H. L. Meyers The Creatures of Man

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now?" he snorted. "But never mind that for a moment, since I can see from your
emo that you think you know how such a close approach could be made. If you're
asking me to assign a Bureau agent to that mission, the answer is NO.
For the very good reason that we no longer have an agent fit for that type of
job."
"No agent?" murmured Tosen.
"They've all turned noncompetitive," grunted Mergly. "Which makes sense from
their viewpoint. Agents are among the few people who actually risk their lives
in the conduct of the econo-war. That takes strong motivation, which present
conditions don't provide."
"But if it was explained to one that this mission might revitalize the
econo-war . . ." Tosen began.
"He would laugh at you," Mergly responded. "Have you tried to explain your
scheme to a noncompetitor?"
"Well, yes. To my wife."
"What did she think of it?"
"She laughed," Tosen admitted lamely.
Mergly's smile was sour. "So there you are. You have a suppositional
structure, which you need more data to substantiate sufficiently to impress
someone who has turned noncompetitive. But to get that data, you have to
impress a noncompetitive agent with your suppositions. Quite a dilemma."
After a silence, Tosen said, "There's one answer to it: I can make the jaunt
to Orrbaune myself if you'll agree."
"That's a deadly game for an amateur," replied Mergly.
"I know," said Tosen.
* * *
Four light-days away from Orrbaune's sun Tosen came out of warp, well outside
telepathic detection range.
For an instant he felt a purely subjective chill, so distant from a sun's
warmth and clad only in the shorts, sleeveless shirt and low boots normally
worn by space travelers. However, the tiny implanted devices of his
life-support system were keeping him warm while they protected him from the
vacuum, and from the high-energy particles of interstellar space. And embedded
in the tissues of his throat and nasal passages were gas-converting
macromolecules to permit normal breathing.
He torqued his repulsor field to start himself spinning slowly, blinked
tightly to turn on his ampli-sight, and peered about for the equipment pod
which had been set to follow three seconds behind him through warp. This was
an uncertainty-filled point in his mission finding his equipment because
warping over a two-hundred-light-year jump was not totally precise. His pod
might emerge on top of him or fifty thousand miles away. And it could not make
any blatant announcement of its location so near the
Lontastan capital system . . . it had a powerful red blinker for Tosen to look
for, and that was all.
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Without the equipment in the pod, he might as well warp for home immediately.
He had to have it, and it could not have made the trip through warp with him.
A man-sized mass was about the maximum that could move at warp velocities
without stirring up mind-wrecking turbulence in prime-field.
So Tosen spun slowly in space, straining for a glimpse of the red blinker.
He almost missed it. It was a dim flicker in his peripheral vision that
vanished when he tried to look directly at it. But he had its direction
spotted. He activated his propulsor field and zoomed toward it on semi-inert
mode.
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Within fifty yards of the pod he went full-inert and drifted in slowly. The
pod was a slender torpedo of dull red, and the color went black when he
reached and killed the blinker. After activating the automatic setup system,
he drifted a few feet away while he watched the pod unfold, extend a framework
of slender lattices, and fan out a thin pie-slice of silver into a six-meter
telescope mirror. When the components clamped together and motion stopped, he
drifted to the eyepiece and swung the instrument to point in the direction of
Orrbaune.
Basically it was an ancient device that would have been readily recognized for
what it was back in Earth-
Only times an astronomical reflector telescope. It was rendered more effective
by an ampli-sight attachment and tight-line tracking, but its mirror optics
differed little from those used by men to peer into space even before man
himself could leave old Earth's atmosphere.
Tosen grinned at the sheer size of the instrument. Who would imagine a spy
using such a big, cumbersome gadget?
And that was the whole point. Nobody had imagined it, and that was why it had
never been tried. People were used to thinking of space equipment in
pill-sized packages . . . devices small enough to place in the various
available nooks and crannies of the human body without making noticeable
bulges. Like ampli-
sight, for example, for which a specialized field phenomenon was produced by
speck-like transmitters located within the eyeballs.
Being sane, Tosen mused as he busied himself with the telescope, only gave
individuals access to such abilities as they inherently possessed. It was no
guarantee of great wisdom, or of creative imagination.
He felt himself fortunate to possess the latter of these.
He spent fifteen hours working with the telescope and its computer attachment,
getting the data he needed. When his series of observations was complete, he
knew his position and motion relative to
Orrbaune with more exactitude than any earlier Commonality agent. He figured
on a maximum margin of error of ten miles.
Satisfied at last, he activated the breakdown system and watched the telescope
collapse back into the compact pod configuration. When the process was
complete, he switched on the systems of the pod's record-and-home automatic
sequence.
Then he drifted away from the pod, carefully set up his approach vector, and
warped toward Orrbaune.
* * *
He exited into norm space almost sitting on the planet. His altitude was only
two hundred miles, and his inert momentum in relation to the surface was near
zero.
But he had no time to congratulate himself on this success. He was too busy
observing with every implant-augmented sense he could bring to bear. He had a
lot to try to learn in the two seconds he had allowed himself.
At that, he nearly overstayed. The Lontastans were skittish indeed about
unheralded visitors and
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especially one appearing almost on top of their heads. Tosen realized as he
automatically went into warp and zipped away that he had felt the first few
milliseconds of a zerburst flare that had blossomed within a few hundred
meters of where he had been. He could feel the burn all across his back, and
could detect his medicircuits going to work on the damage.
What had he learned?
He wasn't sure, but he hadn't expected to be at this stage. The important
information, he hoped, was that which had been gathered by his special sensing
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devices and transmitted to the pod, to be recorded and transported home.
But at any rate, his memory of those two seconds held nothing to indicate
Monte was not a device.
There had been telepathic contact. It had come so swiftly after his exit from
warp that he had noticed no time lag.
But the . . . the feel of that contact was, at first, impersonal, without even
mild emotion. Would a living telepath have such a feel? Tosen had never
experienced telepathy before, but he doubted it.
Then, a split-second later, that impersonal feel was lost in a welter of
obviously human thought-patterns as alerted Guardsmen came storming into the
telepathic linkage with the expected reactions of alarm and anger, and harsh
demands that the intruder identify himself instantly.
All in all, Tosen considered his mission to Orrbaune a complete success.
* * *
He left a confused flurry of exchanges behind him.
Who was that?
demanded Frikason of the Lontastan High Board.
Monte replied: His identity was not revealed as his attention was so totally
on receiving data that he transmitted very little. However, he was from the [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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