A Circus of Hells Read online

  “Well,” Djana said, “he—”

  “Pure coincidence is implausible,” Rax declared, “especially when he could ill afford you on a junior lieutenant’s pay. It is also known that Ammon has quietly purchased certain spacecraft supplies and engaged a disreputable interplanetary ferrier to take them to the outermost member of this system and leave them there at a specific place, in a cave marked by a small radio beacon that will self-activate when a vessel passes near.”

  Suddenly Djana realized why Skipper Orsini had sought her out and been lavish shortly after his return. Rax’s outfit had bribed him.

  “I can’t imagine what you’re getting at,” she said. A draft of smoke swirled and bit in her lungs.

  “You can,” Rax retorted. “Dominic Flandry is a scout-boat pilot. He will soon depart on his next scheduled mission. Ammon must have engaged him to do something extra in the course of it. Since the cargo delivered to Planet Eight included impellers and similar gear, the job evidently involves study of a world somewhere in the wilderness. Ammon’s discovery was therefore, in all probability, an old record of its existence and possible high value. You are to be his observer. Knowing Flandry’s predilections, one is not surprised that he should insist on a companion like you. It follows that you two have been getting acquainted, to make certain you can endure being cooped together for weeks in a small boat.

  “Orsini will flit you to Eight. Flandry will surreptitiously land there, pick up you and the supplies, and proceed into interstellar space. Returning, you two will reverse the whole process, and meet in Ammon’s office to report.”

  Djana sat still.

  “You give away nothing by affirming this,” Rax stated. “My organization knows. Where is the lost planet? What is its nature?”

  “Who are you working for?” Djana asked mutedly.

  “That does not concern you.” Rax’s tone was mild and Djana took no umbrage. The gang lords of Irumclaw were a murderous lot. “You owe Ammon no allegiance,” Rax urged. “Rather, you owe him a disfavor. Since you prefer to operate independently, and thus compete with the houses, you must pay him for his ‘protection.’ ”

  Djana sighed. “If it weren’t him, it’d be somebody else.”

  Rax drew forth a sheaf of bills and riffled them with a fine crisp sound. She estimated—holy saints!—ten thousand credits. “This for answering my questions,” it said. “Most likely a mere beginning for you.”

  She thought, while she inhaled raggedly, If the business looks too dangerous, I can go tell Leon right away and explain I was playing along—of course, this bunch might learn I’d talked and I’d have to skip—A flick of white fury: I shouldn’t have to skip! Not ever again!

  She built her sentences with care. “Nobody’s told me much. You understand they wouldn’t, till the last minute. Your ideas are right, but they’re about as far along as my own information goes.”

  “Has Flandry said nothing to you?”

  She plunged. “All right. Yes. Give me that packet.” Having taken the money, she described what the pilot had been able to reveal to her after she had lowered his guard for him. (An oddly sweet pair of nights; but best not think about that.) “He doesn’t know the coordinates yet, you realize,” she finished. “Not even what kind of sun it is, except for the metals. It must be somewhere not too far off his assigned route. But he says that leaves thousands of possibilities.”

  “Or more.” Rax forgot to control intonation. Was the sawing rhythm that came out of the speaker an equivalent of its equivalent of an awed whisper? “So many, many stars…a hundred billion in this one lost lonely dustmote of a galaxy…and we on the edge, remote in a spiral arm where they thin toward emptiness…what do we know, what can we master?”

  The voice became flat and businesslike again. “This could be a prize worth contending for. We would pay well for a report from you. Under certain circumstances, a million.”

  What Nicky said he was getting! And Leon’s paying me a bare hundred thousand—Djana shook her head. “I’ll be watched for quite a while, Rax, if Wayland turns out to be any use. What good is a fortune after you’ve been blasted?” She shivered. “Or they might be angry enough to brain-channel me and—” The cigarette scorched her fingers. She ground it into a disposer and reached for a new one. A million credits, she thought wildly. A million packs of smokes. But no, that’s not it. What you do is bank it and live off the interest. No huge income, but you’d be comfortable on it, and safe, and free, free—

  “You would require disappearance, certainly,” Rax said. “That is part of the plan.”

  “Do you mean we…our boat…would never come back?”

  “Correct. The Navy will mount a search, with no result. Ammon will not soon be able to obtain another scout, and in the interim he can be diverted from his purpose or done away with. You can be taken to a suitably distant point, to Terra itself if you wish.”

  Djana started her cigarette. The taste was wrong. “What about, well, him?”

  “Junior Lieutenant Flandry? No great harm need come if the matter is handled efficiently. For the sums involved, one can afford to hire technicians and equipment able to remove recent memories from him without damage to the rest of his personality. He can be left where he will soon be found. The natural assumption will be that he was captured by Merseians and hypnoprobed in a random-pattern search for information.”

  Rax hunched forward. “Let me make the proposition quite specific,” it continued. “If Wayland turns out to be worthless, you simply report to Ammon as ordered. When it is safe, you seek me and tell me the details. I want especially to know as much about Flandry as you can extract from him. For example, has he anything more in mind concerning this mission than earning his bribe? You see, my organization may well have uses of its own for a buyable Navy officer. Since this puts you to no special effort or hazard, your compensation will be one hundred thousand credits.”

  Plus what I’ve already got in my purse, she exulted, plus Leon’s payment!

  “And if the moon is valuable?” she murmured.

  “Then you must capture the boat. That should not be difficult. Flandry will be unsuspicious. Furthermore, our agents will have seen to it that the crates supposed to contain impellers do not. That presents no problem; the storage cave is unguarded.”

  Djana frowned. “Huh? What for? How can he check out the place if he can’t flit around in his spacesuit?”

  “It will not be considered your fault if his judgment proves erroneous, for this or any other cause. But he should be able to do well enough; it is not as if this were a xenological expedition or the like. The reason for thus restricting his mobility is that he—young and reckless—will thereby be less likely to undertake things which could expose you, our contact, to danger.”

  “Well!” Djana chuckled. “Nice of you.”

  “After Flandry is your prisoner, you will steer the boat through a volume whose coordinates will be given you,” Rax finished. “This will bring you within detection range of a ship belonging to us, which will make rendezvous and take you aboard. Your reward will go to a million credits.”

  “Um-m-m…” Check every angle, girl. The one you don’t check is sure to be the one with a steel trap in it. Djana flinched, recalling when certain jaws had punished her for disobedience to an influential person. Rallying, she asked: “Why not just trail the scout?”

  “The space vibrations created by an operating hyper-drive are detectable, instantaneously, to a distance of about one light-year,” Rax said, patient with her ignorance of technology. “That is what limits communications over any greater reach to physical objects such as letters or couriers. If our vessel can detect where Flandry’s is, his can do likewise and he may be expected to take countermeasures.”

  “I see.” Djana sat a while longer, thinking her way forward. At last she looked up and said: “By Jesus, you do tempt me. But I’ll be honest, I’m scared. I know damn well
I’m being watched, ever since I agreed to do this job, and Leon might take it into his head to give me a narcoquiz. You know?”

  “This has also been provided for,” Rax pointed. “Behind yonder door is a hypnoprobe with amnesiagenic attachments. I am expert in its use. If you agree to help us for the compensation mentioned, you will be shown the rendezvous coordinates and memorize them. Thereafter your recollection of this night will be driven from your consciousness.”

  “What?” It was as if a hand closed around Djana’s heart. She sagged back into her chair. The cigarette dropped from cold fingers.

  “Have no fears,” the goblin said. “Do not confuse this with zombie-making. There will be no implanted compulsions, unless you count a posthypnotic suggestion making you want to explore Flandry’s mind and persuade him to show you how to operate the boat. You will simply awaken tomorrow in a somewhat disorganized state, which will soon pass except that you cannot remember what happened after you arrived here. The suggestion will indicate a night involving drugs, and the money in your purse will indicate the night was not wasted. I doubt you will worry long about the matter, especially since you are soon heading into space.”

  “I—well—I don’t touch the heavy drugs, Rax—”

  “Perhaps your client spiked a drink. To continue: Your latent memories will be buried past the reach of any mere narcoquiz. Two alternative situations will restimulate them. One will be an interview where Flandry has told Ammon Wayland is worthless. The other will be his telling you, on the scene, that it is valuable. In either case, full knowledge will return to your awareness and you can take appropriate action.”

  Djana shook her head. “I’ve been…brain-channeled…brain-burned—no,” she choked. Every detail in the room, a checkerboard pattern on a lounger, a moving wrinkle on Rax’s face, the panels of the inner door, stood before her with nightmare sharpness. “No, I won’t.”

  “I do not speak of slave conditioning,” the other said. “That would make you too inflexible. Besides, it takes longer than the hour or so we dare spend. I speak of a voluntary bargain with us which includes your submitting to a harmless cue-recall amnesia.”

  Djana rose. The knees shook beneath her. “You, you, you could make a mistake. No. I’m going. Let me out.” She reached into her purse.

  She was too late. The slugthrower had appeared. She stared down its muzzle, “If you do not cooperate tonight,” Rax told her, “you are dead. Therefore, why not give yourself a chance to win a million credits? They can buy you liberation from what you are.”

  Chapter IV

  The next stage of the adventure came a month afterward. That was when the mortal danger began.

  The sun that men had once named Mimir burned with four times the brightness of Sol; but at a distance of five astronomical units it showed tiny, a bluish-white firespot too intense for the unshielded eye. Covering its disc with a finger, you became able to see the haze around it—gas, dust, meteoroids, a nebula miniature in extent but thick as any to be found anywhere in the known universe—and the spearpoints of light created by reflection within that nebula. Elsewhere, darkness swarmed with remoter stars and the Milky Way foamed around heaven.

  Somewhat more than four million kilometers from the scoutboat, Regin spread over two and a half times the sky diameter of Luna seen from Terra. The day side of the giant planet cast sunlight blindingly off clouds in its intensely compressed atmosphere. The night side had an ashen-hued glow of its own, partly from aurora, partly from luminosity rebounding off a score of moons.

  They included Wayland. Though no bigger than Luna, the satellite dominated the forward viewscreen: for the boat was heading straight down out of orbit. The vision of stark peaks, glacier fields, barren plains, craters old and eroded or new and raw, was hardly softened by a thin blanket of air.

  Flandry sent his hands dancing over the pilot board. Technically Comet class, his vessel was antiquated and minimally equipped. Without a proper conning computer, he must make his approach manually. It didn’t bother him. Having gotten the needful data during free fall around the globe, he had only to keep observant of his instruments and direct the grav drive accordingly. For him it was a dance with the boat for partner, to the lilt of cosmic forces; and indeed he whistled a waltz tune through his teeth.

  Nonetheless he was taut. The faint vibrations of power, rustle and chemical-sharp odor of ventilation, pull of the interior weightmaking field, stood uncommonly strong in his awareness. He heard the blood beat in his ears.

  Harnessed beside him, Djana exclaimed: “You’re not aiming for the centrum. You’re way off.”

  He spared her a look. Even now he enjoyed the sight. “Of course,” he said.

  “What? Why?”

  “Isn’t it obvious? Something mighty damn strange is going on there. I’m not about to bull in. Far better we weasel in.” He laughed. “Though I’d rather continue tomcatting.”

  Her features hardened. “If you try to pull any—”

  “Ah-ah. No bitching.” Flandry gave his attention back to the board and screens. His voice went on, abstractedly: “I’m surprised at you. I am for a fact. A hooker so tough albeit delectable, not taking for granted we’d reconnoiter first. I’m going to land us in that crater—see it? Ought to be firm ground, though we’ll give it a beam test before we cut the engine. With luck, any of those flying weirdies we saw that happens to pass overhead should register us as another piece of meteorite. Not that I expect any will chance by. This may be a miniworld, but it wears a lot of real estate. I’ll leave you inboard and take a verree cautious lookabout. If all goes well, we’ll do some encores, working our way closer. And don’t think I don’t wish a particularly sticky hell be constructed for whatever coprolite brain it was that succeeded in packing the impeller cases with oxygen bottles.”

  He had not made that discovery until he was nearing Regin and had broken out the planetside gear Ammon had assembled to his order. You didn’t need personal flying units on routine surveillance. The last thing you were supposed to do was land anywhere. They weren’t even included in your emergency equipment. If you ran into trouble, they couldn’t help you.

  I should have checked the whole lot when we loaded it aboard on Planet Eight, he thought. I’m guilty of taking something for granted. How Max Abrams would ream me out!…Well, I guess Intelligence agents learn their trade through sad experience like everybody else.

  After a string of remarks that made Djana herself blush, he had seriously considered aborting the Wayland mission. But no. Too many hazards were involved in a second try, starting with the difficulty of convincing his fellows that breakdowns had delayed him twice in a row. And what harm could an utterly lifeless ball of rock do him?

  Strangely, the enigmatic things he had seen from orbit increased his determination to go down. Or perhaps that wasn’t so strange. He was starved for action. Besides, at his age he dared not admit to any girl that he could be scared.

  His whetted senses perceived that she shivered. It was for the first time in their voyage. But then, she was a creature of cities and machinery, not of the Big Deep.

  And it was a mystery toward which they descended: where a complex of robots ought to have been at work, or at least passively waiting out the centuries, an inexplicable crisscross of lines drawn over a hundred square kilometers in front of the old buildings, and a traffic of objects like nothing ever seen before except in bad dreams. Daunting, yes. On a legitimate errand, Flandry would have gone back for reinforcements. But that was impractical under present circumstances.

  Briefly, he felt a touch of pity for Djana. He knew she was as gentle, loving, and compassionate as a cryogenic drill. But she was beautiful (small, fine-boned, exquisite features, great blue eyes, honey-gold hair), which he considered a moral virtue. Apart from insisting that he prepare meals—and he was undoubtedly far the superior cook—she had accepted the cramped austerity of the boat with wry good humor. During their three
weeks of travel she had given him freely of her talents, which commanded top price at home. While her formal education in other fields was scanty, between bouts she had proved an entertaining talkmate. Half enemy she might be, but Flandry had allowed himself the imprudent luxury of falling slightly in love with her, and felt he was a little in her debt. No other scouting sweep had been as pleasant!

  Now she faced the spacefarer’s truth, that the one thing we know for certain about this universe is that it is implacable. He wanted to reach across and console her.

  But the vessel was entering atmosphere. A howl began to penetrate the hull, which bucked.

  “Come on, Jake,” Flandry said. “Be a good girl.”

  “Why do you always call the boat Jake?” the companion asked, obviously trying to get her mind off the crags lancing toward her.

  “Giacobini-Zinner is ridiculous,” he answered, “and the code letters can’t be fitted into anything bawdy.” I refrain from inquiring what you were called as a child, he thought.I prefer not to believe in, say, an Errriintrude Bugglethwaite who invested in a, ah, house name and a total-body biosculp job… “Quiet, please. This is tricky work. Thin air means high-velocity winds.”

  The engine growled. Interior counter-acceleration force did not altogether compensate for lurching; the deck seemed to stagger. Flandry’s hands flew, his feet shoved pedals, occasionally he spoke an order to the idiot-grade central computer that the boat did possess. But he’d done this sort of thing before, often under more difficult conditions. He’d make planetfall without real trouble—

  The flyers came.

  He had scarcely a minute’s warning of them. Djana screamed as they whipped from a veil of driving gray cloud. They were metal, bright in the light of Mimir and of Regin’s horizon-scraping dayside crescent. Wide, ribbed wings upbore sticklike torsos, grotesque empennage, beaks and claws. They were much smaller than the spacecraft, but they numbered a score or worse.

  They attacked. They could do no real harm directly. Their hammering and scraping resounded wild in the hull. But however frail by the standards of a real ship, a Comet was built to resist heavier bufferings.