Operation Interstellar (1950) Read online

  On his way up the sidewalk, Paul planned the retort perfect. Anticipating some humorous sarcasm on the mode of his arrival, Paul hoped to crush any verbal volley with unanswerable repartee. Usually Paul’s fount of boundless wit ran just a trifle slow, following the definition of a bon mot: Something you think of on the way home. This time he was going to be prepared.

  He swung the door airily and strode in, his tongue poised over a few words of terse wit.

  The guard looked at him and swallowed a large lump. “How in hell did you get out?” he gasped.

  This was not according to plan; unfortunately, the guard had not read Paul’s script, and die prepared answer would not fit the question. “I was never in,” said Paul lamely, again wishing he had a tongue full of ready wit instead of fumbling for a prepared speech.

  “The hell you weren’t.”

  Paul took it from there, ignoring the fact that the guard had not followed Paul’s mental conversation. “That was a car reserved for very important personages,” he said. “From now on you can call me Viper.”

  The guard bypassed this. “But how did you get out?” he asked. His voice was almost a plea. “You didn’t pass me.”

  “Were you guarding the jail too?” chuckled Paul. “Fast man, no?”

  “You came in a taxicab the first time.”

  “Ah yes. But that was years ago before people knew of my brilliance, importance, and high station. Now—”

  “Years ago, my eye. Less than fifteen minutes ago—”

  “I did not.”

  “You did.”

  “Not me.” Paul’s feeling of airy well-being came down a few thousand feet and mired in a cumulus cloud.

  “Look, Grayson, you came in a taxicab and breezed in here about fifteen minutes ago as though you had only a minute to spare.”

  “You’re thinking of someone else.”

  “Your picture said Paul Grayson, and so did your identification. How else would I be knowing you?”

  “You’ve seen me often enough.”

  “Maybe. But don’t forget that I see a few thousand people every day. And I know you only well enough to know that you do own bona fide credentials. You’ve got ’em?”

  “I—” Paul blinked. A great searing light was starting to cut through the cobwebs of his brain. The airy feeling of well-being dropped below the cumulus cloud and made a one-point landing on strictly solid ground. “Look,” he said soberly. “You claim a man came through here a few minutes ago, resembling me?”

  “Unless you ain’t who you are, he was you.”

  “He wasn’t me. My papers were stolen less than an hour ago. He must have—”

  The guard was no imbecile. He turned in a flash and hit a button on the desk beside him. An alarm bell rang in some inner room and four more guards came tumbling out of a doorway, alert and ready for trouble.

  “Tommy,” snapped the guard at the door, “Go check Paul Grayson’s ship, that’s number—”

  “BurAst 33-P.G.l.”

  The guard looked at Paul carefully. “You’re a dead ringer for the other guy that came through here,” he said. “But you happen to know Paul Grayson’s BurAst number. Anybody could memorize it.”

  Paul watched the other guards tumble out of the building and head off across the spaceport on a dead run, drawing pistols as they went. He started to follow them.

  The guard barred his way.

  “No you don’t!”

  “But that guy is stealing—”

  “Maybe your name is Grayson and maybe the outer guy is Grayson. You look alike and he had identification. I don’t know Paul Grayson well enough to accept or deny you—or him. But until you show me credentials entitling you to roam this spaceport, you stay outside!”

  “But—”

  “The boys I sent out there are capable. Don’t get in their way. They might shoot the wrong Paul Grayson.”

  “But—”

  “Get your credentials. Get some sort of identification.”

  Paul looked at the big standard clock on the walk “But I’ve got less than eight minutes until take-off time.”

  “There’s always tomorrow. You’ll get cleared first or no entry! And that’s final.”

  “Hell’s Eternal Bells!” exploded Paul. “The cops that brought me here did so because I was clipped on the bean and robbed.” “It’s my job,” explained the guard quietly. “I don’t want to be any more of a bastard than I have to be. If you’re Paul Grayson and the cops know you were robbed, there’s the telephone.” Paul grabbed the phone and started to dial, fuming at the delay. First there was a few seconds until the dial tone came, then Paul dialled the outside line. Another few seconds of delay until he could dial the number of the municipal police department Then a bored voice asked: “Police headquarters, who’s calling please.”

  “This is Paul Grayson at the Municipal Spaceport.”

  “What’s the trouble out there?”

  “A crook stole my identification.”

  “We’ll send a man out to investigate.”

  “No!” yelled Paul to prevent the telephone operator from cutting off the line on the assumption that the call was closed.

  “You don’t understand. I’m supposed to take off in—ah—seven minutes.”

  “We can’t get a man there that quickly. You’ll have to wait.”

  “Look,” raid Paul hurriedly, “there’s a squad car that just dropped me here. I was clipped on Talman Avenue and they went there to investigate, they brought me here. Why not call them and ask them to come back and explain to the guards here what happened?”

  “I’ll check that and take action,” promised the voice in a completely bored tone.

  Paul fumed.

  There was the sound of a shot outside, followed instantly by the shrill, whining song of a ricochet, probably a glance from the hard metal flank of a parked spacecraft.

  The telephone went dead and a second later came the dial tone again. Paul hung it up reluctantly.

  And that made it worse. Other hands were not as imbued with the importance of the project. To other hands it was a routine bit of trouble, not the matter of life and death that it was to Paul Grayson; yet he to whom this thing was vastly important must sit with folded hands while men handled the matter in ponderous routine.

  The clock continued to turn inexorably. Paul’s mathematically-inclined mind went to work; it was less than two minutes since the police car left. Give them a minute to check up, and a minute to make sure, then a minute to call the car. That was three of the precious seven minutes gone to hell. If it took them as long to return as it took them to get where they now were, throw another two minutes down the drain and that left two minutes in which to let the sergeant explain to the guard, clear Paul Grayson on a pro tem basis, get him across the spaceport to his ship, in, up, and away.

  He groaned.

  He wished frantically for some means of knowing what was going on; what measures were being made in his behalf. He wanted desperately to listen to the radio in the police car. He’ wanted to get on the radio himself and roar out explanations, to exhort them to greater effort— The siren wail of the police car cut into his thoughts and Paul raced to the door to fling it open. The car slid to the curb and the siren whined down the scale as the driver turned it off. They got out of the car and came up the walk briskly.

  “Hurry! ” he called.

  He cast a glance over his shoulder at the standard clock. He had three minutes.

  “Tell ’em who I am!” he exploded breathlessly.

  The sergeant blinked. “But I don’t know who you are.”

  “But I’ve told you.”

  “Hell,” grunted the guard. “You’ve told me, too.” To the sergeant, the guard said: “Do you know anything about all this?” “We got a call that this man had been clipped and robbed. He. was.” The sergeant looked at Nora Phillips. “Can you identify this man?”

  Nora bit her lip. “He’s Paul Grayson.”

  The guard sp
eared Nora with a cold look. “Do you know that or is it just what he said?”

  “Why I’ve—”

  “She’s never met him otherwise,” put in the sergeant.

  “That’s true, but I think—”

  “Thinking ain’t good enough.”

  Nora looked at Paul. “Haven’t you anything to show?”

  Paul shook his head. “Nothing that would cut any ice. Belt buckle with initial G. A few laundry marks and cleaners’ marks. A checkbook in my hip pocket but no name printed in it. I might check the balance against the bank, but that would be tomorrow morning. We might call Doctor Haedaecker, but by the time we arrived on some means of personal identification, take-off time would be gone and past.”

  Paul paused, breathless, his whole body poised tense and his head bent to listen. There came the patter of feet outside.

  The standard clock was swinging towards the hour, two minutes remained, enough if all went quick and well.

  One of the guards burst in. He took a quick look around and spotted the police sergeant. “Good,” he said, breathing heavily. “We’ve just shot a man out there. You’re needed.”

  “Was it the man who passed himself off as me?” shouted Paul Grayson.

  “As we came up to BurAst 33-P.G.1, this guy jumped from the airlock and started to run. We gave chase and lost him in the dark beyond a group of parked spacecraft. We called for him to halt. We found him again on the far side of the ships and Joe fired a shot.

  “It must of missed him because he kept running, and then we all started shooting, losing him behind another ship parked by the fence. You know old Mupol 3316? The way the guts are parked all over the spaceport and left to rust? A derelict if I ever saw one, and after this I’d say it was about time we cleaned up that old wreck—”

  “—Please hurry,” blurted Paul.

  “— we got to the fence where he’d climbed out over some junk stacked behind Mupol 3316. We went after him, and then guess what?”

  “What?”

  “We found this character flat on his face in the road, as dead a corpse as ever died.”

  Paul exploded again. “That proves it,” he said. “Now—”

  The spaceport guard shook his head. This shake was echoed by the sergeant of police.

  “But I’ve work to do—”

  The sergeant smiled unhappily. “We’ve work to do too, son. I’ll call you Grayson for the benefit of the doubt. There is not much doubt that something is highly rotten here, but we’ve got to be certain. There’s been one slugging and robbery, the attempted theft of spacecraft, and now a man killed by armed guards in performance of their duty. This is going to require clearing up before we let you go.”

  “But you know where to find me. I’m due on Proxima Centauri I to check the arrival of the Bureau of Astrogation survey beam. I’m to take off—”

  “If you are Paul Grayson.”

  “If the other guy was Paul Grayson, would he have run from cops?”

  The sergeant laughed bitterly. “This may come as a shock to you, son. But you have no idea of how many of our Nicest People, Pillars of Society, and Solid Citizens have secrets in their daily .lives that make them shun Law and Order when Law and Order comes toward them with a drawn pistol, a subpoena, or a warrant for arrest.”

  The loudspeaker came to life at that moment. “BurAst 33-P.G.l taking off for Proxima Centauri I. Timing signal for synchronization first check…” the voice died to be replaced by a series of clicks, one second apart.

  “That’s my notice—”

  The guard snapped a switch. “Master Control,” he said quietly. “This is Edwards, guard at the main gate, hold the flight.”

  “Hold the flight?” answered the speaker.

  “Hold the flight. We’ve had trouble here.”

  “Is that what the shooting was all about?” The timing clicks died in the background. “What’s the trouble?”

  “We’ve got two Paul Graysons wanting to take off.”

  “Tell ’em to draw straws. This is costing money.”

  “One of them—”

  “Goddammmit!” yelled Paul, “I’m Paul Grayson and I’ve—” “That you’ll have to prove, son,” said the sergeant.

  “— is dead,” finished the guard.

  “Dead?” gasped the speaker. “Which one?”

  “It ain’t funny,” said the guard seriously. “Just hold the flight.”

  “Okay, sport. But—”

  Paul spoke up, “Can you get the Elecalc free for a course for tomorrow night?”

  “Who’s that speaking?”

  “I’m Paul Grayson.”

  “The live one, huh?” chuckled the unimpressed voice from the speaker. His bantering tone made Paul want to rip out his larynx with a crooked thumb and shove it down his throat. “Okay. We’ll have the electronic calculator figure out a course for Proxima I for tomorrow night. Doubtless someone will take the flight.”

  “Oh damn!” groaned Paul. “Why does this have to happen to me?”

  The sergeant smiled. “If this were the first attempt to steal a spacecraft, I’d be surprised.”

  The guard shook his head. “It’s more than that,” he added sagely. “If the other guy was a thief bent on swiping a BurAst ship, he could have gone off in it ten minutes before the second Paul Grayson arrived. He didn’t. He was waiting for the take-off signal; and if he were a crook, he hoped to fill in the real Paul Grayson’s place. If he was the real Grayson, we’ve killed a frightened Bureau man, and this bird here—”

  Paul looked at the standard clock. It was now moving past the precise second marked for take-off. He sighed resignedly and relaxed. “For the moment we’ll assume that I am Paul Grayson,” he said quietly. “So soon as we can find someone to corroborate me, the second part of your supposition will have no grounds.”

  The sergeant shook his head. “I think we’d all best head for the station and wait this thing out.”

  Paul gulped. “You’re going to jug me?”

  “Both of you.”

  “But you can’t arrest me—”

  “Five will get you eight,” chuckled the sergeant.

  Nora Phillips came forward until she stood between Paul and the sergeant. “Why am I being arrested?” she demanded.

  The sergeant smiled affably. “No one is being arrested.”

  “Why am I being detained, held, or otherwise prevented from enjoying my rights of freedom?” she snapped.

  Paul shrugged. “I’ve missed my take-off,” he said. “I’ll have to wait until tomorrow anyway. And I can get identification in an hour or so without any trouble. In fact, I’ll gladly go along with you if you’ll permit me the telephone. They can bring my stuff down there and we can settle this quickly. But there is no reason to hold Miss Phillips.”

  The sergeant turned to the woman and bowed deferentially. “Forgive a harried policeman his habits,” he said quietly. “As a shoe salesman will mentally catalog the shoes of the people sitting opposite to him on the street car, and a physician will mentally diagnose the ills of his fellow-spectators at a baseball game, a policeman habitually views the acts of his contemporaries with one eye toward their motives.”

  “Meaning what?” demanded Paul Grayson.

  The policeman faced Paul and said with a level voice: “So far as every bit of evidence goes, you are Paul Grayson. You behave as a man might behave when placed in the position you appear to be in. On the other hand, if you were a smart man, you would behave as you are now behaving even though you had reasons most dire to execute as soon as you leave the watchful eye of law and order. This is a bit too trite. A stolen wallet containing only a few bucks and a whale of a lot of identification, complete with a witness to the crime, makes fine story material to use in establishing a false identity. Motive can come later—if any. If you are Paul Grayson, I will make abject apology. If your tale is not true, there will be some tall explaining to make.”

  “How about Miss Phillips’ boy friend?”


  “Now that’s a nice thought, but not necessarily conclusive proof. He might easily and sensibly be included to give any story an air of veracity. However, we can check with Toby Reed as soon as we get back to the patrol car.”

  CHAPTER 3

  Paul Grayson awoke the following morning to the tune of the telephone beside his bed. “This is Sergeant Hollowell,” said the Other man, ‘‘I’ve just called to apologize once more and to tell you that everything is OK. We’ll even give you a guard if you want it.”

  Paul stretched and said, sleepily: “Thanks, Sergeant. I guess everything will come out all right without a guard.”

  “Okay. I’m glad for all concerned. For your information and not to be repeated, the character we got last night is— was—a petty crook with a record as long as your arm. A plain case of theft. Interrupted luckily. We call it closed.”

  “Thanks again. And the ship?”

  “It’s there as it was last night. So far as we and the BurAst guards know, no one but the crook was near it, and no one will be permitted to go near it until you come to take it up.”

  Paul breathed easier. “Okay, see you later.”

  “Your wallet, intact, will be delivered to your apartment within the hour. That closes that case, too.” The policeman’s voice sounded well pleased with himself and the night’s work. Paul hung up and sprawled back in bed, thinking.

  There was no point in arousing the policeman’s suspicions again. A howl of ‘Why?’ might delay Paul Grayson; might cause another technician to be sent to Proxima I to check the arrival of the radio beam. Paul had all the reason in the galaxy for wanting to be there himself, and an equally large quantity of reasons for not wanting someone else running his ship.

  But there was more to this than met the eye.

  Paul reached for a cigarette and laid back in bed blowing smoke at the ceiling. A smile touched his lips. Aside from the annoyance at being delayed for twenty four hours, it had been one large evening.