The Invaders Plan

The deal was finished. The laborers left. And the dolly sat fifty feet away from the airbus. But an airbus can't get up to the loading platform and still open its doors. I called Ske. I pointed.

He started to lift one of the boxes and then stopped to give me an awful look. I gestured impatiently.

It was warm and it was dusty. Nevertheless, a sweating Ske soon had nine boxes sitting on the floor of the airbus.

I lifted a lordly finger. "To the Apparatus hangar, my man." And he got in and the airbus rose lumberingly, staggering into the sky.

Ske was snarling to himself and the airbus was lurching about. This was silly since the load it carried was only a hair above the full-rated passenger load.

The bouncing around made it a bit hard to do, but I got out the spare Zanco labels and began to affix them, one to the case. They were the immersion type label: when you put them on, they sink into the material of the case and nothing can remove them. The labels said: DANGER HEALTH HAZARD RADIOACTIVE CELLOLOGICAL ELEMENTS THE ZANCO COMPANY IS NOT RESPONSIBLE FOR SERIOUS BURNS OR DEATH RESULTING FROM OPENING THIS CASE Bright red. Delightful! They would glow even in the dark!

And as the somewhat dusty airbus lurched through the sky, I did some glowing of my own.

Nine hundred pounds of gold was ten thousand, eight hundred ounces, Troy.

On Blito-P3, the current average price of gold was a minimum of six hundred dollars American an ounce, to say nothing of what it brought on the black market or in Hong Kong.

This meant that one Soltan Gris would have six million, four hundred and eighty thousand personal dollars American to play around with. This was so ample I didn't even bother to adjust it for gravity differences. What was a million, more or less?

That would buy an awful lot of Turkish dancing girls.

It would also buy, if I was pushed to use it, an awful lot of Hells for Heller. I giggled because the words are similar in English.

Not only a clever Gris, not only a rich Gris, but a lofty, millionaire, tycoon, fat-cat Gris was not just unbeatable. He was inexorable!

"This ain't no truck!" snarled Ske, narrowly averting a nose-dive crash.

I ignored him. Power, power, who saith it doth not have a sweet taste? I was spending it in English already. And in my imagination, Heller, a ragged, shabby and starving, panhandling bum, approached on the street and begged me for a quarter and I pulled the sleeve of my tailored jacket out of his bony, clutching fingers and slammed the door of my limousine in his tear-streaked face.

Chapter 2

At the Apparatus hangar everything was well. Ske crunched down on the landing target, went into ground mode and rolled off to the side.

From where I sat, I could see Tug Onecontinuing to boil. The back fin was finished. They were doing something to the whole outside hull. In addition to other crews on other jobs, over a hundred contractor men, in bright yellow cover suits were working with bright yellow spray which instantly went black when it hit the plating.

I knew what this was: Heller was redoing the original Fleet absorbo-coat. You could see the difference between the old coating and the new. The old coating was a tiny bit gray; the new coating was so black it was almost not there. Absorbo-coat takes all incoming waves and simply drinks them up; absolutely noenergy gets reflected, visible or invisible. Not the most searching beams or screens can get a bounce off of it. The vessel becomes completely undetectable unless it blocks off a light behind it like a star. It will defeat any modern surveillance system.

I smiled when I thought of going to all that work just to baffle the primitive detection systems of Blito-P3. Even a shabby, old, chipped Apparatus vessel could do it. And then I felt less cheerful: all this absorption would multiply the dangers of Tug Oneblowing up. She would shed nothing!Screaming through space, picking up fields and light . . . I looked away quickly to get my mind off it.

Ah, something more cheerful! The Blixo!The Blixowas just clearing in! My luck was really holding!

One of the several Blito-P3 run freighters, the Blixowas no better or worse. These are small freighters, only about two hundred and fifty feet long. They are rather ski

I motioned to Ske and he ground-drove over – a half a mile was too far to walk in my exalted state.

She had settled into her gantry within the last half hour and the huge trundle dolly had finished taking her into the hangar and lowering her to the floor. It was now pulling back out.

But that wasn't all that was begi

A convoy of armored flying lorries was standing by in a short column. They were one by one inching ahead. The Blixowas discharging her priceless cargo under the cover of screens.

The first lorry, all buttoned up after loading, drew out and stood waiting. When joined by the loaded remainder, they would go roaring off across the desert, advertisedly to Camp Endurance, actually all the way through to Spiteos. The vast storage spaces of the antique fortress would be getting filled up. Just a small amount as yet, but as the months went on, it would be appreciable. Lombar would be in jumping glee to see these lorry loads roll in.

Half a regiment of Apparatus guards were standing about to keep the area secure. It wasn't very important to them. They were leaning haphazardly on their blast-rifles, talking to one another about some prostitute or some dice game.

It wouldn't take them long to discharge this priceless cargo. I sat and waited and at length, all the flying lorries were full and the convoy drove over to the nearby landing target and one after the other, they lumbered into the sky. The chain of them thundered off toward Camp Endurance.

I nudged Ske and we drove up near the guard commander and I flashed my identoplate. An orderly near him took its reflection on his board and we went through the security screens and stopped at the airlock ladder.

Actually, it was by my authority as head of Section 451 that these freighters came and went. But you wouldn't have thought it by the attitude of the spacer by the airlock ladder. He was plainly anxious to get off and go into town and have himself a binge.

"Tell Captain Bolz that Officer Gris is here," I said.

"Tell him yourself," said the spacer. They are always a bit surly when they come in from a run.

But we didn't have time for me to administer proper discipline. I was just getting out of the airbus when there was a row in the airlock.

Three big Apparatus guards, apparently sent from Spiteos for the purpose, were pushing and hauling at a debarking passenger – captive is the better word.

There was nothing unusual in this and I was stepping aside to let them brawl their way down the ladder when my alert ear caught what the captive was saying.

"Take your God (bleeped) hands off my God (bleeped) neck and get these God (bleeped) cuffs off my God (bleeped) wrists!" It was in English! Not Turkish or Arabic. But English!

The individual was a bit of a mess, very dishevelled and much the worse for wear from his voyage. He was squat, very muscular. He had black hair and black eyes and a swarthy complexion. He had on the remains of a tailored suit and a blue shirt with black stripes. But that wasn't the oddity. He was in metal, not electric cuffs and he had no ankle shackles. Further, he was not comatose, but awake and talking and tough! All very irregular.