One whole wall was covered by a mirror and I was a little embarrassed now to see Lombar preening himself in front of it. He had had a gold cape made, emblazoned with Royal arms, and he wore it now, turning this way and that, looking at himself in the mirror. He finished and took it off, folding the fabric very carefully. He laid the cape away in a silver chest and spun the lock. As Your Lordship knows, it is the death penalty for a commoner to don a Royal cape.
"Sit down, sit down," said Lombar, waving to a chair. He was smiling and relaxed.
I hadbeen feeling pretty good. Suddenly I was terrified!
The stinger lay neglected on a bench. He was being courteous, even jovial.
What did he want?
"Have a chank-pop," he said, and extended a gold box of them toward me.
I could feel my heart almost stop beating. My legs wouldn't hold me up and I sagged into the chair.
He shoved the box at me urgently and I managed to reach out and take a chank-pop and somehow get the top off. The lovely scent made a gentle explosion on my face, cooling it, waking me up.
Lombar settled on a broad, soft bench, still smiling. "Soltan," he began – and my terror soared; he had never before used my name and never, never would a superior use one's familiar name. I knew something awful lay in the instant future!
"Soltan," repeated Lombar in a fond tone of voice, "I have good news for you. A sort of a celebration present after our great win yesterday." I couldn't breathe. I knew it was coming.
"As of this morning," said Lombar, "you are relieved from post as Section Chief of 451." My Gods, I knew it. His next words would condemn me to the cells – after torture!
My face must have gone very white for he became all the more jovial. "No, no, no," he laughed. "Don't be afraid, Soltan. I have something much more interesting for you. And if you carry it out well, why, who knows, you might become Chief Executive of the Apparatus. Even Lord of the Exterior." Ah, yes. I was very, very right. I wasin trouble! Desperation made me find my voice. "After . . . after my slip-up?"
"Why, Soltan," said Lombar, "you couldn't have helped that. Heller's report went on entirely different channels, completely out of your hands, utterly beyond your possible reach." He was right. With no copies made, I was never alerted and able to call upon the Shadow Section to help me retrieve the original report and replace it with my altered version. But that wasn't going to save me now!
He got off the bench and I thought he was going over for his stinger or maybe, worse, to push the buzzer for an arrest guard. But he just looked himself over in the mirror. "We needed that accident," he said, "to sort of jolt things together. The Grand Council has given us an order and we are going to fulfill it." Lombar wandered back and patted me on the shoulder. I couldn't help flinching, it was so automatic. "Soltan, I am appointing you the handler of the special agent we are going to put on Blito-P3." Now I understood. A handler runs an agent in the field, guides him, tells him what to do. Day by day, even hour by hour, a handler is responsible for everything that agent does. If anything goes wrong, the handler is routinely executed.
But a condemned man, especially a condemned man, tries to fight for his life. "But . . . but they only allocated three million credits to the whole project. One ship crash would wipe that out. ..."
"Pish, pish," said Lombar. "Endow can run a three-million-credit allocation up to hundreds of millions. A little overrun here, a bit of teasing good news there, a threat somewhere else and any allocation can become a staggering fortune. No, you won't have any money troubles. None at all. Why, it would cost them trillions to stage a premature, off-schedule invasion. And one that would fail." He wandered over to the mirror again. "I thought I was very clever, really. I anticipated the report. I pulled a vast potential allocation within reach. I have a means now of covering ten times the space traffic to Earth and no questions asked, no more dodging the detection screen here. Marvelous. All I have to tell them is that we're staying in communication with the special agent – and you, of course."
"You mean I'm going to Earth?" I said idiotically. That was obvious. You can't handle such an agent from Voltar. I was rattled. I had even overlooked the obvious demand for applause. "I was stunned by your clever recovery," I said lamely. "I couldn't believe our luck in getting out of it. It was all due to you." That made him smile again. For a moment he had started to frown. So I got bold enough to say something else. "We . . . uh . . . we don't have any agents of that caliber."
"Oh, we have a few agents on Earth. You know that. I was thinking of giving you twoof them – Raht and Terb – to help out. They're a couple of the finest killers I have ever seen! Now how's that? Feel better?" I could see that execution order for a failed mission as plain as though I held it in my hand. Might as well make my fight now. "Chief Executive, neither one of them knows geophysics from soup. And I . . . well, I almost failed those courses at the Academy." Lombar laughed. Very pleasantly. He was amused. This was certainly a different Lombar than I had ever known. "But you did take those courses. You know the big words. Soltan, you just have to get used to the idea that I am really your best friend." Now I wasfor it. There was more. I knew there was more.
He extended the gold box to me again. "Have another chank-pop." I could barely get the top off. But it was a good thing I did or what he said next would have otherwise made me faint.
"Have no qualms about the special agent. I have already decided upon him." He looked to see if he had my full attention. "His name is Jettero Heller!"There was a long, long silence in the room while I strove to get my wits around it. For seconds I thought I was having delusions, hearing wrong names. But Lom-bar just stood there smiling.
"He's the ideal choice," said Lombar when I didn't comment. "The Grand Council will believe reports signed by him. I'm told he is very competent, in a stupid sort of way. He has no training as a spy. He knows nothing of how the Apparatus is organized or works. You and he are both Academy graduates and potential friends – you talk his language." I got my wits working again. "But Jettero Heller is a bright engineer. He's been to a ton of postgraduate schools. He's way above my level. I'm all confused. If he has no spy training, if he knows nothing of the Apparatus ..."
"Have another chank-pop," said Lombar, extending the box. And as I nervously took it, I knew there was more to the news.
"Ready?" said Lombar.
I stared at him fixedly.
"Mission Earth," said Lombar, "must be designed and run to fail"I didn't get it.
"The last thing we want," said Lombar, "is an Earth invaded by and conquered by the present Voltarian government. We have our own plans of conquest for that planet. You know that and I know that. Ours will take place a long time before the official invasion. We are not the least bit interested in Blito-P3 having clean air. There are lots of planets. Blito-P3 has other uses and those uses will be made of it long before any oceans flood. For that matter, who the Devils cares about air?" I was beginning to get it now. I also got that Lombar, coming from Staphotten, a planet which has a low oxygen level, cared little about air anyway.