Mission: Earth "Disaster"

I will now be able to relate how it was that I came to be in your fine prison. Your Lordship may have been shocked to learn that Fleet Officer Jettero Heller was killed at that roadhouse in Co

My reaction at the time was a strange sort of numbness. I had pla

I also felt no joy when I watched Ahmed drop the poison-gas bomb down the air chute to the Countess Krak's cell.

My personal feelings did not deter me from my duty, however, when Agent Rant told me there were diamonds at the roadhouse. I had ordered Rant to kill Heller, and all the bungling idiot could do was whine about losing blood and bother me with radioed pleas for help. Typical riffraff. But when he said he had found a bag of diamonds, duty called.

So it was a definite pleasure to take Tug One from Afyon with Captain Stabb and his crew of Antimancos. The ship—Heller had named it the Prince Caucalsia—had been sitting dormant while Heller was in the United States. I figured it was only fitting that I visit his corpse in the very ship that he used to bring us to Earth. After all, that was when my troubles started. I told the assassin pilots that they didn't have to worry—we weren't trying to escape the planet. (I never figured out who started that idea, but it is the sort of thing Lombar Hisst, as the head of the Apparatus, would have done.)

And speaking of assassins, it was a relief not to have to worry anymore about the one that Lombar had assigned to kill me if I fouled up.

My plan was simple. We would go to Co

And so it was as I kissed my dear Utanc good-bye.

We crossed the world to Co

"There ought to be more like you, Gris," said Captain Stabb as we stood behind the pilots in the hurtling craft. "Just because we once stole a Fleet vessel and went pirating, them (bleeped) Royal officers done us in—us, some of the best subofficers they ever had. They tried us and sentenced us to death and if it weren't for the

The vocodictoscriber on which this was originally written, the vocoscriber used by one Monte Pe

likes of you and Lombar Hisst stealing us out of prison, we'd be dead today. Oh, don't think we're not grateful, Officer Gris. When we pick up these diamonds, we'll rob the planet blind for you! Torture, rape and sudden death, that's our motto."

He made me a little bit nervous with his black, beady eyes and pointed head. I fingered the star I had on a chain. Each point of it was designated for one member of this crew. Pushed one direction, a point produced an electric shock in the fellow; pushed the other way it threw him into a hypnotic trance. The top point controlled Captain Stabb. I had not had to use it yet on any of them, but as he poured his evil breath upon me I was glad I had it. He made me a trifle nervous, even though I conceded his compliments were all too well deserved by me.

Tug One, that Heller had named Prince Caucalsia, ran smoothly despite her long idleness. I wished I could get back into her posh quarters, laid out for an admiral of the tug force. They were full of gold and silver fittings, vases and the like, and some of the switches even had precious stones on them. But those doors and even her cargo hatches would only work to Heller's voice tones. Of course we had found a way to get down into the hold through her engine room but I supposed that was empty now. Actually, Tug One made me nervous. She was built for runs between galaxies and had the engines used for that. Pushing such a small ship, these gigantic Will-be Was time-converter engines thrust her at a clip 10.5 times faster than any other vessels ever built. And Tug Two had exploded in midspace, lost with all her crew, because of accumulated charge gathered in crossing lines of force too fast, it was said. We weren't ru

"Bridgeport over there," said a pilot. "That's Norwalk dead ahead. Our navigation is dead on." He laughed. "Can I spit in the Royal officer's face if the corpse is still there?"

"Spit away," I said. But I still hadn't felt the joy I should have over Heller being dead.

"Aren't we awfully low?" I said.

"Their radar can't touch us," said Captain Stabb. "Absorbo-coat. We could fly in at thirty thousand and we're at seventy."

The pilot was braking. The antiacceleration and gravity coils in the ship worked so smoothly I didn't even realize it until I saw the lights in the scenery below slowing down. We dropped lower: forty, twenty, ten, five thousand feet. An engineer startled me by opening the doors of the airlock. Captain Stabb answered my startled stare. "Your radio waves can't get through this hull. Call up your man and see if it's all clear."

"Agent Raht," I said into the radio.

"Oh, thank Gods you've come!" Raht's voice sounded weak. "I fell at the bottom of the steps. I've lost so much blood I can't move."

"The Hells with your blood," I said. "Is the area all clear or do we blueflash?"

"Oh, please don't blueflash! I might never again regain consciousness! There's nobody around. Land quickly and save my life."

Stabb had heard it. He made a hand signal to the pilot. Tug One dropped rapidly. The image of the old gangster roadhouse was dim on our screens. The maples and evergreen trees around it were giving off more reflection.

They banged the ship down in the flat place about a hundred yards from the front door. It was very dark. Crickets were making an eerie sound. A bullfrog made a snoring noise in the creek. Fireflies were winking here and there. The smell of Co