"What is holding us?" I at length demanded.
Ske shrugged. "It's that Fleet freight skyhauler." Alarm shot through me. I had been careful about keeping Heller away from Fleet anything! And sure enough, down there on the landing circle below, a Fleet skyhauler was hovering, bobbing up and down, giving the final adjustments to something huge and brass colored – a sort of cylinder. It was getting it finally onto a trundle dolly.
Even as I looked, the Fleet pilot tripped his let-go and the cables began to reel up. Without waiting for this to be completed, the blue freight carrier zipped up into the sky.
The trundle dolly was moving into the hangar now and my driver plummeted the airbus down to the target area.
I was actually quite alarmed to see Fleet touching even the fringes of the mission. The thought of the Fleet patrol crew, probably long dead now in Spiteos, and the words of Soams were almost enough to make me withdraw from the area.
But the computer threat was fresh in my mind. I jumped out and ran up alongside the trundle dolly. It was inside the hangar now. The crane hook was coming down to engage the rings on the cylinder.
And there was Heller, riding the crane hook over. I drew back a bit.
Tug Onehad had some upper hullplates removed. Right in the middle of her back.
Heller was giving hand motions to the crane master way above. He dropped off onto the top of the brass-colored cylinder and then guided the hook to engage a huge ring. Heller locked the hook blades in place with a gloved hand and, with him signalling, was hauled high in the air, riding the cylinder as it rose.
I caught a sign on the cylinder. It said: HIGHLY DANGEROUS HIGHLY EXPLOSIVE DO NOT OPEN My Gods, I mourned to myself. She isn't enough of a bomb already?
The trundle dolly operator was clambering down. His job finished, he was lighting a puffstick.
"Have any other Fleet units been around here lately?" I asked him.
"What's the matter? Haven't you seen them?" He hadn't noticed I'd been missing for three weeks.
"Well, have they?" I insisted.
"Naw, this is the first in a couple days. There ain't been anything else, yesterday or today."
"What's been coming?" I persisted.
"That's a funny (bleeped) thing," he said, looking up at the swaying cylinder. "They can't change a time-converter in flight. Taking an extra one means they must be going to some well-equipped repair base. I was a drive operator once, you know. Before space started giving me the creeps." Heller had guided the huge brass cylinder down through the place that had been opened in the top of the hull.
"He wouldn't let anybody else guide it in," said the trundle dolly operator. "Or maybe they refused to. Those (bleeping) Will-be Was engines! They're dangerous even in a battleship. That's what they were designed for, you know, not for no (bleeped) tug. But I wonder what he's doing with a spare time-converter." Heller was directing the final lowering. He looked like a speck from where I was standing. The huge cylinder was spinning back and forth with him standing on it.
"I'll give you some advice," said the trundle dolly operator. "Don't never open one of them time-converters up. Believe what it says on the labels. You could lose your hand! I could even give you some better advice. Don't never go no place in that (bleeped) tug!" He was uncomfortable to be around. I walked deeper into the hangar. The day half-platoon was lounging about. They didn't even glance at me. I approached the subofficer.
"Have a bunch of things been coming in from Fleet?" I asked him.
He glanced around. "Most of the contractor crews seem to have gone home." That certainly answered no question. "What do the things look like?" I insisted.
"How does any long box look?" he said irritably.
"Where are they putting them?" I demanded.
"In the lower hold, of course. Say," and he focused on me very sharply, "can't you see, or something?" It was obvious he had not noticed I had been missing.
The hook was now rising out of the open gap in the hull, the cylinder seemingly having been gotten into its storage space.
Heller was riding the hook. It came down like a bomb. He jumped off and it hit the pavement with a crash.
"Oh, say, Soltan," he said, for all the world like he was rebeginning a conversation interrupted a half hour earlier, "like I was telling you, all the cultural notes and observations are missing from all those earlier Blito-P3 surveys. See if you can get hold of them, will you?" And he yelled back up to the high cab, "Very well done and thank you, crane master!" and with a friendly hand wave to him, he trotted over to the tug and went in through the airlock.
The day's work was over. People were drifting off. The sun was gone.
And then here it came, "Hup, yo, hup, yo, hup, yo!" The cadence counting of the Fleet marines, totally foreign to Apparatus areas. The slamming bootbeats of the marching squad. In they came and gave the day subofficer a salute. Then, "Pohstings! Guardsman Ip, yuoah post is in the ship!" And the Countess Krak, in perfect evolution, boot-slammed in through the airlock.
The rest of the squad gave a jump and cheer and then dispersed. All just as before!
Snelz wandered over to the old gravity chair and sat down. I approached him.
He was lighting a puffstick. "Bit of wind on the desert today. Have a puffstick?" he added as an afterthought.
"I think you owe me more than that," I said threateningly.
"Oh?" He felt in his tunic side pocket and pulled out a five-credit note. "I thought I gave it to you a couple days ago. Well, here it is." He probably owed me more than that. But realizing he didn't even know I'd been gone sort of took the heart out of me. I put the five-credit note in my pocket and walked slowly away.
I had five credits. It made me brave enough to go "home." I mounted the side steps, avoiding the broken boards. I heard somebody walking in the hall. It was dark. As quietly as I could I slid along the wall to my room. I knew my way. I had done it very often. I am a master at silent approach.
There were no bars on my door. I slid it open. A low glowplate was burning in there and by its light I saw, standing not three feet from me, Meeley.
She looked like she was going to go through my pockets. I hastily flipped out the five-credit note and handed it over.
She did not even say thank you. She did not even say I still owed her money for last year. She said, "I wish you would sweep that floor up occasionally! The stench is awful!" And she walked away.
Later I lay in the broken bed, staring into the dark. I had been gone three weeks. I could have been dead for all they knew. And not once this whole day had anybody said, "Where have you been?"
Chapter 8
But if I thought I would continue to be unnoticed and that things would just go on forever in this way, I was verymistaken. I did not have any forecast at all that, today, Heller's crazy, irresponsible actions would pull the pin and accidentally begin the landslide of events which were to lead us all into catastrophe.
I awoke, well before dawn, ravenously hungry. I became panic-stricken at the thought of starving and thirsting myself to a point where I would have another Manco Devil's dream: my poverty had prevented me from eating the entire previous day. I didn't want to be interviewed again for a job as handler of the King of the underworld.
Accordingly, I piled out and dressed and, down in the side courtyard, booted my driver awake and bade him fly at once, like mad, dark though it still might be, to my office.