Lone Star Planet
There were bits of advice about the hat, and the trousers, which for
some obscure reason were known as Levis. And I was informed, as an
order, that I was to wear the belt and the pistols at all times outside
the Embassy itself.
That was all of the second notebook.
The two notebooks, plus my conversation with Ghopal, Klueng and
Natalenko, completed my briefing for my new post.
I slid off my shoes and pulled on a pair of boots. They fitted
perfectly. Evidently I had been tapped for this job as soon as word of
Silas Cumshaw's death had reached Luna and there must have been some
fantastic hurrying to get my outfit ready.
I didn't like that any too well, and I liked the order to carry the
pistols even less. Not that I had any objection to carrying weapons,
_per se_: I had been born and raised on Theta Virgo IV, where the
children aren't allowed outside the house unattended until they've
learned to shoot.
But I did have strenuous objections to being sent, virtually ignorant of
local customs, on a mission where I was ordered to commit deliberate
provocation of the local government, immediately on the heels of my
predecessor's violent death.
The author of _Probable Future Courses of Solar League Diplomacy_ had
recommended the use of provocation to justify conquest. If the New
Texans murdered two Solar League Ambassadors in a row, nobody would
blame the League for moving in with a space-fleet and an army....
I was beginning to understand how Doctor Guillotin must have felt while
his neck was being shoved into his own invention.
I looked again at the notebooks, each marked in red: _Familiarize
yourself with contents and burn or disintegrate._
I'd have to do that, of course. There were a few non-humans and a lot of
non-League people aboard this ship. I couldn't let any of them find out
what we considered a full briefing for a new Ambassador.
So I wrapped them in the original package and went down to the lower
passenger zone, where I found the ship's third officer. I told him that
I had some secret diplomatic matter to be destroyed and he took me to
the engine room. I shoved the package into one of the mass-energy
convertors and watched it resolve itself into its constituent protons,
neutrons and electrons.
On the way back, I stopped in at the ship's bar.
Hoddy Ringo was there, wrapped up in--and I use the words literally--a
young lady from the Alderbaran system. She was on her way home from one
of the quickie divorce courts on Terra and was celebrating her marital
emancipation. They were so entangled with each other that they didn't
notice me. When they left the bar, I slipped after them until I saw them
enter the lady's stateroom. That, of course, would have Hoddy
immobilized--better word, located--for a while. So I went back to our
suite, picked the lock of Hoddy's room, and allowed myself half an hour
to search his luggage.
All of his clothes were new, but there were not a great many of them.
Evidently he was planning to re-outfit himself on New Texas. There were
a few odds and ends, the kind any man with a real home planet will hold
on to, in the luggage.
He had another eleven-mm pistol, made by Consolidated-Martian
Metalworks, mate to the one he was carrying in a shoulder-holster, and a
wide two-holster belt like the one furnished me, but quite old.
I greeted the sight and the meaning of the old holsters with joy: they
weren't the State Department Special Services type. That meant that
Hoddy was just one of Natalenko's run-of-the-gallows cutthroats, not
important enough to be issued the secret equipment.
But I was a little worried over what I found hidden in the lining of one
of his bags, a letter addressed to Space-Commander Lucius C. Stonehenge,
Aggression Department Attache, New Austin Embassy. I didn't have either
the time or the equipment to open it. But, knowing our various Departments,
I tried to reassure myself with the thought that it was only a
letter-of-credence, with the real message to be delivered orally.
About the real message I had no doubts: _arrange the murder of
Ambassador Stephen Silk in such a way that it looks like another New
Texan job...._
Starting that evening--or what passed for evening aboard a ship in
hyperspace--Hoddy and I began a positively epochal binge together.
I had it figured this way: as long as we were on board ship, I was
perfectly safe. On the ship, in fact, Hoddy would definitely have given
his life to save mine. I'd have to be killed on New Texas to give
Klueng's boys their excuse for moving in.
And there was always the chance, with no chance too slender for me to
ignore, that I might be able to get Hoddy drunk enough to talk, yet
still be sober enough myself to remember what he said.
Exact times, details, faces, names, came to me through a sort of hazy
blur as Hoddy and I drank something he called superbourbon--a New Texan
drink that Bourbon County, Kentucky, would never have recognized. They
had no corn on New Texas. This stuff was made out of something called
superyams.
There were at least two things I got out of the binge. First, I learned
to slug down the national drink without batting an eye. Second, I
learned to control my expression as I uncovered the fact that everything
on New Texas was supersomething.
I was also cautious enough, before we really got started, to leave my
belt and guns with the purser. I didn't want Hoddy poking around those
secret holsters. And I remember telling the captain to radio New Austin
as soon as we came out of our last hyperspace-jump, then to send the
ship's doctor around to give me my hangover treatments.
But the one thing I wanted to remember, as the hangover shots brought me
back to normal life, I found was the one thing I couldn't remember. What
was the name of that girl--a big, beautiful blond--who joined the party
along with Hoddy's grass widow from Alderbaran and stayed with it to the
end?
Damn, I wished I could remember her name!
When we were fifteen thousand miles off-planet and the lighters from New
Austin spaceport were reported on the way, I got into the skin-tight
Levis, the cataclysmic-colored shirt, and the loose vest, tucked my big
hat under my arm, and went to the purser's office for my guns, buckling
them on. When I got back to the suite, Hoddy had put on his pistols and
was practicing quick draws in front of the mirror. He took one look at
my armament and groaned.
"You're gonna get yourself killed for sure, with that rig, an' them
popguns," he told me.
"These popguns'll shoot harder and make bigger holes than that pair of
museum-pieces you're carrying," I replied.
"An' them holsters!" Hoddy continued. "Why, it'd take all day to get
your guns outa them! You better let me find you a real rig, when we get
to New Austin...."
There was a chance, of course, that he knew what I was using and wanted
to hide his knowledge. I doubted that.
"Sure, you State Department guys always know everything," he went on.
"Like them microfilm-books you was readin'. I try to tell you what
things is really like on New Texas, an' you let it go in one ear an' out
the other."
Then he wandered off to say good-bye to the grass widow from Alderbaran,
leaving me to make the last-minute check on the luggage. I was hoping
I'd be able to see that blond ... what _was_ her name; Gail
something-or-other. Let's see, she'd been at some Terran university, and
she was on her way home to ... to New Texas! Of course!
I saw her, half an hour later, in the crowd around the airlock when the
lighters came alongside, and I tried to push my way toward her. As I
did, the airlock opened, the crowd surged toward it, and she was carried
along. Then the airlock closed, after she had passed through and before
I could get to it. That meant I'd have to wait for the second lighter.
So I made the best of it, and spent the next half-hour watching the disc
of the planet grow into a huge ball that filled the lower half of the
viewscreen and then lose its curvature, and instead of moving in toward
the planet, we were going down toward it.
CHAPTER III
New Austin spaceport was a huge place, a good fifty miles outside the
city. As we descended, I could see that it was laid out like a wheel,
with the landings and the blast-off stands around the hub, and high
buildings--packing houses and refrigeration plants--along the many
spokes. It showed a technological level quite out of keeping with the
accounts I had read, or the stories Hoddy had told, about the simple
ranch life of the planet. Might be foreign capital invested there, and I
made a mental note to find out whose.
On the other hand, Old Texas, on Terra, had been heavily industrialized;
so much so that the state itself could handle the gigantic project of
building enough spaceships to move almost the whole population into
space.
Then the landing-field was rushing up at us, with the nearer ends of the
roadways and streets drawing close and the far ends lengthening out away
from us. The other lighter was already down, and I could see a crowd
around it.
There was a crowd waiting for us when we got out and went down the
escalators to the ground, and as I had expected, a special group of men
waiting for me. They were headed by a tall, slender individual in the
short black Eisenhower jacket, gray-striped trousers and black homburg
that was the uniform of the Diplomatic Service, alias the Cookie
Pushers.
Over their heads at the other rocket-boat, I could see the gold-gleaming
head of the girl I'd met on the ship.
I tried to push through the crowd and get to her. As I did, the Cookie
Pusher got in my way.
"Mr. Silk! Mr. Ambassador! Here we are!" he was clamoring. "The car for
the Embassy is right over here!" He clutched my elbow. "You have no idea
how glad we all are to see you, Mr. Ambassador!"
"Yes, yes; of course. Now, there's somebody over there I
have to see, at once." I tried to pull myself loose from his grasp.
Across the concrete between the two lighters, I could see the girl push
out of the crowd around her and wave a hand to me. I tried to yell to
her; but just then another lighter, loaded with freight, started to lift
out at another nearby stand, with the roar of half a dozen Niagaras. The
thin man in the striped trousers added to the uproar by shouting into my
ear and pulling at me.
"We haven't time!" he finally managed to make himself heard. "We're
dreadfully late now, sir! You must come with us."
Hoddy, too, had caught hold of me by the other arm.
"Come on, boss. There's gotta be some reason why he's got himself in an
uproar about whatever it is. You'll see her again."
Then, the whole gang--Hoddy, the thin man with the black homburg, his
younger accomplice in identical garb, and the chauffeur--all closed in
on me and pushed me, pulled me, half-carried me, fifty yards across the
concrete to where their air-car was parked. By this time, the tall
blond had gotten clear of the mob around her and was waving frantically
at me. I tried to wave back, but I was literally crammed into the car
and flung down on the seat. At the same time, the chauffeur was jumping
in, extending the car's wings, jetting up.
"Great God!" I bellowed. "This is the damnedest piece of impudence I've
ever had to suffer from any subordinates in my whole State Department
experience! I want an explanation out of you, and it'd better be a good
one!"
There was a deafening silence in the car for a moment. The thin man
moved himself off my lap, then sat there looking at me with the
heartbroken eyes of a friendly dog that had just been kicked for
something which wasn't really its fault.
"Mr. Ambassador, you can't imagine how sorry we all are, but if we
hadn't gotten you away from the spaceport and to the Embassy at once, we