Mission: Earth "Death Quest" (34 page)

Then the whine and moan of electronic instruments.

Then a chorale like a tribal chant:

And then in a perfectly normal voice at the end it said:
So that's the moral, little kiddies. Don't never (bleep) robots!

The women in the room had almost had (bleeps)

from the rhythm. I thought I had read the label wrong. I leaped up and snatched it from the turntable before it could repeat. Yes, it was approved by the International Psychological Association and its title was "Moral."

Teenie snatched it out of my hands. She put it back on the turntable. It started up again,
POW, POW, POW, POW, POW, POW! BOOM, BOOM, BOOM!

She got into the rhythm of it. "Ain't it dreamy?" she said with a beatific smile that made her oversize mouth look like a hungry cavern. She looked to see if Adora was ready. Then she turned to me, "Come on, cowboy, let's get into the first pose!"

She reached out and yanked me to my feet so fast my robe flew out behind me.

She bent back and looked at me with an astonished expression on her face. She snapped her fingernails.

Adora had the picture.

Teenie made a grab for me.

I hastily tried to bat her hands away and disengage.

It was strange: stamped on my retina was a look of awe upon her face.

But right now, there was anything but awe in Teenie. She was stamping her heels to the music. I was reassured because I thought it was distracting her.

But no!

She suddenly grabbed the lapels of my robe, making it fly wide.

I tried to seize her wrists to get her off me. But she had the flat of her hands against my chest and was pushing ME away.

A look of horror was stamped on my retina. But it wasn't there now.

The music was going and pounding. Her body writhed against mine, bruising me. The marijuana and music were spinning in my head.

Teenie suddenly dropped to her knees.

I hastily grabbed at her shoulders to make her stand up., _

She then stood up but was I surprised!

She slapped me.

Right in the face!

A deadly insult! An invitation to a duel!

Oh, that was too much to take from this teen-age kid!

I wanted to kill her!

She tried to escape me but the back of her knees hit the bed.

The look of fear that was momentarily branded on my retina was not put on-of that I was very sure.

Killing her would be a pleasure!

She whirled around and tried to escape by climbing on the bed.

I seized her ponytail.

She backed up! Against me!

I made my hand flat to give her behind a powerful swat. "I'll teach you to insult me!" I snarled.

But Teenie was laughing!

Teenie turned over on her back and began to hold her sides with mirth.

Adora was laughing.

Candy was laughing.

Mike and Mildred were laughing.

I could not for the life of me figure out what they were laughing at.

I stamped off to my room and slammed the door.

I went to bed and glowered into the dark.

Blasted teen-age monstrosity!

To HELLS with her education!

I could still hear them guffawing in the other room.

Oh, I said, as I gnawed my pillow, when Lombar was finally through with this planet and needed it no more, what a pleasure it would be to blow it up. Especially with Teenie in the middle of the cataclysm. It couldn't be too soon!

Exhausted by my evening's work and rage, assisted by the marijuana and champagne, I fell into a restless nap, only to be awakened by a nightmare in which, no matter how hard I tried, I couldn't get the fuse lit that would explode Earth.

Trying to look at my watch told me two things: I had a terrible pain in my skull and it was 8:00 P. M.

There were no sounds coming from the front room. They had obviously gone out to dinner and a show as they often did.

I took a cold shower, trying to get rid of the headache. It didn't work. But it suddenly brought me alert enough to realize I was neglecting the real reason I had to endure all this travail: Heller!

Cursing the man for now even sicking teen-agers on

me, I towelled off quickly and uncovered the viewers. Krak's was still blank, Crobe's was no interest. But Heller's was another thing. It was dim but unmistakable: he was still at sea.

I blew out a sigh of relief. I was in time to watch him being blown to bits as he tried to land at Atlantic City. And what a joy THAT would be after all the trouble he had caused me!

The night was a flat calm. There was a glow against the sky which must be Atlantic City. The patrol craft was dead in the water. He was preparing to go in!

Oh, I knew I could count on the harbor master: they don't like blown-up ships clogging their channels. Heller, I said, you are going to catch it good this time and I hope to the Gods that Lombar has removed your Grand Council contact, for tonight, now, you could get your head blown off. And a pleasure it will be to see it done!

He verified that the running lights of the patrol craft were burning bright. Then he went to a chart table and laid out a chart that showed the East Coast of the U. S. and the Atlantic past Bermuda. He looked into a Coast Pilot and found the Devil's Triangle. It said it was an area south of Bermuda where ships had been known to disappear from causes never established. He then spotted this area with a pencil point on the chart and drew a line to it and read the course from where he was, off Atlantic City, to the Devil's Triangle. He couldn't get it very exact, apparently, for he drew in a bunch of question marks on the chart.

He then went to the pilothouse controls and put the engines back in gear, slow ahead. With the wheel, he brought the craft to the course he had just found and then locked the autopilot in.

Heller turned to the log and, imitating the calligraphy, wrote, "2012 hrs. Sea Monster has told us where to solve mystery in the Devil's Triangle. Following him at his standard cruising speed, Course 152° T. Will report revelations after he has had coffee."

He then went into the salon, checked each of the crew lying there and arranged the unconscious bodies so they were comfortable.

Heller said to them in general, "When you boys wake up and find yourselves where you will be, I hope, amongst you, you can also find a great way to explain your whereabouts to your Coast Guard superiors. I've left you one and, who knows, after the spot they put you in, they might even buy it. I'm leaving now. Don't bother to pipe the side." He turned out the light and closed the door.

He went to the rail, climbed over it and dropped into the Sea Skiff which was towing alongside. He started its engines, checked the water pumps for cooling and then, with the slash of a knife, cut the taut towline and was almost at once bobbing back in the patrol craft's wake.

He looked toward the lights of Atlantic City, a hazy dome of dim whitish blue in the blackness. He said, "Now we'll try to land once more on this hostile coast and see what the natives have cooked up this time. No cannibals, I hope."

I blinked. Had he guessed the trap that had been laid for him? Then I relaxed. Typically Heller. He was referring to the Verrazano plaque he had read that morning. You could never tell when he was joking. It was a disconcerting trait, typical of the villain. Threw you off. He had owned the place once: he knew very well that,

aside from Federal tax collectors, there were no cannibals in Atlantic City.

He fed throttle to the Sea Skiff, heading for a point to the north of the glow in the night. As he picked up speed and the Sea Skiff planed, the fans of spray cast a glow of their own-phosphorescence.

I grabbed a map. Judging from the position of Atlantic City's lights off his port bow, he was not heading for the harbor entrance, Absecon Inlet. He must be going for Little Egg Inlet, ten miles to the north. Then I realized that he was not taking a frontal approach to the harbor. He was going to join the Intracoastal Waterway, go down Little Bay and Reed's Bay back of Brigantine Beach! He was going to enter Absecon Bay by the back door!

Sneaky! Oh, you could never trust Heller! (Bleep) him! With what bitterness I recalled all he had put me through when I had had to leave Istanbul by sea.

I phoned the harbor master at Atlantic City. "This is the Fed. Your man is in a Sea Skiff, travelling at 42.3 knots. He will be coming down the Intracoastal Waterway and will approach through Absecon Bay."

"Aha!" said the harbor master. "That means he'll come down Absecon Channel to get to the yacht! We'll muster at Parley State Marina."

"Be sure to get him!" I said. "He's a very desperate black terrorist, trained by the FLO."

"Have no fear," said the harbor master. "We've supplemented the regular force with a squad from the New Jersey National Guard. We'll let him have it with machine guns!"

"Have you alerted the yacht?"

"Got her surrounded by collision floats in case this (bleep) tries a kamikaze."

"Good thinking," I said. "I estimate he'll be amongst you in half an hour."

"In half an hour," said the harbor master, "your man will be blown to bits!"

"Knew I could count on you," I said. "The national interest must be served." I rang off.

Heller was streaming along over the black, glassy water. There was a little radarscope back of the gyrocompass and he was apparently steering by that. The shapes of land were very clear on it and he was rocketing straight into a black gap. Tricky navigation at very high speed: those inland channels looked complex.

He was doing something else! I couldn't quite make it out in the dim glow around him. Was he holding a bomb? I watched.

A can of beer!

He was drinking a can of beer!

Oho, I thought. You don't suspect. Far too sure of yourself, Heller, much too relaxed.

I watched him as he banked into a constricted channel, speeding south. There were some marker lights. He didn't seem to be paying much attention to them. Then I realized that that Sea Skiff, with only its propellers and rudders in the water, probably did not much care about the depth of the channel. He was taking short cuts! Running by land masses, not buoys! He had me lost!

I studied my map anxiously. I wished I could read a radarscope. I saw a restricted place ahead of him. He was roaring toward it. I relaxed: it could only be the opening which carried him into Absecon Channel-the islands to the right and left were so long that he could not detour around them. In only a mile or so now he would reach Brigantine Bridge. There were its lights ahead! Right where they invisibly waited for him with machine guns!

He was doing something else now. He was propping something up in the pilot seat.

"Now you just sit there," he said, "and keep your eye on things."

A shape. A form! Good Gods, had he taken one of those luckless Coast Guardsmen prisoner? And making him run the boat?

Then Heller put the arms on the wheel and tied them with a flip of cord. The arms were too limp to be human.

A dummy! A work suit stuffed with pillows that had a pillow face.

Heller walked to the back of the Sea Skiff. He picked up a big sack.

He pulled something down over his face.

He rolled off the stern!

Right into the churning wake!

He bobbed up.

He had something in his hand, hard to tell, silhouetted against the lights of the distant town. It was wrapped in plastic.

He pressed it.

The Sea Skiff banked!

He pressed it again, watching the spray of the roaring craft.

The Sea Skiff banked the other way!

A radio control! (Bleep) him! He had rigged the autopilot to the craft's radio the moment I had my back turned. He was holding some sort of trigger in his hand!

The Sea Skiff was closing the distance to the bridge very quickly now. He made it zigzag.

A CHATTERING BURST OF MACHINE-GUN FIRE!

"I thought so," muttered Heller.

He pressed the control. The Sea Skiff banked into a steep turn.

Rifles were going now!

A ricochet came skipping over the water and made a vicious whine past his head.

The Sea Skiff headed to his right.

"I'm sorry," said Heller. "You were a good boat."

The Sea Skiff turned again. It passed under the bridge and was racing toward a nearby marina entrance.

The sharp staccato hammer of machine guns above the roar of engines.

The crash of a shattered windshield!

The vicious multiple whines of ricochets!

A heavier burst of fire!

Still surging toward the marina docks, the Sea Skiff seemed to stagger. Then it went lancing on!

A gout of flame!

The blue-white flash of exploding gasoline!

All the extra fuel cans must have gone up as one!

The remains of the rocketing speedboat hit the end of a pier!