'll be able to make out of you-can do," and they showed her that.
"Now I'll find out what you can do-if anything. You can't do even fifty fast push-ups without going flat on your face," and of course she couldn't He worked her fairly hard for half an hour, which was about all she could take, then said, "That's enough for today, poor thing." Then, turning to Yvette, "Give her a massage in steam, and go deep. After that, the usual." "No, I want you to do it yourself," the girl said. "They say you're tops and I want nothing but the best." "Okay," Jules said, in a perfectly matter-of-fact voice, and peeled down to his white nylon shorts.
"That'd be better-I'll know more exactly how you come along." The ladies-in-waiting were shocked-or pretended to be -as the three-quarters-naked man worked on their completely naked mistress; but Jules, alone, of all those present, was-apparently-not affected at all. He was a top-expert masseur working at his profession.
This went on for day after day. Since the Duchess was actually a strong, healthy athletic girl, splendidly built, and agile both physically and mentally, she learned fast and developed fast. But for the first time in her life she had struck a man and bounced. It was an intolerable situation -a situation that got no better at all as time went on.
He stayed coldly impersonal and more than somewhat contemptuous; he was and he remained a master craftsman wasting his talents on material entirely unworthy of his skill. He paid no attention whatever to any of the little plays she made.
One day, however, when she had become a pretty fair gymnast and was very proud of her accomplishments, all the ladies-in-waiting disappeared before the massage was to begin.
"We don't need them any more, I don't think." She posed, with her skimpy garment half off, and gave him an undereyebrows look that would have put any other man she knew into a flat spin. "Do we?" "I don't, that's sure," he said, with the sneer that had become so maddening that she wanted to bash it back into his skull with a sledgehammer. "And if you're trying to seduce me you're wasting your time. You're a hunk of clay I'm trying to model into something halfway worth while, and nothing else. I'd not rather have you than any other mass of poor-grade clay-or a dime's worth of catmeat." That blew it-sky high. "You low-born oaf!" she screamed. "You clod! You base-born peasant, I'll have you flayed alive and staked out on..." She stopped screaming suddenly and her eyes widened the veriest little.
