S.T.A.R. FLIGHT (7 page)

“And quite a bit to gain,” he reminded. “What are the odds?”

“Of you collecting that two million? Small,” she said honestly. “You won’t be the first to have tried. Some of the best minds of Earth have grappled with the problem. The Kaltich are smart. They’ve got us in a stranglehold. Have you ever wondered,” she said, “why the governmental forces haven’t just gone in and grabbed a Gate? Just taken it over?”

He nodded.

“They have. Five years after the Kaltich appeared they tried it. In Estonia. The Soviets sent in armed troops. They managed to get what they were after and found they had nothing at all. The Kaltich had retreated and closed the Gate after them.”

“What happened?”

“For thirty years no member of the Communist Part was granted longevity treatment. The heads of the party were old men. No government has dared try it since. That’s why the Kaltich have us in a stranglehold. Your worst enemies are those of your own kind.”

“Are you saying that STAR is against me?”

“No. We are the ones who are for you, but how many belong to STAR? Not many,” she said, not waiting for an answer. “And we could be wrong. The UNO thinks that we are. Chung Hoo preaches patience — all will come if we wait long enough. I think that he is lying. Not consciously but actually. He doesn’t want to recognize the truth.”

“Which is?”

“The Gates will never be opened,” she said. “Not as they’ve promised. Not so that the people of Earth can enjoy new worlds. We’re trapped,” she said. “Beaten by our own greed. Tell me,” she demanded. “Do you know how far science has advanced since the aliens came?”

He shook his head.

“Hardly at all. Oh, we’ve made some slight progress, perfected some skills, tied up a few loose ends, but that’s about all. We haven’t made any really significant progress
during the past fifty years. Can you guess why?”

It was obvious. “Why beat your brains out trying to do something that has already been done? All we need to do is to wait and the Kaltich will drop the answer to every question right smack in our lap.”

“Exactly. They’ve even killed our initiative.”

An inflated rubber duck lay at the edge of the pool. He picked it up and threw it into the water. Idly he watched it drift. The sunshine made rainbows on the tiny puddles where they had dripped water when climbing out.

“Wait,” he said. “For how long?”

“Until we’re so helplessly dependent on the Kaltich that we’ll be no better than slaves.” She stretched, breasts high and firm. “I’m a surgeon,” she said. “Did you know that spare-part surgery was possible as far back as the middle of last century? The point is that we could have had our own spare-part organic banks by this time. In fact, we did. Then the Kaltich offered to keep us supplied. They taught us their method of tissue-typing. Now, when we need anything, we send to a Gate.” She rolled, looking directly at him. “Where,” she asked meaningfully, “do they get those spare parts?”

Moodily he lit a cigarlet. You’re avoiding the issue, he thought. STAR has already gone into these questions. She’s marking time for some reason of her own. Idly he wondered how a woman like her, rich, beautiful, had come to join the organization.

“I deal with a varied clientele,” she explained. “One of them spoke to me about STAR, so I joined.

“Just like that?”

“Well, no,” she admitted. “At first I contributed funds, then advice, then I took a more active part. The love of adventure, I suppose,” she said. “The thrill of belonging to a secret organization. Surgery can be very boring.” She stretched, the soft flesh of her breasts flattening on the marble edging the pool as she reached for one of his cigarlets. “And you?”

“I don’t really know,” he said broodingly. “I was bored too, I guess, eager for a little excitement. No,” he admitted. “It wasn’t that. I just don’t like the Kaltich. I don’t like the way they lord it around. The way they whip people.” Unconsciously his hand lifted to touch his cheek. “This plan of yours,” he said. “When are you going to tell me about it?”

“In a minute.” She moved her knee, one long, curved thigh sliding over the inside of the other. Her skin was like velvet, soft, enticing with the promise of tactile pleasure. Tiny blonde hairs shone like a golden down in the bright sunshine. “We were talking of spare-parts,” she said. “The aliens can supply them and they can come from only one place — here on Earth. The tissue is too similar for them to have come from anywhere else.”

“The people they let pass through the Gate,” he said. “The young selectees.”

“It could be. We think so. It makes sense.”

Then why use them? he thought, but knew the answer. To a dying man morals and ethics have little meaning. And, he thought bitterly, what you don’t know doesn’t hurt.

“They do it for money,” she said. “Have you ever worked out just how much money they make?”

“Tell me.”

“They charged a thousand units for one longevity treatment. Now it’s doubled. Everyone over fifty wants one. They want to look and feel like thirty again. So they pay.” She removed the cigarlet from between her lips and examined the glowing tip. “We estimate that, from North America alone, they collect ten thousand million units a year. That’s just for the longevity treatment. No one knows how much they collect for the sale of spare parts.”

“That’s ten million times the average income,” he said thoughtfully. “And soon to be doubled. What do they do with it?”

“Buy things. They own almost all of New York. They own airlines, farms, factories, power plants. You name it they’ve got it. And they buy food,” she said. “Fantastic amounts of
food. And guns. And ammunition.”

“Why? Do you think they want to start a war?”

“I don’t know.” She threw away the cigarlet. “I just state the facts. STAR has been collecting data and we don’t like what we’ve found. In another twenty years the Kaltich will practically own the planet. In another fifty we’ll all be working for the aliens. Then what?”

“We won’t let them get away with it,” he said. “We daren’t.”

“Who is ‘we’?” she demanded. “You? Me? The guy next door? What the hell can we do about it? Nothing,” she said, answering herself. “The governments are for the aliens and they’ll keep us in line. It’s happened before,” she said. “The old North American Indians were robbed blind, dispossessed of their land, herded into reservations. I guess they thought it could never happen to them either. But it did. You know,” she said, looking at him, “the more I think about it the more it scares me. We’ve been invaded and don’t know it. We’ve been taken over without a struggle. Almost without a struggle. Thank God for STAR.”

“Yes,” he said flatly. “I expect Lassiter felt like that.”

“He was unlucky,” she said. “But let’s face it. What is one man’s life in a war to regain a planet?”

“That depends on whose life you’re talking about.” Preston crushed out the butt of his cigarlet and threw it at the inflated duck. The filter made a popping sound as it hit the rubber. “Listen,” he said. “I’ve enjoyed the swim and everything else, but I can do without the build-up. Why don’t you just tell me about the plan?”

She looked at him, moving so as to let gravity claim her breasts, smiling at the involuntary motion of his eyes. “Now?”

In the pool the duck bobbed, watching.

“Beta,” said Preston. “Gamma. Delta. Gamma-delta. Delta-alpha.”

“Look again.” Hilda Thorenson pressed the remote
control and the slide jumped back onto the screen.

“Delta-alpha-null,” he said. “I hadn’t noticed the black on the badge.”

“Try this one.” A Kaltich, dressed all in black, showed on the screen.

“Null.”

“Now this.”

“Null-alpha,” he said. The man was all in black but this time wore a red flash. A third null appeared, this time with a flash of yellow and blue. “Null-beta-delta.”

“And this?”

“Delta-null.”

“Delta-null-epsilon,” she corrected. “You missed the white at the bottom of the flash. Now this … and this … and this …”

It went on for another hour. Finally Hilda Thorenson pressed the switch and the screen went blank. She wore a figure-hugging robe of scarlet velvet; the thick tresses of her golden hair hung loose about her shoulders. In the dimness of the theatre her skin shone with a limpid translucence. “That’s enough,” she said. “If you don’t know about their badges of rank by now you never will.”

Like coat armour, he thought, remembering the schloss. But no, these badges weren’t to identify the wearer in a personal sense.

“To sum up,” she said briskly, “as far as we know all the Kaltich are divided into six classes; red, yellow, green, blue, white and black. A member of one class shows his superiority over other members of the same class by wearing a badge. A beta with a red flash is of higher rank than a beta with a green. A beta with no badge is lower than both and so on. Whites, the epsilons, seem to be of the lowest civilian rank. Nulls, the blacks, are the military or the law-enforcement body. What,” she demanded, “does this tell you?”

“A caste system,” he said. “Something like the Hindus.”

“Nothing else?”

“Such a system is usually unadaptable. A member of one class cannot, or will not, perform the duties of another.”

“And?”

“It is brittle,” he said slowly, thinking. “Inflexible.”

“It is also concerned, to a remarkable degree, with symbols of status and position. Think of the army,” she suggested. “Any army. There you have an almost exact analogy. Privates, noncommissioned officers, officers … a multiple layer of various degrees of command. Now, if a private were to adopt the uniform of an officer — who would expose the impersonation? The men?”

“I doubt it. They wouldn’t risk being wrong.”

“Exactly. Their own system works to protect the impersonator.” Her eyes shone in the shadowed dimness. “That,” she said quietly, “is the plan.”

Before he could answer she operated the remote control and the screen blazed with colour. This time it was a movie. A family of Kaltich dressed all in blue were shown wandering down a street.

“Look at them,” she ordered. “A man, a woman, two children. An ordinary family. Tourists.”

“So?”

“We’re getting a lot more of them,” she said. “Groups like this one, family groups, travelling, looking around, staying at local hotels. The Kaltich, it seems, have lifted some form of restriction. Those people are vacationing.” The movie blurred, slowed to show a couple of men dressed in green. “Gamma out sightseeing. They eat, drink and act like ordinary people. Exactly like ordinary people. If we took one and dressed him in our clothing you wouldn’t be able to tell him from a native.”

“So you imagine that, if one of us should dress like one of them, the converse would apply?” Preston frowned, thinking about it. “Would it be as simple as that? Surely they must have some form of identification?”

“They probably have,” she agreed. “But I’m not just talking about dressing up like one of the Kaltich. It goes
deeper than that. Listen,” she said. “You were sent for because of three things: you speak perfect Galactic, you are loyal to STAR — and you look almost exactly like a delta we’ve got on ice. That’s right,” she said. “I told you they acted just as if they were human. This one was lured away from his friends. He was on vacation and we made sure that he enjoyed it. We’ve got some attractive girls working for STAR,” she added. “He fell for one like a ton of brick.”

“And?”

“She took him to a hotel. He was doped and we went over him with a fine-tooth comb. Controlled hypnosis — we dragged out all we could find. You’re going to assimilate all we learned. You’ve got two days. In that time you’re going to stop being human and become a Kaltich.”

He took out his cigarlets, lit one for himself, another for the woman. Smoke drifted before the glowing screen.

“The Gate,” he said. “Maybe they have a encephalogram-check, something like that. The Kaltich aren’t fools. In the past fifty years others must have tried this.”

“Maybe they have, we don’t know. STAR hasn’t.” She drew smoke into her lungs, blew it out in a spreading cloud. “You’ve got a good point,” she admitted, “but we’ve covered it. This delta comes from the Washington Gate. We lured him to New York and made sure that his friends knew about it. Now suppose we had a vicious riot. One bad enough to shatter the ring of perimeter guards. And assume that in the middle of all the fuss and excitement a group of Kaltich should come running towards the Gate. They would be chased, apparently in danger of their lives. Would the Gate custodian be so insistent on identification then? And, even if they were, could they check with Washington before letting you pass into safety?”

“Maybe not,” he admitted, and then, “so this is the wonderful plan.”

“It’ll work,” she said. “Do you think STAR’s been idle all this time? Those fires and demonstrations aren’t spontaneous. STAR is behind most of the zanies. And this is our
big chance. The doubling of the longevity charge,” she explained. “There have been demonstrations each night since then. When we’re ready there’ll be a big one. In the chaos you’ll get your chance to walk into the Gate. You won’t be alone. You’ll be with others. If you’re smart you’ll let them carry you.”

“So I get into the Gate,” he said. “What then?”

She shrugged. “I don’t know. That’s up to you. We can’t do more than give you your chance.”

“And the man I’m to impersonate?”

“Forget him,” she said. “He won’t bother you. This is war, remember? What is one life against the destiny of the world?”

On the screen the aliens still walked and talked and acted like ordinary humans. He reached out, took the switch from her hand and pressed it. In the following dimness he touched her knee, slid his hand along her thigh. “You’re beautiful,” he said in English. “So very beautiful.”

“Fool!” She had muscles and used them. The impact of her hand numbed the side of his face. “Never use other than Galactic! Never!”

He rubbed his cheek, watching her.

“But thank you” she said softly. “Thank you very much.”

She wore nothing beneath the robe.

All Celestial Gates followed the same pattern; a central dome flanked by long, low structures a little like flattened aircraft hangars, each standing in the centre of an expanse of open ground. Only the extent of the ground varied — the Gate in Moscow sat in ten acres, in London a quarter. The New York Gate was even more modest and Preston was glad of it.