Уильям Макгиверн - Collected Fiction - 1940-1963

“Well?” Margot asked. This morning she wore a man-tailored jumper which, Ramsey observed, clashed with the Sirian-archaic furniture. She looked cool and completely poised and no less beautiful, if less provocatively dressed, than last night.

Ramsey returned question for question. “What about the ship?”

“In a Spacer Graveyard, of course. There isn’t a landing field on the planet we could go to.”

“You mean we’ll take off from a Graveyard? From a junk-heap of battered old derelict ships?”

“Of course. It has some advantages, believe it or not. We’ll work on the ship nights. It needs plenty of work, let me tell you. But then the Graveyard is a kind of parts department, isn’t it?”

Ramsey couldn’t argue with that.

They spent the next three days sleeping and slowly going stir-crazy. They slipped out each night, though, and walked the two miles to the Spacer Graveyard down near the river. It was on the other side of the river, which meant they had to boat across. Risky, but there was no help for it. Each night they worked on the ship, which Ramsey found to be a fifty-year old Canopusian freighter in even worse condition than Margot had indicated. The night was usually divided into three sections. First, reviewing the work which had been done and planning the evening’s activities. Then, looking for the parts they would need in the jungle of interstellar wrecks all about them. Finally, going to work with the parts they had found and with the tools which Ramsey had discovered on the old Canopusian freighter the first night.

As they made their way back across the river the first night, Ramsey paddling slowly, quietly, Margot said:

“Ramsey, I— I think we’re being watched.”

“I haven’t seen or heard a thing. You, Vardin?” Vardin was the Vegan girl’s name.

Vardin shook her head.

Ramsey was anxious all at once, though. Things had gone too smoothly. They had not been interfered with at all. Personally, things hadn’t gone smoothly with Ramsey, but that was another story. He found himself liking Margot Dennison too much. He found himself trying to hide it because he knew she could read minds. Just how do you hide your thoughts from a mind reader? Ramsey didn’t know, but whenever his thoughts drifted in that direction he tried thinking of something else — anything else, except the proto-man letter.

“Yes, that’s just what I was thinking,” Margot said in the boat. “I can read minds, so I’d know best if we were being watched. To get a clear reading I have to aim my thoughts specifically, but I can pick up free-floating thoughts as a kind of emotional tone rather than words. Does that make sense?”

“If you say so. What else did you read in my mind?”

Margot smiled at him mysteriously and said nothing.

Ramsey felt thoughts of proto-man nibbling at his consciousness. He tried to fight them down purely rationally, and knew he wouldn’t succeed. He grabbed Margot and pulled her close to him, seeking her lips with his, letting his thoughts wander into a fantasy of desire.

Margot slapped his face and sat stiffly in her cloak while he paddled to the other side of the river. Vardin sat like a statue. Ramsey had come to a conclusion: he did not like letting Margot know how he felt about her, but it was mostly on a straight physical level and he preferred her discovering it to her learning that he’d read the proto-man letter from her father. In his thoughts, though, he never designated it as the proto-man letter from her father. He designated it as X.

When they reached the bank, Margot said: “I’m sorry for slapping you.”

“I’m sorry for making a pass.”

“Ramsey, tell me, what is X?”

Ramsey laughed harshly and said nothing. That gave Margot something to think about. Maybe it would keep her thoughts out of his mind, keep her from reading...

X marks the spot, thought Ramsey. XXX marks the spot-spot-spot. X is a spot in a pot or a lot of rot...

“Oh, stop it!” Margot cried irritably. “You’re thinking nonsense.”

“Then get the heck out of my mind,” Ramsey told her.

Vardin walked on without speaking. If she had any inkling of what they were talking about, she never mentioned it.

Margot said: “I still get the impression.”

“What impression?”

“That we’re being followed. That we’re being watched. Every step of the way.”

Wind and cold and darkness. The hairs on the back of Ramsey’s neck prickled. They walked on, bent against the wind.

Security Officer Second Class Ramar Chind reported to his Chief in the Hall of Retribution the following morning. Chind, a career man with the Irwadi Security Forces, did not like his new boss. Garr Symm was no career man. He knew nothing of police procedure. It was even rumored — probably based upon solid fact — that Garr Symm liked his brandy excessively and often found himself under its influence. Worst of all — after all, a man could understand a desire for drink, even if, sometimes, it interfered with work — worst of all, Garr Symm was a scientist, a dome-top in the Irwadi vernacular. And hard-headed Ramar Chind lost no love on dome-tops.

He saluted crisply and said: “You wanted to see me, sir?”

Garr Symm leaned forward over his desk, making a tent of his scaly green fingers and peering over it. He said three words. He said: “The Earthgirl Dennison.”

“The Spacer Graveyard,” Ramar Chind said promptly. That was an easy one. His agents had been following the Dennison girl, at Garr Symm’s orders. Ramar Chind did not know why.

“And?” Garr Symm asked.

“The Earthman Ramsey, the Vegan Vardin, both are with her. We can close in and arrest the lot, sir, any time you wish.”

“Fool,” Garr Symm said softly, without malice. “That is the last thing I want. Don’t you understand that? No, I guess you don’t.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Their ship?”

“Every morning after they leave we go over it. Still two or three nights away from completion, sir. Also—” Ramar Chind smiled.

“Yes, what is it?”

“Two or three nights away from completion, except for one thing. They’ll need a fuel supply. Two U-235 capsules rigged for slow implosion, sir. The hopper of their ship is empty.”

“Is there such a fuel supply in the Graveyard?”

“No, sir.”

“But could there be?”

“Usually, no. Naturally, the junkers drain out spaceship hoppers before scrapping them. U-235 in any form brings—”

“I know the value of U-235. Proceed.”

“Well, there could be. If they were lucky enough to find such a fuel supply in one of the wrecks in the Graveyard, they wouldn’t be suspicious. Naturally, we won’t put one there.”

“But you’re wrong, my dear Ramar Chind. You’ll load the hopper of one of those wrecks with enough U-235 for their purposes, and you’ll do it today.”

“But sir—”

“We’re going to follow them, Chind. You and I. We want them to escape. If they don’t escape, how can we follow them?”

Ramar Chind shrugged resignedly and lisped: “How much fuel will they need for their purposes, sir, whatever their purposes are?” Naturally, his lisping sounded perfectly normal to Garr Symm, who also spoke in the sibilantless Irwadi manner.

“You’d really like to know, wouldn’t you?” Garr Symm said.

“Yes, sir. To put me in a position in which I could better do my—”

“To satisfy your curiosity, you mean!”

“But sir—”

“I am a scientist, Chind.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Didn’t it strike you as odd that a scientist should be elevated to the top post in your department?”

“Of course, sir. I didn’t question it, though.”

“As you know, Chind, when it was decided to planetarize Irwadi as a first step toward driving away the outworlders, the quarters of every outworlder on Irwadi were thoroughly searched.”