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The motion sickness, the sonic aftereffects, the poisoned air he'd breathed, the pressure changes--they gripped him hard, and he wanted to die. Then, by stages, they began to let go. Nobody found him there. A house was nearby, but it had a vacant look. After some time Matt sat up and took stock of himself. His throat hurt. There was a strange, unpleasant taste in his mouth.
He was still on Alpha Plateau. Only crew would go to the trouble of building walls along a void edge. So he was committed. Without a car he could no more leave Alpha Plateau than he could have arrived there in the first place. But the house was architectural coral. Bigger than anything he was used to, it was still coral. Which meant that it should have been deserted about forty years.
He'd have to risk it. He needed cover. There were no trees nearby, and trees were dangerous to hide in; they would probably be fruit trees, and someone might come. apple-picking. Matt got up and moved toward the house.
CHAPTER 4
THE QUESTION MAN
THE Hospital was the control nexus of a world. It was not a large world, and the settled region totaled a mere 20,000 square miles; but that region needed a lot of control. It also required considerable electricity, enormous quantities of water to be moved up from the Long Fall River, and a deal of medical attention. The Hospital was big and complex and diversified. Two fifty-six-man spacecraft were its east and west corners. Since the spacecraft were hollow cylinders with the airlocks opening to the inside (to the Attic, as that i
So the young man in Jesus Pietro's office had no idea where he was. Even if he'd managed to leave the office unguarded, he'd have been hopelessly lost. And he knew it. That was all to the good.
"You were on the dead-man switch," said Jesus Pietro.
The man nodded. His sandy hair was cut in the old Belter style, copied from the even older Mohawk. There were shadows under his eyes as if from lack of sleep, and the lie was borne out by a slump of utter depression, though he had been sleeping since his capture in Harry Kane's basement.
"You funked it," Jesus Pietro accused. "You arranged to fall across the switch so that it wouldn't go off."
The man looked up. Naked rage was in his face. He made no move, for there was nothing he could do.
"Don't be ashamed. The dead-man switch is an old trick. It almost never gets used in practice. The man in charge is too likely to change his mind at the last second. It's a--'
"I fully expected to wake up dead!" the man shouted.
"--natural reaction. It takes a psychotic to commit suicide. No, don't tell me all about it. I'm not interested. I want to hear about the car in your basement."
"You think I'm a coward, do you?"
"That's an ugly word."
"I stole that car."
"Did you?" The skeptical tone was genuine. Jesus Pietro did not believe him. "Then perhaps you can tell me why the theft went u
The man told him. He talked eagerly, demanding that Jesus Pietro recognize his courage. Why not? There was nobody left to betray. He would live as long as Jesus Pietro Castro was interested in him, and for three minutes longer. The organ bank operating room was three minutes walk away. Jesus Pietro listened politely. Yes, he remembered the car that had tauntingly circled the Plateau for five days. The young crew owner had given him hell for letting it happen. The man had even suggested--demanded--that one of Castro's men drop on the car from above, climb into the cockpit, and bring it back. Jesus Pietro's patience had given out, and he had risked his life by politely offering to help the young man perform the feat.
"So we buried it at the same time we built the basement," the prisoner finished. "Then we let the house grow over it. We had great plans." He sagged into his former position of despair but went on talking, mumbling. "There were gun mounts. Bins for bombs. We stole a sonic stu
"The car was used."
"What?"
"This afternoon. Keller escaped us last night. He returned to Kane's home this morning, took the car and flew it nearly to the Hospital before we stopped him. The Mist Demons know what he thought he was doing."
"Great! 'The last flight of-We never got around to naming it. Our air force. Our glorious air force. Who did you say?"
"Keller. Matthew Leigh Keller."
"I don't know him. What would he be doing with my car?"
"Don't play games. You are not protecting anyone. We drove him off the edge. Five ten, age twenty-one, hair brown, eyes blue--"
"I tell you I never met him."
"Good-by." Jesus Pietro pushed a button under his desk. The door opened.
"Wait a minute. Now, wait--"
Lying, Jesus Pietro thought, after the man was gone. Probably lied about the car too. Somewhere in the vivarium the man who really took the car waited to be questioned. If it was stolen. It could equally well have been supplied by a crew member, by Jesus Pietro's hypothetical traitor.
He had often wondered why the crew would not supply him with truth drugs. They would have been easy to manufacture from instructions in the ship's libraries. Millard Parlette, in a mellow mood, had once tried to explain. "We own their bodies," he had said. "We take them apart on the slightest pretext; and if they manage to die a natural death, we get them anyway, what we can save. Aren't the poor bastards at least entitled to the privacy of their own minds?"
It seemed a peculiar bleeding-heart attitude, coming from a man whose very life depended on the organ banks. But others apparently felt the same. If Jesus Pietro wanted his questions answered, he must depend on his own empirical brand of psychology.
Polly Tournquist. Age: twenty. Height: five one. Weight: ninety-five. She wore a crumpled party dress in the colonist style. In Jesus Pietro's eyes it did nothing for her. She was small and brown, and compared to most of the women Jesus Pietro met socially, muscular. They were work muscles, not te
Had she been raised as crew girls were raised, had she access to cosmetics available on Alpha Plateau, she would have known how to be beautiful. Then she wouldn't have been bad at all, once the callus left her hands and cosmetic treatment smoothed her skin. But, like most colonists, she had aged faster than a crew.
She was only a young colonist girl, like a thousand other young colonist girls Jesus Pietro had seen.
She bore his silent stare for a full minute before she snapped, "Well?"
"Well? You're Polly Tournquist, aren't you?"
"Of course."
"You had a handful of films on you when you were picked up last night. How did you get them?"
"I prefer not to say."
"Eventually I think you will. Meanwhile, what would you like to talk about?"
Polly looked bewildered. "Are you serious?"
"I am serious. I've interviewed six people today. The organ banks are full and the day is ending. I'm in no hurry. Do you know what those films of yours imply?"