Protector

She said, “Tell me more about the Vandervecken case.”

“Not much more to tell. I wish I could forget about it.” It hadn’t been out of his mind in more than a month. He’d been robbed.

“Did you go to the police right away?”

“No.”

“That’s what I remembered. The Snatcher picks his victims from the main Belt, holds them for four months or so, then bribes them. Most of the time the bribe is big enough. I suppose it wasn’t in your case.”

“Almost.” He was not going to tell a stranger about Greatly ’Stelle. “But if most of them take the bribes, how do you find out about them?”

“Well, it’s not that easy to hide a disappearing ship. Mostly the ships disappear from the main Belt, then reappear four months on in their orbits. But if telescopes don’t find them during the four months, someone may ask questions.”

They poured the remnants of eggs out of their frictionless cups and filled them with coffee powder and boiling water.

“There are several cases of this kind, and they’re all unsolved,” she said. “Some Belters think it’s the Outsider, taking samples.”

“Outsider?”

“The first alien humanity will ever meet.”

“Like the Sea Statue? Or that alien that landed on Mars during—”

“No, no,” she said impatiently. “The Sea Statue was dug up on Earth’s own continental shelf. It was there for over a billion years. As for the Pak, it was a branch of humanity, as far as anyone can tell. No, we’re still waiting for the real Outsider.”

“And you think he’s taking samples to see if we’re ready for civilization. When we are, he’ll come.”

“I haven’t said I believed it myself.”

“Do you?”

“I don’t know. I thought it was a charming story, and a little scary. It never occurred to me that he might be sampling flatlanders too.”

He laughed. “Thanks.”

“No offense.”

“I go to Brasilia from here,” he said. It was not quite an offer.

“I rest up. One day on, one day off. I’m strong for a Belter, but I cant just keep going day after day.” She hesitated. “That’s why I don’t travel with anyone. I’ve had offers, but I’d hate to think I was slowing someone down.”

“I see.”

She got up. So did Truesdale. He had the impression that she towered over him, but that was illusion.

He said, “Where are you stationed? Ceres?”

“Vesta. ’Bye.”

“’Bye.”

He trekked Brasilia and Sao Paulo and Rio de Janiero. He saw Chichen Itza and grooved on Peruvian cooking. He came to Washington, D.C., with the theft of four months of his life still itching in his brain.

The center of Washington was under a weather dome. They wouldn’t let him in with a backpack. Washington was a business city: it governed a respectable section of the planet Earth.

He went directly to the Smithsonian Institution.

The Sea Statue was a mirror-surfaced, not quite humanoid figure. It stood on its great splayed feet with both three-fingered hands upraised as against a threat. Despite the ages it had lain at the bottom of the sea, it showed no signs of corrosion. It looked like the product of some advanced civilization… and it was; it was a pressure suit with emergency stasis field facilities, and the thing inside was very dangerous. Once it had gotten loose.

The Pak was an ancient, tired mummy. Its face was hard and inhuman, expressionless. Its head was twisted at an odd angle, and its arms were lax at its sides, unraised against what had crushed its throat. Truesdale read its story in the guidebook, and felt pity. It had come so far to save us all…

So: there were things out there. The universe was deep enough to hold all ma

No, there was more. Itchy questions: why go to Earth for flatlanders? Couples of sufficient wealth spent their honeymoons on Titan, beneath the huge ringed wonder of Saturn. Surely it would be easy to hijack a honeymoon special. And why pick Belters from the main Belt? Enough of them still went out to mine the outer reaches.

He had a glimmering then, but it wouldn’t come clear. He filed it away…

There was a trek, along the Mississippi, and some climbing in the Rockies. He broke his leg there and had to be flown to a nearby arcology city built into a jagged canyon. A doctor set his leg and used regrowth treatments. Afterward he flew home. He’d had enough.

The San Diego Police had no new information on Lawrence St. John McGee. They were used to seeing Truesdale, and in fact were getting a little tired of him. It was becoming clear to Truesdale that they did not ever expect to find McGee and Truesdale’s money.

“He had more than enough to buy a face and fingertip transplant,” an officer had told him once. Now they just made soothing noises, and waited until he went away. It had been a year since he last dropped in.

Truesdale went to ARM Headquarters. He took a taxi rather than a slidewalk; his leg still hurt him.

“We’re working on it,” Robinson told him. “A case this strange doesn’t get forgotten. In fact — well, never mind.”

“What?”

The ARM gri

“Sure. I was there, a month and a half ago.”

“Aren’t they amazing? Some clown put up that duplicate in a single night. Next morning there were two Stonehenges. You can’t tell the difference except by position: the duplicate is a few hundred yards further north. There are even the same initials carved in the duplicate.”

Truesdale was nodding. “I know. That’s got to be the most expensive practical joke ever pulled.”

“We don’t really know which is the real Stonehenge, either. Suppose the joker moved both Stonghenges? He had the power to move all the rocks in the duplicate. All he had to do was move the rocks in the real Stonehenge and put the duplicate in its place.”

“Don’t tell anyone.”

The ARM laughed.

“Did you get anything from the Belt?”

Robinson lost his smile. “Yah. Half a dozen known cases, kidnapping and amnesia, and all unsolved. I still think we’re looking for a struldbrug.”

All unsolved. It boded ill for Truesdale’s case.

“An old struldbrug,” said the ARM. “Someone who was already old enough a hundred and twenty years ago, to think he’d learned enough to solve the problems of humanity. Or maybe to write a definitive book on human progress. So he started taking samples.”

“And he’s still at it?”

“Or a grandson took over the business.” Robinson sighed. “Don’t worry about it. Well get him.”

“Sure. You’ve only had a hundred and twenty years.”

“Don’t noodge,” said Robinson.

And that did it.

The center of goldskin police activity was the center of government: Ceres. Police headquarters on Pallas, Juno, Vesta, and Astraea were redundant, in a sense, but very necessary. Five asteroids would cover the main Belt. It had happened that they were all on the same side of the sun at the same time; but it was rare.

Vesta was the smallest of the five. Her cities were on the surface, under four big double domes.

Thrice in history a dome had been holed. It was not the kind of event that would be forgotten. All of Vesta’s buildings were pressure-tight. Several had airlock tubes that led out through the dome.

Alice Jordan entered the Waring City police airlock after a routine smuggler patrol. There were two chambers, and then a hallway lined with pressure suits. She doffed her own suit and hung it. The chest bore a flourescent she-dragon, breathing fire.