CHAPTER THREE

It was six days later, and I had the beginnings of a plan worked out in my head. I had succeeded rather spectacularly before by relying on a certain caliber of man to aid me, and what had worked then just might do so again. Cardip had pulled out all stops, and each agent was expected to drop everything and go after Colonel Seek with as he put it, "Whatever resources are possessed." Well, it just so happened that there were some resources I needed. The Director was not enthusiastic about my plan, however.

"Heliox?" Cardip exclaimed. "Why in the hell would you want to go back there?"

"I have my own good reasons," I told him.

"Reasons? What reasons?" he railed. "Are you crazy? George Seek is not on Heliox. How do you expect to stop him by going where he isn't? Go where he is for God's sake!"

"Where is he?" I challenged.

"He's-- well, out there somewhere else. Go get him!"

I winked and stared down at him slouched in his chair. "Mind if I sit, Chief?"

"Since when did you ever ask permission to do anything you felt like?"

"Thank you." I sat, crossed my legs, and lighted a cigarette. Cardip reached under his desk and flipped a switch. There was a whirling sound just above my head. I exhaled and watched the cone-shaped cloud disintegrate and vanish almost instantly. The smoke emminating from the tip of the cigarette was a perfectly vertical thread, web-like and rising. Even some of my hair was standing up. Evidently, Cardip had installed some new equipment after my last visit. But I pretended not to notice. "I intend to 'get him' as you say, but only in the way that I think is best. It's my neck after all."

"I thought you had given up that filthy habit." Cardip complained, wrinkling his nose in my direction with displeasure.

"I did. I started again. The custom is still quite in vogue on Heliox, you know."

"Which shows what an intellectual hinderland the place is. But that would appeal to you. Now, answer my question: "Why are you going there?"

"I like that," I said. "'Why are you?'" not 'Why do you want to?' It shows that you have resigned yourself to the fact of my going and-- "

"Answer my question!" Cardip stormed. His face was red and laced with tiny blue bloodveins which contrasted nicely with the large ones on either side of his neck. Those stood out prominently. I thought of the vessels unseen within his cranium and decided to cooperate a bit. I preferred him flustered, not dead.

"I need men for the job, Harry," I explained simply.

The Director's face cleared somewhat, and he swallowed almost gratefully before he spoke. "Men? I told you I would supply you with men. I'll give you a veritable army of them. When do you want them? Just say when, and you'll have them. Then, you will go out after Colonel Seek and never come back to bother me!"

"I want them now, if you please," I answered. "And I have a list of them right here for your convenience." I handed the list to him, and he tilted his head, peered through his bifocals, and immediately gave it back.

"You can't have those guys, and you know it," he said.

"Why not? I worked with them before and we practically conquered the planet Tuukar together."

"They are under different leadership now." Cardip told me. "I believe you can guess whose."

"Peso Jack's, right?"

"Correct," he affirmed. "And you ought to agree that it's only fair since he recruited them himself."

"But who trained them---"

"He did."

"Yeah, but who gave them the real field experience that they needed? Answer me that."

Cardip sighed. "I'll admit that you did. Now it's your turn to admit that those men were only under your command as a loaner. Peso recruited every one of them."

I mulled this over for a moment, then had inspiration. "Every one?" I cried. "Not quite, my friend. That list was alphabetical. Whose name appeared last?"

A cough escaped Cardip. It had nothing to do with my cigarette, which I had butted out on the arm of my chair. I lighted another one. "You can't mean Zallaham?" he sputtered. "The warlord of Huria himself?" The Director snorted derisively.

"What's so funny?" I protested. "He's mine. I found him. I got him. I brought him to you!"

Cardip grinned. "Zallaham yours ?" he asked sarcastically.

"In a word, yes. Mine!"

"You had better hope he doesn't hear you saying that, you know," Cardip warned nervously. He seemed to be fighting back the impulse to look over his shoulder. "For Pete's sake, even Peso has to keep up his guard with that powerhouse around."

"So you won't give him back to me?" I fumed. "I risk my neck to bring you a one-in-a-million stone-age military genius and muscleman. And you think he's just too plain good for me and give him to somebody else."

"You know he's too good for you, Jenkins," said Cardip, mincing no words. "But I didn't say I wouldn't give him back to you. He's yours. Go tell him."

I stood up and leaned over his desk, pushing my face close to his. "Listen, you. You're not going to wiggle away that easily. You assigned Zallaham to Peso, and you'll personally assign him back to me or I'll know the reason why."

Cardip was leaning way back in his chair now, anxious to be away from my face and cigarette halitosis. "Agreed," he said quickly. "Just sit the hell back down."

I sat smiling. "That's nice. That's very nice. It's also too easy. What's the catch?"

Cardip shrugged. "None," he replied. "You have no right to ask for the others on the list, of course. They are simply out of the question. To Zallaham, however, I agree you have some tenuous claim."

"So you'll order him to report back to me?"

"I'll ask him," said Cardip. "One does not give orders to the likes of him, as you must already know."

"Good enough." I got up and shook Cardip's hand. "I'll collect him when I get back."

"From Heliox, I presume?"

"Of course. I know that the soldiers you would offer me are nothing more than company climbers in permanent high gear. They're ambitious and will resent any directions I give them."

"Can't stand the competition, eh?"

"I can stand it all right, thank you." I told him. "But I hardly think it's useful. An operation needs only one operator to run at all. And with your guys, let's face it: we'd practically be peers."

"I don't know whether they would appreciate being characterized as such," Cardip parried. "But if that's your only complaint, I think I can offer a solution to your dilemma. There is still a virtual multitude of Zallaham's Tuukarian infantrymen whom I would be more than happy to assign to you. I can promise you that they will not be overly ambitious."

"Nor overly bright either." I countered. "I, of all people, don't think much of those who degrade the natives of third world planets, but I think it's fair to note that Peso's boys from Heliox made chumps out of the lot of them. Took them for what little wealth they possessed using the most transparent bait and switch schemes imaginable. I think I'll pass."

"So it's off to Heliox, then?"

"That's right. I don't need competitive intellectual equals, and I don't need unambitious morons. I'll tell you what I need. I need savvy bastards who were just plain born to lose. Men with street brains but no higher intelligence -- and no pretentions. The classical criminal type. And, by God, Heliox is one place I can find them!"

* * * * * * * * * * * * *

I left Cardip to his devices and walked through the open galleries of the Seychelles. It was a way I had of unwinding. There was something in the raw utilitarian rusticity of the ship that relaxed me. Once, it had been perhaps the greatest luxury liner ever built. It had grown older but never obsolete. Passengers clammored to get tickets aboard. But the Federation overplayed its hand trying to dip into the coffers, the result being an uprising that played a part in Antigov history. Our organization was on hand to aid the aggrieved crew, and the organizers of the rebellion were more than happy to fall in with our cause. For one thing, the Federation's penalty for mutiny was harsh indeed and the rebels needed our sanctuary. Now, the fabulous Seychelles had been requisitioned and souped up. It had also been stripped down to its bare rivets and fleeced of its finery. The ship was simply a shell of what it had once been.

I didn't agonize over that as some people did. Cardip had once confided that he had hidden the great oak banisters, the gleaming chandeliers, and all the rest of what was truly the Seychelles in some unheard-of place. When the revolution was over, he planned to put a great team of craftsmen and artisans to work restoring the ship. After that would follow one whale of a celebration on board.

When I got back to my quarters, Lourdes was not in. I noticed that she had put up some extra pictures: seascapes, virgin dunes, and an exquisite panorama of Marion's Norsano Desert. Perhaps that was her way of dealing with her lost home, but I wished she hadn't done that. It just made me homesick for my beach retreat on the Paradise Coast.

"Like them, Jenkins?" It was Lourdes. She had come in so quietly that I hadn't even heard her.

"Lovely, indeed!" I had to humor her. "Soon we'll be back there soaking up that sun, not a care in the world, an honest day's work only a hateful memory."

Lourdes stepped over and straightened a seascape. "Have you been following the news about Colonel Seek?" she asked. "The Federation Broadcasting Network is making real hay of the whole debacle. It's a smart move on their part. They know that that man could ruin us in about ten seconds flat."

"He could," I agreed. "But don't call him Colonel. I think a more proper title would be "lunatic." At any rate, I plan to catch him, drag him back here, and strip off his medals along with as much of his hide as happens to come off with them."

"Don't work yourself up," Lourdes warned, frowning. "You know how you get. All puffed up and not a wink of sleep for a week."

"I always get that way before a major assignment." I told her.

Lourdes scowled. "Always?" she asked. "You've had exactly one to date, and it was I who lost sleep in the end. I was never so surprised in my life when you came back alive from that awful planet Tuukar."

"It was awful, I'll have you know. And to tell you the truth, I was a bit surprised to get away with some of the stunts I pulled myself. I just hope you weren't disappointed."

"I wasn't. Just surprised. Grateful too. The Federation in taking over Marion made us involuntary citizens, and as such we are subject to its antiquated laws -- whenever we decide to start obeying them, that is. The Federation is not a community property state, and in addition it exacts a hefty inheritance-type tax on the property of a deceased spouse. A widow today I would not like to be."

"I knew it was only my half of the estate that you cared about..."

Lourdes looked at me sternly. "Tell me the truth. You were joking just now when you said you were going after Colonel Seek, weren't you?"

For a moment I thought of lying, but at the last second I thought better of it. Lying to Lourdes was madness, suicide. She always found out and then there was literal hell to pay. I plopped down on the bed. I had to admit it; there was no other way.

Lourdes didn't take the truth well. I almost wished I had lied after all -- or maybe just fibbed a little. She was adamant: I would leave her a widow, I would ruin her life, I would do this and that..... "But Lourdes," I tried to explain. "Everyone who is anyone is going out to have a crack at Seek. We have to. If that psychopath pushes the wrong button, it's the end of our revolution. We would just have to pack it in and wait another four-hundred years for our time to get ripe again."

"And what about me, then?" Lourdes asked. "I just sit in our quarters aboard ship and wait and worry? You say everyone's going. Well, fine. I've had every bit as much training as you, haven't I?"

"Well, yes." I snorted. "More so in fact."

"Well?"

"You want to come with me?" I asked in surprise.

"It's better than waiting around here and trying to manage your harebrained business enterprises, ninety percent of which fail miserably."

"Ninety percent of everything does," I reminded her. "It's the ten percent that's the charm," I said. "But I didn't know you wanted to go."

"What else is there for me to do?" she asked. "I hated every minute of waiting the last time you were out. And if I have to stay aboard this glorified flying trash can this time, I'll go absolutely crazy. What's more, I never liked that bible-thumping George Seek anyway. It'd be a pleasure to haul him back kicking and screaming. I'll hold him and you can kick. We'll leave the screaming to him."

"You know the rat?"

"Not personally. However, when you were out tromping across the frozen plains of Tuukar with your felons at large and your legions of bad-tempered eskimos, I attended a few presentations aboard ship. One was given by Seek. It was the last I attended. Couldn't stomach the topic."

"What was it? Military strategy? Weapons deployment?"

"It started out dealing with similar themes, but soon regressed into something less attractive. Colonel Seek, it seems, believes in a supreme being."

"No!"

"I'm afraid so, Jenkins. He went on and on about woman evolving from the rib of a man and a galaxy-wide intrusion of hydrogen and oxygen in a two-to-one solution that killed all life in its path. It was real scary and I left."

I shook my head. "Well, if that don't beat all."

"Now," said Lourdes. "Am I going with you, or do I go after the bum myself?"

I protested, of course. I said everything that a concerned husband would say. She would get hurt. Heliox, combat, deep space-- bad for woman! But my heart wasn't really in it. The fact was, I wanted her to go. I hated being without her to the point that it had almost jeapardized my last mission. And it wasn't as though she couldn't take care of herself. For her size she was at least as tough as any man. To tell the truth, I felt pretty sure she could beat me up if she really put her mind to it.

I didn't express to her directly how I felt, of course. When I left her, I made it clear in no uncertain terms that a mere woman would never accompany me on an assignment, but Lourdes knew that I did not mean it. The belief in male superiority was an abberation of the stoneage. And what kind of woman would marry a man who believed in such a thing? (Woman evolving from a rib indeed!) In reality, with her willing to go, I had an entirely new outlook on the undertaking.

It didn't take long to find out I had made the right decision. I ran into Cardip about an hour later. "Good news," he said. "I talked to both Zallaham and Peso Jack. Zallaham has been reassigned to you ."

"Good. You work fast Chief." I responded.

Cardip started to walk away, then did a little doubletake and spun on his heel. "Er, there's just one problem." He said offhandedly.

"What's that?

"Zallaham refuses to have anything to do with you, and Peso says he's going to knock you around some the next time he sees you."

CHAPTER FOUR

I heard the commotion inside the room even before I opened the door. I took a deep breath, turned the knob, and strolled in casually. The noise did not abate for even a moment, and that did not bode well for me. My appearance there was unexpected and should have produced a communal gasp and a scrambling rush of activity to conceal the mischief followed by sheepish grins and a chorus of ingratiating if affected salutations.

Instead, the boys from Heliox ignored me altogether. They shouted the foulest obscenities at one another and continued to make boisterous side bets on the outcome of something truly disgusting.

In the center of the formica table was a foot-long plank upon which sat a floppy-earred creature known as a Grangorian rabbit. Biffer, a thin whiplash of a chiseler, was directing some sort of ray at the animal's head while his companions roared with excitement, sheaves of the inflated paper currency of Heliox clutched tightly in their hands. There was a long trough of liquid in front of the rabbit and just beyond it was a spindle upon which was impaled a rather moldy potato. An uncapped jug beneath the table read: 25M H2S04.

It didn't take me long to figure out the game. The trough, of course, contained sulphuric acid, and the ray that Biffer was dutifully administering to the creature's cranium was undoubtably designed to stimulate the hunger center of the lagomorph's brain. When the ray had worked up a colossal appetite within the rabbit, the luckless animal would leap with uncharacteristic voracity toward the potato. And, of course, land directly in the acid. A stopwatch would click and those having correctly predicted the time of the event would divide the pot.

Of course, they could have played without the acid.

There was a sudden splash followed by an enormous mishmash of outcries. The throaty groans and curses of those who had lost were all but drowned out by the ear-splitting whoops of pleasure from the winners.

Biffer was fast at work at the trough with a smoking fork with which he first skimmed the fur off the top of the acid, then fished out the bleached and disintegrating skeleton.

Things were plainly getting out of hand. I had simply started out too loose with these boys. Now came the unpleasant business of tightening things up. "Who's the big winner here today?" I said cheerfully, putting on a greasy, almost lewd smile that this crowd understood only too well -- or thought they did. Kroin, the biggest and ugliest of the bunch stepped forward, eager to claim the honor. Perfect. I had been hoping it would be him.

"Me," he said stupidly, and motioned to a cage against the wall. "Win more later, too. Got ten rabbits left."

"One of them's getting away," I told him and when he looked to see, I punched him directly in the teeth.

Kroin screamed gagging in pain and staggered about the room in circles. The rest of the company gaped in surprise, then grinned in anticipation as Kroin regained his senses and turned his attention from his splintered teeth to me. "Ahrgg!" he screeched and bounded toward me.

I stood firm, feet planted well apart. It didn't take a genius to foresee his intentions. Kroin halted about two paces from me and kicked with with all the savage intensity he possessed in his rage. The man's heavy number-twelve boot caught me directly in the groin, the force of it practically lifting me from the ground. To the surprize of the onlookers, however, it was Kroin, not I, who fell squalling in agony.

I knew the kind of ruffian I would be dealing with here on Heliox and had made preparations in the form of a stainless steel scrotal cup. I also took my precautions a bit beyond the ordinary by taking this protective garment to the Seychelles metal shop where I welded on a two-inch dock spike where it would do the most good. Now the cup not only protected the wearer, but also quite effectively punished the offender. I was surprised at how well it worked.

Kroin lay groaning in pain, dividing his attentions between the ruins of his teeth and his punctured metatarsus. In the top center of his right boot was a quarter-inch hole from which oozed a thin trickle of blood. Around the fallen giant lay a scattering of red-backed federal guilders. I scooped these up with a sudden, aggressive motion and Kroin cringed quickly in alarm. I peeled off a couple of bills and tossed them at him. "Here's a hundred bucks," I said. "I recommend J. Patrick Gambles. He's a dentist." But I hadn't finished. I smiled sarcastically at the others, then began to kick Kroin where he lay. He yelped in pain and scrambled frantically around the room. I pursued him doggedly until he was finally able to escape through an open doorway.

From the hallway echoed the desperate and uneven clomping sound of his new and unaccustomed stumbling gait. "He'll be beating time with that good left pin for at least a month," I snorted with just the correct mixture of amusement and contempt. "Anyone else here bet I can't do the same to them?" I made a fast move in their direction and the lot of them shrank backward, mouths forming little O's, wrists clutched to their breasts. "Good. I'll be back in an hour and when I am, this room had better be immaculate. I want this whole place licked clean."

* * * * * * * * *

I could not help but laugh when I related what happened to Lourdes. She didn't find my description of the day's events particularly humorous. I had to explain that I had merely inflicted pain and had done so for a very good reason. True, Kroin's smile had suffered somewhat, but he never smiled much anyway. And modern dentistry could undo what I had done, though why anyone would want to restore any part of Kroin's ape-like visage would be unfathomable. Frankly, I felt my pummeling had improved his appearance to a degree, although it would certainly have been Kroin's right to disagree with me on that point. However, far from unwarranted and inexcuseable, my preemptive assault was a necessary, sane, and in some ways humane action. Punishment under the rules of Heliox's roughnecks was most often far worse. In perspective, Kroin had gotten off lightly. And I had no choice in the matter anyway. I knew the men I was dealing with, and I knew a fate far worse than Kroin's was awaiting me if I failed to gain their respect.

Lourdes seemed to understand me better when I told her what happened to the Grangorian rabbit. She was hardly a bleeding heart, but like anyone else knew there was something fundamentally wrong with people who torture animals or other people to death for money. She tried to lump me in with their ilk, but I hastily pointed out that I hadn't actually killed Kroin -- just badly wounded him, and no tender had changed hands.

Now she was interested in the immediate future. The house I had rented on Heliox was a dilapidated two-story vermin run, and my wife seemed eager to move out of it. I rather liked it because I had reserved the entire second floor for Lourdes and me. We'd fixed it up a bit and it was liveable. Downstairs, the ruffians had been allowed to swagger however they liked, which had only spoiled them. The recent public thrashing of Kroin had ended all that. And there were other changes soon to come. Yet Lourdes was impatient. "Look, Jenkins," she complained as we sat at our upstairs dinner table. We had finished a nice cut of steak and were enjoying a cup or two of coffee. "You did all right I suppose in getting Kale Soldat, your old buddy from your Tuukar days, to give you a list of ex-felons and two-time losers whom you could contact on Heliox. You've collected about thirty of the bums here simply by offering them the unfamiliar luxury of a roof over their worthless heads. Those few who are of more account have been offered the most ludicrous and unlikely rewards for throwing in with you. In the meantime, George Seek has disappeared from sight and may decide at any moment to demolish the greater part of the galaxy. If I may be so bold; just what in the hell do you think you're doing?"

"I have an answer to that question," I said. "And part of it has to do with those materials I asked you to review for me today."

"I reviewed them," she said. "But I don't know why. Only one item seemed to have any bearing on Seek and his whereabouts." She set her coffee mug down, got up, and took some papers from the nearby desk. I noticed the computer on-off light still glowing redly. So did Lourdes. She snapped it off and sat back down at the table and purused the papers. "These are the print-outs from the data you gave me. That little Marion-made computer works pretty well, although I still can't understand how you got it through spaceport customs. Heliox is famed for its hard line on imported technology."

Not all of my talents were lost on my wife, I could see. "Heliox is a federal planet," I explained. "Its limited autonomy is assured provided that the populace behaves. If they don't, out goes good ole King Caleb, usurped by a genuine Federation lacky. Caleb wouldn't like that. So he's as careful as he is brutal. Computers can make the work of rebellion easier, and like all such tools, they are strictly regulated here. But the more rules imposed, the more people become set on circumventing them. Most of those people in the end are officials, and officials of corrupt governments everywhere practice a common trade: la mordida."

"La what?"

"La mordida, the bribe," I replied. "The one and only cooperative interchange between official and common citizen on such worlds. Both are victims of the government, and in a mutually helpful spirit both benefit by thwarting the desires of the greater enemy, the despot himself-- in this case King Caleb."

"Okay," Lourdes sighed. "So you greased a palm or two to get the computer in, and you are grateful. But you know very well that the official is usually committing extortion when he demands a bribe -- so enough for your cooperative spirit nonsense. What language is "mordida?"

"Spanglo," I said, as though the answer couldn't have been more obvious. "I'm surprised you don't know it, Lulu Crane."

Lourdes looked at me. " Please?"

"It's your name; it's Spanglo! Lourdes Garza means Lulu Crane."

"That's nice. Is there some reason why I should care?"

"Because if my hunch is right, where we're going, your name will fit right in. Mine won't, so I'll have to change it. How does Jaime Loro sound?"

CHAPTER FOUR CONTINUED AND RESURRECTED THRICE"Asinine," she said bluntly. "I don't think I'm going to like that language. But don't tell me; I can see that you think that our friend Colonel Seek is at this very moment lurking on some planet where Spanglo is the official tongue."

"I do, indeed."

"And the reason for your belief has to do with the information that I processed and analyzed for you?"

"Yes," I replied. "I need a second opinion to be sure that the theory I have formulated merits investigation. You haven't told me what you discovered yet, so I'd like your analysis. You said that there was one item that could pertain to his location."

"There was one -- and only one; I didn't know what the rest of the data were all about," Lourdes said. "Anyway, the battleship that Seek filched from the Federation was one that hadn't been fueled in one-hundred years or so. Both its propulsion and armament systems operate at only thirty percent power."

"That information, of course, was not expressly stated in the six million pages of public relations information included in the data I gave you."

"No, but it is a fact as deduced from the discrimination software in the Marion computer."

"The Federation did not try very hard to conceal that particular datum, did it?" I noted.

"Why should they have? What was someone supposed to do with that kind of information -- use it to steal a world cruncher?"

"Seek may have," I remarked.

"Yes," said Lourdes. "But you wanted to know how this could relate to his whereabouts. Frankly, the link is not particularly tantalizing. It is only this: if Seek were so inclined, he might take steps to acquire fuel to develop full power for his engines and arms. He'd have a problem, of course; those super-sized fighters are ancient things and some of their technology was hopelessly antiquated even at the time they were built."

"They're powered with simple 20th century atomics." I said.

Lourdes nodded. "Yes, so gassing up a ship like that is no simple matter; the Federation itself waits fifty to one-hundred years to bother with it. And Seek knows full well that the feds will be keeping a wary eye on their fuel dumps. To conclude, the analysis tells us that he might possibly be mining fissionable material. Somewhere."

"That's it," I exclaimed. I poured us each an extra cup of coffee. "That's what he is doing. He has to. He must mine."

Lourdes sipped her coffee and frowned. "Has to? Must?" She questioned. "That is not my conclusion. My conclusion is that he will not mine. Why should he? He can run that P-657 for another hundred years and demolish a dozen planets a day every day. That should satisfy him."

"It won't," I stated flatly. "That is the mistake that the Federation and the Agency are both making. They assume that he is moderately content with something less than a full-blown world cruncher. I contend that he is not."

Lourdes set down her mug. "Content he may have to be. Mining the fuel would be a tremendously complicated and unpleasant business. It would probably also compromise his security to wait around instead of striking while the advantage was his. And powering up a ship like that from raw materials would also take forever. Jenkins, he just won't do it."

"Six months," I disagreed. "With machinery in place now, it could take even less. There is a library aboard that ship. Seek won't be bored. He's the type that could happily spend that time just rubbing his hands together and laughing maniacally."

"It's a longshot..."

"No, it's not. And the argument is simpler than that," I said. "Either he will mine that fuel or he won't; those are the only two possibilities."

"And I say he won't." Lourdes said stubbornly.

"Fine," I scoffed. "And by limiting your thinking in that way, you, like the Federation and the Agency, stop dead in your tracks without a clue as to where the criminal might be. If, on the other hand, you had embarked on a different train of thought -- one based upon the opposite assumption -- you would inevitably have been led to the same corpus of facts and circumstantial evidence that has revealed to me his intentions as well as his location."

"What information could possibly give you all that?" Lourdes asked disbelievingly.

I only grinned and stirred my coffee sagely. "I can sum up that body of evidence with two words: Armageddon and carnotite." She started to protest, but I raised my hand and waved her to silence. "Yes, I know you have never heard of the former. It's an obscure reference. Armageddon refers to the upheaval that Colonel Seek's benevolent supreme being has planned for everyone who isn't exactly as mentally unhinged as he. Fire, brimestone, gnashing of teeth, bloody horse flesh on the highways, that sort of thing. Don't laugh, now. This doctrine has actually been written down, and Seek believes it. I checked. Carnotite is...."

"A rather complex yellow mineral which contains uranium," Lourdes said quickly. "I could recognize it in the field when I was ten, so don't assume it's also something new to me. I thought you gave me the job of analyzing data on that and other minerals because you were a lousy chemist -- which you are. Now, I see that you are just doublechecking your own conclusions again."

"Nothing wrong with being thorough, is there?" I asked.

"No, but what you gave me on carnotite makes no sense," she answered. "I can see that you are developing some theory that Seek will try to mine fuel from carnotite."

"He will. I'm almost sure of that."

"But that's ridiculous," she objected. "Carnotite is comparatively poor for such a purpose. There are much better and more plentiful ores for the uranium he needs."

"I had already surmised that when I gave you the data," I responded. "That's why I asked you to establish the location of a place where large deposits of carnotite are present in conjunction with rich natural reserves of more usable uranium ore."

"I did so. There are three worlds that stand out above thousands of others."

"Which of the three has the most carnotite?"

"Ancho."

"I knew it!" I shouted. "That's where we're going, Lulu."

I then told Lourdes the facts uncovered in an investigation that I had conducted even before leaving the Seychelles for Heliox. My study concerned the character of the man, George Seek. I went over his academic transcripts and found a Ph.d. in physics from Syrius Tech, no slouch degree that. But his post doctorate publication record was spotty. Just some uninspiring papers in the journals on carnotite and its afinity to other minerals on various worlds -- actually a subject well outside his field. On a hunch, I did a computer scan of unrelated publications. I was checking to see whether he had strayed even farther afield. I had guessed right, and what I found was chilling. His name appeared predominantly in the most obscure sectarian publications: magazines with titles like Sweltering Disciple, Holy Infarction, and Blessed Gazette. Again, the subject was carnotite, but his treatment of the topic had taken a bizarre theological turn, relating the "music of the spheres" and a surpreme being with the chemical properties of carnotite and its associated minerals.

That may sound silly, but Seek was deadly serious. He did rather inaccurate studies of the decay of radioactive isotopes in Carnotite, attemping to prove that the fossils so often associated with the mineral were recent relics of an intragalactic deluge referred to somewhere in written dogma. It was his opinion that carnotite had been placed in the universe as evidence for the great design of the supreme being.

His presentation was always kind of oblique and fuzzy and left out the most blatantly obvious and pertinent facts that would destroy his arguments in an instant. But it was fascinating reading because it went beyond most of the other articles in these publications.

The other magazine pieces relied heavily on the same tactics of omission and slight of hand. But they were composed by mental midgets, who were much too demented to see their own self deception even as they passed their delusions on to their readers. These contributers reveled in using block-long words that they didn't really understand, and the subscribers, most of whom would have to consult a dictionary to spell the word, "cat", were, of course, none the wiser.

Seek, on the other hand, was in earnest. His constructs and dichotomies seemed directed straight from the subconcious. His typical reader was simply an intellectual chucklehead or suffering from moderate to rather severe mental illness. Seek, however, was truly psychotic.

This had dawned on me as I read in the Seychelles library some weeks earlier. And I almost recoiled at the revelation when it struck because I knew that George Seek was capaple of anything, and that his vision of Armageddon could very well be a prophesy which he intended to fulfill himself.

It was obvious that for a proper doomsday he would feel absolutely compelled to get the ship up to full power. He would mine that fuel, all right. And he would use as much carnotite as he possibly could.

I could read him like a book.

(Friendly friend, kindly scroll to the following chapter in order to continue this fast-moving and entrallingly literate first person account.)