"You," said Lombar, dropping his professorial role and becoming harsh, "are now in full control of that base and its supplies. You must not fail in your duty to me." I was a little heartened. I thought I knew now what this eerie and secret night ride was all about: a briefing to me as a mission handler that could not be overheard. I knew already that Blito-P3 was the unwitting and secret base outside the control of Voltar. I had always thought it an amusing role for a stupid and primitive planet. It had always been a source of private amusement to me. The dumb twits.
Lombar's hands darted to the automatic position switches and there was a series of clicks which cut in the complex navigational systems of "the gun" so that she would go to and hold on exact coordinates. Freed of flying, he leaned back.
The gun steadied down, the engines dropped to an inaudible pitch. I knew where we were now.
Only a few miles away and a few thousand feet below lay Palace City. Visibly, it is simply a hole in the landscape. The mountain behind it and the vast array of palaces are enwrapped in the effects of a gigantic space warp. The black hole in the mountain makes it invisible and this in turn causes Palace City to be invisible. Shielded against unwanted radiation, the whole area is thirteen minutes in the future.
It is utterly impregnable. Nobody can attack it. It simply isn't there. For nearly a hundred and twenty-five thousand years, it had defied all assaults. You can't shoot up a not-there-in-now.
Many stellar empires hide their central government on asteroids to put them out of reach of enemy and popular attack. It has its points but you can trace ships to it. Voltar's Emperor could not be touched by any combat means ever evolved. It made the Voltarian Confederacy one of the strongest governments in any galactic history.
There lay the nothingness, surrounded all about by a moonlit landscape. It always made me nervous. It wasn't wholly that that mountain could blow up some day when its mass imbalanced too far, it was that it represented such awesome might within its secret glove.
Lombar was fiddling with the gun's fire controls.
Even a weapon as heavy as this ship carried was of no avail here. But his twitching fingers increased my unease.
"See that?" said Lombar. And I was thankful when he took his hand off the weapon triggers and gestured. Of course there was nothing to see. "The Lords there in their fine robes are plotting against me." I could agree with that. The Apparatus must make them quite nervous at times even though they thought of it as their own tool.
Lombar swept his hand in a wider gesture. "The people of this and every other Voltarian planet are just lying in wait to rise up and kill me." Oh, I could surely agree with that. The way the Apparatus hated them and abducted them and slaughtered them, they undoubtedly were lying in wait.
Lombar sighed, an executive with many burdens. "So, I know you will agree, Soltan, that the only possible solution is to seize control of Palace City and the power of the throne. And then, with that, properly use the authority to slaughter the people." I knew these were his plans. I had always thought them a bit drastic.
He must have sensed my reservations. "I am the only one brilliant enough and strong-willed enough to take over. The Lords are weak. The people are riffraff. It is my duty." He nodded, firmly agreeing with himself. Then, "So the problem is, to take over Palace City." Nobody had ever done it. It was considered impossible.
Lombar was fishing in his tunic pocket. "But we have our supply base on Blito-P3. And we have our weapons." He took out a bottle of pills and dropped it on the gun control ledge in front of him. I knew the bottle. Its label said: I. G. Barben, Pharmaceutical New York The eerie Voltar moonlight glinted on the label so far from home. Methedrine, a powerful amphetamine.
He took out a cellophane package of white powder. Turkish heroin. By its number, part of the last Blixoshipment, now safely stored in Spiteos. The moonlight made it greenish, like dried venom.
He gestured to them with his hand. "These are our artillery." He smiled. "And violent ammunition it is. The higher nervous systems of Voltar populations react to it five times over and above the Earth reaction." He turned to me, his face very serious. "So that is why you must keep Blito-P3 under control. You must keep the ammunition coming. These weapons take a while to work. Months, years. We can keep firing and we can wait.
"Above all, we must maintain our monopoly. Chemists here might learn to synthesize this. In producing heroin, the basic morphine is very garish to grow and easy to spot. But still there is a danger we could lose the monopoly before we have addicted the Lords and robbed the people of their will to resist. I have other plans to handle this here, but youare going to make sure the Blito-P3 base is secure to us." A pleading note crept into his voice. All this meant much to him, Lombar, the slum-raised sewer rat, any Lord rank far beyond his reach. "When I am Emperor, you, Soltan, will be the head of the Apparatus." It made me uneasy. Just to listen to this talk could bring torture and execution. And the eerie moonlight made it worse.
Then he got serious. "This upstart (bleepard) Heller threatened all that. By a stupid fluke, he got into the scene. He doesn't even suspect what he threatens. But whatever happens, you must make certain that he does not succeed in tampering in any way with Blito-P3!" The mention of Heller had brought out his aggressiveness. He glared at the invisibility of Palace City. "Those blundering idiots down there are stupid enough to place their confidence in Heller! Little do they know that I can outfight, outfly a dozen Hellers!" Before I could get truly alarmed, he began to laugh. It didn't have any amusement in it. He turned to me and patted my knee. "That was a terrific trick, Soltan. Ah, you are a sly one. I can choose men well. Only you would ever have thought of loosing that rotten whore on him, the Countess Krak!" I went cold. He knew!
"Clever, clever. Keeping him under control by using a murdering prostitute. Almost as good as some of the things I work out. There was every chance she'd kill him. Too bad she hasn't." He laughed over it.
Who had told him? Snelz! It must be Snelz! It made me feel surrounded by spies.
But Lombar was plunging on. "However, if she hasn't killed him by his blastoff tomorrow, he won't have long to run anyway." He fished out a sheaf of papers. "As you already know, I have allocated to you our two best agents on Blito-P3, Raht and Terb. They are to shadow him at all times. And here is a project written for Raht to do at once. As soon as you land. It concerns the identity Heller will be given. I can think of a few ideas myself – somewhat more refined than Countess Krak ones." I opened the sheets. It was not easy to read in the moonlight coming through the windscreen. But what I saw stood my hair on end!
Blito-P3 is the only place anyone ever heard of where a gutter bum and criminal can rise by normal social processes to a point of absolute planetary control. It was probably this fact which had attracted Lombar to it in the first place, which had caused him to study all past surveys and its cultural and social patterns and even introduce them so thoroughly into his own work. On Earth, one man and his family had risen to such a position. He controlled the planet's energy companies, he controlled its drug companies, he controlled its finances and he controlled many other things including, to all intents and purposes, its governments. We ourselves, although he didn't know it, did business with him. His name was Delbert John Rockecenter. It was one of our operating maxims that we never upset anything connected with him.
And the birth certificate and credentials which Lombar was ordering Raht to procure were in the name of Delbert John Rockecenter, JUNIOR!