A lot of contractors who had worked on the ship were beginning to drift in. Hundreds of workers and their families. And maybe relatives. Ah, yes. And hangar crews were also drifting over. And there! Crews of Apparatus ships in the hangar were coming from the barracks. They were all early! But beautiful people. All of them.
Ah, yes. And transports of Fleet officers and spacers, unloading in showers of powder blue. Well, welcome, welcome. Fine branch of the service, Fleet.
And here came our crew! They slipped off an Apparatus police van. They hastily grabbed their spacebags. They held them on their shoulders in such a way nobody could see their faces. They came slinking up the eighty feet of steps. Five ex-pirates, still under a death sentence.
I stepped over by the airlock to welcome them. I knew the racial type. Antimancos: their heads are a bit narrow at the top and then swell out on each side to make the face a sort of triangle bottomed by a wide, savage sort of jaw. Their complexions are very swarthy; they average about three hundred pounds and six foot eight. There is a lot of hate in their very small, narrow-set eyes. The Antimanco feel the universe does not appreciate them. I would show them Idid!
Expansively, I said, "I am Officer Gris. I have been waiting for you." Maybe it was the way I said it, but the one in the lead, probably the captain, stared at my welcoming hand and then at my clothes and backed up so quickly he almost knocked the rest of them back down the steps. Then he sort of steeled his nerve, uttered a low command and rushed past me through the airlock and vanished into the ship. Inside I could hear what sounded like swear words from them.
I pondered it. I looked at my welcoming hand. There was nothing wrong with it if you disregarded the red, spiked metal knuckles. There was nothing wrong with my uniform either. Quite sharp, really, especially the hangman's nooses.
Feeling quite benign, I again surveyed the vast scene below.
There was Snelz walking about, lining up a full company of men. Dear Snelz. Always a comfort to have him around.
Wait! Euphoria or no euphoria, what was Snelz doing with a companyof men? He only rated a platoon.I looked closer. Even though Snelz was five hundred feet away, the red of the captain'slocket glowed in the morning sun!
With a wave of total certainty, I knew it must have been Snelz who had told Lombar about the Countess Krak! How else would he have gotten promoted? SNELZ WAS THE SPY!
I backed up. Somebody was behind me. I turned and got a foggy view of Heller's face. "Snelz got promoted!" Heller laughed. "Yes, I know. I gave him five hundred credits to buy his next rank. He deserved it." I felt sort of spinny. If the spy wasn't Snelz, then who was supposed to kill me?
Heller looked strange to me. He had changed to his Fleet dress uniform. He had a round, flat-topped, brim-less cap on his head, slanted a bit to the right and held in place with a gold chin strap. His skintight, waist-length tunic was gleaming with gold citation scrolls against the dark blue. His fifty mission star was blinding on his chest. A wide, red stripe went down the outside of each leg. In his Fleet dress uniform, Heller made a picture that would cause the girls to really faint.
He was looking at me oddly, though. "What are you doing in Death Battalion full dress?"
"It's Snelz," I said. "I mean, there seems to be an awful lot of tupples here amongst the danceships." I realized I was talking too fast.
"Are you all right?" said Heller.
"Of course, Lombar is all right. Whatever Snelz says, goes. Goes up to the bear girls, of course, unless the bands don't launch." (Bleep) it, I was talking too fast.
"You better sit down," said Heller. "On the rail, there. No, no, don't fall over! Here, I'll open one of these review chairs. Now you just sit there and take it easy. This will all be over and we'll be gone soon." I didn't know why he was concerned. The world looked just great to me.
Chapter 9
I was about to see what Heller called "keeping it in the family." Ten o'clock arrived. And so had scores and scores of lorries and thousands and thousands of people. The hangar guards seemed to be making no attempt to regulate traffic or numbers – the gates were simply wide open.
Gay bunting and flags were all over the place. Tup hadn't arrived by the canister: it had arrived in tankers; and everywhere you looked, people were drinking from mugs. Some of the bands had begun to play and the music, in conflict from band to band, rose above the chatter of the multitude. One would have thought the party had started.
Not so. A daylight fireworks crew had arrived a bit earlier and I had been eyeing them benignly, not realizing what they were up to. Theysignalled the start of the party!
Up from their platform went a "flaming planet"!
It soared half a mile into the air, hung there spinning and displaying lighted "continents" and then burst into a great ball of fire. It would have been visible for miles in all directions! That officially started the party.
The crowd burst into a cheer.
Oh, well, I thought, such displays are common enough: it wouldn't be thought to be anything special by the countryside. New store opening, a public bullet ball game. No harm. Besides, it had been quite pretty.
Sitting in my chair on the review platform, I was mostly hidden by the bunting on its rails but I could see quite well what was going on. I felt quite powerful, really, capable of controlling everything with ease from where I sat.
My eye lighted upon a crane platform lifted up from a big truck, higher even than I was. Suddenly I saw it was a Homeview crew! A bigHomeview crew! With bigcameras!
Oh, well, I thought. Probably the tup companies had called them in hopes of getting some free advertising into every home. Maybe the manager of the dancing girls or the mountain dancing bears. Homeview crews went everywhere and they often didn't use what they shot. Just routine.
Reporters! The vans of about ten newssheets were parked around the Homeview crane truck. There was a swarm of newshawks and their cameramen. Oh, well, they say where you find free drinks, you always find reporters.
They seemed to be heading over this way. Ah, of course! There was Heller standing there and they probably didn't have many pictures of him in fancy Fleet full dress, blazing with citations. He looked kind of cute. Naturally they would want some shots of him – for their files, of course, in case anything exciting happened in the future. And sure enough, I was right. Here they came storming up the eighty-foot rise of steps, jostling each other. And their cameramen immediately began shouting orders to Heller to smile, to look up, to look down, to turn this way or that and even to shake hands with one of the leading reporters who probably wanted one to show to his kids. No harm in all that. Just routine.
Then I caught sight of the Fleet Intelligence officer, Bis. He seemed to be talking to three reporters and pointing up at the platform and here they came with their cameramen.
Aha! They recognized power when they saw it! They were not heading for Heller! They were coming straight to me! About time.
They asked me to stand up and look this way and that. I'm sure they got some very good portraits: probably sell them for use in history books of the future. Contemplating the feats I felt capable of at that moment, they would probably be writing whole sets of volumes about me.
Then they wanted me to stand just behind Heller so they could shoot Heller in the foreground to the left and me behind him slightly to the right. Bis was there, too, helping them pose me, whispering so as to not disturb Heller.
So, they got some shots of me looking at Heller's back. They weren't satisfied. But when they told me I was a natural actor and could glare and grit my teeth and all that I entered into the fun of it. I did all that and even added a few of my own such as tapping my lead-filled sack against my palm and clenching my metal-guarded fists. Heller was unaware of it and just went on chatting.