D-99: a science-fiction novel by H. B. Fyfe (cool books to read TXT) 📗

can you be sure they do? And why can't you get to him somehow?"

"We know because he managed to get a message out—we think." Johnson frowned doubtfully. "That is, he did if we can believe the ... ah ... messenger. We made inquiries of the natives, but it is impossible to make much of an investigation because their civilization is an underwater one."

Smith noticed Westervelt.

"Willie," he whispered hastily, "get on the phone and have one of the girls stop in the library and fetch me the volume of the Galatlas with Trident in it."

Westervelt dropped his package on a table and punched Beryl's number on the nearest phone. Meanwhile, with its weird pauses, the interstellar talk continued.

The missing Terran, Harris by name, had insisted against all advice at the outpost on one of the watery planet's few islands, upon conducting submarine exploration in a converted space scout. Since ninety-five percent of the surface of Trident was ocean, Johnson had only a vague idea of where Harris had gone. The point was that the explorer had been too long out of touch. The natives, a sea people of crustacean evolution, who were to be found over most of the ocean bottom, and who had a considerable culture with permanent cities and jet-propelled submarine vehicles, admitted to having heard of Harris but denied knowledge of his whereabouts.

"So we reported to the D.I.R. sector headquarters," Johnson concluded. "They sent an expert to coax the Tridentian officials into visiting the shallows for a conference, but nothing came of it. Then we called in one of your field agents and he referred us to you."

Beryl entered the room quietly, bearing a large book. Westervelt held out his hand for it, but she seemed not to see him until he rose to offer her the stool. When he turned his attention back to the screen, Smith was probing for information which the distant Johnson sounded reluctant to give.

"But if they deny everything, how do you know he's not dead instead of being held in one of their cities? Why do you think he's being made a sort of exhibit?"

Johnson hemmed and hawed, but finally confessed.

Besides the crustaceans, who were about man-sized and "civilized," there was another form of intelligent—or at least semi-intelligent—life on Trident. Certain large, fish-like inhabitants of the planet's seas had been contacted more than once to deliver messages to the exploring members of the outpost. This was always promptly accomplished by having one of the "fish" contact another of the same species who was in the right location.

"What did you say?" demanded Smith. "Telepathic? A telepathic fish? Oh, no! Don't ask us to—Well, what I mean is ... well, how do you know they're reliable?"

More in the same vein followed. Westervelt stopped listening when he realized that Smith was being convinced, willing or not. Stranger things were on record in the immensity of the known galaxy, but Smith took the attitude that they were all a plot against Department 99. Westervelt pried the book from Beryl's grasp and turned over pages to the article on the planet Trident.

He skimmed the opening, which dealt with galactic co-ordinates and the type of star at the center of the system, and did the same with the general description of the surface and what was known of the life forms there. The history since discovery was laconically brief.

Here it is, he told himself. A species of life resembling a Terran fish in general configuration, about twenty feet in length and suspected of having some undetermined sense whereby individuals can locate each other at great distances. Well, by the time it's in print, it's outdated.

Someone turned on a brighter light, and he realized the interstellar talk was at an end. Smith looked around. He held out his hand for the book, seeming to take for granted that someone should have found the page.

"I don't see how we're going to reach this one," he grunted, plopping the volume down on the table to scan the article.

Colborn snatched at a small piece of apparatus he had evidently been assembling. Only Beryl was impressed; the others knew that Smith said this of every new case.

"Tell Mr. Lydman and Mr. Parrish I want a conference," the department head requested. "We'll use the room next door."

Beryl and Westervelt left Colborn examining his gadget suspiciously and retraced their steps up the corridor. At the door to the main office, the blonde left him, presumably to go through to the corner office occupied by Parrish, whose secretary she was. Westervelt dwelt on the thought of sending her on the way with a small pat, but forced himself to continue up the other wing of the "U."

He passed two doors on his left: another conference room and a spare office used mainly for old files. Doors to his right led to washrooms. This end of the hall was not blank as on the other side; it had a door labeled "Laboratory—No Admittance." The last door to the left, corresponding to the location of the communications room, led to Lydman's office.

Westervelt knocked, waited for the sound of a voice inside, and walked in. For a moment, he saw no one, then pivoted to his right as he remembered that Lydman kept his desk on the inner wall, around the short corner behind the door. Everyone else who had a corner office sat out by the windows.

He found himself facing a heavy man whose bleached crewcut and tanned features bespoke much time spent outdoors. Very beautiful eyes of a dark gray-blue regarded him steadily until Westervelt felt a panicky urge to run.

Instead, he cleared his throat and gave Smith's message. Lydman always had the same effect upon him for the first few minutes, although he seemed to like Westervelt better than anyone else at the office, even to the point of inviting him home for weekends of swimming.

I always get the feeling that he looks right through me and back again, thought Westervelt, but I can't see an inch into him!

TWO

Castor P. Smith sat at the head of a steel and plastic table in the conference room, whistling thoughtfully as he waited for his assistants. Next door in the communications room, the tortured tune his lips emitted would have been treated as deliberate jamming. Simonetta Diorio entered carrying a recorder, and he roused himself for a smile of appreciation.

"You won't forget to turn it on when you start, Mr. Smith?" she pleaded.

"I'll keep my finger on the switch until then," he grinned. "Thanks, Si."

Left alone again, he told himself he would have to do something about the reputation he was acquiring—quite without foundation, he believed—for being absent minded. After all, he was hardly likely to forget to record a conference when it had been his own idea. So many ideas were tossed around on a good day that some were bound to be lost, unless they were down on tape. Even a good steno like Simonetta could not guarantee to keep up with it all when two or three got to talking at once.

Generally, he admitted to himself, he erased the tape without the necessity of filing some brilliant solution. Still, the one in a thousand that did turn up made the precaution worthwhile.

He stared morosely at the volume of the Galatlas he had brought from the communications room. Sometimes, in this job, he lost his sense of galactic direction. Calls were likely to come in from stars of which he had never heard.

Wish I could get a little more help from the D.I.R., he thought. It's more than having one secretary on vacation just now; we're always short-handed. They never brought us up to strength since old Murphy blew himself up in the lab with that little redhead. Maybe Willie will grow into something. That will take years, though. We ought to have some kind of training school.

In Smith's opinion, he should have had a larger force of full time agents in the field, but he recognized the difficulties inherent in the immensity of Terran-influenced space. Even recruiting was a hit-or-miss process. He had made various working arrangements out of chance contacts with independent spacers—he supposed that it was unofficially expected of him—and most had worked out well. About a dozen routine cases were currently being handled out there somewhere by a motley group of his own men and piratical temporary help. In addition, there were three hot cases that had required supervision from headquarters.

I wonder if we should stay a little late tonight? he asked himself. I hate to ask them again, but who knows what will break with this new skull-cracker?

He looked up as Pete Parrish entered. His dapper assistant walked around the other end of the table and took a seat on the window side.

"I hear you have another one," he greeted Smith.

Parrish was a trim man of thirty-six or thirty-seven, just about average in height but slim enough to seem taller. Smith was aware that the other took considerable pains to maintain that slimness. By his own account, he rode well and played a fast game of squash.

The wave in his dark hair was somewhat suppressed by careful grooming. He smiled frequently, or at least made a show of gleaming teeth; but at other times his neat, regular features were disciplined into a perfect mask.

Thank God that he doesn't wear a mustache! thought Smith. That would put him over the brink.

He was reasonably certain that Parrish had given the idea careful calculation and stopped just short of the brink. That would be typical of the man. He had been at one time a publicist, then a salesman, on Terra and in space. Actually, he should have been a confidence man. It was not until the Department had stumbled across him that he had found opportunity to exercise his real talents. He was expert at estimating alien psychology and constructing rationalizations with which to thwart it.

Smith realized, self-consciously, that he had been staring through Parrish. He passed one hand down the back of his neck, reminding himself that he must get a haircut. He could not imagine why he kept forgetting; it occurred to him every time he faced Parrish. He decided further to wear a freshly pressed suit the next day.

Lydman padded in, glanced about the room, and sat down as near to the door as he could without leaving an obvious gap between himself and the others. He eyed Parrish briefly, and raised one hand to check the scarf at his throat. Lydman dressed unobtrusively, and probably would have preferred an old-fashioned tie to the bright neck scarves favored by current fashion.

I wonder why I get all the nuts? Smith asked himself, avoiding the beautiful eyes by looking squarely between them. Even the girls—people with romantic ideas of cloak and dagger work, or the ones that owe us favors, keep sending us peaches. Then they marry off, or go around acting so secretive that they draw attention to us.

Sometimes, he had to admit, he would have preferred having a babe marry and leave the department. Parrish was often helpful in such situations, which was only fair since he created most of them. Twice divorced, the assistant had lost none of his interest in women. He was as clever at feminine psychology as at alien.

"Well, I suppose you've heard something of the new squawk," Smith said to break the silence. "I just don't see how we're going to reach this one. The damned fool got himself taken on an ocean bottom."

He proceeded to outline the facts so far reported. Parrish received them impassively; Lydman began to scowl. The ex-spacer developed special grudges against aliens who attempted to conceal the detention of Terrans.

"First, let's see where we are before we tackle this," suggested Smith. "I've given you enough on Harris to let it percolate through your minds while we review the other cases. It looks like something we should all be in on."

Sometimes he would put a case in the charge of one of them, but they were accustomed to exchanging information and advice.

"This business of the two spacers who were nailed for unauthorized entry in the Syssokan system seems about ripe," he reminded them. "Taranto and Meyers, you remember."

"Oh, yes," said Lydman in a withdrawn tone. "The dope."

"That's right. There was no trouble getting information about them, just in comprehending the idiot reasoning that would maintain a law that makes it a crime to crash-land on that planet. Terra, like any other stellar government, is permitted one official resident there. Fortunately, we got the D.I.R. to slip him a little memo about us before he was sent out, and this is the outcome. They may even be on the loose right now."

"Let me see," mused Parrish. "Bob gave you the formula for something that practically suspends animation, didn't he?"

"Yeah," said Lydman. "We figured on the bastards to carry the bodies out and dump them. A bunch of tramp spacers