Дэймон Найт - Orbit 12

“What do you mean?”

“I mean,” Nert said, “we already know Dr. Billingsley uses mittlebran. Why go to all that trouble trying to prove it?”

“Well, we don’t really know it was Billingsley. One of his patients could be using it. You know how fast clothing soaks up the smell, how difficult it is to get rid of. Besides, I think we’ll have more of a psychological advantage if we catch him with his pod in the punch.”

Herbie sent Nert out to the spaceport to get them each a berth on a ship leaving on one of the next few nights. Herbie had specified nights because they would have to leave as soon as possible after their meeting with Dr. Billingsley, and the plan had to be used in the early evening.

Nert rode the slideways to the edge of town, skirting the forbidding area he’d traveled through the night before. The daylight washed away the dark demon magic from the streets and buildings, and left old wooden walls weather-blasted and peeling; tired beings lounging on front steps and in gutters as if they’d been there as long as the buildings. It was no longer terrifying, it was depressing.

Nert ignored the invitations, inducements, and promises of sky-boards and beings who all had good times awaiting him at a modest fee. But the dancing melee of color and sound was pale compared to the way Nert remembered it was at night, when the advertising no longer had to compete with the sun. He got to the spaceport and followed the signs to where spacemen could sign up on outward-bound ships.

Signing up for a post on an outward-bound ship always disturbed Nert. On the home world when he was just a klarn, Nert had once read Moby Dick, a Terran classic. Though it had been translated from late middle English into Droshi, he’d found the reading so difficult that he’d never finished it. Somewhere during the first few chapters the hero and his alien companion signed up on a ship whose captain, they were warned, had an obsession about a large local aquatic creature. Nert had been told that later the ship was lost with all hands except for the hero. Signing up for a post on an outward-bound ship always reminded him of Moby Dick and what had happened to its crew. He knew it was not rational, but his subconscious was unconvinced until it was aboard his ship and could see there was no resemblance between it and the ship in the book.

He signed Herbie and himself onto a freighter carrying towels and blankets, each stamped in red with the words HAVE A SPREE ON SPANGLE! The mate who signed them up claimed he had room in the crew for only one more. Nert convinced him otherwise with a few credits from his dwindling capital reserve.

It was early evening. The sun was low on the horizon, silhouetting the peaks and spires of the city against the sky. They’d left the slideways and were deep in Oldtown. They were following the route Herbie had pulled telepathically out of Nert’s mind. Nert looked like an ambulatory baby blue cone. It was a disguise.

They both knew that if Dr. Billingsley saw Nert he would be suspicious. Herbie had hung a camera around Nert’s neck, wrapped him in one of the blankets from the hotel and pinned it closed with a fastener he found in the complimentary toilet kit in the bathroom. Herbie told him he looked like a being from Fomalhaut VII. Nert said he felt as if he were walking inside a tent.

Herbie walked down the steps to the alley where they found the long row of closed doors and the rusting metal stairway. Nert saw with one eye through a slit Herbie had cut in the blanket. The blanket gave Nert’s view of the world a fuzzy frame. Yellow light from the setting sun threw the rough unevenness of the walls into high relief, made them seem too sharp and well defined to be real. The metal stair looked as if it had been forged from gold. Even from the foot of the stairway they could see the overdeveloped Terran female on the doctor’s door looking proudly out over the city. The blue-and-white lights above her head were pale and ghostly in the onslaught of sunlight.

“This is the place,” Nert said. “Right up there.”

“Right up there, hmm?” Herbie moved forward and inspected an old wooden door in the brick wall.

Nert was nervous. It was difficult for him to stand still. But when he moved, the bony knobs on the ends of his legs clicked against the sidewalk and were answered by an echo with a million feet

Herbie said, “This is it.”

Nert clattered forward, stepping as lightly as he could. The blue blanket billowed around him, and he could smell his own body over the odor of the synthetic fiber. The camera swung against him on its cord—bump, bump.

The door had been boarded up many years before and was now a rooming house for small insects. It was festooned with their filmy nests and webs. A sign painted on the door said KEEP OUT. NO TRESPASSING. The lettering was more faded than the painted woman upstairs.

Nert said, “Can we get in?”

“I think we can push a hole through it.” Herbie took a dull metallic cone from his bag and aimed its point at the door. It was smooth except at the point, where there were shallow concentric grooves. Herbie reached inside the machine and made a cradle out of his body to support it.

“What about the sign?”

“From the looks of it,” Herbie said, “I’d guess the beings who made that sign are long past caring what happens to this building.”

A low whistle soared up and out of hearing range, and the door rattled for a moment Suddenly an even round hole appeared in it.

Herbie put the drill away and they looked inside. The late afternoon sunshine made the large rectangular shapes within cast long shadows, striping the room. Noodles of pipe stretched across the ceiling and down the walls. Dust covered everything.

“Laundry room,” said Herbie.

Nert agreed, and they moved back from the opening. “Don’t forget,” Herbie said, “when you’re all alone with him, stamp on the floor three times. That’ll be our signal.”

“Right. You sure you can control that pain field of yours?”

“Positive. Don’t worry. Good luck.” Herbie let his body relax and flowed through the small hole into the room beyond.

Nert said, “Good luck,” and started up the stairs, clicking his claws nervously.

At the top, he looked down at the long alley, just as empty now as when he’d first seen it, and at the city beyond, sparkling like a lake in the setting sun. He wondered why he’d never seen any of the beings who lived behind the many doors along the corridor. Maybe they were shy. Or maybe there weren’t any. Nert thought it was all very beautiful, and he would have stood there longer if there hadn’t been work to do. His mission made him not brave but determined, and his claws were quiet. When Nert felt he could put it off no longer, he pushed the latch release on the door and went inside.

Nert’s eyes grew big in the darkness. There were no windows and the only light came from three dust-laden imitation hurricane lamps with cracked and chipped glass.

The waiting room was large and square. Dusty red velvet drapes with faded yellow fringes hung on the walls, and the room was filled with archaic wooden furniture that looked as if it had been built only with humans in mind.

Three creatures were in the waiting room, and the human furniture did not accommodate them well. One of them was a purple dracoid like the one he’d ridden with in the elevator two nights before. It lay on the floor like a small mountain, sleeping. The armored tail curled around its body, and the scaly tip languorously fanned its snout. A slimy creature with too many legs squirmed as it tried to get comfortable in a chair that cramped it no matter which way it turned. Occasionally a stalk carrying an eye at the top rose out of the writhing mass. The eye blinked and then dropped back among the appendages.