Part 28
1
Psychlo!
The home planet of two hundred thousand worlds.
The center of an empire that had ruled and ruined sixteen universes over a period of 302,000 years.
Psychlo. That had been the cause of man’s destruction.
What had happened to its empire, if anything?
What had happened to Psychlo? And if it still existed, what did it plan?
Was it a danger or not?
For a grueling and turbulent year they had wondered. It lay like a nagging barb under their thoughts.
Now they were going to find out.
Pale light lit the bowl. The metal of the platform shone dully. Not a motor to be heard in the sky. The stars were bright above.
Angus and Jonnie looked at each other. Now they would know.
“First,” said Jonnie, “we will inspect minesites and see what transshipment rigs are active. Perhaps there is some indicator somewhere that would alert them to this. We will be cautious, not get too close to anything.”
The coordinate book told them of a transshipment rig at Loozite, a Psychlo mining world without population other than Psychlo miners. It was a large planet but distant from Psychlo.
They put the new gyrocage down, put a picto-recorder in the armored case, calculated the coordinates for a point forty miles from the Loozite transshipment site, punched the console buttons, and fired.
The wires hummed.
The cage came back.
There was a slight recoil.
Jonnie put the disk in the atmosphere projector that still stood there.
He pressed the button.
For a moment both he and Angus thought they must have miscalculated and shot a mine instead. Forty miles was a long way off for detail and Jonnie adjusted and recentered the scene before them.
It was a hole!
But not a mine. There stood a transshipment pole at a drunken angle.
But it was otherwise just a hole in the planet surface. No trace even of compound domes.
Jonnie wondered whether they had different compound layouts on different planets. Perhaps that Loozite platform had been miles from anything else. Still, the Psychlos were demons for standard layouts. Usually the whole central administration of the planet was at the transshipment rig, for there was where the ore came from all over the planet. There was where the books were kept, where the main shops existed, where the top executives were.
Just that hole. It was pretty big, but a hole is a hole.
They chose another firing site: Mercogran in the fifth universe. It was shown as a planet five times the size of Earth, but of less density.
They fired and recalled the gyrocage.
When Jonnie turned the projector on, they saw at once they had something different. They had to widen the view on the projector to see better.
Mercogran had been close to a mountain range and avalanches had apparently come down. They would have covered much of the space of any compound.
Jonnie brought the view in closer. There! At the lower right! The inverted bowl of a compound dome. It was lying like a broken soup plate. There was a transshipment pole and attached charred wires sitting in the middle of it. But nothing else.
So far no tight conclusion could be reached beyond the fact that those central compounds and transshipment rigs were certainly no longer working.
At random they took another planet: Brelloton. It was an inhabited planet, another reference told them, with a population of its own, governed by a Psychlo “regency,” enduring such rule for sixty thousand years.
They calculated the coordinates for a spot forty miles from the transshipment rig and fired the gyrocage.
They were not prepared for what they got. The atmosphere image showed a city. The transshipment rig there had apparently been on a raised plateau in the center of town.
Buildings that once must have been massive were blown to bits. They made a spreading pattern that radiated out from the plateau. Buildings that must have been two thousand feet high in a city that must have held a million beings or more had fallen outward like dominos.
The remains of the rig were plain. The platform was a hole. The poles were all leaning outward.
The compound domes had lain under the edge of the plateau and had been lifted by concussion and blown away, leaving the familiar underground layout plain in view.
Bringing the compound in closer, one could see what must be a year’s growth of grass in crevices.
There was no sign of life.
Jonnie went back and sat down and thought. He asked Angus to find some views the air cover had taken at the Purgatoire River. Views of the American compound.
Angus got them and Jonnie looked at them: the hole where the platform had been, the outward lean of the poles that still stood, the blasted city fifty or more miles away.
“I know what happened,” said Jonnie. “We could go on looking at Psychlo planets all night and get the same answer. Give me that computer. We’re going to look at Psychlo on Day 92 last year!”
Light. It traveled approximately 5,869,713,600,000 miles a year. The light which came from Psychlo on that hour and date was still traveling in space. They would get just ahead of it, and with a picto-recorder from a star drone set for 6,000,000,000,000X magnification, they would look at Psychlo at the instant it occurred. Whatever had occurred.
It had been just a few days ago over a year ago.
Choose a sidereal angle to aim the scope. Avoid nearby heavenly bodies so that the cage would not be influenced by gravity and would stay there for two or three minutes. No, let’s be brave and put it there for fifteen minutes and hope it doesn’t move and we get it back.
It took a while to set up. They had to readjust magnification, tune in heat sensors, and blind them to other bodies. Calculate seconds.
They fired the cage.
The wires hummed in holding for the long required time. They called the cage back.
It arrived!
It was a little misplaced on the platform. Jonnie would have touched it in his eagerness but Angus grabbed his hand. It would be cold enough for the metal to take one’s skin off! They had to wait and let it warm up, for if they opened it cold they might warp a disk with the abrupt temperature shift.
It was like teasing a thirsty man by withholding a water skin from him.
Finally they projected it. What a brilliant picture! They had thought it might be fuzzy such as you get with heat waves. But the light that had traveled for over a year was crystal-clear and straight.
There was the Imperial City of Psychlo. Circular tram rails, streets down from its cliffs like conveyor belts. They even carried the idea of mining into their city design.
Huge, bustling Psychlo! The center of power of the universes. The hub of the great, cruel claw that raked the bones from planets and peoples everywhere. There was the three-hundred-two-thousand-year-old monster itself, spread out in its sadistic and ugly might!
Neither Jonnie nor Angus had ever seen a live city of that size before. A hundred million population? A billion? Not the planet, just the city above the lower plain. Look at the trams. Rails that ran in circular spirals. Cars that looked for all the world like mine cars but full of people. Mobs in the streets. Mobs! Not riots. Just Psychlos. You ever see so many beings? Even in such a tiny size one could see mobs!
They were daunted.
They compared it to their own towns, even to their own ruined cities. These didn’t measure up to it at all.
What arrogance to attack anything like that.
They were so awestruck and impressed they hadn’t even been looking at the transshipment rig of Psychlo. They missed the beginning and had to track back.
They adjusted the projector lens and position to get the transshipment platform of Psychlo more centered and enlarged.
And then they saw the whole sequence, just as it had occurred right after Jonnie and Windsplitter had raced across the Earth platform.
First, there were the Psychlo workers racing out to leave the platform clear for the incoming semiannual from Earth. There were flatbeds lined up to receive coffins and personnel.
There was the first shimmer of arrival of the Psychlos Jonnie and Windsplitter had knocked down.
Then a small puff.
There were the Psychlo workmen flinching back.
A force screen had gone on! A dome over the platform had closed instantly to contain that small explosion. It could not have been an atmosphere-armor cable. Some sort of shimmering, sparkling screen. Transparent but very much there.
Trucks had time to start up before anything else occurred. One huge emergency truck had lunged nearer the platform, evidently to handle the minor blast. A whole minute went by.
Then the first lethal coffin exploded! A big “planet buster” nuclear bomb, nestled into a bed of dirty mines.
The force screen held.
The holocaust was contained. The boiling, ferocious blast had not even bulged the screen.
Then another shock as the second coffined “planet buster” went off.
The screen held! Good Lord, what technology to build a screen like that. What power it must take to hold it.
Another shock inside that dome. The third planet buster. It and all its ancient, very dirty atomic bombs.
The screen held.
Psychlos were racing toward it from far off. Those near the platform were flattened by concussion transmitting through the screen.
The fourth contained bomb went off.
The screen still held.
But the transmitted concussion had hurled the emergency truck backward. Nearby buildings lost their glass.
The ground was shaking as though hit by gigantic earthquakes.
A nearby building suddenly dropped downward as though sucked from below. Other buildings began to go the same way.
The fifth bomb went off!
And seen in slow motion, first narrowly, then more broadly, the entire scene went into a churning, boiling mass of atomic fire.
No, something more! Molten, flaming fire was erupting in spots all over the plain.
They widened the angle quickly.
The whole Imperial City of Psychlo was sinking and all about it sprayed up rolling oceans of molten fire.
The circular trams, the mobs, the buildings, and even the towering cliffs were drowning in a tumult of liquid, yellow green flame.
They hastily widened the view.
And they saw the entire planet of Psychlo turn into a radioactive sun!
The recording ended. They sat limp.
“My God,” said Angus.
Jonnie felt a little sick. Psychlos or not, he had just watched the end product of all their planning and risk a year ago, and he was hit with a feeling of guilt. It was not easy to take responsibility for that much destruction.
He had thought the bombs would wipe out the company headquarters and perhaps the Imperial City. But they had created a new sun.
“What happened?” said Angus.
Jonnie looked at his feet. “I pulled ten tabs out of those coffins. We didn’t want to set a time fuse and then have them go off on Earth. We knew the bombs were a bit contaminated. Had radiation leaks. They were old and their cases were old. We handled them in radiation suits.”
He made a dropping gesture with his hand. “In the fight, I dropped the fuse tabs on the platform. I forgot them. They must have been slightly radioactive, and when they hit the Psychlo platform, they made a small puff of explosion. They are what caused the minor recoil last year.
“They triggered the force screen on Psychlo that the Chamcos mentioned. And that force screen was good enough and strong enough to contain the blasts.
“I read in a book Char had that the crust of Psychlo is riddled with abandoned mine shafts and tunnels, a complete sieve. They call it semicore mining. The blasts went down. One after another they pounded deeper and deeper toward the molten core of Psychlo.
“The fifth explosion penetrated the core. The next five exploded in that.
“I think all a nuclear weapon does is stimulate a chain reaction into existence. And in addition to blowing out the planet crust, the fusion continued. And is probably still going on and may well go on for millions of years.
“Psychlo is no longer a planet. It’s a flaming sun!”
Angus nodded. “And all the transshipment rigs in the whole Psychlo empire, keeping schedule, not knowing about it, fired into that radioactive sun and blew themselves to bits!”
Jonnie nodded, a bit spent. “Just like we did in Denver a year later.” He shuddered. “Terl fired himself into a holocaust. Poor Terl.”
That’s what it took to yank Angus out of it. “Poor Terl! After all the rotten things the demon did? Jonnie, I sometimes wonder about you. You can be cool as ice and then all of a sudden you come out with something like ‘poor Terl’!”
“It would be an awful way to die,” said Jonnie.
Angus straightened up. “Well!” he said, just like he had popped up out of a dive in the lake. “Psychlo is gone! The empire is gone! And that’s one thing we don’t have to worry about anymore! Good riddance!”
2
Despite emotional reactions, Jonnie had been raised a hunter. His had been a life in the mountains, much of it spent alone on trails where pumas and grizzlies and wolves could lurk. There were times when you could feel a planning predator behind you, watching for a false move, concentrated on intentions of its own.
For the last fifteen seconds he had had that feeling. Danger!
He spun about, tensed for action.
The small gray man behind him said, “Oh, didn’t you know?”
Jonnie let his hand fall away from his gun butt.
The small gray man appeared not to have noticed. “A lot adds up now that I didn’t understand before. Yes, I fear Psychlo is gone. We knew that, of course. We weren’t sure how.”
Angus said, “Are there any Psychlos left? Anywhere?”
The small gray man shook his head.
The other small gray man, who had arrived by teleportation, had been lurking in the shadows. He came forward now. “We checked it and checked it. Probes told us Psychlo was gone only a couple of weeks after it happened. We’ve had ships out everywhere. . . .”
The first small gray man had glanced at him. A cautionary glance?
The other small gray man smoothly shifted what he was going to say. “The transshipment rigs were all at minesite centrals or at regency palaces: that was company custom. All their executive personnel and high-ranking officers on planets were quartered near the platforms—pure laziness, really, so they wouldn’t have far to walk and could get dispatches sooner. And the bulk of their breathe-gas storage was also in the same area.
“The first word they got—they never went in much for space travel as such, since they had a monopoly on teleportation, and it wouldn’t have gotten back to them soon enough anyway—was when they fired into Psychlo.
“We of course couldn’t examine all universes, but knowing Psychlos, we are positive there are no transshipment rigs or central compounds or executives left. We ourselves gave it up over five months ago. The time limit would have been six months for breathe-gas to last. And that expired six months ago.”
Jonnie had been watching them carefully. These men were hiding something. And they wanted something. They were a threat. Down deep he knew that. Their manner was easy. They were very pleasant and smooth. But their frankness was a pose.
“How can you be sure,” said Jonnie, “that some Psychlo engineer didn’t build a transshipment rig?”
“Oh,” said the second small gray man, “he would have fired straight to us at once if he avoided firing into Psychlo. The rig nearest us blew to bits. Took half a city with it. Horrible. Just by a freak, I was out sailing with my family that day, miles away. However, our own offices are fifteen levels underground.”
Was the original small gray man giving him a warning sign? In any case, he got interested in his pointed fingernails.
Angus said, “I don’t see any planets listed that have the same atmosphere as Psychlo. Are there any other planets that have that breathe-gas?”
The two small gray men thought it over. Then the one who had come latest said, “Fobia. I don’t think they’d list it.” The two of them laughed about something.
The original one said, “Excuse us. It’s kind of a joke. The best-kept state secrets of Psychlo are all a kind of open book in our business. That they would omit listing ‘Fobia’ is so typically Psychlo. It’s where they exiled King Hak about 261,000 years ago. It’s the only other planet in that system, and it is so much further out than Psychlo, you can’t even see it from the home planet with an unaided eye. It is so cold, its atmosphere has liquefied and lies in lakes on the surface. They built a little dome there and exiled Hak and his fellow conspirators and then got so scared he’d escape, they sent assassins in and killed them all. Typically Psychlo. They cut the whole thing out of their schoolbooks. Let’s see your astrographic tables.” He took them, looked a while, and then laughed and showed his companion. “Not there! An omitted planet right in their own system!”
In response to Jonnie’s look, the second one said, “No, not even any Psychlos there, and nothing going on there either. It’s nothing but breathe-gas ice and very tiny anyway. As of a couple of weeks ago, probes showed it totally deserted. No, you can be certain that’s the end of the Psychlos. I saw on scans I reviewed here that you have a very few still alive, but you didn’t get them to build this!” He patted the side of the console dragon. “For reasons best known to Psychlos, they’d kill themselves first!” He shook his head. “There were a few alive. Engineers in branch minesites. And don’t think one didn’t try to persuade them! They’re all dead now.”
Was the original one trying to turn the other one off? But the new one was a bit better dressed and appeared to be the superior of the other.
“I think,” said the original one, “that we really ought to get together for a formal conference. There are some things to take up.”
Ah, thought Jonnie. Now we get to it. “I’m not a member of the government,” he hedged.
The newest arrival said, “We’re aware of that. But you do enjoy its confidence. We were thinking that possibly if you and the two of us could have a talk, you might assist us to arrange a conference with your government.”
“A talk about having a serious talk,” said the other.
Jonnie had an inspiration. He recalled the first gray man had drunk yarb tea. “I’ll be having dinner in half an hour. If you can eat our food, I’d be pleased to have you join me.”
“Oh, we eat anything,” said the newest small gray man. “Anything there is. We would be so pleased.”
“Half an hour it is,” said Jonnie. And he left to tell Chong-won he had dinner guests after all.
Now maybe he’d find out the threat that these two posed. He wasn’t imagining it. These two were dangerous!
3
The small gray men could really eat.
Jonnie had been surprised at how well the chief had decorated the main room of the spare apartment. Colored paper lanterns—with mine lamps in them—had been hung about; two paintings, one of a tiger coming toward you in the snow, the other of a bird in flight, decorated the walls; side tables for serving had been set up; the large center table where they sat even had a cloth on it.
Mr. Tsung had insisted Jonnie don a gold brocade tunic—after Jonnie refused to wear a robe of green satin—and Jonnie looked quite nice.
Some very subdued but kind of squeaky music was coming from someplace. It and the click of dishes that Chief Chong-won kept hauling in and the jaws of the small gray men were the only sounds.
Jonnie had tried to invite Angus, but he had said he had to keep an eye on that moon gyro. He had wanted Stormalong to come but the pilot was dead tired and catching naps in the ops room. He had asked Chief Chong-won and Mr. Tsung to also eat with them but they said no, they had to serve. So just Jonnie and the two small gray men had wound up as the diners. Jonnie felt that this was a pity for there was an awful lot of food. And Jonnie, so far, had no one to talk to. The small gray men just ate. And ate and ate!
The dinner had begun with appetizers—egg rolls, barbecued loin ribs and paper-wrapped chicken; these had been served in mounds and had all been eaten up by the small gray men. Then various noodles had been served—pancake noodles, yat ga mein, mun yee noodles, war won ton, beef lo mein, yee fu noodles, and gorn lo won ton, tubs of them! And the small gray men had eaten them all up. Large platters of chicken had been served—almond chicken, cashew chicken, button mushroom chicken and lichee chicken. And the small gray men had eaten all that up. Then there had been beef dishes—Mongolian beef, sauteed eggplant with beef, tomato beef and chili pepper steak. And they had gotten around that! Massive platters of Peking duck, cooked in three ways, had, in its turn, disappeared down their gullets. They were working now on egg dishes—chicken egg foo yung, precious flower egg and mushroom egg foo yung.
Jonnie wondered where Chief Chong-won had gotten all the ingredients until he recalled that game had been plentiful, including lots of fowl in the lake, and that the Chinese had had time to plant and harvest gardens, using an area protected by the dam armor cable to keep the wild beasts out of it.
He himself had not eaten very much. Mr. Tsung had had it relayed to him disparagingly that most of these dishes were southern Chinese cookery and that true cookery had evolved in the north during the Ch’ing Dynasty when his family took care of things. The Peking duck and Mongolian beef should get his main attention. Jonnie had complied. It was pretty good food. Not as good, of course, as his Aunt Ellen’s venison stew, but quite edible. The nurse had sent in word he was not to have any rice wine because of the sulfa, but that was fine—Jonnie didn’t much care for drinking anyway.
These small gray men were eating the entire banquet that had been planned for thirty people! Where did they put it all?
Jonnie took the time to study them. Their skin was gray and kind of rough. Their eyes were a dull gray blue, maybe like the sea, and had heavy lids. Their heads were round and hairless. Their noses took a sharp upturn just at the tip. The ears were a bit odd—reminded one more of gills than ears. They had four fingers and a thumb on each hand, though the nails were very pointed. They really looked quite like men. The main difference was their teeth: they had two rows of teeth, the second set just behind the first.
Watching them eat so voraciously and hugely, Jonnie tried to figure out what genetic lines such creatures might come from. They reminded him of something and he sought to place it. Then he recalled a fish that a pilot who was passing through Victoria had shown them. The pilot had been downed by fuel failure in the Indian Ocean and had ejected with a life raft. While waiting to be picked up he was attacked by these fish. When he was rescued, they had shot one of the fish with a cannon and picto-recorded it. It had been pretty big. What had he called it? Jonnie tried to think. They had looked it up in a man-book. Ah, a shark! That had been the name! Yes. These small gray men had a similar skin, similar teeth. Maybe they were evolved from sharks that had become sentient.
It finally came down to tea. It wasn’t that the small gray men couldn’t eat any more. It was that Chief Chong-won had run out of food! The tea was served, and the first small gray man asked with just a trace of worry whether this was “yarb tea.” He was reassured that it was just plain green tea, a fact that seemed to bring relief.
They sat back and smiled at Jonnie. They said that was the best dinner they had had in some time, maybe ever, and Chong-won slid out to tell and please the cook.
Under their gaze, Jonnie thought to himself that now they were finished with all the food in sight, they were going to try to eat him! But no, that was vaporing. They were quite pleasant, really. Now maybe he could find out what they were all about, what they really wanted.
“You know,” said the original small gray man, “about these hostile forces—your trouble here was really your defenses. Cheap trash. But that’s the Psychlos for you. They never put their money in good defenses. Personnel were cheap. They’d rather buy half a dozen new females or a ton or two of kerbango than proper armaments.”
He looked at Jonnie as though about to apprise him of something utterly devastating. “You know how much those anti-aircraft guns you use cost? Less than five thousand credits. Cheap trash! They won’t even shoot up to two hundred thousand feet. Bargain-basement, rummage-sale armaments. They probably bought them from some war surplus, used. And some executive put the new price on the books and pocketed the difference.”
“What should a proper antiaircraft gun cost?” said Jonnie to keep it going.
The newest small gray man thought a moment. Then he brought a small gray book out of his vest pocket and opened it. The page seemed to get bigger and he scanned down it with a little reader glass. “Ah, here’s one. ‘Surface/space combination repulsion, multicomputer firing defense cannon: maximum range 599 miles, 15,000 shots a minute, simultaneous tracking of 130 vessels or 2,300 bombs, destruction potential A-13 (that’s capital ship penetration), cost before discounts, C123,475 plus freight and installation.’ Now batteries of those located around your strong points would have handled that entire combined force or kept them so high up they could not have launched atmosphere crafts.”
The original small gray man agreed. “Yes, that was the main trouble. The Psychlos were both improvident and credit-pinching at the same time. I don’t think they even kept up this planet’s defenses.”
Jonnie could agree with that. He felt he was going to find out something about these fellows now that they were talking. Keep them talking! “Well, just at a guess,” said Jonnie, “what would you say proper defenses for this planet would cost?”
He had started something!
Both small gray men put their heads together. The original one started pulling all sorts of little things out of his pocket, looking into them and finding things. The newer arrival had a large ring on his left finger and at first Jonnie thought he was simply fiddling with it: not so; he was twisting and tapping it with sudden little jerks, and a long thread, so thin as to be nearly invisible, was coiling out of the ring.
They were very intense and their voices murmured and blended together. “. . . thirty space probes . . . maintained carrier wave probe warning beams . . . fifteen space drones, automatic firing at all nonsignal identified craft . . . cost of equipping terrestrial craft with identification beacons . . . two thousand atmosphere beacons . . . 256 Mark 50 combat fighters . . . four hundred fly-away, antipersonnel tanks . . . seven thousand antipersonnel road barricades . . . one hundred city cable defenses with retractable gates . . . fifty heat/color search drones . . . fifty automatic target destroy surface drones. . . .”
They were finished. The newer one snapped off the thread at the ring and tapped it at the end, and with a little pop! the thread expanded into a long sheet of paper like a tape. He gave it a small flick and it landed in front of the original small gray man. He picked it up, scanned the figures on it, and then looked at the end.
“With spare parts and freight,” he said, “it comes to C500,962,878,431 at two parts in eleven annual interest rate, plus an estimated C285,000,006 annual military and maintenance personnel salaries, housing and equipage.”
He tossed the long tape across the table to Jonnie and concluded, “There it is. An efficient and economical planetary defense system. All top-of-the-line merchandise. Good for a hundred years. That’s the sort of thing you should have had! And you can still have it!”
That was C498,960,878,431 more than Earth had! It had made him realize how broke Earth was. Now was the time to find out more about these two. “I surely appreciate your information. If you will excuse me, what are you two gentlemen? Arms salesmen?”
He might as well have dropped a bomb on them, they looked so startled! Then they looked at each other and both of them laughed.
“Oh, I am so sorry,” said the original small gray man. “It is so terribly impolite of us. You see, we are quite well known in our respective areas. And we know so much about you, in fact, know you so well, that it just never occurred to us that we never introduced ourselves!
“I am His Excellency Dries Gloton. And I am very pleased to meet you, Sir Lord Jonnie Tyler.”
Jonnie shook his hand. It was a dry hand, quite rough.
“And this,” said His Excellency, “is Lord Voraz. Lord Voraz, Sir Lord Jonnie Tyler.”
Jonnie shook his dry, rough hand and said, “It is really just Jonnie Tyler, Your Lordship. I have no titles.”
“We choose to doubt that,” said Lord Voraz.
His Excellency said, “Lord Voraz is the Central Director, Chief Executive Officer and Overlord of the Galactic Bank.”
Jonnie blinked but bowed.
Lord Voraz said, “Dries here likes to call himself the chief collections executive but it is a sort of bank joke. He is actually the branch manager of the Galactic Bank for this sector. You might have noticed a time or two that I stepped on his toes accidentally. A branch manager has total authority for his sector and is a bit jealous of his prerogatives.” He laughed, teasing his junior. “Your planet comes in his sector and dealings about it are entirely up to him. He’s the one who has to show a profit for his area. Now I, I am simply here because the emissaries have met. These are very troubled—”
Dries Gloton cut him off sharply. “His Lordship can’t be expected to know all the ins and outs of sector business. He does very well to keep up with universes.”
Lord Voraz laughed again, “Oh, dear, I am really sorry we worried you. Why, we have been looking—”
Dries cut him off again, “We’re just here to help, Sir Lord Jonnie. By the way, would you like to start an account? A personal account?” He was fishing in his pockets for the materials. “We can give you a very low number and absolute confidence assured.”
Suddenly Jonnie realized that he had no money. Not just no money in his pockets. He didn’t have and never had had any money at all. He’d even given the gold coin away. He thought maybe he got pilot pay that was given to Chrissie, but he had never seen it. He steered off apprehensive thoughts of Chrissie quickly. He had better keep his mind on this talk. But he was broke. Penniless.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “Perhaps later if I ever get any money to deposit.”
The two gave each other a quick look. But Dries said, “Well, just remember, we’re not enemies of yours.”
“I think you would be very bad to have as enemies,” said Jonnie, still fishing. “That fleet wouldn’t go away until you talked to Snowl.”
“Oh, that!” said Dries Gloton. “The Galactic Bank has lots of services for its customers. What you saw there was just notarial services. They needed a radio notary code trace to attest and verify that it was a valid conference order. He wouldn’t take their word, of course. They trust the bank.”
“Was calling the emissaries here a bank service, too?” said Jonnie.
“Well, no,” began Lord Voraz.
“You could call it so, if you like,” said Dries. “For sometimes such a conference is arranged as a service. It’s in the interest of the Galactic Bank to have civilized planets do business together smoothly.”
Jonnie was not at all satisfied, but he put an easy face on it. “These emissaries do seem to obey you, though. They call you ‘Your Excellency’ and they call Lord Voraz ‘His Worship.’ What do you do if they don’t obey you? You know, not come to the conference or do what you say.”
The thought shocked Lord Voraz. Before Dries Gloton could stop him, he said, “Unthinkable! Why, the bank would call in their loans, shut off their credit. Their economies would shatter. They would go bankrupt. Their whole planet could be sold right out from under them. Oh, they would think several times before—”
Dries finally got his attention and shut him off. “Now, Your Worship,” he said softly, “I know you feel strongly about these matters, but we must remember that this is my sector and things that concern this planet are my worry. Forgive me. I think possibly Sir Lord Jonnie doesn’t really know too much about the Galactic Bank. We haven’t reprinted the information leaflets for ages. Would you like to know more about it, Sir Lord Jonnie?”
Jonnie definitely would. He privately had become very alert about “the whole planet could be sold right out from under them.”
4
Chong-won poured more tea.
“You mustn’t get the impression we are violent people,” said Dries, taking a large swallow from a bowl.
Just powerful and deadly, Jonnie thought.
“Our race is called the ‘Selachee,’” continued Dries. “We are indigenous to the only three habitable planets of the Gredides System. The planets are mostly water—nine surface parts of water to only two parts of land on the average. And we have only banking as our industry.”
He smiled and drank more tea. “We’re ideal bankers. We can eat anything, drink anything, breathe almost any atmosphere, live on almost any gravity. By tribal mores, we worship total honesty and the righteousness of obligation.”
Jonnie thought that was probably true, but he also thought they were not telling all they knew and especially what they intended to do. “Honesty” might not include the whole truth, and there might be some real clues here as to what was going on. He smiled politely and listened closely.
“We have about five billion inhabitants on each planet,” continued Dries, “and it is quite a busy population. Although mostly devoted to banking, we have, of course, our engineers and specialists and, naturally, lots of mathematicians. Nearly five hundred thousand years ago we developed space flight. That’s about the right figure, isn’t it, Your Worship?”
Lord Voraz was still a bit out of sorts at the idea of planets going back on obligations. But he put a good, professional banking face on it. “Four hundred ninety-seven thousand, four hundred thirty-two years this coming sidereal Day 103 for this universe,” he said.
“Thank you,” said Dries, having gotten His Worship back into the discourse. “And three hundred two thousand years ago—”
“Three hundred two thousand three,” said Lord Voraz.
“Thank you. . . . We ran into the Psychlos! Now, don’t be alarmed. We were not conquered. We didn’t even fight a war. In those days the Psychlos were not as bad as they became about a hundred thousand years later. In that time, they had not begun killing for the love of it—I’m sure I don’t have to go on to you about Psychlos.”
“No indeed!” said Jonnie. This was all going somewhere that was going to wind up as bad news. He could feel it despite their smiles.
“Precisely,” said Dries. “Where was I? Anyway—and this will amuse you—they were not interested in us really, for we did not have any metals to amount to anything. Being mostly water, our planets would have presented formidable mining problems.
“We needed metals and the Psychlos needed some computer technology we had, and so we became a market. This was something brand-new in Psychlo experience. They had a lot to learn about finance and that sort of thing. So we taught them.
“Internally, they were pretty bad off. They breed like . . . what’s some fish of this planet you’d know . . . like herrings! They have always been terrified of founding actual Psychlo colonies for fear they’d rise and revolt against the home planet. They had mobs and unemployment. Heavy, heavy depressions. They were an economic mess.
“So we helped them build markets for metals. With their teleportation shipping arrangements, it was very easy for them to do this. They became prosperous and developed even more ways to mine and we saw to it they were economically stable.
“Then suddenly, from the Psychlo viewpoint, an awful thing happened. It terrified them. That was about two hundred thousand years ago.”
“Two hundred nine thousand, four hundred sixty-two,” corrected Lord Voraz.
“Thank you. Another race stole or invented teleportation!”
“The Boxnards, Universe Six,” said Lord Voraz.
“It is unclear what happened then,” said Dries. “We don’t always have access to military files and we never had access to these, not ever. But I think the Boxnards tried to put teleportation to military use. The Psychlos got there first and the entire seven planets of the Boxnards and every single Boxnard were wiped out. It took the Psychlos years.”
“Three years and sixteen days,” said Lord Voraz.
“They even slaughtered people and races which had been associated with or allied with the Boxnards, for we never afterward found any trace of them.”
“That war,” said Dries, “also seemed to change the Psychlos. For nearly half a century they all but cut contact with other worlds. It was a bad time for us as well. Our economy was wrapped up in their concerns. They also must have engaged in some internal slaughter because the next records we have show their own population to have decreased by six-elevenths.
“It took another century for the Psychlos to become busy again. But they were a very changed people.”
Aha, thought Jonnie. I have the time they began to use those capsules in baby Psychlos’ heads! And why. To protect their teleportation technology and mathematics.
“They had burned all their books,” said Dries. “They had lost any aesthetic arts they had had. You can tell from their dictionaries that the language they had accumulated over the ages ceased to be in full use. They dropped words like compassion or pity and it even seemed they had dropped the term good sense.
“Although we refer to them now as ‘Psychlos,’ that name didn’t come into use until that time. Previously they called themselves after whatever king might chance to be on the imperial throne.
“Anyway, not to bore you, for I see you know something of this, the ensuing centuries were very, very bad for everyone, especially the Psychlos. They built a reputation of being the cruelest, most sadistic oppressors any universe had ever seen.
“But they were in internal trouble. Their population was bursting. They were in economic chaos. They were nine parts in eleven unemployed. The royal house was terrified of revolution and as a matter of fact, experienced, I think, four assassinations of princes—”
“Seven,” said Lord Voraz. “And two queens.”
“Thank you,” continued Dries. “And in total desperation, they came to the Gredides and actually begged the Selachees for help. They wanted money to hire soldiers and buy arms. But our parliament, the Creditable Body, along with every other race in sixteen universes, wanted nothing to do with them and it looked like outright war. But somebody in the Creditable Body—”
“Lord Finister,” said Lord Voraz.
“Thank you. Had the good sense to turn them over to us. We were as big a bank then. The current head of it—”
“Lord Loonger,” said Lord Voraz.
“Thank you. Brought them to the bargaining table and really got them on the signature line! The bank would handle all economic connections they had with other races, handle all transfers of Psychlo funds, handle all peace conferences. And in return every Selachee would be held inviolate, the Selachee planets and the Gredides System were totally hands off, and the Psychlos would furnish teleportation facilities throughout the universes for the bank. They signed, they got their money, they stabilized.”
Lord Voraz spoke up, “The only two times they ever sought to violate those agreements, they went into a nose-dive splash and they hastily reformed at once.”
“So there,” said Dries Gloton, “you have the whole background of the Galactic Bank. We call it ‘Galactic,’ you know, even though it should be ‘Pan-Galactic,’ covering sixteen universes as it does. But ‘Galactic’ makes customers look on it as their galaxy’s bank. More neighborly, don’t you think?”
What Jonnie thought was that he was dealing with an outfit more powerful than the Psychlos. With the galactic organization that could give orders to monsters and be obeyed. He was very alert. There was trouble here somewhere.
“Then possibly,” said Jonnie, “you want to talk with the government here about teleportation service.”
Dries and Lord Voraz looked at each other and then back at Jonnie.
“Not with the government,” said Lord Voraz. “I doubt it owns any of that. Teleportation would be quite another subject and really we aren’t engaged in having a talk to arrange a talk about it just now. You see, there is space travel. It is slow and time consuming, but it does exist.”
Jonnie felt he was not saying everything, but he wouldn’t push that. It evidently wasn’t where the danger lay—for certainly it lay someplace! He could feel it. He sat easily and said, “Maybe it’s about the payment of fees for this conference. They might be much larger than we had anticipated.”
“Oh, heavens, no!” scoffed Dries. And he went to work with a ring he wore. The fingers flew, a thread came out and popped into an expanded tape, and he looked at it. “Negligible. The fees vary for emissaries because their governments vary in size and even pay them differently. But they only add up to about C85,000—it could, of course, be more if they delay. But not much. The bank fee is standard: only C25,000. There is of course the matter of my yacht—”
“The bank,” said Lord Voraz, “pays the space yacht expenses when he uses it on bank business. I think it would be fair, Dries, for you to charge up all the months you searched—”
Dries cut him off sharply. “The yacht would only be charged from the Batafor planet of Balor—that’s the Galactic Bank branch office for this sector,” he added for Jonnie’s benefit. “It’s a Hawvin planet. They’re not such bad people really. Honest enough individually. So call it C60,000. The total is only around C170,000.”
They had that much, thought Jonnie.
But Dries was hesitating. “We’re not entirely sure yet that you would get this bill. It sort of depends on the outcome of the conference.”
Something here, Jonnie told himself. He was now getting a finger on it.
5
They looked at Jonnie with their heavy-lidded eyes. They were very serious now.
His Excellency Dries Gloton leaned forward. “It’s a question of clear title. The bank would never have anything to do with a clouded title.”
“Never!” said Lord Voraz.
“The whole reputation of the bank, indeed, the racial reputation of the Selachees,” said Dries, “is based on absolute honesty and impeccable legality.”
“Always legal,” said Lord Voraz. “It would be our ruin if we ever did anything illegal. We never bend rules. That’s why uncounted quintillions of people trust us.”
Jonnie was not among those quintillions of people. There was something cold, hard and horrible here. “Perhaps you had better explain further,” said Jonnie. “If I am to arrange a meeting for you, I really have to know the background of what will be taken up.”
Dries leaned back. “Ah, well. That’s true. Where shall I begin? Well, the point of discovery of this planet is a good place.
“The sixteenth universe,” he continued, “was the last one to be discovered, possibly less than twenty thousand years ago. It was never wholly mapped. The Psychlo imperial government introduced probes into it to do further charting but for a very long time they found nothing new.
“This planet is part of what might be called a ‘rim star system,’ way out at the edge of a galaxy. It might have gone overlooked had it not sent out some probes of its own. It gave its exact location, an imperial probe picked it up, and the rest is history.
“The Psychlo imperial government obtained title, quite valid, on the right of discovery. And this system’s title was entered on the books for the first time.
“That government sold the planet to Intergalactic Mining which, being short of cash, borrowed the purchase price from the Galactic Bank. All this is very routine, ordinary, and usual. Intergalactic Mining has done this countless times.
“Such loans are secured by lodging the deed of title of a planet with the Galactic Bank. The interest rate is usually two parts in eleven. Or, in non-Psychlo arithmetic, roughly eighteen percent per annum. The term was twenty-five hundred years.
“Intergalactic in the past always paid such loans off smoothly—they knew better than not to. In fact, this was the only planet they had bought in recent times; all the others had been paid off. Such a transaction is called a ‘mortgage.’ Are you following me so far?”
Jonnie was. He had begun to guess what was coming.
“There was a second mortgage also,” said His Excellency. “It was to pay for the expenses of military conquest by Intergalactic. But that was a minor matter and, being at a higher interest rate, was paid off in only five years.”
Jonnie got it. The Galactic Bank had financed the invasion of Earth. Financed the gas drone.
They must have detected that something had changed in his attitude.
Lord Voraz said, “It is just business. The bank tends to banking and the customers tend to their own affairs. It does not mean the bank was ever hostile to you. Actually we are not hostile now. This is all just routine. Ordinary banking business.”
“So anyway,” said Dries easily, not bothering to assert his prerogatives, “the basic mortgage has fourteen hundred years to run.”
Jonnie digested that, very warily, very alertly. “But I should think that a war and so on would tend to wipe out that mortgage.”
“Oh, dear no!” said Dries. “The simple fact of military take-over does not change the basic debt structure of a planet. That a government changes does not relieve the property of debt. Why, if that were true, then governments would just arrange to change hands every day and they would be rid of all their financial obligations.” He laughed. “No, no. A change of government or a military takeover does not change a country’s debts. The new owners have to pay.”
“The original conquest,” said Jonnie, “when Intergalactic took over Earth, did not assume any debts.”
“They would have been internal,” said Dries. “Internal debts have nothing to do with international debts. No, the planet was properly discovered, properly bought from the Psychlo imperial government by Intergalactic Mining. The mortgage papers were all properly executed. Everything was totally legal.”
“Totally,” said Lord Voraz.
“The debt is not in question,” said Dries. “Who pays it is in question.”
“You called this conference to see who pays the debt?” said Jonnie.
“Not precisely, but close. You see,” said Dries, “so long as combat was threatened and so long as one could not really determine who was and who would be the actual responsible government of this planet, I could not serve this paper.”
He was holding a big legal-looking piece of paper. He did not hand it over. Jonnie reached out his hand for it, but Dries said, “No, you are not a member of the government, by your own statement.”
“What happens when you do serve it?”
“Why, we have a meeting to arrange the possibility and terms of payment, and if no agreement can be reached, we foreclose.”
“And then what happens?” said Jonnie.
“Why, the planet is put up for public auction and sold to the highest bidder.”
Jonnie began to understand the feeling he had had about these two.
“And what happens to the planet’s people?” said Jonnie.
“Why, that is up to the buyer, of course. The title would not be clouded in any way. He could do with them pretty much as he liked. That is wholly outside the province of the bank.”
“And what do such buyers usually do?” said Jonnie.
“Oh, it all depends. Ordinarily they would pay cash or use their credit to pay for the auctioned planet—such buyers usually have credit or other collateral and they assume the balance of the mortgage. They often just move in, but if there is local protest, they get a short-term loan from the bank and engage in a swift military suppression of the population. Sometimes they sell the original population as slaves to meet their payments. Such buyers want to move in their own people, you know.”
Jonnie sat and looked at them. “I don’t think a buyer would find it so easy to take this planet.”
“Oh!” said Dries, brushing it away. “The planet has no defenses worth mentioning. You have very few people. Modern arms could do it in a few days. This combined force you had here was just a buzzing of insects. The real fleets of these combatants weren’t even involved. But be calm. There is no reason to become alarmed. It is just business. Just a matter of a mortgage and paying one’s obligations. A banking matter.”
“So you are waiting now to see whether we win so you can serve that paper,” said Jonnie.
“Oh, I think you will win,” said Dries. “That is why we are talking with you tonight. We want you to arrange a meeting with your government the moment we know it really has won. And then we can serve this paper and discuss things. That’s all.”
“If I’m going to arrange a meeting for you,” said Jonnie, “you had better show me the paper so I will know what I am talking about.”
“I’m not serving this on you,” said Dries, “but you can look it over.”
Jonnie took it.
It had pages and pages of legal details, tracing the discovery, the loan, the payments made. And then it had a huge, single page attached to it. Jonnie had held each page of it up to catch the light better (and to expose it to the button camera that had been going in the upper corner of the room all evening), and he now held up the final one. It said:
NOTICE OF DELINQUENCY
Jonnie said, “And what would be satisfactory ‘terms’ for its discharge?”
“Oh,” said Dries Gloton easily, “a payment of five trillion at once and some arrangement like five hundred billion a month would do. You see, legally, a whole loan becomes due and payable instantly if payments are missed. So you will really find the bank very easy to do business with, for we could require the whole amount instanter! We really are your friends, you know. We always pride ourselves, not just on our total honesty and integrity, but on our customer relations.”
Five trillion! thought Jonnie. Five hundred billion a month! They only had two billion, two hundred million. They had no industry or income. No resources they could dig out of the ground would match the amount needed in that time period.
Dries saw through his fairly well hidden consternation. “You’d have a whole week! It is very liberal.”
“And as soon as this conference decides the fate of Schleim,” said Jonnie. “And the relationship to the other combatants—”
“Why, the planet will have a clear title!” said Dries triumphantly. “And you can arrange the meeting for us. And we can serve this paper and the whole thing will be handled!”
“The winning government,” said Lord Voraz, “would have days to discuss it and find where they were going to get the money.”
“You couldn’t lend it to us?” said Jonnie.
“Oh, dear no. It’s already been lent.”
“And who might buy this planet?” said Jonnie.
“Why, any one of the combatants would be glad to have it. They, unlike you here, have industry and credit and collateral.”
“So after we win this war, if we win it, then we might lose it totally, even to the Tolneps!” said Jonnie.
“Well,” said Dries Gloton with an expressive hand gesture, “banking is banking. Business is business.”
6
Stormalong, folded across a desk in the ops room, was jolted out of the sleep of exhaustion. Groggy from days of directing battle, it was with alarm that he saw Jonnie.
“Wake up!” Jonnie was saying urgently. He was trying to shake the Buddhist communicator, Tinny, into some sign of life.
“What’s the matter?” Stormalong surged up. “Have they started attacking again?”
“Worse!” said Jonnie. “These small gray men! . . . Tinny, please wake up!” The woman was almost senseless after days of combat communication, all without sleep.
Jonnie had bowed the guests out. He had walked a full circle around the night-shrouded bowl. MacAdam! He knew he had to get hold of MacAdam of the Earth Planetary Bank in Luxembourg and get hold of him fast. He would arrange no meeting with the government. But he sure would arrange one with somebody who should know banking!
Tinny was coming wake. “MacAdam!” said Jonnie. “Get MacAdam on the radio!”
“What’s up?” said Stormalong. Jonnie was usually pretty cool and calm. “What can I do?”
Jonnie shoved a pair of disks at him, the recordings of the whole party. “Get me duplicates of these. It’s a dinner party.”
It made no sense at all to Stormalong but he went over to the disk duplicator and ran them off.
Tinny was trying to wake up Luxembourg, sleepily singing out the code call signs in Pali.
“If you’re calling Luxembourg,” said Stormalong, “they’re all gone.” Then he realized Jonnie had not had much briefing.
“It’s Russia,” said Stormalong. “The Singapore people got there and they can’t get near the place. It’s all on fire.”
Jonnie didn’t understand. An underground base on fire?
“You’ve been there,” said Stormalong. “I don’t know why but they had some material, some black stuff, inflammable, outside the main entrances. Do you know what it was?”
Coal! The Russian base had been piling coal up for the winter. “It’s coal,” said Jonnie. “A black rock that burns.”
“Well, whoever built that base built it next to or on or under a mine of this stuff, and in the fighting, it must have ignited. The Singapore team couldn’t get near the base. They were very few and they didn’t take any mine pumps, and even if they had, there was no water near there. They yelled for help. They had to get the fire out to get near the base. Luxembourg was the only defense area that was never hit and they had flying tankers there. About two hours ago they filled those tankers and flew to Russia. We have no further reports on the fate of the Russian base. And there’s no defense team left in Luxembourg.”
“Surely the Earth Planetary Bank had a radio!” said Jonnie.
“Yes,” said Stormalong doubtfully, “but at this hour of the night, I don’t think it would be manned. They’re not part of the defense network.”
“I’ve got to go then,” said Jonnie. “What planes are left—”
“Whoa!” said Stormalong. “I had direct orders from Sir Robert that you stay here!”
“But MacAdam can’t fly down here if there are no pilots. Not even one pilot left in Luxembourg?”
“Not one.”
Jonnie felt desperate. “Then how about detaching a pilot from Edinburgh and getting—”
“Not a chance,” said Stormalong. “They’re arrived there and it’s a screaming mess. The whole tunnel network under the rock has collapsed. You can’t get into the place to see whether there’s anyone still alive in the shelters. They’ve got atmosphere hoses and equipment to get air in to any survivors and they are bringing mine diggers up from Cornwall. But they need the pilots they have as machine operators. I don’t think I could persuade even one of them—”
“Do you have a plane here?”
“Of course I’ve got a plane here. I’ve got five planes here! But you are not leaving!”
The woman turned from the mike. “It is dead. There is no one answering from the Luxembourg minesite or the bank. And after all, it is two in the morning there.”
“I’m going,” said Jonnie.
“You’re not!” shouted Stormalong.
“Then you are!” shouted Jonnie.
Stormalong blinked. After all, he had had about two hours worth of catnaps. “You’ll have to handle anything here by yourself,” he said. “Be in the air and at that mike at the same time if you have to fly defense.”
“I’d take Tinny and handle the network from the plane,” said Jonnie, “if I had to go up and fight. But that isn’t where the fight is! It’s right down here with these small gray men! Can you stay awake to Luxembourg?”
Stormalong shrugged and then nodded.
“All right,” said Jonnie. “You take those copies you made of the dinner party and you fly to Luxembourg and find MacAdam. Blast him out. Tell him I said it was vital he review those recordings right now. And he’s got to find some way to handle a debt. You tell him that.”
“A debt?” said Stormalong.
“Yes, a debt. And if we don’t pay or handle it, we’ve lost this whole war! Even if we win it!”