Chapter 3: The Storm

"Pete! Hey, Pete! Didja hear the big news?"

"Whoa back! Take a deep breath, and start over. I know, they've discovered that EssChad's a great place to raise chickens." Pete's somewhat muffled answer came from his usual place, half inside the copter's innards. In the last week and a half the palisade around the base had been extended to include the edge of the swamp, and the need for armed guards to protect the area was much less.

"Aw, cut it out about the chickens. Anyhow, there's more money right now in raising chinchillers for export to other worlds. No, the news is that a bunch of big wheels is coming for the grand tour. They'll want to see everything what's going on."

"That should break the monotony, even if there isn't much to see, right now. Any idea who they are? Vice presidents in charge of this, that, and the other thing, I suppose."

"Bigger'n that, even. There's gonna be a couple of them from the government, representing the O.M.M. Then, there's a couple more from the board what the big trading corporations have set up to police their own affairs. Them's the ones what really gets the VIP treatment. The InterDimensional Trade Control Board, they calls it. Kinda like the doctors, and their A.M.A. If they don't like the way we treat the natives, or how we're tearing up the landscape, they can shut us down in a minute. Make it hard for us to get other jobs, too."

"Relax, Charley. They aren't going to do anything to us here. We've been bending over backwards to obey all of their rules. Besides, we haven't much more'n gotten started here yet." Pete wriggled deeper inside the tangle of plumbing that was the copter's hydraulic system. "Hand me that ninesixteenths boxend wrench, will you?"

"Here. Pete, how come you spend so much time on that durned machine? Every time I come by here, seems like you've got it half torn apart."

"Just stop and think for a minute. How'd you like to hike back here, from forty or fifty miles out in the swamps? Especially, with nothing to eat but what you could carry on your back? If you made five miles a day through that muck, you'd be doing good. This copter isn't exactly new, and it has to bring me back every time, not just nine times out of ten or ninetynine times out of a hundred. Besides, as long as I keep busy working on it, they aren't about to find something else for me to do."

"Okay, okay. You've got me convinced. Hey, that reminds me. The Old Man wants you at his office in about a half an hour. Cleaned up, too."

"Now you tell me. All right, I'll be there." He tested the tightness of a couple of fittings before starting to replace exterior panels.

"He said that if your lizard friend shows up, to bring him along."

"Right. It's about the time he usually shows up around here. If he isn't here by the time I'm done, I'll leave him a note."

"You mean, you've taught him to read?"

"Sure. Just a few words so far, of course. I told you he was a bright kid."

"Sure, sure. He's wonderful. Just don't forget to show up."

"I'll be there." Pete finished buttoning up the copter. Wiping most of the grease from his hands and face, he made a mental note to get cleaned up, then stop by the cook shack on his way to the main office. These long days made meal times come awfully far apart when a man was working.

"ManPete not work on chopter?" KeeBar's voice held a note of sad inquiry.

"Oh, KeeBar. I was wondering when you would show up. Mr. Johnson wants both of us over at his office in a little while."

"What ManMr.Johnson want? KeeBar do something not right?"

"Not that I know of, but we'll just have to go and find out."

The two made a strange looking pair as they walked across the compound. KeeBar's short, loping strides were barely able to keep up with Pete's longer steps. His feet, with their long webbed toes, were better suited to his beloved swamps than to walking on packed dirt. They entered the compound just in time to see a group of people being escorted from the transdimensional gate to the main office. Pete stopped as one of them struck a responsive chord in his memory. Unless he was very much mistaken, he had run into her before, his first night in New York.

Along about dusk, Charley had finally begged off sightseeing, and Pete started a tour of night spots on his own. He faintly remembered cutting up a tender, juicy steak, so he must have eaten, but most of the evening was more or less blurred by a warm alcoholic haze.

The next thing that came through clearly was the frenzied beat of drums in a dingy night club. A dim blue spot narrowed down to focus on the dancer's blankly smiling face, as she distributed pieces of her costume about the stage. As her routine came to its predestined end, Pete gulped the last of his watery drink and headed for the door.

A chill wind whipped the bottom of his raincoat about his legs, and slashed at his face with bursts of sleety rain. He looked in vain for a cruising cab, then decided that it really wasn't too far to walk to his hotel. A body geared to the muggy warmth of Central America was at a real disadvantage in a New York winter storm, but he pushed on stubbornly.

After a few blocks, the fresh air cleared some of the fumes from his head. His strides lengthened as his muscles warmed to their work, and he no longer noticed the sting of sleet against his face.

He stopped suddenly as a fierce gust of wind whined around the corner of a building. Yes! There it was again! He broke into a run as another faint cry for help came from a huddled knot of figures partway down the next block. He stripped off his raincoat as he ran, wrapping it about his left arm. One of the figures rose to meet him as his footsteps rang on the wet pavement, and he lurched to one side as a knife sought his throat.

He parried another thrust with his arm, feeling the knife catch in the folds of his coat, then struck at the man's belly with stiffened fingers. A chop with a hardedged palm stopped the second attacker's headlong dive. The last of the trio scrambled to his feet, fading back into the storm at the threat of a fair fight.

After making sure that the muggers would stay out for a while, Pete bent to examine their victim, who was struggling to a sitting position.

"Easy, there. Let me help you." He lifted her to her feet. "Are you all right?"

"I think so." She looked at him doubtfully. The distant street lights drew out pale highlights from her golden hair, and her eyes were a deep, clear blue against the light tan of her face. "I'm afraid I've twisted my ankle."

"Do you live near here?"

"No, I don't. I was delivering some documents for my boss, and when I came back outside, my taxi was gone." She spoke with a faint accent that he tried, and failed, to place. "I decided to walk to where I could phone, but this was as far as I got. Those three thugs jumped me, and I couldn't fight all of them at once. It was fortunate for me that you came along."

"I'm only sorry that I didn't get here sooner. The one who got away took your purse with him."

"That's all right. It only had a few dollars in it. No papers of any importance."

"Let's see what these two have on them." He turned one of the unconscious men over, and took out his wallet. "Hey, would you look at this!"

The wallet was old and battered, and held nothing but the raggedly torn half of a hundreddollar bill! The other thug's wallet yielded another just like it.

"It looks to me like you were set up for them," Pete commented, grimly. "We'd better get out of here, before the one who got away comes back with his buddies. When we get to a phone, you'd better report this to the police."

"I would rather not, unless I have to. They would only write it off as another case of industrial spying, anyway."

"We still need to find you a phone. You'll need a taxi, and to get in out of the weather and into some dry clothes. By the way, my name's Pete Riley."

"I am Amy." She smiled, then shivered as a fresh gust of winddriven rain cut into them.

He shook out his slashed raincoat, draping it around her shoulders, and gave her his arm to lean on as she limped along. By the time they reached the end of the next block, her limp was almost gone, and the walking had helped both of them to feel warmer. They passed building after building without finding anything open.

"My hotel is only a few more blocks," he finally suggested. "I know that we can phone from there."

"All right. I have to call my boss. He'll want to hear about what happened."

The lobby phone was one of the new ones with a vision screen. Pete studied the image of her boss as she told him what had occurred. "... And then Pete walked me here to his hotel."

"Let me talk to Mr. Riley."

"Yes, Mr. Marten."

Pete answered the probing questions, and finished by showing him the torn halves of the hundreddollar bills. "They looked like typical downandouters to me."

"Yes, there are still a few of that kind around, even with all of the jobs that are going begging. I don't imagine that anything will come of it, but we'll try checking the serial numbers on the bills. I'll have a car there to pick up Amy in fifteen or twenty minutes."

He stood by the lobby door for long minutes after she left, staring into the darkness. They had talked for a few minutes as he'd tried to get better acquainted, but Amy had been distant, seemingly lost in her own thoughts. Then, while he had still been trying vainly to get to know her better, Amy had been borne off by a sleek new steampowered limousine. Shrugging his shoulders for what might have been, he turned away and took the elevator to his room.

"ManPete! Is something wrong?" KeeBar's tug at his sleeve brought him back to the present.

"No, nothing's wrong. I was just thinking about something. Let's go on in."

Mr. Johnson's secretary was just shutting the door to his office when they came in, and Pete caught a worried look on her face.

"Hi, Nancy. Charley said the Old Man wanted to see both of us."

"Hello, Pete. Hello, KeeBar." She smiled at the youth, who was staying very close to Pete in these strange surroundings.

"Hello, Miss Nancy." He kept his slitpupiled eyes carefully averted from the actinic light of the fluorescent fixtures. Pete had long ago explained to him that it would not be appropriate to address a human female as 'ManNancy', while just 'Nancy' wasn't formal enough.

"Mr. Johnson said to send both of you in as soon as you arrived." She pressed a button on her desk, and the door swung open.

"Pete, KeeBar! Come on in. I was just telling these people about the fine work you've been doing." Sam Johnson's hearty manner failed to entirely hide that he was uneasy. "I would like you to meet Miss Marten, of the Dimensional Trade Control Board, and Mr. Jordan, of the Washington branch of the Office of Manpower Mobilization. They've come to see what we've been doing, so far."

Pete shook hands with Mr. Jordan, whose alert gaze belied his outward appearance of a rather colorless civil servant, then turned to the woman who had been introduced to him as Miss Marten. She was indeed the one he'd rescued from a New York street, though her eyes were masked behind tinted glasses, and her hair was pulled back severely from her forehead. He stepped forward with a smile, then stopped, as she gave a tiny shake of her head.

She extended her hand. "I'm pleased to meet you."

He hid his puzzlement, waiting to see what would happen next. Sam Johnson nervously spread out maps of the area for them to look at.

"Here is our base, at the foot of this ridge. Kee village is here to the southeast, about ten miles away, five miles or so inside the swamps. We haven't explored far enough yet to be sure, but it looks like this area is the edge of an old meteor crater, some six hundred miles in diameter. If so, the entire crater is very likely made up of swamps and shallow seas. The natives say that the water becomes salty, far to the east, so there is probably a connection to the ocean."

"You haven't covered a very large area with your maps, considering the length of time you have been here." Mr. Jordan's statement came out flatly, simply stating the facts, with no hint of accusation or judgment.

"We've been hindered by the almost perpetual clouds, and the lack of a magnetic field strong enough to navigate by," Pete explained.

"Couldn't you use a radio compass?" The question from Miss Marten was also in a neutral tone of voice.

"I'm afraid not. The lack of a magnetic field, and the cool sun, means that there's no ionosphere to speak of. Radios can only be used over short distances, and we couldn't justify the cost of putting up navigational satellites at this point."

"How do you expect to make a profit out of this world?" Jordan's question was directed at Sam Johnson. "I don't see a great deal of potential in what is basically a very primitive culture. I hope your young friend will excuse my use of the term."

"We have several lines of inquiry going. For one thing, the genetic makeup of the life here is far different than ours. Most of the organic compounds are like nothing we've ever seen. Our labs are testing the samples we've sent back to them, and report that several have shown considerable medicinal value. Another possibility is that of recovering a part of the meteoric material at the center of this crater. We don't need the iron, of course, but some of our tests indicate that the meteor may have contained a significant proportion of transuranic elements, which are semistable in this universe."