The Invaders Plan

Chapter 3

About noon, wiping his hands on a bloodstained disposable coat, Doctor Prahd Bittlestiffender came out of the hospital. But he did not come over to where I sat at the pool. He went walking along one of the curving rock paths that wound artfully under the blooming trees.

Well, I thought, he just wants to stretch. He hadn't been two hours on that operation; he had been more than three and a half! Long-legged and a bit too tall, he went ambling along on a zigzag sort of course, looking down. Maybe the operation had been a failure, maybe he'd put an electric knife in too deep and killed Heller: an intriguing thought. As I considered it, it seemed to have more and more merit.

Coming back along the path, the young doctor suddenly stooped over and picked something up. Then he went over to where a naked wood nymph posed erotically in stone. He took a small hammer from an inside pocket and started hammering something against the wood nymph's metal base. What in Hells was he up to? Trying to bring the wood nymph to life by rhythmic pounding? We had one too many nymphs around here already!

At last he began to wander over toward me again. He took a little spin drill and a pair of tweezers out of his inside pocket and was holding something and buffing it, wandering closer, humming. The spin drill was going screech, screech, screech; very hard on the nerves.

Near my chair, he stopped. He put the spin drill away and got out a vial of blood. With the tweezers, he immersed something in the blood and then put the vial away. What in Hells kind of hocus-pocus was this? He had me on tenterhooks to find out what had happened in the operation.

He took out a small, gold-plated, circular box. It looked like one of those which females carry perfume pats in. Then I realized it was probably part of the Zanco delivery. Firms specialize in fancy little cases that they hand out to doctors as presents for female patients: sure enough, it had an engraved Zancoon the cover.

Young Doctor Prahd popped it open and with great care, laid whatever he held in his tweezers into it, puffed up the interior padding and wiped the blood off the tweezers on it.

He held it out to me very proudly. He was like some long-legged cub animal, waiting for somebody to say, "Good barker," and give it a pat on the muzzle. There was a microscopic bit of stone lying amidst the bloodstains.

"The piece of the arrowhead," said young Doctor Prahd.

"You didn't get this out of his head. I saw you pick it up, right over there." Then suddenly it dawned on me what he was doing. Hey, there was hope for this boy. He was going to give it to Heller as the convincer. But I had no idea of letting this young fool get a good opinion of himself. Compliments are the destroyer of the race: they end striving. He could slide right out from under my thumb! I dismissed the box with a wave of my hand. "It took you long enough." I glanced at my watch. "Two hours is not three hours and forty-five minutes." He looked a little crestfallen. "Well, you see, I didn't have the patient yesterday. I could have taken the basic cells then. I had to take cells of his dermis and epidermis as well as his bone. It took half an hour to get them into a sterile base and catalyze them so as to get cell supplies to use.

"Somebody had given him one of those crude vaccinations as a child and that had to be repaired so there was no scar. Then, besides the white scar in his shoulder, I had to repair an area of blastgun burn on his back.

"Then he'd caught a finger sometime or other and the nail was slightly crooked and I had not prepared nail cells so I had to get a catalyst growth tube going for those He was driving me up the tree with all this. "Come on, come on, what about the respondo-mitter and the audio-respondo-mitter?"

"Well, there really had been a small crack in the front bone. Those Fleet doctors are not careful enough. It had regrown by itself with no professional attention. It had filled itself with soft bone tissue and that all had to be scraped out. He must be from Manco. Their bones are quite hard and tough. I blunted a drill . . . ." He must have seen my impatience. He rushed on. "It made a perfect cavity for the two items. And, of course, they had to be treated and the bone cells conditioned so as not to reject them. They have tiny microscopic ante

"What about that sore place he had on his eyebrow?" I demanded, thinking he might have put them into a tender spot that would require a later operation that would discover the two bugs.

He seemed puzzled. Then he remembered. "Oh, there was no tender spot. That was my fingernail." He saw how impatient I was getting. He rushed on. "They are in there, they will never be detected. The scars are all gone. I think I passed my test very well." I snorted. "There was a young trainee my uncle ..."

"I thought Professor Slahb was your great-uncle?"

"I also have an uncle that's a cellologist," I said determinedly. "This young trainee was supposed to stay around and finish his contract." I was talking because he was in very elegant circumstances here. I didn't want anyone to put any ideas in his head. "But he met a young widow who was rich and he knocked right off his contract, violated all his promises and went on living with her right there!" He shook his head. "Oh, if you mean Pratia . . ." That clinched it. Pratia was the Widow Tayl's girl-name. Clearly they had gotten way into a relationship to be on a first-name basis. "So if you think I am going to pass you now, you are mistaken! I do not know if the operation works. Further, I do not know if you will talk to anyone and give away secrets. And you have no right to stand there and demand your contract be handed over. You will get that contract when you report to me on Bli . . . at your duty station. I will be there before you." He looked like he was going to stutter. It's a very good sign.

"So I have some instructions for you. Sit down!" He swallowed hard and sat down.

I had brought from the airbus a small case. "Here are three languages. They apply to your post. One is Turkish.Another is English.The other is Italian.There are books, dictionaries and a player machine in this case. Starting here and all during your six weeks voyage, you will study like mad. You will land on Bl . . . at your duty station, speaking, reading and writing English, Turkish and Italian. If you pass on this case as to workability and arrive knowing these languages, and if you have not violated secrecy – and believe me, I am having you watched every minute by unseen eyes – I will then consider handing over your contract. Do you understand this?"

"T . . . Turkish? It . . . it . . . whatever. Are these civilized languages? I have never heard of them!"

"Primitive tongues. Another galaxy. Do you understand?"

"Y . . . y . . . yes."

"Ten days from today, at ten o'clock in the morning, Zanco will send a lorry for all this equipment. They know exactly where to deliver it. They have a pass for that place." I had verified with the captain of the Blixohis exact blastoff time. I had spoken to him about all arrangements.

"Zanco," I continued, "will bring an empty case for the operating table and put that one in it."

"B . . . b . . . but it has a case! A long box."

"Exactly." I was taking no chances of the Widow Tayl detaining him. "You are going to bore holes in the ends and fix it to lock from within. When Zanco comes, you pretend to be showing them what to take. And you doshow them and you doget that operating table packed in the case they will bring. And then you will jump into that empty case and lock it from the inside and they will deliver you to the ship." He gaped. But it was a master stroke. He'd get loose from Tayl. Nobody would see him go aboard. I like things neat.