Vector: 7/?
by Nancy Smith and Linda Garrick
7
Mombasa stood before a board showing the incoming and outgoing flights in between pitches for various products and watched the man. Frexvor's “pet keeper” was dressed in the Nindili native costume, blending in with the people around him. There was a second man with him -- a short, broad fellow with thinning dark hair and nondescript features. Mombasa didn't recognize him but the two appeared to be together. They were speaking to one another with complete familiarity, apparently discussing something of import to both of them. The "pet keeper" spoke to a passing porter and the man nodded. Together, the three headed for the baggage claim area.
All his instincts screaming, Mombasa followed. The porter went to a reserved area and emerged a few minutes later, guiding a huge crate on an antigrav cart.
Mombasa's heart was in his throat. Something was wrong here -- very, *very* wrong.
They exited the spaceport building, Mombasa still on their heels, and paused before a ground truck. The crate was stowed in the flatbed of the vehicle. The short, nondescript man tipped the porter and he and his companion got in front.
He was going to lose them!
Mombasa looked frantically around. There was another car in the loading zone, the engine running. A man was pulling suitcases from the trunk while a woman stood on the curb, holding a child by the hand. Mombasa gritted his teeth.
'Here's where I become a criminal,' he thought. Stealing a family car --
Still, the family didn't look impoverished. All members were well-dressed and the bags were of embossed leather. Perhaps they weren't even a family. The little girl that the woman held by the hand looked spoiled and sulky, and the woman herself was dressed like a nanny. Besides, they'd probably find the car later, even if he didn't exactly bring it back.
Somehow that made it better. He waited until the man slammed the trunk and had turned to put the last suitcase onto the cart and then strode over to the unlocked vehicle, jumped behind the controls and gunned the engine.
It was a souped-up heap; that was for sure. The car took off with a squeal of the ground-tires that nearly drowned out the yell of the abandoned driver and brought stares from every passerby in the vicinity. Swearing softly, Mombasa followed his quarry.
The stolen car was flashy, too, he realized belatedly -- a bright, red, late-model sports convertible with silver racing stripes along the sides. It was going to be hard to remain unnoticed in this thing. And with the heavy, rush-hour traffic, he didn't dare fall too far behind.
He wove in and out of ground traffic, striving to keep up with the truck. He saw one of the men in the vehicle glance back as they neared an intersection. Had the “pet keeper” recognized him? No, probably not, he assured himself. He was dressed like a native of Nindili, complete with the flowing jacket, hood and light gloves that most of the natives wore against the chill of late autumn. It was the car that was attracting attention.
The light caught them at the next intersection, too, and the next. Both men in the truck were watching him now. This was bad. Somehow he must allay suspicion. But how?
An idea hit him then, born of sheer desperation. The light changed and he floored the accelerator, passed the truck before it could move more than a meter or two forward, and cut rudely in front of it. An oncoming car had to swerve to avoid a collision and the driver of the truck sounded his horn in protest. Mombasa reached out the window with an insulting gesture and gunned his engine. In the rear view scanner he saw the driver give him the gesture in return and say something to his companion. Mombasa slowed down, forcing the man to brake to avoid a rear end collision. Someone behind the truck honked in annoyance at the slow pace. Mombasa made the gesture out the window again and slowed even more.
They reached a more open section and the driver of the truck pulled out, trying to pass. Mombasa picked up speed so the driver had to floor the accelerator to complete the pass. He made it, but just barely, almost forcing an oncoming groundcar off the road. The driver of the car behind the truck pulled out, too, and roared past him, shouting an insult as he did so. Mombasa shouted one back and made the gesture again.
The truck was picking up speed. Mombasa floored the accelerator, coming up as close behind his quarry as he dared. The truck passenger glanced back and again said something to the driver. Mombasa edged closer, tailgating the vehicle. The passenger glanced back again and Mombasa flipped him off. The man ignored him, turning to face the front again.
He continued to tailgate the truck, occasionally sounding his horn, to keep the occupants as annoyed as possible.
The traffic grew heavier and after another thirty minutes he let the truck pull ahead a bit. Another car promptly pulled between them. Mombasa, remaining in character, sounded his horn at the driver and flipped him off. It was an Arcturian, he saw, and the alien ignored him. A second car pulled between them so that the truck was now separated from him by two vehicles. The Arcturian courteously allowed another car to pull between him and the car ahead, and Mombasa saw the truck turn off the main road, heading for the more populated areas of the inner city. Mombasa followed, keeping at least two cars between them now.
The situation wasn't good, though. They knew he was there and were trying their best to lose him. He would have to figure out some way to make them think they had. But how was he going to manage that in this piece of dynamite that he was driving?
Surprisingly, it only took him a few minutes to come up with a plan, and not a bad one at that. The traffic was heavy but moving fairly well at this point. Mombasa eased the blaster from his shoulder holster and set it on needle beam.
The car ahead of him slowed, and then slowed again until they were moving at a crawl but the oncoming traffic continued to move at the same pace. Mombasa turned the weapon slightly, aimed quickly and fired.
His marksmanship didn't fail him. An oncoming car, a large, bulky older model, went sliding sideways as the front tire exploded with a terrific bang. The driver, a golden-scaled Arcturian, flashed in front of Mombasa as the vehicle veered across the lane. He had a brief glimpse of the alien's muzzle, drawn back in a hideous snarl, his crest erect as the car flashed by and slammed into the vehicle directly behind the truck he followed. In an instant traffic slowed and came to a virtual standstill. Brakes squealed and horns sounded.
In the confusion, Mombasa hopped from the flashy sports car, bent low and sprinted back toward another car, two lanes across from his. His choice was dictated by one circumstance: the open window by the driver's seat. He yanked open the door. A handsome, young man in a dinner jacket, turned toward him, his mouth opening in surprise. Mombasa stunned him and jumped into the seat, pushing the now slack body of the driver onto the floor. With his thumb, almost absently, he pushed the control that rolled up the window.
As far as he could tell, no one was paying any attention to him. The confusion caused by the accident in heavy traffic was occupying everyone completely. Mombasa locked the door, snatched the driver's hat and glasses, flipped down the hood and put the items on.
Traffic was crawling forward as people attempted to get through the traffic jam created by the accident. The Arcturian was standing on the pavement, his golden-scaled face once again impassive. The car that he had hit showed a huge dent in the front fender and a young, bearded man was being helped from the vehicle. Blood trickled from the man's nose but otherwise he appeared unhurt.
Mombasa hoped he would be all right, but there was no time to worry about it. Maybe he'd just saved the kid's life, he rationalized. He probably wouldn't have sustained the injuries if he had been wearing his safety webbing. In any case, Mombasa had something more important to worry about.
Traffic was hopelessly snarled and almost at once he came to a halt again. The man he had stunned lay motionless, slumped on the floor. Mombasa took advantage of the pause to fasten his victim's hands behind him with his belt. The man groaned faintly and began to struggle weakly in his hold.
A handkerchief protruded from his prisoner's pocket. Mombasa pulled it out and blindfolded his captive.
"Lie still," he advised. "You'll feel better in a few minutes."
The man started to retch. Mombasa let him down to the floor again as gently as he could and inched forward another twenty centimeters.
Someone behind Mombasa's abandoned sports car honked in annoyance, trying to edge out into the next lane. The car in the next lane pulled up quickly to prevent the encroachment and the thwarted driver shouted an indecency at him. The fellow shouted the same indecency back.
The former driver of Mombasa's vehicle had become still, his shoulders now tense at the realization that he was a prisoner. Better to head off any vigorous attempts to escape, especially with his attention split as it was, Mombasa thought.
"Lie still," he said. "I won't hurt you. I just need your car."
Some of the tenseness went out of the man and Mombasa saw him rest his head against the seat, grimacing a little as he did so.
"The headache will get better soon," Mombasa said.
"Good." At least the guy didn't seem inclined to lose his head. There was silence, except for the honking of horns, muffled somewhat by the closed window. Ahead, the truck was motionless, surrounded by traffic. In the distance he heard the approaching wail of an air ambulance and other sirens indicating that the police were on their way.
His prisoner heard it too. He could tell by the sudden tenseness of his body. He reached over and touched the other man's shoulder.
"If you give me any trouble, I'll stun you," he said. An idea hit him. "I'm with the Terran Underground," he added. "I can't let you see my face."
The man nodded briefly. "All right."
Mombasa waited. The air ambulance passed overhead, flanked by two police cars.
The man on the floor spoke suddenly. "I'm not going to try anything, mister. Don't stun me again, okay?"
"Okay," Mombasa said. "Where were you going?"
"To my future in-laws' house. They're having me over to dinner tonight ... or were." His voice trailed off.
"You're going to get married?"
"Next week -- I hope."
"Don't change your plans," Mombasa told him.
A faint grin tugged at the man's lips. "Okay."
Mombasa eased the car forward another couple of centimeters. The police were here, trying valiantly to get the traffic moving again. The man who had been injured in the crash was being lifted into the ambulance and the abandoned sports car had been discovered. A cop was speaking into a communicator, apparently reading off the license number.
The man on the floor lowered his face to rest it against the seat. Ahead of the car, the traffic began to creep forward again and Mombasa followed. This time it kept moving until he was nearly clear of the accident. They paused momentarily once again and then picked up speed. The truck was pulling away and a moment later Mombasa followed.
He almost lost it at first. Ahead, it rounded a corner and he had to employ some fancy maneuvering to get up to it without attracting the attention of the police. He, too, rounded the corner and for an instant felt a touch of panic, for the truck was nowhere to be seen. He went forward fast and spotted it gaining speed on a side street. He turned, following as close as he dared. He was fairly sure they wouldn't notice him now. This car was far less flashy than his original theft had been. His captive knelt, unmoving, on the floor, his head against the seat. The truck merged onto another street and Mombasa followed.
It was twenty nerve-wracking minutes before he saw the truck turn onto another side street and then down an alley. They were in one of the poorer sections of town. Small, nondescript buildings lined the dingy streets.
Mombasa went slowly down the side street. Ahead of him, in the alley, the truck's engine cut off. Mombasa pulled up to the curb.
Apparently, they had reached their destination. Mombasa waited for a moment. The day was drawing toward evening and shadows were creeping across the city, twilight beginning to settle in. It should make him less noticeable.
He checked his prisoner's bonds and then secured the man's feet as well and gagged him.
"I'm sorry," he told the guy, feeling a tug of guilt as he fastened the gag. "I know this'll be uncomfortable, but it probably won't last for long."
The man's shoulders shrugged, slightly hampered by his bonds. "Just let me live." Mombasa made out the muffled words through the gag.
Mombasa got out of the car, locking it behind him. On cat feet, he crept up to the alley and peeked quickly around the corner.
The door of a garage was just closing. Mombasa ran lightly forward and put his ear against the panel. Faintly, he could hear voices within, but no distinct words. Something thumped heavily and then there was the sound of something heavy dragging across a rough surface. Someone spoke sharply -- a command to be careful, he thought. Another soft thump, more voices, and then silence.
Mombasa waited a moment and then, very cautiously, tried to open the garage door.
It was locked but beside it was a smaller door, obviously meant for the passage of persons rather than vehicles. It was also locked. Once more, the Squadron Commander employed the use of the needle beam of his blaster for an unorthodox purpose. The lock warped beneath it and Mombasa gripped the handle, easing the door open.
He found himself in the garage. No one was in sight but the truck that he had followed from the spaceport was parked in the middle of the stone floor. Beyond the vehicle was a flight of steps ascending to parts unknown.
He drew a deep breath and banished the vision of Lord Hanthzar's thin, ugly face from his mind. "Who the hell wants to be a Squadron Commander anyway?' he asked himself. 'Haven't you genuflected to enough Jils in your life? Damn right ...'
A bit of mental bluster, he knew. A lot worse than simply being fired awaited him if the Jils found out about this -- and they were bound to find out. But this planet was home to something far dearer to him than his career and even his own life: the lives of his family and his beautiful bride-to-be, as well as a town of people who believed him to be a hero.
There was nothing to do but go on, he knew. Goodbye profitable and hard-earned career. Hello, life of crime ...
He crossed the garage to the stairway, every sense alert for any possible alarms or spy devices, and ascended swiftly and silently.
The stairway ended in a closed door with a crack of light showing beneath it. Mombasa listened for a moment.
Silence. No murmur of voices or creak of footsteps. Very carefully, he eased the clumsy manual door open a crack. Nerves jumping, Mombasa waited, gripping his blaster.
Nothing happened. Carefully, he pushed the door open farther and peeked through.
It was a kitchen. He saw the stove and cupboards, and a cold unit purred softly in one corner. In the center of the room sat the crate that he had seen loaded on the back of the truck. There was a closed door on the other side of the room and from the room beyond he could faintly hear voices.
He crossed softly to the door. There was no need to be tying himself in knots, he told himself. Most likely this was something very harmless. The only problem was: deep down he didn't believe himself for a minute.
He reached the door and put his ear against it, listening.
The "pet keeper" was speaking, his deep voice easily recognizable even through the intervening wall, and his words froze Mombasa with horror.
" ... An area with a lot of casawas, and a scattered human population. That way the disease will spread real good there before it's even noticed."
The other man had a soft, precise way of speaking, with the almost musical accent of Riskell. Mombasa identified the man's speech without difficulty. "The open area of the Red Mountains would be best, I'm certain. The creatures run thick there and the human population is sparse."
"The disease'll take another fourteen days to reach its terminal stage in the infected animals," the “pet keeper's” voice said. "Are you sure there's enough casawas in the Red Mountains to get things going by the time these die off?"
A short laugh. "There's a dozen casawas in every tree there. Their major predator, the Giant Silverwing can't live in the Red Mountains. Silverwings die if they're exposed to a heavy concentration of iron in their food or drinking water, and the Red Mountains are called that for obvious reasons." Another short laugh. "And the human population is one for every ten kilometers – if that much."
"That's good." There was a pause, as though the “pet keeper” was considering something. Then: "The disease is only contagious from casawa and human or casawa and casawa. Humans can't give it to each other, so even if one family member is infected, his death'll probably be written off to something else."
"What's it do to you?" The Riskellian sounded only mildly interested and not upset at all over the impending fate of humanity on Nindili. "I mean, does it kill you quick or slow?"
For the first time the “pet keeper's” voice betrayed emotion. "It ain't nothing you want to get; take it from me. First you think you have the flu, so you go to bed and drink fluids. Then your kidneys cut out on you -- actually, they sort of rot away. You fill up with fluid -- lungs, heart, everything -- and end up drowning in your own secretions. Happens fast: less than twelve hours, usually. And if you manage to get to a doctor, and they patch on a syntha-kidney, the next step is for your blood to quit clotting. You start to bleed from everywhere. Spots all over you from broken blood vessels under the skin and what pee you got comes out as pure blood. So they give you clotting factors to stop it. Then the nervous system goes. The paralysis starts in your toes and moves up. Takes about a week before it hits your lungs. That usually finishes you off. If you survive that --"
"Never mind." The other man's voice sounded shaken. "I don't want to know about it."
"Yeah." The “pet keeper” seemed willing to cease his description. "I've been immunized, believe me. Jils or no, I wouldn't have gone near those critters without it."
"Hell!" The Riskellian sounded very worried suddenly. "I was carrying that condemned crate with the things in it!"
"Oh, don't worry about that. It's air tight and self-contained, and there’s an internal stasis field. No way the virus can get out until I want it to. And look, I'll go ahead and immunize you if you like. I got the stuff with me."
"You're damned right I like!"
"Okay! Okay!" Another laugh. "Take it easy. I'm not going to risk you. It'd be real inconvenient if you ended up in the hospital with this. Besides, it's not really so bad. Most people that get it die within 48 hours and about half of those in 24. They never reach the bleeding stage, much less the paralysis one."
"This is supposed to make me feel better?"
"Look, I'm telling you, you're perfectly safe. I need you, and so do the Jils. Now look; can you give me the exact population of that area around the Red Mountains?"
"It's around four thousand square kilometers with fewer than a hundred people -- probably less than fifty. Most of them are prospectors. Fifty years ago there was a claim that some guy found a big diamond somewhere up there and there was a big rush to the area. The claim turned out to be false and interest faded. People went back to the more promising areas. Only a few old die-hards are still there. Look, how much more of this virus is there?"
"Will you quit worrying? It's at Space Station Seven. That's where they developed it."
"There's no more?"
A pause. Then: "I guess there might be. They don't tell me everything."
No, Mombasa thought, they probably didn't, and yet it seemed unlikely that the Jils would spread the stuff around. Too much evidence in too many places was risky. It might implicate them, once the epidemic started -- and the stuff probably couldn't be used anywhere but Nindili, since it required a native population of casawas to spread. No; they would probably keep it all in one place where it could be easily eliminated. The Jils sure wouldn't want the Terran Underground getting wind of it.
The thought brought him up short. The Underground! Maybe they were already onto this thing!
He dismissed the hope a second later. Whether the Underground knew or not didn't matter to him. He must act as if they didn't.
Again the thought stopped him. If he acted, his illustrious Patrol career would go down in flames, but if he didn't, Dagmar, Selena, his parents, his brothers and sisters, his nephews, his brother-in-law, all his friends and a lot of Nindili residents that he didn't know would die. The Jils had a plan here. He'd seen them implement such plans before, although never with biological warfare. Colonization rights for new planets were quite specific. If the resident colonists withdrew, for any reason, from a planet, or if the colony failed for any reason, the planet became open to colonization by the first species to move in.
Mombasa had no doubt at all which species that would be.
All right, Busaidi, old buddy, what’s it going to be, your career or your family and friends?
When it came right down to that, the choice was easy. The thought of the people he loved succumbing to a disease like that negated all other considerations. Wealth, success, power, prestige – they all paled and faded away at the thought of burying his family. The decision was really no decision at all.
All right, a plan of action. First he must dispose of the immediate danger – the infected casawas in the crate.
The Riskellian was still commiserating about having carried the crate of animals off the truck. ‘Don’t worry about it, buddy,’ he thought grimly as he carefully adjusted the setting on his blaster.
For a moment more he paused, listening intently. Except for the whining tones of the Riskellian, all was still. These two were alone in the building, he was sure – or at least he hoped so. In any case, to accomplish his purpose here, he was going to have to take some risks. This would simply be the first of many.
He moved quickly. With one foot, in the best style of the Viceregal Patrol, he kicked the door open, stepped through and fired. The “pet keeper” dropped with a needle beam through the skull. The Riskellian turned toward him, his mouth agape. Mombasa fired a second time and he went down.
Carefully, he beamed them both in the head a second time and then lifted the body of the “pet keeper” and dragged him through the door. Grunting with effort, he heaved the body atop the crate, and then returned for the Riskellian.
The second body was lighter and easier to handle. He piled the second body beside the first, and flipped off the crate’s stasis field. Then he went to stand in the doorway that led to the stairs, adjusting his blaster carefully as he did so. Taking careful aim, he pressed the firing stud.
The energy cell of the blaster gave up its entire charge of energy, releasing itself in a titanic roar of flame. The crate and bodies were engulfed, ignited and rapidly reduced to ash by the intensity of the heat. Shielding his face from the heat with a lifted arm, Mombasa considered the meager remains for a moment, then shook out the exhausted cell and inserted another one. With careful precision, he flamed the entire area a second time. By the time he had finished, the synthastone walls were blazing, the flames licking upward toward the more flammable roof. Mombasa stepped back, half-ran down the steps and exited the building, closing the door behind him.
**********
tbc
