My Gods, this was taking risks!
Lombar must have seen my face. It amused him. "The difference between myself and other men is that I can very accurately predict what will really happen. The instant Heller shows up in the United States calling himself Delbert John Rockecenter, Junior, it will start a commotion. The name is too well known. The big one will hear of it instantly and have Heller put behind bars immediately. He has the power and the will to do things. Heller won't get ten steps into the society before he is nabbed. Into a penitentiary and we're rid of Heller. Maybe if he's crazy enough to try to tell them he's an extraterrestrial, they'll put him in an insane asylum for life. It can't miss." I understood it then. I'd have to be very sure Heller carried no other identity.
"So you have that," said Lombar. "Now, there's the matter of a crew for that tug. I said I'd handle that. And I certainly have. We were lucky. There were several Fleet subofficers on the galactic run. They were, of course, piloting and engineering the big Fleet freighters with the Will-be Was drives. They mutinied and stole a ship intending to go pirating. The Fleet patrols caught them and tried them. But just before they were executed some of our people did a body substitution.
"There are five of them, a captain, two pilots and two engineers, plenty for that tug. They are a race that calls themselves Antimancos – exiled long ago from Manco for ritual murders. They hate the Fleet. They hate Manco. And oh, will they hate Heller! I'll see you're told more about them. So there is your uncorruptible crew." He sat for a while, staring at the invisible hole of Palace City and just about the time I thought he had told me everything, he looked at his watch, frowned and began again.
"Now earlier, when I first heard about that (bleeped) tug, I ordered two warplanes to duty at the Earth base. The four pilots will not be under your orders. They will have their own orders. If that tug gets loose there or if Heller tries to use it locally, our planes have orders to shoot it down. Those planes will be arriving there shortly. So that takes care of that." I felt very cold. The moonlight was cold. His face was cold now. I hoped I wasn't aboard that tug when they showed up. Our ship had no guns or defenses. It was just a tug.
"There's only a couple things more," said Lombar. I knew they wouldn't be good, but I wasn't prepared for what they really were.
He fixed me with a look. "If, at any time, it looks like Heller is going to succeed and you have no other way to stop him, you are to disregard any consequences and," he pointed a finger at me and said the next words slowly, "you are to murder him!" His attention had gone back to Palace City. He seemed to be waiting for something, but of course there was nothing there to wait for: it was just a zone of nothing.
He glanced at his watch and then turned to me again. "There is one final thing." His tone was very unfriendly. "I have given secret instructions to someone in your vicinity. You will never suspect who it is. And those instructions are this: if you fail to handle Blito-P3, if you fail to keep our ammunition coming, if Heller gets loose and messes things up, if, in any way, you play me false, that someone has explicit orders to murder you!" I felt like the moonlight had just turned into ice.
But Lombar was again looking at his watch. Then he held up a finger to me. Suddenly the most beatific expression came over his face. "There it was! Oh, there it was! Didn't you hear it?" I had heard nothing. There was just the empty hole of Palace City out there, just the hateful moonlight. The ship was even soundproof.
I must have looked a trifle frantic. Lombar said insistently, "The voice, the voice! I brought you here so you could hear the voice!" He sat up, listening intently. "There! There it is again: 'Lombar Hisst! Come be Emperor! The destiny of Voltar pleads for you to take the Crown!' " He sank back in relief. "Now that you have heard it, you know that everything I have had to do is true, is destined. I am so glad you were here to vouch for it." A conviction drove through me like a blastgun bolt. Like the pieces of a puzzle spinning about on a board and suddenly assembling, all my experience with Lom-bar Hisst and tonight came together in a single vivid fact. All the psychology textbook psychopathic symptoms of a paranoid schizophrenic, complete with megalomania and tonight, aural hallucinations, were there.
I was scared spitless!
Lombar Hisst was insane!
I was under the control of a complete lunatic!
And there was no possible way to escape it!
Chapter 6
I actually was a pretty sick Soltan Gris when the Apparatus guard bus dropped me at my office. It was very late. I knew I ought to be packing and getting moved in aboard the tug for blastoff. But I sat at my desk for nearly half an hour, just looking into nothingness.
Somehow, I felt, there must be some mistake. Nothing could be quite as horrible as being the pawn of a madman. With sudden inspiration, I dug some of my psychology textbooks out of what I call my "Carrot Hole," a code name for a cavity under the planking.
For another half hour I pored over the Earth texts. Schizophrenia,I verified, is schizei –"to
Yes! I had the terms right. Aural hallucinationswas the right label for hearing voices. So Lombar Hisst was insane.
It brought no comfort at all.
If he started taking those amphetamines,a drug called speed,and particularly the heart-shaped orange tablets called methedrine,that I knew were in that bottle he had displayed, he really would go crazy!
I sat there for another hour, glooming.
What could I do?
Nothing!
No, not nothing!
If I didn't get going and push this mission through to the end, I would be a dead man. That had been made too vivid to be mistaken.
The realization alone made me leap up. It was way past midnight. I hastily rushed down the hill to my room to pack. I had even forgotten Ske had been outside the office with the airbus until he, alerted no doubt by the way I came crashing out of my office, took off and landed in the side courtyard.
Frantically, I began to scoop up things and throw them into bags. I was about to stuff the Heller monitors in with old broken canisters when I realized I had to get a grip on myself. I carefully packed them in a disguised case marked Fragile Heirlooms.Ske was leaning against the door. I said, "Give me a of here and move aboard. I won't get any sleep at all tonight if I don't hurry."
"You mean you'll be gone for a real long time?" said Ske. "Years and years? Oh, great. I'll help you like fury!" And he pitched right in. He needn't have been so nasty. The bandages were off his hands. Every bruise I'd given him was healed except maybe for a broken tooth or two.
And then another voice cut in. "You will get plenty of sleep on a bench in the debt court if you don't pay your back rent!" It was, of course, Meeley.