Short fiction collected, p.126
Short Fiction Collected, page 126
Of everything the man said, two words struck Correll. He repeated, as if in a daze, “Ten thirty!”
The man gestured toward the wall. The clock read 10:31.
Correll stared uncomprehendingly. Where had the time gone. It was impossible—
He allowed himself to be lead out. A few moments later, as the cell door closed behind them, another strange thought came into his head. Only a short time before, he had been exhausted. Now he wasn’t tired at all.
He might have been drugged, of course. But then there would have been a blank spot somewhere. But there was no gap that he couldn’t bridge. He let his mind run back over all that he had done that afternoon, and everything followed in smooth and logical order, without a break. Where had he lost those precious hours? Those precious hours he had not felt go by.
For a moment he had the sense of being smashed in a sequence of malign events which had no relation to each other. Take that business on the spaceship, for instance; when without any previous warning whatever, the rear-rockets engineer, engaged in helping swing the ship wide around an unexpected swarm of meteors, had collapsed on the job, and almost the entire fuel load of rockets had been touched off. There had been a rapid series of shattering explosions that accelerated the ship almost past the endurance of its tough metal frame, caused two deaths, and distributed injuries major and minor among half the remaining passengers.
The ship had swung way off its orbit, and they had been fortunate indeed to contact a rescue vessel and be supplied with enough fuel to land on Earth, hungry and thirsty, but glad after their ordeal to feel firm planetary soil under their feet.
Investigation had uncovered no reason for the engineer’s collapse. The man had passed a health examination before leaving Mars, and he had recovered sufficiently to be in good health by the time the ship landed on Earth. The ship’s doctor had been baffled, but seemed not too greatly surprised.
Correll wondered if it were related to the mysterious cases of coma they’d been having on Mars during the past decade. They thought it came from rapid changes of gravity. That couldn’t be it, though. Men had been undergoing gravity changes ever since the first spaceship left Earth, but this coma was something relatively new. And his mother—she was born on Mars, never left it in her life—she was a victim too. Been in a special sanitarium for eight years. And no hope of getting out. No. thought Correll, it’s something else. Maybe something in the artificial Martian atmosphere, or the Martian soil—
He shook his head. He was back in the old rut of thoughts that always ended in self-pity, he told himself. He pulled himself back to his current problems —why the devil had he been put in this prison, and how was he going to get out? Damn it, he was slow after all. He had been tricked, completely tricked. He ran to the door and began to yell for the guard.
The guard appeared, looking annoyed. “What is it?”
“I want to see Mr. Hjalmar.”
“Mr. Hjalmar’s busy. Will the World President do instead?” asked the guard insultingly.
“Anybody! Even a clerk in the Commerce Department. But whoever it is, send him quickly. This is important.”
“There’s no one in the Commerce Department now. There won’t be any one until morning.”
“All the more reason to hurry. I was supposed to discuss the list of goods we needed—”
“It’ll keep till morning,” said the guard, and left him.
The fool, thought Correll bitterly. It wouldn’t keep at all. His kidnappers had sent their own men to take his place. The substitute had submitted the list they wanted filled. He had been so eager to get the materials he needed that he had probably been very generous in his terms. If the materials were surplus on Earth, they would probably be loading overnight, without waiting for formal ratification by the trade committee. By some time the next morning, in response to the plea that the shipments were urgently needed on Mars, the freighter would take off. What happened to it from then on would be up to its new owners, whoever they were.
If he could only get out of here, escape for a few moments . . .
And then he told himself he was being a fool. This was a prison from which no one could escape. The metal cell walls were smooth and unyielding, the entrance door fitted into the sides so perfectly that it seemed to be part of them. There was no lock to pick or break. And in the corridors outside, there were human guards as well as scanners that focused instantly on every moving object. Outside the prison building there was a well-scanned barrier zone where any man who attempted to escape would at once find himself under the fire of automatically aimed paralysis rifles.
He swore softly. He had been neatly tricked and rendered helpless. But the Commerce Department had been tricked even more neatly. When the truth came out, they would take the blame.
It was with that consoling thought that he finally went to sleep.
ONLY a few hours later he awoke. The cell block was ringing with alarms, and his own door was open. As he ran out into the corridor, no one tried to stop him. Other prisoners came out of their own cells to join him, looking just as dazed as he must have. They seemed more frightened than anxious to escape. It took them almost a minute to realize that there were no guards in sight.
If they had meant to escape, that minute was their undoing. As they milled through the corridor and around the bend, a metal door dropped from the ceiling to bar their way. A loudspeaker blared, “Get back into your cells, everybody. You can’t get away. Get back or you’ll be shot down.”
The other prisoners obeyed at once. Correll said loudly “I’ll get back if you want me to. But I know something about how the prisoner you want escaped.”
He knew nothing, of course. He wasn’t even sure that a prisoner had escaped. He had no idea how an escape could be managed from this perfectly guarded maze.
The loudspeaker seemed to stammer. Finally, after a full half-minute in which it made incomprehensible noises, it said, “All right, step forward and stand at the door. The rest of you get back to your cells!”
He could hear the whispers of excitement from the other prisoners as the door lifted. On the other side, two guards with guns drawn stood waiting for him. They motioned him forward, and once more the iron door clanged behind him.
In the warden’s office there were two men. One of them was the warden himself, elderly, plump, and more than a little worried. The other was the official who had arrested him, now tense and considerably upset. Correll took note of the unhappy expression on his face, and of the restless way in which he was drumming with his fingers on the top of the desk alongside which he stood.
The warden demanded, “What’s your name? Your real name?”
“Correll. Alvo Correll.”
“You still maintain that?” asked the official.
“Of course.” Then he told it, beginning with what he had seen in the department store.
They listened, interrupting only when he seemed to have left something out. The official, for instance, didn’t believe that he could have made the mistake he did about the time. The warden was more curious about what the man who had leaped through the window had been doing in the department store.
Correll came to the end of his story, and the two men stared at each other. “I hope I’ve been helpful,” he said.
The warden shrugged. “I don’t know. In the long run, what you have told us may prove important. As to what happened here, I’m not sure.”
“The prisoner who escaped,” said Correll. “What about him?”
“You were going to tell us about that.”
“Either he was the man who sprang out of the window or one who could move like him.”
“What makes you think that?”
“Otherwise he couldn’t get out of a place like this. He was someone you caught accidentally and couldn’t hold.”
“Not a bad guess. However, we don’t need guesses.”
“And his rescuers were men of the same kind. That’s why things happened so quickly tonight. The rescue was practically over before you knew it had started.”
“We don’t need you to tell us that,” said the warden stiffly.
“Well, I’m telling you something more. I’m telling you that the man who took my place was an impostor. I don’t know exactly how he did it, but it’s obvious that the girl who made my appointment for 7:30 must have been involved somehow. She knew what I looked like. Hjalmar didn’t.”
“He might have. His ignorance would have been too much for an impostor to count on.”
“All right then, let’s say that the man was made up to look like me. But in case of doubt he would have been fingerprinted and his physio-pattern checked. He must have removed the records of my fingerprints and my pattern and substituted his own.”
“Very likely,” conceded the official.
“It’s obvious that someone inside the department has been working with my kidnappers.”
“If you really are Correll. We’ll have to check.”
“I don’t mind staying in a cell for a while,” said Correll grimly. “But while I’m here, my kidnappers are getting away with a cargo of materials they consider vital. Of course I shouldn’t dream of suggesting you put your neck out and try to stop them. No good bureaucrat would do that. But you might at least try to find out what they’ve ordered that’s so important.”
“I might.” The man bent over the desk and spoke into a phone extension. After a moment he sat up and looked at Correll. There was a look of bewilderment on his face, as if things were happening too fast. “Machine tools,” he said. “And a new type of electronic valve.”
“Now if you could hold up the ship’s departure for a few hours—”
“That won’t be necessary. The ship’s departure is already being held up indefinitely—pending investigation.”
The tone of the man’s voice struck Correll. He said, “You mean the Commerce Department already suspects that something is wrong?”
“With good reason,” replied the other grimly. “A group of men attacked the freighter and got away with the entire cargo about half an hour ago. That happened at the same time the rescue of that prisoner was being staged here. The methods were similar, too. I suppose, you are who you say you are after all. My apologies. If you and your Government put in a claim for damages, I shall see that it is paid.”
A BELL tinkled softly. The warden, in his turn, reached for the phone, while Correll waited impatiently. The warden said, “Well, strictly speaking, no. This is a prison, not a warehouse. But we do take, er, visitors into protective custody. Yes, I suppose it could be done. Send it over.”
“What’s ‘it’?”
The warden said slowly, “This grows stranger all the time. Did you say you saw a robot at this place?”
“That puts it pretty well.”
“I’ve been asked to take care of a robot prisoner. Actually, of course, there’s no problem. We’ll just disconnect the guiding center and then examine the psuedo-brain records to find out what the thing’s been doing.”
“You won’t get far that way,” said the official. “If it’s been involved in anything wrong, most of the brain records will have been erased.”
“Naturally. Still, we may get an interesting clue or two.”
“Where was the robot taken?”
“A short distance from the ship that was attacked. There were no robots involved in the original robbery. It must have been part of the group that tried to hijack the thieves themselves.”
“Did the original thieves escape?”
“Completely, along with most of what they stole. We managed to recover a crate or two of electronic valves.”
The official stood up. “This may be our chance to learn something at last. I’m anxious to see what we’ll find out by examining that robot. I have an idea that we may get some interesting information about the people who held Correll.”
“They’re bringing it right up,” said the warden, “I’ll notify my mechanical brain experts.”
It was at that moment the sound of an explosion came from below. The three men looked up and then stared at each other. “What now?” asked Correll. “Another escape?”
The warden shrugged, and spoke into the phone. He smiled wryly. “The robot,” he turned to address Correll, “has just committed suicide! There go our brain records.”
III
AT TEN in the morning, Hjalmar’s own eyes seemed dull as he greeted Correll. He said, “More apologies, Mr. Correll, this time from me. We haven’t been very hospitable here on Earth.”
“At any rate, you’ve been interesting,” said Correll pleasantly, examining the man who faced him. There had been a time when a man’s name gave some idea of his nationality, of the kind of man he was. That time was no more. He noted that Hjalmar was a burly giant who seemed almost seven feet tall and not much less than that broad. From the number of fine lines in his face he seemed middle-aged, seventy, at least. His hair, however, was thick and jet black, with not a trace of gray.
He noted that Hjalmar’s eyes were blue, as had once befitted a man of his name, but his complexion was dark. The old combinations of hair, eye and skin color had gone for good, thought Correll. There were no longer Norwegians, Europeans, or Asiatics, but Earthman only. Or rather, human beings, for the Martians were hardly a race apart.
Hjalmar was studying him with the same intensity. “You’ve certainly been an interesting guest,” he said. “You look very much like your previous self, Mr. Correll. So much like him, in fact, that I’m thinking of withdrawing my apology for confusing the two of you. And in view of the fact that fingerprints and physio-patterns checked, the mistake was the most natural thing in the world.”
“There must have been some differences.”
“Of course. Now that I see you I realize that he didn’t have that Martian habit of taking slow deep breaths of our Earth air. And he walked a little differently, as if he were accustomed to our gravity. He was either a native Earthman, or he had acquired Earth habits. We should have noticed it, but we were a bit slow on the uptake.”
It was a welcome novelty to hear someone else make that particular confession. Correll said, “Have you learned how the records were substituted?”
“No. But on the basis of the information I’ve acquired, I don’t think that any one in the Department is guilty. There’s been no evidence of wrongdoing, and no one has run for cover. I’m beginning to believe that an outsider must have done the job.”
“How?”
The giant sighed. “There you have me, Mr. Correll. I don’t know how. Our routine here is a bit specialized. It wouldn’t have been easy to slip in here, change the records unsuspected, and then slip out again.”
“It might have been done by someone on the inside.”
“That’s possible, of course. However, you let us worry about that, Mr. Correll.” Hjalmar hesitated. “What I have to say, as you may have gathered, is of a confidential nature. Not that any of it would be much use to those whom I may call ‘our enemies.’ They probably know more about it than we do. But it isn’t information that should be made public. At the present stage, it would do little more than create unrest, and possible panic.”
“Then why tell me about it?”
“Because it’s something that Mars should know. And in view of the fact that there’s no special government body fitted to cope with the problems involved, I imagine that your own Commerce Department will have to handle them, as we’ve been forced to do here. I don’t know whether the problems have risen on Mars yet, but if they haven’t, they will eventually. And you had better be prepared.”
CORRELL said, “I’d much prefer to be left out of this, Mr. Hjalmar. I’m not fitted for intrigue. I’m, shall I say, too naive. And I’m beginning to think, too slow-witted.”
“You’re too modest. We’re none of us fitted for this kind of work. Fortunately, it may not require any special fitness. As for you. Mr. Correll, we’re asking you to do two things. First. to act as a contact man between us and Mars. and to report to your own Department exactly what we’ve learned. You won’t take notes, of course. You’ll just remember what I tell you.”
“And second?”
“Keep yourself safe. Stay out of danger, if you can, until you return to Mars. That may be a little more difficult than it seems.”
“I don’t know. No one has tried to harm me so far.”
“That depends on what you call harm. For a good part of the time you’ve been on Earth, you’ve been a prisoner.”
“That sounds odd, Mr: Hjalmar, coming from you.”
“Strictly speaking, your arrest wasn’t our doing.” The man stood up, his huge bulk knocking a pad off his desk. He picked it up as if such clumsiness had become a habit. “It was the inevitable result of what our enemies had done. They counted on our holding you, and we did exactly what they expected. In future, however, they may imprison you themselves. That would upset our plans considerably.”
“You might put me in protective custody again,” Correll said thoughtfully.
“After the excitement of last night, I returned to my cell to sleep. It wasn’t a bad place, once I knew that I could leave when I wanted to.”
“That would be impracticable, in view of the commercial negotiations you have still to carry out. I think that the best thing to do would be to have you trailed by our men. If you don’t mind.”
“And if I do?”
“You’ll still be followed. For your own sake. Now that we agree on that,” said Hjalmar with a heavy smile, “let me get down to some of the information I want to give you. As you know, such things as war and racial strife have been things of the past on Earth ever since the end of the twentieth century. And they’ve never even been known on Mars. The average person who heard about such things would be confused, simply because he couldn’t understand how any sane person could entertain such an idea.”
