"Emmink," said Reith, "suppose you wanted to learn if a certain object-for instance, a small spaceship-was inside that building, how would you go about it?"
Emmink snorted. "I would consider no such folly. I would resume my place on the dray and depart while I still had health and sanity."
"You can think of no errand to take us into the building?"
"None whatever. A fantasy!"
"Or close past that open portal?"
"No, no! Of course not!"
Reith longingly considered the building and the open portal. So near and yet so far ... He became furious with himself, at the intolerable circumstances, at the Blue Chasch, Emmink, the planet Tschai. Seventy-five yards: the work of half a minute. He said curtly to Emmink: "Wait here." And he started walking with long strides across the planted area.
Emmink gave a hoarse call. "Come here, come back! Are you insane?"
But Reith only hastened his steps. On the walk beside the building were a few Chaschmen, apparently laborers, who paid him no heed. Reith gained the walk. The open portal was ten steps ahead. Three Blue Chasch stepped forth. Reith's heart pounded; his palms were damp. The Blue Chasch must smell his sweat; would they know it for the odor of fear? It seemed as if, engrossed in their own affairs, they might not notice him. Head bowed, loose-brimmed hat in front of his face, Reith hurried past. Then, with only twenty feet to the portal, the three swung around as if activated by the same stimulus. One of the Blue Chasch spoke in a gobbling mincing voice, the words formed by organs other than vocal chords.
"Man! Where go you?"
Reith halted and responded with the explanation he had formed as he had crossed from the main avenue. "I came for scrap metal."
"What scrap metal?"
"By the portal, in a box; so they told me."
"Ah!-" a blowing gasping sound, which Reith was unable to interpret. "No scrap metal!"
One of the others muttered something quietly, and all three emitted a hiss, the Blue Chasch analogue of human laughter.
"Scrap metal, so? Not at the factory. There: notice that building yonder? Scrap metal yonder!"
"Thank you!" called Reith. "I'll but look." He went the last few steps to the open portal, looked into a great space murmurous with machinery, smelling of oil and metal and ozone. Nearby were platform components in the process of fabrication. Blue Chasch and Chaschmen alike worked, without obvious caste distinction. Around the walls, as in any Earthly factory or machine shop, were benches, racks and bins. In the center were a cylindrical section of what apparently would be a medium sized spaceship. Beyond, barely visible, was a familiar shape: the space-boat on which Reith had come down to Tschai.
He could detect no damage to the hull. If the machinery had been dismantled, no evidence was apparent. But a good deal of distance intervened between himself and the boat, and he had time only for a single glimpse. Behind him the three Blue Chasch stood staring at him, massive blue-scaled heads half-inclined as if listening. They were, so Reith realized, smelling him. They seemed suddenly intent, suddenly interested and began to walk slowly back toward him.
One spoke, in his thick queer voice: "Man! Attention! Return here. There is no scrap metal."
"You smell of man-fear," said another. "You smell of odd substances."
"A disease," replied Reith.
Another spoke. "You smell like a strangely dressed man we found in a strange spaceship; there is about you a factitious quality.„
"Why are you here?" demanded the third of the group. "For whom do you spy?"
"No one; I am a drayer, and I must return to Pera."
"Pera is a hive of spies; time perhaps that we sifted the population."
"Where is your dray? You did not arrive on foot?"
Reith started to move away. "My dray is out on the avenue." He pointed, then stared in consternation. Emmink and the dray were no longer to be seen. He called back to the three Blue Chasch, "My dray! Stolen! Who has taken it!" And with a gesture of hasty farewell for the puzzled Chasch, he darted off into the planted area separating the two roads. Behind a hedge of white wool and gray-green plumes he paused to look back and was by no means reassured. One of the Blue Chasch had run a few steps after him and was pointing some sort of instrument here and there through the planting. A second was speaking with great urgency into a hand microphone. The third had gone to the portal and was peering toward the space-boat, as if to verify its presence.
"I've done it for sure," Reith muttered to himself. "I've pulled the whole business down around my ears." He started to turn away, but paused an instant longer to watch as a squad of Chaschmen, wearing uniforms of purple and gray, drove up the factory road on long low slung motorcycles. The Blue Chasch gave terse instructions, pointing toward the planted area. Reith waited no longer. He ran to the avenue, and as a dray loaded with empty baskets rolled smartly by, he sprang out, caught hold of the tailgate, pulled himself up on the bed and crawled behind a stack of baskets, without arousing the attention of the draymaster.
Behind came half a dozen motorcycles at great speed. They passed the dray with an angry whir of electric propulsion. To set up a roadblock? Or to reinforce the guards at the main gates?
Possibly both, thought Reith. The venture, as Emmink had predicted, was about to end in fiasco. Reith doubted that the Blue Chasch would involve him in their infamous games; they would prefer to extract information from him. And then? At best, Reith's freedom of action would be curtailed. At worst-but this bore little thinking about. The dray was rattling along at a good pace, but Reith knew he had no chance of passing through the gate. Close to the North Market Reith dropped to the ground and at once took cover behind a long low structure of porous white concrete: a warehouse or a storage shed. Finding his view constricted, he climbed upon a wall, thence to the roof of the shed. He could see down the main avenue to the gate, and his fears were amply justified: a number of purple and gray-uniformed security police stood beside the portal inspecting traffic with great care. If Reith was going to leave the city he must choose some other route. The river? Conceivably he could wait till night and float down the river unseen. But Dadiche extended a score or more miles along the riverbank, with other Blue Chasch villas and gardens beyond. Additionally, Reith had no knowledge of the creatures inhabiting the river. If they were as noxious as other forms of Tschai life, he wanted nothing to do with them.
A faint hum attracted Reith's attention. He looked up, startled to see an air-sled, not a hundred yards distant, sliding quietly by. The passengers were Blue Chasch, wearing peculiar headgear like enormous moth antennae. Reith was initially sure that he had been seen; then he was sure that the antennae were some sort of olfactory amplifiers: equipment being used to track him down.
The air-sled proceeded without change of course. Reith released his pent breath.
His apprehension apparently had been unfounded. What were the tall antennae?
Ceremonial vestments? Adornments? "I may never know," Reith told himself. He searched the sky for other skysleds, but none could be seen. Raising to his knees, he once again looked all around. Somewhat to the left, behind a screen of the everpresent adarak trees, was North Market: white concrete parasols, suspended discs, glass screens; moving figures wearing black, dull blue, dull red; scales glinting gunmetal blue. The breeze, blowing from the north, carried a complicated reek of spice; of sour vegetable matter; of meat cooked, fermented, pickled; of yeasts and mycelium cake.
To the right were the huts of Chaschmen, scattered through the gardens. Beyond, pressed up against the wall, was a large building screened by tall black trees.