C Kornbluth - His Share of Glory The Complete Short Science Fiction

3 Crime in Space

Jerry reached for the phone, his brow grooved. "Broadway three thousand," he said. The voice with the smile answered, "One moment, please," giving him time to reflect on the superfluity of machinery. Less efficient than a dial-phone, maybe, but that touch of warmth and humanity— "Here's your party, sir."

"Central Office, Interplanetary Police."

"This is Captain Leigh, of Leigh Salvage, Incorporated. I wanted to see you about—"

"About the peculiar state of the Carpathia. Come on up."

"Yeah," said Jerry, baffled. "That's what I wanted to see you about."

How did they know? And maybe they had a lead on the vanished Miss Alice Adams? He hoped so.

He was received in the offices of the Interplanetary Police by a very old man who introduced himself as Major Skeane. Jerry took a seat and opened the valise he had brought. "I don't know how much you know about the business of the Carpathia," he said, "so I'll begin at the beginning. Please examine these—exhibit A."

"These" were the contents of his valise—small, heavy chunks of metal.

Skeane grunted. "Once spheres," he said, "apparently cast in a shot tower; then sandblasted to suggest natural formations. Some filed by hand, even. These, I take it, were the particles that wrecked the bullion ship?"

Jerry wet his lips. "Yes," he said. "It looks like a put-up job for sure. And Alice—that's Master Adams, of the scow Bluebell—she's disappeared.

We were racing her for the Carpathia and she broke down about half a million kilos from the hulk. I meant to pick her up on the way out to Mars and maybe tow her ship in, too, but when we got grapples on her we found her scow deserted—not a man left on her! Have you people got any dope on that business?"

Major Skeane scratched his head. "Captain," he said, "I'm sorry to inform you that while you do not jump to false conclusions, neither do you shine in the formulation of true ones. Do you see no logical relationship between the two events?"

Jerry considered, and paled. "None," he said angrily. "And instead of antilogising, you might be out hunting down the swine that would try to profit by the deaths of two score men."

"The rebuke is undeserved," smiled the old man. "We have the wrecker of the bullion ship—or a least we know who did it, and how."

"Anybody I know?" asked Jerry.

"I believe so. The saboteur is Miss Adams, of Bluebell."

The younger man stiffened in his chair. "No!" he cried. And then persuasively, "she might be crazy as a flea, but wrecking—never!"

"You do us an injustice. We were warned to watch her the moment she landed on Mars. Our agents assured us that she was a girl with ambitions; they kept track of her, reporting to us for the customary considerations. One man in particular—LeMouchard—has kept us posted, and he's as much to be trusted as anyone these days. To my mind—and I am the officer in charge of this case—the alleged disappearance of Miss Adams is conclusive proof of her guilt. She failed to cash in on the particularly rich opportunity that she created for herself and thus destroy the evidence, and so was picked up by a confederate, with her presumably equally guilty crew. I expect her now to continue her career from another base; possibly another planet, until she makes a slip. Then we shall trace her and deliver her to the execution cell."

"I see," said Jerry, fighting to keep calm. But he didn't see and somewhere there was a horrible mistake which had cost the lives of a score of men and would yet cost the life of that girl with the blue-grey eyes who had tried to pass him and had nearly wrecked her ship and his own, he thought.

Skeane broke in. "Will you leave that valise of junk here? We need some material evidence. And I want you to swear to a description of the girl."

"Sure," said Jerry vaguely. "Anything you say."

"Right. Hair, blonde; shade thirty-three plus on the I.P. scale. Eyes, blue-grey—shade nine. Weight—Captain! Come—"

Jerry was walking slowly through the outer office, his mind in a state of terrible confusion. He didn't know what to do for himself or her. Attack it with logic, he decided fuzzily. For effects there are causes. Assuming flaws in the line of Skeane's logic, discover the points of specific strain and test them. Hah—he had mentioned "agents"—those, he supposed, were informers. And—what was his name?—LeMouchard. Weak link number one: now to test it. He walked into a store. "A bottle of olive oil, please. A big one." That was the first step.

In Mars there are many hidden ways. For every city there is a shadow-city twisting its tunnels and warrens beneath the sunlight and air. It was through these dark passages that Jerry wandered—to check, as he thought, on official deduction, of course.

Reeking with oil and dressed in the rags of an outlaw space-tug's crew, he passed into the dismal underworld as one of its own creatures. In not many hours he was to be found in a low dive swilling the needled ethyl that passes as potable among the scum of a solar system. It was easy to make friends of a sort there—the price of a drink took care of it.

Jerry wasn't drunk, in spite of the terrible cargo of rot-gut he had been stowing away, but he was just a bit ill, for his stomach was well lined with olive oil, sovereign remedy and anti-intoxicant. He was buying liquor for a slimy little man through no altruistic motives; for this was LeMouchard, informer to the police. Gently he questioned him. Of course, he was strictly on the legit, but he hadn't always been, no? And those camels of the gendarmerie that made themselves the great ones, a good man—like our comrade here, yes?—could wrap them around his finger, no?

And surely he was not such a fool as to play with only one master when the pay from two was twice as great? He thought not. Oh, yes—that clever business of the Bluebell girl! He, Jerry, would give a pretty penny to know in whose dazzling intellect that task had been conceived and brought to fruition. Was it—could it be—that he; Jerry, was standing in the presence of the man? But no! But yes! Then surely that was worth another drink of the so gentle ethyl. And so the great LeMouchard was in the pay of the police and one other. Might he, Jerry, be permitted to inquire as to who had availed himself of the services of so great a man?

LeMouchard looked owlishly over a drink. "Oui," he croaked. "It is permitted." His face flushed abnormally, and he shook his head like a dazed fighter. "The English, I forget how you call him …Le bon petit roi d'Yvetot—the king with the little orchestra. It is …" he bowed forward, his eyes bulging. "Carbon?" he said. "Sa Majesty' Carbon." His ratty face hit the tabletop. Out cold.

King Carbon—coal. King—Cole? Old King Cole? That seemed to be the idea. But what was a merry old soul with a small orchestra doing on Mars with a stool-pigeon? He returned to his hotel room and phoned the Interplanetary Police.

"Major? What do you know about Old King Cole?"

There was a pause. "I believe," said the thin grey voice of Major Skeane,

"that he died just fifteen years ago. A bit before your time."

"As I understand it he never lived. What are you talking about?"

"Early space pirate. Good man, too. Crashed on Pluto two days after I was assigned to his case. I was a terror in those days; he must have been afraid of my rep. They all were, then. Did I ever tell you about Ironface Finkle, the Mercurian Menace? I brought him down …"

"Very interesting; very—this King Cole—I want to know more about him. I suppose you found his remains?"

"On Pluto? Don't be silly. When they crash there they stay crashed. This Ironface had had a better position than I did, naturally; I made it a point never to be unfair to the men I was assigned to, since my name alone struck terror—"