The Invaders Plan

"You might not like the contract," I quavered. I handed it over.

He snapped it out of my hand so fast it almost tore. I knew what it said. I had just typed it.

SECRET HUMANITARIAN SECTION GOVERNMENT OF VOLTAR KNOW ALL: As of this date, one PRAHD BITTLESTIFFENDER, Graduate Cellologist, is appointed CHIEF CELLOLOGIST to Sensitive Secret Station X.

His salary shall be FIVE THOUSAND CREDITS (C5,000) per year with all expenses paid.

After the successful completion of a test case, upon the outcome of which this contract is contingent, he shall thereafter proceed as ordered to the place ordered to perform the duties which will be ordered.

Signed: __________________ Authenticated: _____________ "Oh," he cried, scarcely daring to say more.

"Sign on the line there," I said. I gave him a pen and he raced over to his rickety desk and signed it. He found and stamped his identoplate on it.

I held out my hand and he reluctantly gave the contract back. I took the Professor Gyrant Slahb identoplate and put it on the "authenticated" line.

"Now there are some other things," I said. "I want you to make up two lists. The first is everything you will need to outfit a small, temporary hospital for one operation. The other is everything you will need for a small but complete hospital in a remote location that has no equipment, no supplies." Oh, there was nothing complex about that. He scribbled and scribbled. I will say this: he knew his business to a point where he didn't have to refer to a single text.

Finally, he was done and gave me the lists.

"Now," I said, "the person who will be in charge of you, the person whose orders you must follow, is named Officer Soltan Gris of the General Services. You must require that he show you his identoplate so you can be sure it is he as this is very secret work. He will approach you. You are not to contact him.

"Close up all of your affairs. Tell everyone that you are leaving for the back country of Flisten to work with a native tribe. Handle it so that you get no mail and need receive none.

"Then go to this address and wait. There is a charming lady there who will be happy to see you." Indeed she would be. She would also feed him up so he could last longer in bed!

"Some equipment is there," I continued. "But more will be sent. Officer Gris will show up with the test patient. Now I must warn you that Gris is a good enough fellow but in secret work he is an exacting taskmaster. He knows everything. In the service it is said he can even read minds. He is an absolute genius. If he finds that you have leaked anything at all about anything – even to the test patient – I fear he will be furious. He will be the one who gives you the copy of this contract. And he will do it only if you pass your test case. Understand now?" Oh, he understood.

"Well, you just remember," and I almost forgot to quaver, "that your whole employment continuance depends on you obeying Officer Gris and no one else." I softened my tone. "Actually he is a prince at heart. If you make him your friend, if you simply devote yourself utterly to satisfying his every slightest wish, you are fixed for life. He is a secret power in the government. One of their most brilliant assets." I realized I was getting carried away.

I got up. I tottered to the door. "Oh," I said, "one tiny favor more. Do you have an old coat, something you would not miss? It is terribly chilly this evening and I am nearly frozen." He tore the place apart. He found an ancient overcoat full of holes. It had his name inside the collar. He helped me put it over my shivering shoulders.

"I am so grateful," I said. "I shall see that it is returned."

"Oh, keep it, keep it!" he cried. He was rich beyond dreams. He could afford a whole wardrobe!

Actually, the Widow Tayl would probably give him some of her murdered husband's clothes. He was really set. For the moment.

He helped me totter down the exit steps and left me to wend my way through the garbage. Upstairs I could hear him whooping exultantly. And then I heard the shatter and bash of the breaking of already broken furniture. It was his celebrant idea of packing up and settling his affairs.

As I neared the airbus, I sensed somebody was observing me intently from around a pile of garbage but when I looked, the person ducked out of sight. It was nonsense, of course, that anybody would recognize me. I shrugged it off – just some thief being hopeful.

I flew back to the office where, using the handwriting on the lists, I could forge Prahd's suicide note and leave it and his false identoplate and old coat beside the River Wiel in a few days, to be found when he was safely gone to Blito-P3. Doctor Prahd Bittlestiffender was about to vanish forever from the Voltar Confederacy. The idiot. There is no "Secret Humanitarian Section." Nor any humanitarian actions either in this Empire. Wonderful what people will believe when they want to believe hard enough. Far be it from me to pay out five thousand credits a year for anything!

Chapter 10

In the morning, I stopped by the hangar to estimate the situation.

I had no doubts whatever about my pla

The top plates on the tug's back had long since been replaced. Now the cranes had a long fin, like the kind you see on the backs of fish, that was being lowered.

Heller was up there directing the positioning and it was going very fast!In no time at all, they had it where he wanted it and workmen were swarming over it to fasten it while he came swinging down on the crane hook. He saw me and bounced off.

He had a sheaf of papers in his back pocket. He pushed them at me. "These are completed jobs," he said. He was talking in a hurried way, quite unlike him. "I've inspected them all. The costs are correct, the work has been tested. Please stamp them with your identoplate . . . right there under the project number on each." He had magically produced a board to lay them on.

I stamped away. "How about that tendency of these Will-be Was engines to blow up," I said. "You handled that?" He didn't seem to remember anything co

It was the Fleet Intelligence officer that had checked my documents after the club fight! There it was, right on his lapel, Fleet Intelligence They shook hands. Heller said, with a happy eagerness, "You got them!" The orderly held up the two cases, gri

"I have to have your promise these don't fall into civilian hands," said his friend from Fleet Intelligence. He was extending a slip to sign. "They're amusing, you know. I hadn't ever heard of them until you called. I only knew of the big, clumsy, fixed time sights they use on battleships." Heller took each one out of its case to see if it was operational. He was gri

"I won't ask to see the ship," said Fleet Intelligence. "It looks like you're full throttle!"

"We are that!" said Heller. "Working on zero time margin! I really owe you, Bis." They shook hands again and Heller rushed off with the cases. He shouted an order to some contractor and then plunged into the ship. He came out in a moment without the cases and went hurtling off to speed up a contractor crew that was already boiling five times as fast as anyone could expect.