Lone Star Planet
the trial of Switchblade, and Jack-High and Turkey-Buzzard is scheduled
for three days from now. You'll be notified in due form tomorrow, but I
thought you might like to know in advance."
"I certainly do, and thank you, Captain.... We were just talking about
you when you arrived," I mentioned. "About the arrest, or rescue, or
whatever you call it, of that trio."
"Yeah. One of the jobs I'm not particularly proud of. Pity Hickock's
boys didn't get hold of them before I got there. It'd of saved everybody
a lot of trouble."
"Just what impression did you get at the time, Captain?" I asked. "You
think Kettle-Belly knew in advance what they were going to do?"
"Sure he did. They had the whole jail fortified. Not like a jail usually
is, to keep people from getting out; but like a fort, to keep people
from getting in. There were no prisoners inside. I found out that they
had all been released that morning."
He stopped, seemed to be weighing his words, then continued, speaking
very slowly.
"Let me tell you first some things I can't testify to, couple of things
that I figure went wrong with their plans.
"One of Colonel Hickock's men was on the porch to greet Mr. Cumshaw and
he recognized the Bonneys. That was lucky; otherwise we might still be
lookin' and wonderin' who did the shootin', which might not have been
good for New Texas."
He cocked an eyebrow and I nodded. The Solar League, in similar cases,
had regarded such planetary governments as due for change without notice
and had promptly made the change.
"Number two," Captain Nelson continued, "that AA-shot which hit their
aircar. I don't think they intended to land at the jail--it was just
sort of a reserve hiding-hole. But because they'd been hit, they had to
land. And they'd been slowed down so much that they couldn't dispose of
the evidence before the Colonel's boys were tappin' on the door 'n'
askin', couldn't they come in."
"I gather the Colonel's task-force was becoming insistent," I prompted
him.
The big Ranger grinned. "Now we're on things I can testify to.
"When I got there, what had been the cell-block was on fire, and they
were trying to defend the mayor's office and the warden's office. These
Bonneys gave me the line that they'd been witnesses to the killing of
Mr. Cumshaw by Colonel Hickock and that the Hickock outfit was trying to
rub them out to keep them from testifying. I just laughed and started to
walk out. Finally, they confessed that they'd shot Mr. Cumshaw, but they
claimed it was right of action against political malfeasance. When they
did that, I had to take them in."
"They confessed to you, before you arrested them?" I wanted to be sure
of that point.
"That's right. I'm going to testify to that, Monday, when the trial is
held. And that ain't all: we got their fingerprints off the car, off the
gun, off some shells still in the clip, and we have the gun identified
to the shells that killed Mr. Cumshaw. We got their confession fully
corroborated."
I asked him if he'd give Mr. Parros a complete statement of what he'd
seen and heard at Bonneyville. He was more than willing and I suggested
that they go into Parros' office, where they'd be undisturbed. The
Ranger and my Intelligence man got up and took a bottle of superbourbon
with them. As they were leaving, Nelson turned to Hoddy, who was still
with us.
"You'll have to look to your laurels, Hoddy," Nelson said. "Your
Ambassador seems to be making quite a reputation for himself as a
gunfighter."
"Look," Hoddy said, and though he was facing Nelson, I felt he was
really talking to Stonehenge, "before I'd go up against this guy, I'd
shoot myself. That way, I could be sure I'd get a nice painless job."
After they were gone, I turned to Stonehenge and Thrombley. "This seems
to be a carefully prearranged killing."
They agreed.
"Then they knew _in advance_ that Mr. Cumshaw would be on Colonel
Hickock's front steps at about 1030. _How did they find that out?_"
"Why ... why, I'm sure I don't know," Thrombley said. It was most
obvious that the idea had never occurred to him before and a side glance
told me that the thought was new to Stonehenge also. "Colonel Hickock
called at 0900. Mr. Cumshaw left the Embassy in an aircar a few minutes
later. It took an hour and a half to fly out to the Hickock ranch...."
"I don't like the implications, Mr. Silk," Stonehenge said. "I can't
believe that was how it happened. In the first place, Colonel Hickock
isn't that sort of man: he doesn't use his hospitality to trap people to
their death. In the second place, he wouldn't have needed to use people
like these Bonneys. His own men would do anything for him. In the third
place, he is one of the leaders of the annexation movement here and this
was obviously an anti-annexation job. And in the fourth place--"
"Hold it!" I checked him. "Are you sure he's really on the annexation
side?"
He opened his mouth to answer me quickly, then closed it, waited a
moment, answered me slowly. "I can guess what you are thinking, Mr.
Silk. But, remember, when Colonel Hickock came here as our first
Ambassador, he came here as a man with a mission. He had studied the
problem and he believed in what he came for. He has never changed.
"Let me emphasize this, sir: we know he has never changed. For our own
protection, we've had to check on every real leader of the annexation
movement, screening them for crackpots who might do us more harm than
good. The Colonel is with us all the way.
"And now, in the fourth place, underlined by what I've just said, the
Colonel and Mr. Cumshaw were really friends."
"Now you're talking!" Hoddy burst in. "I've knowed A. J. ever since I
was a kid. Ever since he married old Colonel MacTodd's daughter. That
just ain't the way A. J. works!"
"On the other hand, Mr. Ambassador," Thrombley said, keeping his gaze
fixed on Hoddy's hands and apparently ready to both duck and shut up if
Hoddy moved a finger, "you will recall, I think, that Colonel Hickock
did do everything in his power to see that these Bonney brothers did not
reach court alive. And, let me add," he was getting bolder, tilting his
chin up a little, "it's a choice as simple as this: either Colonel
Hickock told them, or we have--and this is unbelievable--a traitor in
the Embassy itself."
That statement rocked even Hoddy. Even though he was probably no more
than one of Natalenko's little men, he still couldn't help knowing how
thoroughly we were screened, indoctrinated, and--let's face
it--mind-conditioned. A traitor among us was unthinkable because we just
couldn't think that way.
The silence, the sorrow, were palpable. Then I remembered, told them,
Hickock himself had been a Department man.
Stonehenge gripped his head between his hands and squeezed as if trying
to bring out an idea. "All right, Mr. Ambassador, where are we now?
Nobody who knew could have told the Bonney boys where Mr. Cumshaw would
be at 1030, yet the three men were there waiting for him. You take it
from there. I'm just a simple military man and I'm ready to go back to
the simple military life as soon as possible."
I turned to Gomez. "There could be an obvious explanation. Bring us the
official telescreen log. Let's see what calls were made. Maybe Mr.
Cumshaw himself said something to someone that gave his destination
away."
"That won't be necessary," Thrombley told me. "None of the junior clerks
were on duty, and I took the only three calls that came in, myself.
First, there was the call from Colonel Hickock. Then, the call about the
wrist watch. And then, a couple of hours later, the call from the
Hickock ranch, about Mr. Cumshaw's death."
"What was the call about the wrist watch?" I asked.
"Oh, that was from the z'Srauff Embassy," Thrombley said. "For some
time, Mr. Cumshaw had been trying to get one of the very precise
watches which the z'Srauff manufacture on their home planet. The
z'Srauff Ambassador called, that day, to tell him that they had one for
him and wanted to know when it was to be delivered. I told them the
Ambassador was out, and they wanted to know where they could call him
and I--"
I had never seen a man look more horror-stricken.
"Oh, my God! I'm the one who told them!"
What could I say? Not much, but I tried. "How could you know, Mr.
Thrombley? You did the natural, the normal, the proper thing, on a call
from one Ambassador to another."
I turned to the others, who, like me, preferred not to look at
Thrombley. "They must have had a spy outside who told them the
Ambassador had left the Embassy. Alone, right? And that was just what
they'd been waiting for.
"But what's this about the watch, though. There's more to this than a
simple favor from one Ambassador to another."
"My turn, Mr. Ambassador," Stonehenge interrupted. "Mr. Cumshaw had been
trying to get one of the things at my insistence. Naval Intelligence is
very much interested in them and we want a sample. The z'Srauff watches
are very peculiar--they're operated by radium decay, which, of course is
a universal constant. They're uniform to a tenth second and they're all
synchronized with the official time at the capital city of the principal
z'Srauff planet. The time used by the z'Srauff Navy."
Stonehenge deliberately paused, let that last phrase hang heavily in the
air for a moment, then he continued.
"They're supposed to be used in religious observances--timing hours of
prayer, I believe. They can, of course, have other uses.
"For example, I can imagine all those watches giving the wearer a light
electric shock, or ringing a little bell, all over New Texas, at exactly
the same moment. And then I can imagine all the z'Srauff running down
into nice deep holes in the ground."
He looked at his own watch. "And that reminds me: my gang of pirates are
at the spaceport by now, ready to blast off. I wonder if someone could
drive me there."
"I'll drive him, boss," Hoddy volunteered. "I ain't doin' nothin' else."
I was wondering how I could break that up, plausibly and without
betraying my suspicions, when Parros and Captain Nelson came out and
joined us.
"I have a lot of stuff here," Parros said. "Stuff we never seemed to
have noticed. For instance--"
I interrupted. "Commander Stonehenge's going to the spaceport, now," I
said. "Suppose you ride with him, and brief him on what you learned, on
the way. Then, when he's aboard, come back and tell us."
Hoddy looked at me for a long ten seconds. His expression started by
being exasperated and ended by betraying grudging admiration.
CHAPTER VII
The next morning, which was Saturday, I put Thrombley in charge of the
routine work of the Embassy, but first instructed him to answer all
inquiries about me with the statement, literally true, that I was too
immersed in work of clearing up matters left unfinished after the death
of the former Ambassador for any social activities. Then I called the
Hickock ranch in the west end of Sam Houston Continent, mentioning an
invitation the Colonel and his daughter had extended me, and told them I
would be out to see them before noon that same day. With Hoddy Ringo
driving the car, I arrived about 1000, and was welcomed by Gail and her
father, who had flown out the evening before, after the barbecue.
Hoddy, accompanied by a Ranger and one of Hickock's ranch hands, all
three disguised in shabby and grease-stained cast-offs borrowed at the
ranch, and driving a dilapidated aircar from the ranch junkyard, were
sent to visit the slum village of Bonneyville. They spent all day there,
posing as a trio of range tramps out of favor with the law.
I spent the day with Gail, flying over the range, visiting Hickock's
herd camps and slaughtering crews. It was a pleasant day and I managed
to make it constructive as well.