He spent the following day watching the Sol ship, and waiting fatalistically for the police to come and question him about the Solarian’s death. But the police failed to come. A check with the news agencies revealed that the man’s body had not even been found. Roki was puzzled. He had left the giant lying in plain sight where he had fallen. At noon, the Solarian crew came bearing several lead cases slung from the centers of carrying poles. They wore metal gauntlets and handled the cases cautiously. Roki knew they contained radioactive materials. So that was what they purchased with their surgibank supplies—nuclear fuels.
Toward nightfall, they loaded two large crates aboard. He noted the shape of the crates, and decided that one of them contained the body of the man he had killed. Why didn’t they want the police to know? Was it possible that they wanted him free to follow them?
The Sol-ship blasted-off during the night. He was surprised to find it gone, and himself still unmolested by morning. Wandering around the spaceport, be saw WeJan, but the man had developed a sudden lapse of memory. He failed to recognize the Cophian visitor. With the Solarians gone, Roki grew bolder in his questioning.
“How often do the Solarians visit you?” he inquired of a desk clerk at Administration.
“Whenever a hospital places an order, sir. Not often. Every six months perhaps.”
“That’s all the traffic they have with Tragor?”
“Yes, sir. This is our only interstellar port.”
“Do the supplies pass through your government channels?”
The clerk looked around nervously. “Uh, no sir. They refuse to deal through our government. They contact their customers directly. The government lets them because the supplies are badly needed.”
Roki stabbed out bluntly. “What do you think of the Solarians?”
The clerk looked blank for a moment, then chuckled. “I don’t know, myself. But if you want a low opinion, ask at the spaceport cafe.”
“Why? Do they cause trouble there?”
“No, sir. They bring their own lunches, so to speak. They eat and sleep aboard ship, and won’t spend a thin galak around town.”
Roki turned away and went back to the Idiot. Somewhere in his mind, an idea was refusing to let itself be believed. A mercy ship visited Tragor every six months. Roki had seen the scattered, ruined cargo of such a ship, and he had estimated it at about four thousand pints of blood, six thousand pounds of frozen bone, and seven thousand pounds of various replaceable organs and tissues. That tonnage in itself was not so startling, but if Sol III supplied an equal amount twice annually to even a third of the twenty-eight thousand civilized worlds in the galaxy, a numbing question arose: where did they get their raw material? Surgibank supplies were normally obtained by contributions from accident victims who lived long enough to voluntarily contribute their undamaged organs to a good cause.
Charitable organizations tried to secure pledges from men in dangerous jobs, donating their bodies to the planet’s surgibank in the event of death. But no man felt easy about signing over his kidneys or his liver to the bank, and such recruiters were less popular than hangmen or life insurance agents. Mercy supplies were quite understandably scarce.
The grim question lingered in Roki’s mind: where did the Sol III traders find between three and five million healthy accident victims annually? Perhaps they made the accidents themselves, accidents very similar to those occurring at the end of the chute in the slaughterhouse. He shook his head, refusing to believe it. No planet’s population, however terrorized by its rulers, could endure such a thing without generating a sociological explosion that would make the world quiver in its orbit. There was a limit to the endurance of tyranny.
He spent the rest of the week asking innocent questions here and there about the city. He learned nearly nothing. The Solarians came bearing their peculiar cargo, sold it quickly at a good price, purchased fissionable materials, and blasted-off without a civil word to anyone. Most men seemed nervous in their presence, perhaps because of their bulk and their native arrogance.
When the base personnel finished installing the synchronizers, he decided the time had come to secure Daleth Incorporated from the local jail. Sometimes he had chided himself for leaving her there after the Solarians had blasted-off, but it seemed to be the best place to keep the willful wench out of trouble. Belatedly, as he rode toward the police station, he wondered what sort of mayhem she would attempt to commit on his person for leaving her to fume in a cell. His smile was rueful as he marched in to pay her fine. The man behind the desk frowned sharply.
“Who did you say?” he grunted.
“The foreign woman from the Dalethian Ship.”
The officer studied his records. “Ah, yes—Talewa Walkeka the name?”
Roki realized he didn’t know her name. She was still Daleth Incorporated. “From the Daleth Ship,” he insisted.
“Yes. Talewa Walkeka—she was released into the custody of Eli Roki on twoday of last spaceweek.”
“That’s imposs—” Roki choked and whitened. “I am Eli Roki. Was the man a Solarian?”
“I don’t recall.”
“Why don’t you? Didn’t you ask him for identification?”
“Stop bellowing, please,” said the official coldly. “And get your fists off my desk.”
The Cophian closed his eyes and tried to control himself. “Who is responsible for this?”
The officer failed to answer.
“You are responsible!”
“I cannot look out for all the problems of all the foreigners who—”
“Stop! You have let her die.”
“She is only a female.”
Roki straightened. “Meet me at any secluded place of your choice and I will kill you with any weapon of your choice.”
The official eyed him coldly, then turned to call over his shoulder. “Sergeant, escort this barbarian to his ship and see that he remains aboard for the rest of his visit.”
The Cophian went peacefully, realizing that violence would gain him nothing but the iron hospitality of a cell. Besides, he had only himself to blame for leaving her there. It was obvious to him now—the contents of the second crate the Solarians had carried aboard consisted of Talewa Walkeka, lately of Daleth and high-C. Undoubtedly they had taken her alive. Undoubtedly she was additional bait to bring him on to Sol. Why did they want him to come? I’ll oblige them and find out for myself, he thought.
The ship was ready. The bill would be sent back to Beth. He signed the papers, and blasted off as soon as possible. The lonely old freighter crept upward into the fifth component like a struggling old vulture, too ancient to leave its sunny lair. But the snychros were working perfectly, and the screen held its shape when the ascent ceased just below red-line level. He chose an evasive course toward Sol and began gathering velocity.
Then he fed a message into the coder, to be broadcast back toward the Sixty-Star Cluster: Pilot abducted by Solarians; evidence secured to indicate that Solarian mercy-merchandise is obtained through genocide. He recorded the coded message on tape and let it feed continuously into the transmitters, knowing that the carrier made him a perfect target for homing devices, if anyone chose to silence him.
And he knew it was a rather poor bluff. The message might or might not be picked up. A listening ship would have to be at the same C-level to catch the signal. Few ships, save the old freighters, lingered long at ninety-thousand C’s. But if the Solarians let him live long enough, the message would eventually be picked up—but not necessarily believed. The most he could hope for was to arouse curiosity about Sol. No one would care much about the girl’s abduction, or about his own death. Interstellar federations never tried to protect their citizens beyond the limits of their own volume of space. It would be an impossible task.