Zach Hughes - Closed System

"Right."

"Have a pleasant trip. I hope that you won't letthis incident keep you from making a return tripto our planet soon."

"The trading is good," Pat said.

He closed the airlock, waited for decontamina­tion. A suspicion hit him. The hatch had been openall the time he was out there with the securityman. Had the whole incident been staged in orderto steal his cargo of gems? He ran to the cargoarea, opened one small case after the other. All thegems were there.

He sat in the command seat, a cup of coffeesteaming in his hand. Well, Pat, he told himself.Thinking time. The old man had wanted off theplanet very badly, badly enough to offer him halfof a fabulous diamond which might or might nothave existed. Now the old man was dead. May he rest in peace. And there was a small bag thrust upinto the tube of a portside flux thruster. Suddenlyhis hands shook. What if it was a bomb? What ifMurphy had fooled hell out of him, acting the part of the underdog to get his sympathy in order to get close enough to the Skimmer to blow her open andget back the gems?

He had a burning urge to go outside and checkthat damned bag. But the police had been able tospot Murphy in the midst of an ashfall. That meantthey had detection instruments which were notfoiled by the ash. If he went out now and got thebag and they were watching he'd have more toexplain than he wanted.

Twenty minutes before his passenger was due toarrive. He activated the computer, began his pre­takeoff countdown. He decided he wouldn't wait until dawn if, indeed, his passenger arrived at fivea.m.

The Skimmer checked out beautifully. She eventold him that there was a foreign object in the number three port thruster. The computer, fresh after a nice rest, hummed and was brisk and effi­cient when he programmed the blink which wouldtake him away from Taratwo into orbital position.He was ready. Five minutes to wait. He had aleather bag containing only God knew what in athruster. A man had been killed before his eyes.

The flux thruster would blow the bag out, disin­tegrating it, when he activated the engines. Unlessthe bag contained an explosive triggered to ignitewith the thruster.

The motion detector buzzed. A ground car. Theair outside was becoming more clear of ash. Hepicked up the vehicle at fifty yards, followed it to astop near the ramp, saw a small man in a baggywhite one-piece get out and walk unhurriedly to­ward the hatch. A quick, rather severe tremorcaused the man to stumble, and Skimmer's gyroscomplained as the ship rocked. No police. No glar­ing lights. No other motion detected. Pat opened the hatch, watched on the monitor as his passen­ger entered the hatch carrying one small, expensive-looking bag. The ground vehicle leaped into motionand disappeared while the hatch was closing. Patwaited until the decontaminator had cleared thelock of ash and any odd and assorted bugs indige­nous to Taratwo. Then he activated the radio and called, "Ground Control, Skimmer. I'm booked for a six a.m. take off. Any problem if I leave a bit early?"

He had to wait, picturing the controller check­ing with a higher authority. "No problem, Skim­ mer."

"I'll be back with you for clearance as soon as Imake an outside visual," Pat said.

That was how he was going to find out what oldMurphy had hidden in the thruster. Making awalkaround visual inspection of a ship before take­off had long since ceased to be standard practice.A pilot, after all, was an inferior instrument com­pared to the ship's sensors, but there were enoughtraditionalists left to make a visual inspectionmerely eccentric, not unusual. He nodded to thepassenger in the airlock, told the small man towait up front. The man still wore his breather,face hidden behind the mask and a floppy hat.

He left the number three portside thruster untillast, jerked the bag out, tucked it under his arm. Itwas heavy enough to contain a bomb. He pausedin the airlock, left the hatch open after setting the emergency-close mech. If the bag contained some­thing unpleasant he would toss it out the hatchand push the emergency-close button while it wasstill in the air and then pray that Skimmer's hullplates were strong enough.

There was no possibility, however, of throwingthe bag out once he had opened it gingerly to finda solid object wrapped in a soiled piece of velvet.He had to use both hands to lift the object out ofthe bag.

It was ovate, almost egg-shaped. He hefted itand estimated it at plus three pounds in weight. Itwas, even in the rough, a thing of incredible beauty.

He was holding in his hands the single largest diamond in history, a diamond, if his weight esti­mate was anywhere near right, at least half a poundlarger than the Capella Glory. He had checked the size of the Capella Glory in the library during his wait, and he knew that it was over eight thousandcarats. The old man's stone would go over ninethousand. A man could name his own price forthat stone, millions, perhaps even a billion.

And Murphy had died for it.

THREE

For a long moment, Pat Howe stood in the airlock,the hatch still open, stunned, his eyes hypnotizedby the fiery depths of the diamond. Finally, hepushed the button to close the hatch and began to think again. The stone was not his. He consideredhis alternatives. He could call the hard-eyed secur­ity man and try to explain how the stone hadcome into his possession. Or he could get the hell off Taratwo and from a safe distance worry aboutfinding the rightful owner of what just might bethe most valuable single object in the civilizedgalaxy.

That was no choice at all. He was beginning tobe just a little bit spooked. He'd been involved inmore than one hairy situation during his relativelybrief career in free enterprise. Once he'd played a deadly game of hide-and-seek on an airless moonwith his air running out and two men intent onkilling him. Once he'd had to run for his life afterhe'd lifted the ransom loot from a Hogg Moonspirate, the kidnap victim clinging to him, slowinghim down. And the total amount of money at stakein both those incidents wouldn't buy a cuttingchip from the diamond he held in his hands. Menhad killed for a tiny fraction of the worth of thatdiamond, and even a man who had never enter­tained a criminal thought might be tempted toward murder by something so valuable.

He left the diamond, in its bag, with the othergems in cargo, ran to the bridge, and wonderedwhat had happened to his passenger. The passen­ger would be housed in the spare cabin. It was crowded, for he used it to store items used onlyoccasionally, but the bed was as large and as com­fortable as his own. He jerked the door open tofind the room empty.

There were not many places aboard Skimmer where a man could hide. He didn't like the idea ofhis passenger wandering around down in the en­gine room, so he decided to check his own quar­ters first. The lock on the door had gone bad onthe trip out and he hadn't bothered to fix it. Hethrew the door open.

She stood beside his bed, the white one-piece ather feet, breather and hat removed to show a fallof lustrous auburn hair, slightly mussed but stillglorious. Her skin was the pale hue of old china. She wore only a tight, brief silken camiknicker,blue.

"Sorry," he said, starting to close the door. Theshock was slow to penetrate. A woman. And not just any woman. It was as if the holographic im­age had come to life, full-sized and breathing, in his cabin.

She reached for a garment she'd removed fromher bag, not in haste or modesty. "I assumed this would be my cabin," she said, with a smile whichmatched the blaze of her hair. "I also assumedthat you would knock before entering."

Corinne Tower. His passenger was Corinne Tower,the film star from Zede II, and she was not at all discomfited as she stood there in a silken piece ofunderwear which emphasized her perfect figure.She seemed to flow into a wraparound which closedoff the view of womanly curves. Her smile hadfaded into a musing expression.