Mission: Earth "Doomed Planet" (20 page)

From: Censorship Clerk To: The Duchess of Manco, Palace City Your Grace: Crown, His Lordship, when this was called to his attention, directed that this be forwarded to you, under seal, as a matter of personal interest. It was brought in by a routine military survey sent by the Chairman of Intelligence. It was found on a post in a mountain cone. The envelope, as you will note, is simply addressed, "Mister Jet." The date is concurrent with the tenth year of reign of the Emperor Mortiiy. The translation follows: Dear Mr. Jet: This is just to let you know that your penthouse is all ready and waiting when you come back. The clothes in the closets are in good shape but a little out of date. Styles have changed in ten years. Your tailor calls from time to time to see if you need anything new. Mr. Stampi of the Spreeport Speedway calkd and asked if you would like to race in the new American Grand Prix. He said he reinstated all your memberships and you were right out front with him. "Queen" Babe Corleone speaks of you often. Just the other day, at the world board meeting, she said she missed "Prince Charming" and cried a little bit. She said maybe Jerome had never forgiven her after all, because he didn't come back. She is doing fine, though. The American Rifle Association elected her Woman of the Year. There are no other mobs now, only Corleone. She is very popular and her name is up in lights over the UN since she ordered them to pass the Women's Thermonuclear Rights Bill. Vantagio has your portrait in the lobby of the Gracious Palms but I don't think you'd like it with all the ribbons across the chest: it makes you look like some famous politician and that's dangerous. The girls there seem to like it, though, and keep votive candles going in front of it. I think Bang-Bang misses you. He keeps talking about the "good old days with Jet." We made him a five-star general of the army so he could show them how to drill. Bury, I'm sorry to say, showed his true colors. After he disposed of Miss Peace and Miss Agnes, his wife disappeared. She was last seen being introduced to an anaconda at the Bronx Zoo. You may not have heard that the mayor's wife was exiled by Babe to the island of Elba. Well, she escaped. Evidence exists that she had a rendezvous with Bury, also at the zoo. She has not been seen since. Twoey is not around very much. We can barely get him in long enough to sign papers that apply to Rockecenter interests. He's bought all the pig farms in New Jersey and spends most of his time there. He named a new prize-winning sow "The Beautiful Krackle," but please don't tell Miss Joy, as I don't think she'd like it. But he thought she'd be pleased and he plagued us for weeks trying to find out where she was so he could show her all the blue ribbons it won. I doubt you'd bother your important head twice wondering about me. I almost died last month when they gave me an honorary degree at Barvard to signalize the conversion of tJie last government on Earth to a corporation. I needed you to keep me from running away which, I am ashamed to say, I did. I keep your office dusted. Your old baseball cap has about fallen apart where you left it on your desk. I am afraid to touch it. So anyway, Mr. Jet, when you're finished surveying the Moon in depth or whatever is keeping you away, your condo penthouse is still waiting. The gardeners keep the garden up and there isn't even any dust around. I go there now and then and pretend you'll soon come home. It sort, of calms me. I hope you don't mind. Yours very truly, Izzy PS: 1 would ask you to give Miss Joy my best but she probably doesn't remember me. PPS: I do hope she is enjoying her life as Mrs. Jettero Heller and the wife of an officer of the Fleet. «e • Hi I was STUNNED!' I looked at the Duchess and said, "He knew his 'Mr, Jet' was an extraterrestrial all the time! And, just like Izzy, he simply kept his mouth shut! But HOW did he rind out?" Oh, I had Heller now! caught red-handed in a flagrant Code break! "Jettero's name was on a receipt from the Fleet pasted inside the time-sight he was given. And in the Empire State Building office, Jettero had a full library of Voltarian including a Voltarian-English dictionary. Izzy must have recognized the characters and translated the receipt. "But there's something else: Utanc-Colonel Gay-lov-reported to Rockecenter that Afyon was an extraterrestrial base. Those files all fell into the hands of Izzy. He must have put six and six together and even when he found the base was destroyed, he guessed somebody would come again or had contacts and he just left the letter." "Amazing!" I said. I gave her back the translation after making sure I had shot a copy of it. I checked my recorder secretly to make sure it was still running. "Now, I have another on my list: Snelz. What happened to him?" She was looking at me very oddly now. But she said, "Snelz retired as a brigadier general of Fleet marines half a century ago. He's been dead for twenty years. But listen, young Monte, I've just noticed something very odd: the questions you've been asking relate to Earth." She pointed her finger at me. I thought that I was caught. But she said, "Now listen, young Monte, we've shown you all his papers and his logs and you MUST cover Jettero's whole career. It's brilliant! Hightee and I have to nag and nag to even get him to let the papers quote him. He won't even answer questionnaires from the encyclopedia people: he just tells them, 'See last year!' and they take it as an order and publish him as a space racer when he was young! He's quite impossible! He never gets the slightest credit for all he's done. It's VAST! Earth was just a tiny, tiny part of it. In fact, if I were you, I'd sort of shy away from it. It's too unimportant. Good Heavens, even the Colipin invasion is more interesting than that. He gave the Emperor Mor-tiiy an absolute fit! We lost five squadrons and Jettero got so upset he grabbed the creaky old Retribution and went right over there and won the war and had peace in a week. And Mortiiy, who'd gone touring to inspect Calabar, belatedly heard about it and came rushing home thinking he'd have to take over the government and he came storming into the Grand Council hall and Jettero was sitting right there and Mortiiy roared, 'What the blazes do you mean going out risking your life in that confounded war?' and Jettero just smiled and said, 'What war, Your Majesty?' and handed him the treaty of peace. And even Mortiiy had to break out laughing, he looked so innocent. But the papers never even MENTIONED it! We gave you access to the logs and files so you could really tell people about him." I smiled. I was going to. Though not what she expected. I knew that an investigative reporter had to be very cunning, so I said, "I certainly will take your advice, Your Grace." But whether she would have pursued it or not, I would never know. At that moment the cat said "Yowl" and punched her with its paw and then, of all things, pointed out an upper window of the "salon. The Duchess turned and stared. She spotted something in the sky. She leaped up and she said, "Oh, no! Jettero is coming in! He's a day early!" She looked down at her stained leather jumper. "Good Heavens! I'm a wreck! No one's even been told what's for dinner!" She rushed from the salon into the rest of the house. The cat scampered out the door toward the landing target in the Rose Park. I followed the cat. The spaceship came in so fast I was certain that it was going to crash. Then it made a sudden swoop at the last moment and settled on its tail so gently, it hardly bent the grass. Now that it was standing still, I gawped.

The airlock door opened and a safety line was thrown out and a man slid down it gracefully. He was dressed in a pale blue civilian suit, without ornament but of very expensive cut. He hit the bottom with a light-footed bounce and turned. Somebody still in the ship tossed a briefcase, a box and a wrapped bouquet of flowers down to him, each of which he caught. Belatedly, a crew from the nearby hangar was rolling out some steps. But far from being abashed as they should have been, they gave him a wave. I was standing in a rose archway to the house. He was walking straight toward me with an easy step.

He was quite tall, very slender, the sort of man who even in late middle age keeps himself in condition. Although his features had thickened, he was still a very handsome fellow. He fixed his gray-blue eyes upon me. He said, "Where's Hightee?" I said, "Oh, she went back this noon to Voltar." "Oh, blast," he said, "I hoped to catch her. You must be the young man I heard she had in tow." "The Honorable Monte Pennwell, Crown, Your Lordship, sir," and I would have knelt but he stopped me. "Let's dispense with all the protocol. I get enough of that at Palace City." He smiled and it was a very engaging smile. "I'm home. Just call me Jet." "Sir," I said, because I couldn't restrain my curiosity another moment, "isn't that Tug One?" "Of course not," he said with a slight frown. "But it IS a tug," I persisted. "It's got a blunt butting nose with arms. It's the same size and shape. It has a fin down the back to get rid of excess charge from Will-be Was main drives. When you opened the airlock, I distinctly saw silver handrails. It even has Prince Caucalsia on its nose!" "Young Pennwell, that ship is NOT Tug One. But your use of the term makes me suspect you have been talking to the women of the family. Gossiping." I drew myself up. I came to just above his shoulder. "Not gossiping. I am an investigative reporter!" He laughed good-naturedly. "'Investigative reporter'? I haven't heard that term for nearly a century." "I want to write the story of your life," I said. He handed me the box he was carrying and the flowers. "Well, come on into the park salon and I will tell you all about it. No reason to keep you out here standing in the sun." I tagged after him. He entered the room. A footman was standing there with cool drinks, smiling a welcome. Heller draped himself into a chair. A man in blue livery, evidently a major-domo, rushed in, still getting into his coat. "Blin," said Heller to the newcomer, "take that box and send it to Hightee. I'm sorry I missed her: I was looking forward to some do-you-remembers as we rambled around Atalanta. Pack it carefully, as it's antique glass: now it will have to be shipped all the way back to Pausch Hills. The flowers are for Her Grace." Blin relieved me of my load. The footman presented me with a drink. Heller motioned for me to sit down, "So what I heard was right," he said. "Dear Hightee was helping you write a book. Do you have a publisher?" "Oh, yes, Your… Jet. Biographies Publishing Company was fascinated with the idea of publishing a book about you. They even signed a contract, without even demanding an outline. They were avid, really." I didn't advise him that they had assumed I must know him very well, when actually it was not until I started this project that I found out that Jettero Heller had been the common name of the enormously popular and fabulously powerful Duke of Manco. They had been stunned when they realized that there was not a single book about him and had said, "Young Pennweil, if you've got an inside track and can actually write the biography of Crown, your fortune will be made!" I was going to go them one better. What a book I had! A sky-buster! "Well, that's fine," said Heller. "I imagine the girls must have been assisting you." "Oh, yes," I said. "They have been splendid-made all your logs and things available, opened up the whole Memorial Library to me as well." "I imagine you've been very busy. Did you have any other material?" "Oh, yes sir," I said. "The most amazing thing. An earthquake must have opened up some passages at Spiteos out in the Great Desert. The place you pulled down, you know. And it was my luck to find the whole Apparatus master files." I was trying to trick him into some new disclosures, some comments I could use. But he only said, "Imagine that," and sipped at his I cool drink. "But I should imagine it gets pretty rough for a young writer. Are you not having any trouble at all?" That reached a tender spot. "Well," I said, "there's my family. Ever since I graduated from the Royal Academy of Arts, they haven't taken my writing seriously. I've written ever so many odes and they don't even listen to them. No encouragement at all." He shook his head and looked very sympathetic. "Well, youth has its penalties. But I don't imagine they actively put any blocks in your way." "Oh, but they do!" I countered. "Every relative I've got has been nudging find pushing at me to take a post doing this or that." "Oh, my," said Heller, "that must be pretty grim." "It is!" I said, emphatically. "But they've eased up on that. Now it's something else absolutely horrible. My mother is leading a conspiracy to marry me off to the Lady Corsa." "Lady Corsa?" he said, wide-eyed. "Why, she's the heiress to half of the planet Modon!" "She's awfully athletic, half again my size. And she has no soul at all! She thinks writing is a waste of time." "But, good Heavens," said Heller, "you'd wind up one of the richest men on Modon in another half-century. The lands of that planet are legendary for their productivity and the uplands are beautiful and full of game. A paradise!" I shook my head. "Provincial," I said. "Bucolic beyond belief. All they do is dig irrigation ditches or stand around with their caps in their hands muttering about the woolly crop. Even the gentry is illiterate and they go to bed the moment the sun, there, sets. I wouldn't be able to get to the bright lights of Voltar even as often as once a year. Oh, I assure you, Your Grace, it would be DEATH!" "You poor fellow," Heller said. "This writing must mean a lot to you." "Oh, it does, it does. So please, Jet, tell me the story of your life." He looked very solemn. He finished off his cool drink and put it down. "Very well, then. Where shall I begin?" I was a bit taken aback. I hadn't realized it would be so easy. "Well, usually one begins with where he was born," I said. He nodded. He settled himself comfortably. I got my recorder running, aching to hear his every word. Now I would get to the bottom of this. With the adroit and tricky questioning I had worked out that an investigative reporter must pursue, I would get him to reveal in his own words the substance of the most gigantic cover-up of all time. "I was born," said Heller, "in Tapour, Atalanta Province, planet Manco, 127 years ago." I was tense. His eyes took on the hue of nostalgia and reminiscence. Now I would get down to it. "Then," said Heller, "I lived until now. And here I am." I felt the very room spin. I opened my mouth. I closed it. A bland and innocent smile remained on Heller's face. Some footfalls were sounding in the hall. The Duchess of Manco swept in. Despite her age, she was beautiful. She was wearing a dinner gown that shimmered blue and yellow and seemed to reflect the color of her hair and eyes. Had I not known how old she was, her skill at makeup would have had me fooled. He stood to welcome her and she kissed him. "You're a bad boy to come blasting in here a day early, catching everything in a mess. But I am delighted," and she kissed him again very warmly. Then she became aware of me. She said, "Jettero, I couldn't help but overhear what you told this nice young man. Spare him your jokes. He's really trying awfully hard and it's time you got some recognition." "That's right!" said Heller. "Recognition! Just what I want. Recognition that^I am starved. What's for dinner?" And that was ALL I ever got out of Jettero Heller, Viceregal Chairman of the Grand Council, Duke of Manco. So you see?