Chapter V

He was 24 years old. A tall, unsmiling, handsome man dressed in a blue serge suit and a hat that he liked to pull down over his eyes so he could look at the world as if it were in a frame. He wasn't the type who made friends and there was a subtle air of menace about him that frightened the people with whom he came in contact. He was a stranger who looked at the world with cold and calculating eyes, like a scientist might look at a piece of lab apparatus. Women were intrigued by him, made their approaches, and hastily left--a little insulted and far more frightened.

Apes.

He was no longer 17, he was no longer a boy, and he wouldn't have shed a tear if he had been stretched on the rack. A hardness and a sense of power showed in the lines of his face and the set of his shoulders. People who talked to him felt inferior, as if they had been talking to a superman. And to a large degree they were absolutely right.

A small Thuscan flyer set him down one night on a fog-bound, Scotch moor, not far from Paisley. The next afternoon he had rented an apartment in Bristol and installed the first load of equipment. For the next three months, he did nothing but observe and travel--and buy up some small parcels of property in fifty different cities spread far and wide over the globe.

He started to set up an organization, though he had difficulty finding men to staff it. Most of those who would have qualified had been executed or were behind bars for life. But by the end of six months, his organization was almost complete. Reynolds, Langerman, and Caldwell were his lieutenants--the men who got their hands dirty and directed those in the next echelon down.

His right hand man was sent to him by Thusca. A powerful, urbane-looking man who smiled often with his mouth but never with his eyes. A guard let him in and he stood quietly in the rear of the room while Stan continued with his briefing session.

There were a dozen new men at the meeting, listening intently to what he had to say.

They were the type whose loyalty was to money, Stan thought, amused. Hard-faced men who had probably fought for a dozen different causes and switched sides as easily as changing a shirt.

Stan had almost finished with the briefing.

"Essentially, it's a simple smuggling operation. Only you're not to know what you're smuggling and under no condition are you to open your packages."

A man up front suddenly interrupted. "Why not?"

Stan smiled bleakly. "The packages are triggered, Piazza, I'm very much afraid if you tried to open it your head would be blown off. Satisfied?"

He turned back to the others. "We pay very well--very well, indeed. A smart man, who isn't too curious, will find it well worth his while. We'll give you the packages and tell you where to leave them. In some cases, it will involve extensive travel on your part. Be cautious, be careful, and be quick on the trigger in case anybody tries to take them away from you."

* * * * *

The man whom Stan had called Piazza stood up and started for the door. Stan watched him quietly until his hand was on the knob.

"What's the matter, Piazza?"

The man turned and spat on the carpet. "I don't like your proposition. I think it stinks. We take all the risks and we don't even know what we're doing!"

Stan shook his head sadly. "I'm sorry, Piazza. Really sorry. I had hoped we could use you."

Piazza whitened. "I'm no stoolie, Mr. Martin."

"We can't take the risk," Stan said simply.

In a movement that only one pair of eyes could follow, he reached inside his coat and shot through the cloth of the lapel.

Piazza looked faintly surprised and slumped limply to the floor.

Stan smiled coldly at the others.

"I assume the rest of you can be counted on?"

After the others had left, the man in back walked up and introduced himself, flashing the small, fluorescent identity card that labeled him as having come from Thusca.

"Tanner." Stan frowned. "Funny, I think I've heard the name before but I can't place it."

"I met you briefly on Thusca," Tanner said easily.

Stan shook his head. "No, it's before then." He paused. "But that's impossible!"

Tanner raised his eyebrows. "Why?"

Stan looked surprised. "Didn't they tell you? Just before I started on this mission, I lost my memory. Crack on the head or something. I only saw two people before I left and they were busy filling me on what I was supposed to do here. Didn't have time to see the doctors." He walked to the liquor cabinet and started mixing himself a drink. "I'll be seeing Mr. Ainsworth and Mr. Malcolm in a few months and maybe they can help me then."

"You don't think your memory is liable to come back ... here, do you?" Tanner asked curiously.

Stan laughed. "Not a chance--there's nothing that's apt to be familiar on _this_ planet!" He dropped in the ice cubes. "Still, it's awkward. For all I remember of my past life, I might as well have been born in a vat."

Tanner smiled faintly. "I didn't know you were in the smuggling business."

"It's a good front and one in which we won't get our own fingers dirty. Besides, you haven't asked me what we were smuggling."

Tanner swirled his drink so the ice cubes clinked against the side.

"Alright, what are we smuggling?"

"Sometimes packages, sometimes suitcases, sometimes hat-boxes. Our men take receipt of the packages and deliver them to different destinations where they think they're going to be picked up. Perhaps a broom closet in a building, perhaps a trash box on a city street, maybe a locker in a train station. There's only two things I haven't told the men--what's in the boxes, and the fact that they're never going to be picked up."

"What happens then?"

Stan sat down in a leather upholstered chair and threw a leg over the arm. "Nothing. Not until November 4th, that is. At twelve noon, London time, half the cities of this world will be blown off the globe."

Tanner looked puzzled. "So? The air forces the fleets, and the armies will still be intact."

"They'll be much too busy to fight us," Stan said smoothly. "You see, Tanner, they'll be fighting each other."

Which actually was very clever, Stan thought slowly. The divide and conquer theory. Each of the packages contained a Thuscan fusion weapon. Once they were set off, each country would think that another had sprung a sneak attack.

November 4th, Tanner and he would strike. November 5th, the world would be in chaos.

November 6th, the Thuscan fleet would land.

Tanner walked to the middle of the room and stood over the body of Piazza. "What are you going to do with our friend?"

"Send him away--I think to Africa." Stan picked the body up and lugged it into what had once been the bedroom. Now it was a room jammed with transmitting equipment and, against the far wall, a single hoop of shining metal standing upright on a black marble base. The hoop was large, over six feet in diameter, with a thin, metal filament winding around it.

* * * * *

He turned a dial set in the base. The filament glowed red and then a brilliant white. The hoop itself shimmered and faded, while at the same time a whirling circle of brilliant black built up where it had been. He tensed his muscles and heaved and Piazza's body hit the circle and disappeared, like a man plunging into quicksand.

"Where will he land?"

"In a doorway on the Street of Lepers in Casablanca." Stan turned the dial again and the whirling circle slowed and became translucent and then faded out altogether as the hoop sprang back into view.

Tanner gestured to the other equipment. "What's all this for?"

"Transmitting equipment to set off the fusion packages." Stan pointed to two box-like structures against the far wall. One held a bank of fifty small, white lights. The other, a bank of fifty red. "The white lights are the operators themselves--I can tell immediately if anything happens to them. The others represent the fusion packages. If one of them goes, I know the package has been tampered with."

Even as he watched, one of the white lights flickered and died.

Tanner looked surprised. "What happened?"

"We just lost an agent," Stan said grimly. "Chicago sector." He glanced over at the bank of red lights--they were still lit. "It couldn't have been about the fusion packages. It must have been about the ... other operation." He looked at Tanner. "The one you were sent to handle."

"What are you going to do about it?"

Stan shrugged. "We'll handle it ourselves, and then recruit another agent." He leafed through a filing cabinet, then finally pulled a dossier and gave it to Tanner. "Trace this man and find out what you can. We'll meet there in a week."

Tanner tapped the card lightly against his knuckles. "Mr. Ainsworth didn't think you'd be meeting any opposition."

Stan blanked his face of expression. He wasn't exactly sure why, but he didn't like Tanner.

"I didn't expect to."

There was a short silence and then Tanner walked to the hoop and worked the dial. The shimmering black sprang up and he stepped up on the marble. Just before he went through, he said: "What are you going to do about the ... opposition?"

"When we find them, we'll smash them," Stan said coldly.

After Tanner had gone through, Stan shut off the hoop. As the circle faded it caught his image and held it briefly, like a mirror.

He stared at it abstractly.

The problem of possible opposition bothered him but there was something that worried him even more. Something he caught himself thinking about when he woke up in the morning. Something he thought about all day and something he couldn't get out of his mind when he went to bed at night.

Who was he?