He saw me and picked up a canister of hot jolt from the heat pad and came over and handed it to me. He was laughing. At my bedraggled appearance?
In thick, Virginia accented English he said, "Mah name is Rovah. Ah have a George named dawg." He had it wrong.
Patiently I corrected him. "It's 'My name is George.' It is the dogthat is named Rover."For some reason it sent him into a gale of laughter. Far too early to laugh that heartily.
Snelz said to me, "You keeping this room? If not, we'll pack up for you." Was I keeping this room? I always kept a few personal things here at Spiteos just in case. Hardly more than a ready bagful. But then it hit me. I wouldn't need this room for ages. In fact, I never wanted to see Spiteos again! "I'm moving, too!"
"Pack him up," said Snelz to his men.
It was amazing how much stuff had been accumulated in this short stay. The food lockers had been filled. Covers had been gotten for the beds, bath towels . . .
Heller was unhooking the Homeviewer. A guard took it toward a carton. "Pack 'em up, move 'em out!" said Heller. The guards all laughed and kept busy. I couldn't understand why they were laughing until I realized Heller's words were the first words of a song, "Spaceward Ho!" For the first time since awakening, the joyous possibility hit me. Were we really on our way? I finished the last drops of hot jolt and then paused. Wait. Why was he packing up a Homeviewer? It was no good on Earth. Had he just tamely told the Countess bye-bye kid? I didn't think so. Why should the guards laugh at the first words of that old song of the spacers? Did they know something I didn't know? Was there something secretively amusing in Heller's attitude? Long service in the Apparatus teaches one to note the signs in scenes carefully. There was something wrong here.
But they now had the place all packed up. They put the cartons on dollies and shortly we were boarding a tunnel zipbus, baggage and all.
The only attention anyone was paying to me came at the various barricades where the alert guards demanded satisfaction for all the commotion. Heller, each time, just jerked a thumb at me and I presented my orders and identoplate. And well the sentries might be curious: somebody in a racing suit was not an ordinary sight at Spiteos or Camp Endurance. Heller had nosecurity sense: if trained, he would have worn something old and shabby, more fitting to the scene. He wouldn't be standing out like an emergency beacon! And he made it even worse by handing the sentries puffsticks and shaking their hands and telling them good-bye. They were not very good sentries, either: they laughed and made jokes with him. In espionage you don't get yourself remembered! This guy wouldn't last two minutes on this mission – if he was really going, which I sourly doubted.
We finally got to my airbus in the Camp Endurance departure zone. My driver had evidently been alerted and he greeted our guards like old friends. He gave Heller a grinning crossed-arm salute. Dawn was hardly breaking. What was there to grin about? My suspicion that these people were up to something deepened.
Although the driver opened the back for Heller, the engineer stepped aside. The dollies rolled up and the guards pitched the cartons and baggage into the back seat. They almost filled it!
"In you go," said Heller and the driver scrambled in on top of the baggage!
Heller climbed into the driver's bucket and gestured for me to run around and get into the guard's seat up front.
He was going to drive!
No guards were getting in. There wouldn't have been room for them anyway. They showed no signs of going off to get another airbus. I didn't want to expose to Snelz that I didn't know what in blast was going on. In a sort of rattled way I thought I might come back and give him further orders when Iknew. "I'll see you later," I yelled at Snelz.
"I know," he said.
I wondered if I was participating in a jailbreak for Heller. But I was well armed. Heller was gunning the drives – rohw, rohw, rohw. I scrambled into the guard's bucket beside him.
The rest of Snelz's people were all standing around grinning. They didn't say good-bye. The airbus vaulted straight up and the group below were pinpoints in the half-light of desert dawn. The red sunlight flashed blindingly in our faces as we ourselves, with altitude, made it rise.
You don't drive airbuses this way. At least sane people don't. Apparatus vehicles are not all that well maintained. But Heller was draped back in the seat, only one hand on the wheelstick, only one toe on the bars. "You comfortable back there?" he shot over his shoulder at my driver.
The pilot had settled himself in a nest in the boxes, only his feet were visible. Then a canister of hot jolt rose in a happy hand. Where had he gotten that? "First-rate, Officer Heller, sir." Heller certainly broke down discipline, I thought sourly.
Heller turned to me. Now it was my chance to gain some control over this crazy departure. I said, "The Apparatus freighter terminal is just to the southwest of Government City. You've got lots of time. There isn't one leaving until midafternoon." He looked like I had said a dirty word. "Freighter?" I opened my mouth to say of course, freighter; they leave once a week on a regular run for Earth. And then I clamped my mouth shut. It was too early in the morning. My wits were not about me. I mustn't tell Heller or anybody else who didn't need to know that Earth had a scheduled Apparatus freight service to it. If that got out, questions would hit the Apparatus like balls of fire! From all over the government and Grand Council.
Heller had the airbus at about twenty thousand feet. He was holding it there. Dangerous. The things slide off-balance if you're not an expert. They crash. It made me nervous.
"Well?" he prompted. "You said 'freighter.'" And then he must have seen that I didn't have any more to say so he did the saying. "Soltan, are you telling me the mission ship is a freighter?But that's silly, Soltan. A freighter would take six weeks or more to crawl along to Blito-P3. And we don't have anything to carry. Besides . . ." I plunged, "We don't have a mission ship."
"Ah," said Heller. He was thinking. He perched the cap a little further back on his head. He had the airbus hanging there like a ball balanced precariously on a finger. Didn't he know these things crashed? The desert, getting lighter now, stretched out from Camp Endurance. Government traffic control detectors would be asking shortly what the Hells we thought we were doing. We shouldn't be attracting attention this way. He shot over his shoulder, "You all right back there?" A curl of puffstick smoke rose out of the nest. "First-rate, Officer Heller, sir."
"You do have some craft in the Apparatus hangar, though," said Heller. And he must have taken it that I had nodded. "Good. We'll go there and look at them." With a blasting roar it was never made to endure, the airbus catapulted across the sky. Heller, flying with one hand and one toe, picked up the traffic control communicator. "Airbus 469-98BRYheading for Apparatus hangars from Camp Endurance." He had read the numbers on the communicator disc. He thrust it at me. I fumbled for my identoplate and pressed it on the disc; and I had a horrible feeling that that was going to be my sole function the rest of today: presenting my identoplate! Fronting for whatever mad scheme Heller might have in mind. At least we were away from the Countess Krak!
The desert fled below us. Spiteos got smaller behind us. Way over on the horizon the place where Palace City should be seen and wasn't, loomed as only a snowcapped mountain. Commercial City spread as a smudge, still in night, way off in the opposite direction. Government City rolled up toward us as we passed the desert-fringing mountain range.