II

Such was the prologue. He had practically forgotten it when the adventure began. That was on a certain night about eight months later.

Soon after the red-orange sun had set, he left the naval compound and walked downhill. No one paid him any heed. A former commandant had tried to discourage his young men from seeking the occasionally lethal corruptions of Old Town. He had declared a large part of it off limits. Meeting considerable of the expense out of his own pocket, he had started an on-base recreation center which was to include facilities for sports, arts, and crafts as well as honest gambling and medically certified girls!

But the bosses below knew how to use money and influence. The commandant was transferred to a still more bleak and insignificant outpost. His successor dismantled what had been built, informed the men jovially that what they did off duty was their business, and was said to be drawing a nice extra income.

Flandry sauntered in elegance. The comet gleaming on either shoulder was so new that you might have looked for diffidence from him. But his bonnet was tilted more rakishly on his seal-brown hair than a strict interpretation of rules would have allowed; his frame was draped in a fantastic glittergold version of dress tunic and snowy trousers tucked into handmade beefleather half-boots; the cloak that fluttered behind him glowed with phosphorescent patterns through the chill dusk; and while he strolled, he sang a folk ballad concerning the improbable adventures of a Highland tinker.

It made a good cover for the fact that he was not out for pleasure.

Beyond the compound walls, the homes of the wealthy loomed amidst grandly downsweeping private parks. In a way, Flandry thought, they epitomized man's trajectory. Once the settlement had been sufficiently large and prosperous, and sufficiently within the Imperial sphere, to attract not only merchants but aristocrats. Old Town had bustled with culture as well as commerce—provincial, no doubt, this far from Terra; nevertheless, live and genuine, worthy of the respectful emulation of the autochthons.

Tonight Irumclaw lay like a piece of wreckage at the edge of the receding tide of empire. What mansions were not standing hollow had become the property of oafs, and showed it. (The oafs were not to be scoffed at. Several of them directed large organizations devoted to preying on the spacemen who visited and the Navy men who guarded what transshipment facilities remained in use.) Outside the treaty port boundaries, barbarism rolled forward as the natives abandoned civilization with a perhaps justifiable contempt.

Past the residential section, workshops and warehouses hulked black in the night, and Flandry moved alert with a hand near the needle gun under his tunic. Robberies and murders had happened here.

Lacking the police to clean out this area, assuming he wanted to, the commandant had settled for advising men on liberty not to go through alone.

Flandry had been shocked to learn that when he first arrived. "We could do it ourselves—establish regular patrols—if he'd order it. Doesn't he care? What kind of chief is he?"

His protest had been delivered in private to another scout, Lieutenant Commander Eisenschmitt. The latter, having been around for a while, shrugged. "The kind that any place like this gets," he answered.

"We don't rate attention at GHQ, so naturally we're sent the hacks, boobs, and petty crooks. Good senior officers are too badly needed elsewhere. When Irumclaw does get one it's an accident, and he doesn't stay long."

"Damn it, man, we're on the border!" Flandry pointed out the window of the room where they sat. It had been dark then, too. Betelgeuse glowed bloody-brilliant among the hosts of stars where no writ ran.

"Beyond there—Merseia!"

"Yeh. And the gatortails expanding in all directions except when we bar the way. I know. But this is the far edge of nowhere … in the eyes of an Imperial government that can't see past its perfume-sniffing nose. You're fresh from Terra, Dom. You ought to understand better than me. I expect we'll pull out of Irumclaw entirely inside another generation."

"No! Can't be! Why, that'd leave this whole flank exposed for six parsecs inward. We'd have no way of protecting its commerce … of, of staying around in any force—"

"Uh-huh." Eisenschmitt nodded. "On the other hand, the local commerce isn't too profitable any more, less each year. And think of the saving to the Imperial treasury if we end operations. The Emperor should be able to build a dozen new palaces complete with harems."

Flandry had not been able to agree at the time. He was too lately out of a fighting unit and a subsequent school where competence was demanded. Over the months, though, he saw things for himself and drew his own sad conclusions.

There were times when he would have welcomed a set-to with a bandit. But it had not befallen, nor did it on this errand into Old Town.

The district grew around him, crumbling buildings left over from pioneer days, many of them simply the original beehive-shaped adobes of the natives slightly remodeled for other life forms. Streets and alleys twisted about under shimmering glowsigns. Traffic was mainly pedestrian, but noise beat on the eardrums, clatter, shuffle, clop, clangor, raucous attempts at music, a hundred different languages, once in a while a muffled scream or a bellow of rage. The smells were equally strong, body odors, garbage, smoke, incense, dope. Humans predominated, but many autochthons were present and space travelers of numerous different breeds circulated among them.

Outside a particular joyhouse, otherwise undistinguished from the rest, an Irumclavian used a vocalizer to chant in Anglic: "Come one, come all, come in, no cover, no minimum. Every type of amusement, pleasure, and thrill. No game too exotic, no stakes too high or low. Continuous sophisticated entertainment. Delicious food and drink, stimulants, narcotics, hallucinogens, emphasizers, to your order, to your taste, to your purse. Every sex and every technique of seventeen, yes, seventeen intelligent species ready to serve your desires, and this does not count racial, mutational, and biosculp variations.

Come one, come all—" Flandry went in. He chanced to brush against two or three of the creature's arms. The blue integument felt cold in the winter air.

The entrance hall was hot and stuffy. An outsize human in a gaudy uniform said, "Welcome, sir. What is your wish?" while keeping eyes upon him that were like chips of obsidian.

"Are you Lem?" Flandry responded.

"Uh, yeh. and you—?"

"I am expected."

"Urh. Take the gravshaft to the top, that's the sixth floor, go left down the hall to a door numbered 666, stand in front of the scan and wait. When it opens, go up the stairs."

"Six-six-six?" murmured Flandry, who had read more than was common in his service. "Is Citizen Ammon a humorist, do you think?"

"No names!" Lem dropped a hand to the stunner at his hip. "On your way, kid."

Flandry obeyed, even to letting himself be frisked and leaving his gun at the checkstand. He was glad when Door 666 admitted him; that was the sado-maso level, and he had glimpsed things.

The office which he entered, and which sealed itself behind him, recalled Terra in its size and opulence and in the animation of a rose garden which graced a wall. Or so it seemed; then he looked closer and saw the shabbiness of the old furnishings, the garishness of the new. No other human save Leon Ammon was present. A Gorzunian mercenary stood like a shaggy statue in one corner. When Flandry turned his back, the being's musky scent continued to remind him that if he didn't behave he could be plucked into small pieces.

"G'evening," said the man behind the desk. He was grossly fat, hairless, sweating, not especially clean, although his scarlet tunic was of the finest. His voice was high and scratchy. "You know who I am, right?

Sit down. Cigar? Brandy?"

Flandry accepted everything offered. It was of prime quality too. He said so.

"You'll do better than this if you stick by me," Ammon replied. His smile went no deeper than his lips.

"You haven't told about the invitation my man whispered to you the other night?"

"No, sir, of course not."

"Wouldn't bother me if you did. Nothing illegal about inviting a young chap for a drink and a gab.

Right? But you could be in trouble yourself. Mighty bad trouble, and not just with your commanding officer."

Flandry had his suspicions about the origin of many of the subjects on the floor below. Consenting adults … after brain-channeling and surgical disguise … He studied the tip of his cigar. "I don't imagine you'd've asked me here, sir, if you thought I needed threatening," he said.

"No. I like your looks, Dominic," Ammon said. "Have ever since you started coming to Old Town for your fun. A lot of escapades, but organized like military maneuvers, right? You're cool and tough and close-mouthed. I had a check done on your background."

Flandry expanded his suspicions. Various incidents, when he had been leaned on one way or another, began to look like engineered testing of his reactions. "Wasn't much to find out, was there?' he said. "I'm only a j.g., routinely fresh-minted after serving here for two months. Former flyboy, reassigned to Intelligence, sent back to Terra for training in it and then to Irumclaw for scouting duty."

"I can't really compute that," Ammon said. "If they aim to make you a spy, why have you spend a year flitting in and out of this system?"

"I need practice in surveillance, especially of planets that are poorly known. And the no-man's-land yonder needs watching. Our Merseian chums could build an advanced base there, for instance, or start some other kettle boiling, unbeknownst to us, if we didn't keep scoutboats sweeping around." Maybe they have anyway.

"Yes, I got that answer before when I asked, and it still sounds to me like a waste of talent. But it got you to Irumclaw, and I did notice you and had you studied. I learned more than stands on any public record, boy. The whole Starkad business pivoted on you."

Shocked, Flandry wondered how deeply the rot had eaten, if the agent of a medium-scale vice boss on a tenth-rate frontier planet could obtain such information.

"Well, your tour'll soon be up," Ammon said. "Precious little to show for it, right? Right. How'd you like to turn a profit before you leave? A mighty nice profit, I promise you." He rubbed his hands. "Mighty nice."

"Depends," Flandry said. If he'd been investigated as thoroughly as it appeared, there was no use in pretending he had private financial resources, or that he didn't require them if he was to advance his career as far as he hoped. "The Imperium has my oath."

"Sure, sure. I wouldn't ask you to do anything against His Majesty. I'm a citizen myself, right? No, I'll tell you exactly what I want done, if you'll keep it confidential."

"It'd doubtless not do me any good to blab, the way you'll tell me."

Ammon giggled. "Right! Right! You're a sharp one, Dominic. Handsome, too," he added exploringly.

"I'll settle for the sharpness now and buy the handsomeness later," Flandry said. As a matter of fact, while he enjoyed being gray-eyed, he considered his face unduly long and thin, and planned to get it remodeled when he could afford the best.

Ammon sighed and returned to business. "All I want is for you to survey a planet for me. You can do it on your next scouting trip. Report back, privately, of course, and it's worth a flat million, in small bills or whatever shape you prefer." He reached into his desk and extracted a packet. "If you take the job, here's a hundred thousand on account." A million! Ye gods and demons! Flandry fought to keep his mask. No enormous fortune, really. But enough for that necessary nest-feathering— the special equipment, the social contacts— no more wretched budgeting of my pleasure on furlough—A distant part of him noted with approval how cool his tone stayed. "I have to carry out my assignment."

"I know, I know. I'm not asking you to skimp it. I told you I'm a loyal citizen. But if you jogged off your track awhile—it shouldn't cost more than a couple of weeks extra—"

"Cost me my scalp if anyone found out," Flandry said.

Ammon nodded. "That's how I'll know I can trust you to keep quiet. And you'll trust me, because suborning an Imperial officer is a capital offense—anyhow, it usually is when it involves a matter like this, that's not going to get mentioned to the authorities or the tax assessors."

"Why not send your personal vessel to look?"

Ammon laid aside his mannerisms. "I haven't got one. If I hired a civilian, what hold would I have on him? Especially an Old Town type. I'd likely end up with an extra mouth in my throat, once the word got around what's to be had out there. Let's admit it, even on this miserable crudball I'm not so big."

He leaned forward. "I want to become big," he said. It smoldered in eyes and voice; he shook with the intensity of it. "Once I know, from you, that the thing's worthwhile, I'll sink everything I own and can borrow into building up a reliable outfit. We'll work secretly for the first several years, sell through complicated channels, sock away the profits. Then maybe I'll surface, doctor the story, start paying taxes, move to Terra—maybe buy my way to a patent of nobility, maybe go into politics, I don't know, but I'll be big. Do you understand?"

Far too well, Flandry thought.

Ammon dabbed at his glistening forehead. "It wouldn't hurt you, having a big friend," he said. "Right?"

Associate, please, Flandry thought. Perhaps that, if I must. Never friend.

Aloud: "I suppose I could cook my log, record how trouble with the boat caused delay. She's fast but superannuated, and inspections are lackadaisical. But you haven't yet told me, sir, what the bloody dripping hell this is all about."

"I will, I will." Ammon mastered his emotions. "It's a lost treasure, that's what it is. Listen. Five hundred years ago, the Polesotechnic League had a base here. You've heard?"

Flandry, who had similarly tamed his excitement into alertness, nodded wistfully. He would much rather have lived in the high and spacious days of the trader princes, when no distance and no deed looked too vast for man, than in this twilight of empire. "It got clobbered during the Troubles, didn't it?"

he said.

"Right. However, a few underground installations survived. Not in good shape. Not safe to go into.

Tunnels apt to collapse, full of nightskulks—you know. Now I thought those vaults might be useful for—Never mind. I had them explored. A microfile turned up. It gave the coordinates and galactic orbit of a planetary system out in what's now no-man's-land. Martian Minerals, Inc., was mining one of the worlds. They weren't publicizing the fact; you remember what rivalries got to be like toward the end of the League era. That's the main reason why knowledge of this system was completely lost. But it was quite a place for a while."

"Rich in heavy metals," Flandry pounced.

Ammon blinked. "How did you guess?"

"Nothing else would be worth exploiting by a minerals outfit, at such a distance from the centers of civilization. Yes." A renewed eagerness surged in Flandry. "A young, metal-rich star, corresponding planets, on one of them a robotic base … It was robotic, wasn't it? High-grade central computer—consciousness grade, I'll bet—directing machines that prospected, mined, refined, stored, and loaded the ships when they called. Probably manufactured spare parts for them too, and did needful work on them, besides expanding its own facilities. You see, I don't suppose a world with that concentration of violently poisonous elements in its ground would attract people to a manned base. Easier and cheaper in the long run to automate everything."

"Right. Right." Ammon's chins quivered with his nodding. "A moon, actually, of a planet bigger than Jupiter. More massive, that is—a thousand Terras—though the file does say its gravity condensed it to a smaller size. The moon itself, Wayland they named it, Wayland has about three percent the mass of Terra but half the surface pull. It's that dense."

Mean specific gravity circa eleven, Flandry calculated. Uranium, thorium— probably still some neptunium and plutonium— and osmium, platinum, rare metals simply waiting to be scooped out

— my God! My greed!

From behind his hard-held coolness he drawled: "A million doesn't seem extravagant pay for opening that kind of opportunity to you."

"It's plenty for a look-see," Ammon said. "That's all I want of you, a report on Wayland. I'm taking the risks, not you.

"First off, I'm risking you'll go report our talk, trying for a reward and a quick transfer elsewhere before my people can get to you. Well, I don't think that's a very big risk. You're too ambitious and too used to twisting regulations around to suit yourself. And too smart, I hope. If you think for a minute, you'll see how I could fix it to get any possible charges against me dropped. But maybe I've misjudged you.

"Then, supposing you play true, the place could turn out to be no good. I'll be short a million, for nothing. More than a million, actually. There's the hire of a partner; reliable ones don't come cheap. And supplies for him; and transporting them to a spot where you can pick them and him up after you've taken off; and—oh, no, boy, you consider yourself lucky I'm this generous."

"Wait a minute," Flandry said. "A partner?"

Ammon leered. "You don't think I'd let you travel alone, do you? Really, dear boy! What'd prevent your telling me Wayland's worthless when it isn't, coming back later as a civilian, and 'happening' on it?"

"I presume if I give you a negative report, you'll … request … I submit to a narcoquiz. And if I didn't report to you at all, you'd know I had found a prize."

"Well, what if you told them you'd gotten off course somehow and found the system by accident?

You could hope for a reward. I can tell you you'd be disappointed. Why should the bureaucrats care, when there'd be nothing in it for them but extra work? I'd lay long odds they'd classify your 'discovery' an Imperial secret and forbid you under criminal penalties ever to mention it anywhere. You might guess differently, though. No insult to you, Dominic. I believe in insurance, that's all. Right?

"So my agent will ride along, and give you the navigational data after you're safely away in space, and never leave your side till you've returned and told me personally what you found. Afterward, as a witness to your behavior on active duty, a witness who'll testify under hypnoprobe if need be, why, he'll keep on being my insurance against any change of heart you might suffer."

Flandry blew a smoke ring. "As you wish," he conceded. "It'll be pretty cozy, two in a Comet, but I can rig an extra bunk and—Let's discuss this further, shall we? I think I will take the job, if certain conditions can be met."

Ammon would have bristled were he able. The Gorzunian sensed his irritation and growled.

"Conditions? From you?"

Flandry waved his cigar. "Nothing unreasonable, sir," he said airily. "For the most part, precautions that I'm sure you will agree are sensible and may already have thought of for yourself. And that agent you mentioned. Not 'he', please. It could get fatally irritating, living cheek by unwashed jowl with some goon for weeks. I know you can find a capable and at the same time amiable human female. Right? Right."

He had everything he could do to maintain that surface calm. Beneath it, his pulse racketed—and not simply because of the money, the risk, the enjoyment. He had come here on a hunch, doubtless generated by equal parts of curiosity and boredom. He had stayed with the idea that, if the project seemed too hazardous, he could indeed betray Ammon and apply for duty that would keep him beyond range of assassins. Now abruptly a vision was coming to him, hazy, uncertain, and gigantic.