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

a direction fix on a thought?"

"Something like that," said Parrish. "I suppose they have bases, where they keep permanent manufacturing facilities. Probably set up at points where they have access to minerals—unless they know how to extract what they need from the water itself."

"Nothing hard about that," agreed Smith. "I'll have to send out a few more questions. Of course, they'll take the attitude that I should be doing something instead of asking about irrelevant subjects...."

"We're used to that," smiled Parrish, showing his beautiful teeth.

Westervelt wondered how broadly he would smile if it were his own responsibility. He had an idea that Parrish might be rather less than half as charming if he were running the operation and not getting much help from the others in solving the problem. He had to admit, however, that the man had a knack for spotting alien culture patterns. When he had asked his question about the cities, it was merely because he had half-pictured some Terran-style dome underwater and knew that that image was unlikely.

"Anyway," Parrish was going on, "we should probably think of them as being free as birds to go where they like. Even before they developed machines, they probably migrated about their world by swimming. I gather that these other ... fish, I suppose we'll have to call them...."

"Thinking fish!" murmured Smith sadly. He ran his hand through his hair again.

"I suppose those things still do, besides other types we still haven't heard of, which would fill the place of Terran animals. So, then—we'll have to look for temporary locations and think in terms of a fast raid rather than a careful penetration."

"If we could find them, there must be some way we could armor a few spacesuits against pressure and drop down on them," said Lydman. "I think I can dig up a weapon or two that will work underwater in a way these clams never thought of."

"Maybe we could do better to have Swishy the thinking fish hypnotize them into bringing Harris back," said Westervelt.

They looked at him thoughtfully, and he was horrified to see his joke being taken seriously. He squirmed in his chair by the window, wishing he had kept his mouth shut.

"I wonder ..." mused Smith. "If they can actually exchange thoughts...."

"They might have natural defenses," said Parrish tentatively.

"What could we bribe a fish with?" asked Lydman, but hopefully rather than derisively.

Smith made another note, then drummed his fingers on his desk top. The four of them sat in silence. Westervelt hoped that the others were engaged in more productive thoughts than his own. It was nice to have their attention, and get the reputation of a bright young man who came up with suggestions; but when they decided upon some reasonable course of action they might remember him for making a foolish remark.

"Willie," said Smith, coming to a decision, "circulate around and ask the others if they can stick it out a couple of hours tonight. Maybe there's time to pry some useful information out of Trident, and at least get something started before we close down. If I know some guy out in space is working on it, I can sleep anyway."

Westervelt left his place by the window and went into the outer office. He told Simonetta and Beryl. The latter acted less than thrilled. Westervelt wondered jealously what kind of date she had scheduled for the evening. He stopped at the window of the switchboard cubbyhole.

"Oh, it's you, Willie!" exclaimed Pauline.

"Yeah, you can turn on the projector again," he grinned. "What is it, a love movie?"

Pauline edged a small tape projector out from behind the side of her board.

"It's homework, if you have to know," she told him.

"That's right, you still go to college," Westervelt recalled. "Why don't you switch to alien psychology? Then you could qualify for office manager around here."

"When do we have alien visitors here? Once in a ringed moon!"

"Who is to say which are the aliens?" said Westervelt. "There are days when I think I could feel more understanding to something with twelve tentacles and a tank of chlorine than to a lot of the mentalities that get loose right in this office. There's a crash program on for the evening, by the way, and Smitty wants the staff to hang on a while."

A look of dismay flashed over Pauline's youthful features.

"I know; you have a class tonight," Westervelt deduced. "Chuck it all. Stay in the file room with Mr. Parrish and you'll learn twice as much."

Pauline offered to throw the projector at him, but laughed. Westervelt told her that no one would miss her if she connected a few of the main office phones to outside lines and hooked up the communications room with Smith's desk.

He left her wondering if she ought to stay anyhow, and headed for the hall. Halfway along to the communications room, he heard the elevator doors open and close. He stopped and looked back.

Around the corner strolled one of the TV men, Joe Rosenkrantz. Westervelt looked at his watch and realized that it was a shift change for the communications personnel, who kept touch with the universe twenty-four hours a day.

In case someone somewhere makes a dumb mistake like Harris, thought Westervelt. They overdo it a little, I think. I suppose it's the typical pride and joy of Terran technical culture to signal halfway across the galaxy to fix something that might have been cured beforehand when Harris was a little boy. I wonder what the psychologists should have done about me to keep me out of a place like this?

"Hello, Willie," said Rosenkrantz, catching up. "Going to the com room?"

Westervelt admitted as much, and gave the operator a brief outline of the afternoon's developments. Rosenkrantz remained unperturbed.

"Hope they don't get intoxicated with ingenuity, and insist on sending messages all over," he grunted. "I was looking forward to a quiet night shift."

They went in to tell Colborn, who took it well. He pointed out to Westervelt that he would in no case have been concerned with the overtime operation. When he was relieved, he was relieved—period.

"I forget this crazy place the minute the elevator door closes behind me," he said grinning, having handed over to Rosenkrantz his log and a few unofficial comments about traffic he had heard during recent hours. "There are some who wait till they hit the street, but I believe in a clean cut. I walk in, push 'Main Floor,' and everything else goes blank."

He went out the door, refusing to dignify their jeers by any defense, and made for the elevators. By the time he reached the corner of the hall, he had slipped into his topcoat. He pushed the button to call the elevator.

When it arrived, Colborn stepped inside and rode down to the ninety-fifth floor. He switched to a public express elevator, which picked up several other people before becoming an express at the seventy-fifth floor.

"Lived through it again," he muttered to a man next to him as they reached the main floor.

He joined the growing stream of office workers flowing through the lobby of the building, taking for granted the kaleidoscopic play of decorative lights on the translucent ceiling. He noticed them when they suddenly went out.

There was first silence, then a babble of voices until small emergency lights went on. Someone spoke of a fuse blowing. Colborn looked outside, and saw no street lights or illuminated signs. His first thought was power for his set upstairs.

"No, that's special," he told himself, "but I'd better call and see if the elevators are working."

SIX

For a jail cell, the chamber was quite commodious. The walls were of bare stone, like most of the buildings on Greenhaven which Maria Ringstad had visited during her short period of sightseeing. She thought that it must have entailed a great deal of extra labor to provide such large rooms in a stone building, especially when the materials had to be quarried by relatively primitive means.

On Greenhaven, everything had evidently been done the hard way. She had heard about that facet of the Greenie character before leaving the ship, and she now wished that she had listened more carefully. It was difficult to picture in her mind just how far away that spaceship was by this time.

That had been the worst, the feeling of having been abandoned.

Meanwhile, having turned up her nose at the sewing chores they had assigned to her but having nothing else to occupy her, she sat on the edge of the austere wooden shelf that doubled as a bed and a bench. The Greenie guard standing in the doorway looked as if he had expected to find the sewing done.

"Can't you understand, honey?" said Maria lightly. "You can cart that basket of rags away. I have no intention of sticking my fingers with those crude needles you people use."

The Greenie was a short, sturdy young man, uniformed in the drabbest of dun-colored clothing. A shirt with a high, tight collar starched like cardboard held his chin at a dignified elevation. It also seemed to keep his eyes wide open, Maria thought, unless that was his naturally naive expression.

"Did anyone ever tell you those hats would make good spittoons?" she asked.

"It is forbidden to speak vainly of any correction official," said the young man stiffly.

"Correction official!" echoed Maria. "Look, honey, don't kid with me! I bet you're just a janitor here. If I thought you were a real official, who might be cuddled into letting me out of this cage, I'd be a lot more friendly."

She gave him an amiable grin. It was not returned.

The Greenie stood gripping the thick edge of the blank wooden door until his knuckles whitened. He looked like a man who had just discovered a worm in his apple. Half a worm, in fact.

"Now, I may be pushing thirty-five," said Maria, "but I know I don't look that bad. Actually, alongside your Greenie girls, I stack up pretty well, don't you think? For one thing, I'm shorter than you are. For another, I fill out my clothes and don't look like a skinny old horse."

"You ... you ... are not ... dressed as an honest woman," the guard got out.

Sitting on the edge of the wooden bunk, Maria crossed her knees—and thought he would choke. She tugged slightly at the short skirt that had attracted so many lowering stares when she had strolled down the main street of First Haven. She was used to being among men, but this poor soul was outside her experience.

Maria Ringstad was aware of both her visual shortcomings and attractions. After a month here, her hair was beginning to grow in darker and less auburn. She was a trifle solid for her five-feet-four, but that came of having a durable frame. Her face was squarish, with a determined nose, and her hazel eyes looked green in some lights. On the other hand, she had a nice smile, and she had spent much time in places where few women went. She was used to being popular with the opposite sex, even in face of competition from members of her own. In the Greenie women, with their voluminous, drab dresses and hangdog expressions devoid of the least make-up, she saw little competition.

"Really," she said, "no one else would think of me as a criminal. I just tried to buy a picture in that little shop. Then the heavens fell in on me."

"The heavens do not fall on Greenhaven," said the guard firmly.

"Well, anyway, some very sour characters trumped up all sorts of charges against me, and here I am. But I didn't do anything!"

"The attempt is equal to the deed!"

Maria shook her head and sighed. She stood up and took a few steps toward him.

"You must keep your place," ordered the young man, with an undercurrent of panic in his tone. "I have not come to debate justice with you. You have sinned and you have been sentenced."

I bet he'd faint if I threw my arms around him, thought Maria.

"But what was the sin, honey?" she demanded. "You'd think I'd written a bad article about Greenhaven for my syndicate. Honestly, I didn't even have time to see the place."

The young man released the edge of the door, but still looked worried.

"Greenhaven was founded by colonists who sought liberty and were willing to create a haven for it by the sweat of their brows," he informed her. "Conditions were inhospitable. There were plagues to test their faith and ungainly beasts to test their courage. What has been built here has been built by a great communal struggle, and it is not to be hazarded by the sinful attitudes of old Terra, and—you should have paid the listed price."

"But he wouldn't sell me one at that price when I offered it!"

"Then he did not have one. You attempted to bribe him."

"Well,