trained agents than Section G has ever been, and you come up with this gang of freaks.” He glanced at a plain- looking middle-aged woman who looked back at him mildly.
Lee Chang said, “Martha Lorans. She has total recall. With Martha along, a troupe assigned to some emergency can set down on a planet without any records whatsoever on their persons. No matter what data they need for the job, they can carry it in her head.”
She indicated the large scholar. “That is Dr. Dorn M. Horsten, top-notch research algae specialist. He has a hobby that is a personal entertainment. Since boyhood he’s amused himself with weight lifting and pretzel-tying— using one-inch mild steel bars for pretzels. He is actually one of the strongest human beings in United Planets. His home world helps: it’s a one point four G planet A very nice, soft-spoken gentleman, conspicuous at every unicellular biology meeting for his brilliant mind. Naturally, nobody notices he has muscles, and can do things that any other human being finds impossible.”
Ross Metaxa grunted. He said, “What’s that fellow doing?”
“Zorro Juarez? He comes from Vacamundo, settled by Argentines. They specialize in raising the best cattle and horses in the confederation, breed them to order to meet the local conditions pertaining on the worlds that desire such animals. The national sport is the use of the bullwhip. Have you ever seen a twenty-foot bullwhip artist perform, Commissioner? Zorro can make old William Tell look very amateurish. He could quarter the apple on the boy’s head and peel one half of it in the bargain.”
Metaxa said, “Confound it, what good does a bull-whip artist do in this day and age, and among Section G operatives?”
Lee Chang’s voice was sweet. “Among other things, it is a most deadly weapon and involves no electronic gadgetry, metal parts, or anything else detectable by search devices.”
The head of her department grunted and marched across the room to a somewhat colorless looking young man who had been practicing, rather ineptly, at the quick draw.
“How about you?” Metaxa snapped.
The young man—he couldn’t have been more than in his mid-twenties—looked up with an air of apology. “I’m lucky,” he said.
Ross Metaxa was bleak. “And I’m Rossie, but just to keep things in perspective, I think you’d better call me Commissioner Metaxa, and the hell with the nicknames. I meant what’s your so-called special talent?”
“That’s what I meant. I’m lucky.”
Section G’s ultimate head looked at him for a long empty moment. Then he turned his eyes to Lee Chang Chu, in silence.
The diminutive Chinese girl tinkled laughter. “This is Jerry Rhodes, Commissioner. He is quite correct. His special talent is that he is lucky.”
Ross Metaxa closed his tired, moist eyes and muttered something inwardly. He opened them again to glare.
Jerry Rhodes cleared his throat, the apology still there. “I don’t pretend to explain it.”
“I’ll bet you don’t,” Metaxa said. “Show me.”
Rhodes thought for a moment. He said, “There is an element I should mention. My own fortunes have to be involved.”
“What is that supposed to mean?”
The colorless young man fished in a pocket. “Here is a coin. You know what a coin is?”
“Yes,” Metaxa said. “I know what a coin is. In fact, they still use them on various of the less progressive worlds. Listen, Rhodes, or whatever your name is, start off on the basis that I’m not stupid. I didn’t get to be Commissioner of Section G by being stupid.”
Rhodes said, “Yes, sir. This is an old coin going back to United States days.” He looked at it. “Sony, France.”
“All right, all right, a coin.”
“Very well. I will wager you a hundred interplanetary credits that if I flick this coin into the air it will come down with the head on top.”
Metaxa looked at him. “Very well, flick the coin. I suppose there’s some rhyme or reason to this.”
Rhodes flicked the coin high. When it bounced to the floor he didn’t bother to look. He held out his hand. “You owe me one hundred credits. Will you document it so that I may credit my account?”
Metaxa looked at Lee Chang in irritation. “Anybody could flip a coin and win. A fifty-fifty chance. What’s lucky about that?”
“That comes next,” Rhodes said gently. “This time I will wager you the same amount that I can flip it heads three times in a row.”
Metaxa blinked. “You’re on.”
Heads. Heads. Heads.
Rhodes said, “You owe me two hundred credits. The next bet is another hundred that I can flip it five times in a row heads—or tails for that matter. You call it.”
Metaxa was staring by now. “Let me see that damned coin! What bet comes after that?”
“That I can flip it ten times in a row,” Rhodes said. “I seldom manage to cozen anybody into that. Are you game?”
“Yes, but not everybody’s!” Metaxa spun back to Lee Chang and Sid Jakes. He pointed to another of the room’s occupants. “What does he do?”
Sid answered him this times. “That’s George Killmer, Licensed Orbit Computer. A ballistics specialist. He does celestial mechanics problems like solving the equations of motion of planetary systems as an off-hand job when somebody brings in a set of observations on some new system. His main work is computing interstellar flight paths for commercial and military ships, and as such he can go just about anywhere among the settled worlds without anyone thinking of him as a possible agent.”
“What’s that got to do with Section G?” Metaxa asked. “What’s his so-called special talent?”
Sid said, grinning, “He’s the best pickpocket Lee Chang was able to locate by going through the files of every planet whose police cooperate with Inter-Planet-Pol. He’s probably the best pickpocket who ever lived. Imagine. Almost three thousand planets in U.P. with socioeconomic systems that have crime, and each with an average population of about two billion. And he’s the best pickpocket of all.”
Ross Metaxa closed his eyes in pain.
When he opened them again, it was to stare at Lee Chang. “Look,” he said. “I assume you’re not trying deliberately to sabotage Section G. You’ve been dedicated too long for that. But when I gave you the job of recruiting new agents, I didn’t expect you to wind up with a bevy of pickpockets, shovel throwers and… and lucky coin flippers. All this is out of the question, understand? We’ll go back to our old system.”
Lee Chang was shaking her head. “We haven’t the time, Commissioner Metaxa. And you know it. We need new agents, fast. We haven’t the time to seek out the young men from all over United Planets who are potential Section G operatives, and we haven’t got five years for training them. In the past year, this department has had more work than we had in the last ten.”
“Do you think I am unfamiliar with that!”
She said, persuasively, “The need to push, prod, pry the member worlds of United Planets into progress is more pressing than ever. And nine out of ten of them resent—or would if they knew what we were about—such pressures on our part Man will cling, suicidally, to such institutions as religion, political systems, socioeconomic systems, racial beliefs, no matter how much they may be standing in the way of progress. In trying to change such institutions, we’ve lost a score of experienced agents in the past few months.”
His eyes hadn’t lost their anger. “You think you know this any better than I do? But I need agents, not freaks.”
“You need people who will bring results, Commissioner. I am combing United Planets to locate them. People with special talents who also have man’s dream.” She pursed her small mouth in a moue of defiance.
Ross Metaxa pointed over at Jerry Rhodes, who had resumed his miserable attempts to jerk a heavy Model H gun from the holster he had under his left arm.
“What good would that clod do, if he came up against one of the strong-arm bully-boys on the planet Goshen? He’d be crisped before he could get his shooter out. And by the way he handles it, even if he did get it out, he’d probably shoot off his own foot.”
