The Man Who Staked the Stars Read online

obscuremenace. The man acted as if his job was over, clinched.

  Bryce reached the answer as the taxi floated down on hissing roterblades and settled to the platform. Sliding down from the railing hewalked toward it, stiff-legged. The light was out inside it, and thecabby did not climb out or attempt to open the door for him. Bryceturned his head and looked back as if for a last glance at thewatching figure, grasping the door handle with his right hand as iffumbling blindly. He was left handed. When the door was open a crack,it stopped opening, and those inside saw the muzzle of a magnamatic inhis left hand looking through the crack at them.

  It's easier to catch wolves if you're disguised as a rabbit, Pop Yakhad told him once. He must have looked a complete sucker, starting toclimb into a dark cab with his head turned backward!

  "Don't move," Bryce said, some of his anger reaching his voice in abiting rasp. Inside, the driver was frozen with his head turned enoughto see the glint of a muzzle behind his neck, and in the darkened farcorner of the back seat where there should have been no one there wasthe pale blur of a face, and a hand holding something. Bryce knew thatthere was no way a shot could reach him except through the shieldingsteel door or the shatterproof window, and a man would hesitate beforeshooting through glass when he was looking down the throat of Bryce'sgun. Bryce waited for him to think it over.

  The hand of the man in the back seat came into focus as his eyesadjusted to the dark inside, and he could see that it was holding agun. The gun was not pointing at anything in particular. It was frozenin mid-motion. The man had a half-smile frozen on his face, probablyin the way he had been smiling just before Bryce spoke.

  "Open your hand. Drop it." The glint of the gun disappeared, and therewas a faint thud from the floor. Bryce opened the door and slid intothe rear seat, watchful for motion, ready to shoot. "Face front!" Theyfaced front like two puppets, perhaps the uncontrollable rasp in hisvoice was convincing. He still did not know whose men they were, orwhy they had been hired. It would be no use questioning them for theywould not know either. He could guess who it was, a name came to mind,but there was no way of checking up. This kind of business did not fitwell with the crucial balance of his plans for the next two weeks. "Becareful," he said perhaps unnecessarily, "I'm nervous. Union Hotelplease."

  The short ride to the hotel was made in dead silence, with the man inthe opposite corner barely moving enough to blink his eyes. He wasmiddle-aged, with the resigned sagging lines to his face of ambitiondisappointed, but he sat with a waiting stillness that Brycerecognized as something to watch. There was probably another gunwithin quick reach of that passive right hand.

  The roter drifted down to a landing space on the floodlighted landingroof of the hotel and settled with a slight bump. "Don't move." Theclumsy careful business of opening the door backward with his righthand and sliding out without taking his eyes from either of them wastediously slow.

  Once out, he slammed the door briskly. "Take off." Not until the redand green lights had faded into the distance did he turn away, pockethis gun and walk into the wide doorway to the elevators. As he brushedpast the hotel detective standing in the doorway the detective wasreholstering a large size police pacifier. Apparently he had beenready to impartially stun everyone concerned at the first sign oftrouble, which probably explained why those in the aircab had notattempted any retaliation. The detective gave Bryce a cold stare as hewent by, probably in disapproval of guests waving weapons on hotelpremises.

  III

  In his luxurious hotel room Bryce checked his watch. Eight o'clock. Atelephone call was scheduled for some time in the half hour. He filedthe question of who was behind the night's attack and picked up thephone. The dial system was in automatic contact with any city in theworld. He dialed.

  Somewhere in a city, a phone rang. It rang unheard, for it was lockedinto a safe in a tiny rented office with some unusual mechanismsattached. The ringing was stopped abruptly and a recorded voiceanswered, "Yeah?"

  Bryce took a dial phone from the night table where it had been sittinginnocently like a toy he had bought for some child. "Hi Al," he saidcheerfully to the automatic mechanism at the other end. "Listen, Ithink I've got a new phrase for that transition theme. How's this?" Heput the receiver against the back of the toy and dialed the toy dial.It responded to each letter and number with a ringing note ofdifferent pitch that played a short unmelodious tune.

  The pitch notes went over the line and entered the mechanism, makingthe contacts within it that dialed the number he had dialed on the toyphone.

  "How's that?" Bryce said cheerfully.

  The recorded voice said, "Sounds good. I'll see what I can do withit." Somewhere far away and unheard another phone had begun to ring."Want to speak to George?"

  "Sure."

  A phone rang in a pay booth somewhere in a great city railroadstation, and someone browsing at a magazine stand or sitting on asuitcase apparently waiting for a train strolled casually to answerit.

  "Hello?" said a noncommittal voice, prepared to claim that he wasmerely a stranger answering the phone because it was ringing inpublic.

  "Hello George, how's everything going?" Bryce asked. Those words werehis trade mark, the passwords that identified him to everyone as theVoice who gave Tips. Among the monster organization which had grownfrom the proven reliability of those tips, the voice was known as"Hello George." Hello George's tips were always good, so they had cometo be followed as blindly as tips from God, even when they were notunderstood. Certainty was one thing men in the fencing and drugsmuggling business most sorely lacked.

  They communicated only by phone. They transmitted their wares byleaving them in public lockers and mailing the key. They never saweach other's faces or heard each other's names, but even the use of akey could be a trap that would bring a circle of narcotics agents ofINC around the unfortunate who attempted to open the locker.

  Far away over the bulge of the Earth between, a man sat in a phonebooth waiting for his tip. "Pretty well. No complaints. How's withyou, any news?"

  "I think you'd better cut connections with Union Transport. They'regetting pretty sloppy. I think they might spill something."

  "Wadja say?" asked the man at the other end cautiously, "I didn't getyou."

  "Better stop using UT for shipping," Bryce repeated, wording hissentence carefully. "They aren't careful enough anymore. You don'twant them to break an inc case wide open, do you?" INC was theInternational Narcotics Control agency of the F. N. But theconversation would have sounded like an innocent discussion ofshipping difficulties to any chance listener on the telephone lines.

  The flat tones were plaintive and aggrieved. "But we're expecting aload of stuff Friday. Our buyers are expecting it." Stuff was drug,and expecting was a mild word for the need of drug addicts! "And we'vegot a lotta loads of miscellaneous items to go out." The contact was asmall man in the organization but he evidently knew just how "hot"fenced goods could be. "That can't wait!"

  He had planned this. "Maybe they are all right for shipments thisweek. I'll chew them out to be careful, check up and call back Friday.Meanwhile break with them."

  "Tell them a few things from me, the--" the distant voice added asurprising string of derogatory adjectives. "Friday when?"

  "Friday about--about six." The double "about" confirmed the signal fora telephone appointment that was general for all contact numbers.

  "Friday about six, Okay." There was a faint click that meant he hadhung up and the phone in the safe was open for more dialings on histoy dial.

  Bryce hung up, leaned back on his bed and pushed a button that turnedon the radio to a semiclassical program. Soothing music came into theroom and slow waves of colored light moved across the ceiling. Hetuned to a book player, and chose a heavy economics study from thecurrent seller list of titles which appeared on the ceiling. The dailymoon ship was scheduled to blast off at five thirty, its optimum atthis week's position of the Moon. By this time tomorrow night, he andall the other members of the Board would be out of reac
h of any easyobservation or analysis by their hired psychological mind-hunter.

  With a slight chilling of the skin he remembered the cop-psychos thegangs had warned him about in his scrambling and desperate childhood,and what they were supposed to do to you when they caught you in athird offense.

  He had been born into an ex-European quarter in a Chinese city, adescendant of something prideful and forgotten called an EmpireBuilder, and grew with the mixed gangs of children of all colors whoroamed the back streets at night, looting and stealing and breaking.Population control was almost impossible in a land where the onlysocial security against starvation in old age was sons, and