The captain was awaiting them in the corridor of the scout. His eyes went anxious and alert when he saw Ronny was wounded.
Lee Chang said briefly, “We’ve had a casualty. Put him into a bunk. Then let’s get into underspace. Sheer bad luck might bring us up against one of Number One’s space cruisers.”
“Yes, ma’m,” the captain said, touching the visor of his cap. He called over his shoulder. Two spacemen came up and took Ronny gently. The captain hurried for his bridge.
By the time they reached the Neuve Albuquerque spaceport, the wounded man was well on the road to repair. The three Section G agents made their farewells to the doctor and the crew of the space scout and took a passenger craft to the Greater Washington shuttleport. There they separated, Ronny heading for his apartment for a night’s rest, fresh clothing and a few drinks before reporting in to the Octagon in the morning. The next day, he scowled down at his bandaged waist and wondered whether or not to remove the dressing, but decided not to. It wouldn’t hurt to keep it on for another couple of days.
He took an automated helio-cab from the pickup point on the roof of his apartment house and dialed through to the Octagon, that city within a city on the other side of the Potomac. At the sixth gate, he got out and dismissed the vehicle.
He approached one of the guard-guides, brought forth his wallet and flicked it open to reveal his badge. It was golden, had a queer sheen and read simply
He scowled at the badge and said, “Section G? Never heard of it.”
Ronny looked at him and said wearily, “It’s not necessary that you have heard of it.”
The other took him in. Ronny Bronston was a man of averages. Medium height, medium weight and breadth. Pleasant enough of face in a medium sort of way, but not handsome. Less than sharp of dress, hair inclined to be on the undisiplined side. Brown hair, dark eyes. In a crowd, inconspicuous. He didn’t stand out.
The guard said, “Where’s your pass?”
“I don’t need a pass. I’m a supervisor of Section G.”
“You need a pass to get by me, friend.”
Ronny decided that it was going to be one of those days. He said, “Look here, who’s your immediate superior?”
The officious one scowled at him. “Lieutenant Economou.”
“And who’s his immediate superior?”
“Commander Hersey.”
“And who’s his immediate superior?”
“General Wayne Fox, Commander in Chief of Octagon Security.”
Ronny Bronston took his badge and put it in the slot of the Tri-Di phone screen standing next to the guard’s post. He said, “General Wayne Fox.”
The guard’s face went suddenly empty.
When the general’s face faded in, he said, “Ronny! I thought you were off on one of those romps of yours.”
The guard’s face was wan now.
“Just got back,” Ronny said. “What do you say we get together for lunch, Wayne? I’ve got a funny story to tell you about old Number One on Neu Reich.”
“Great,” the general grinned. “Meet you in the senior officer’s mess at noon.”
“It’s a date.” Ronny flicked off the phone screen and turned back to the guard. He said, “Summon me a three-wheel scooter.”
The other snapped him a salute. “Yes, sir. Right away, sir.” He pushed a button.
When the vehicle came scurrying up, Ronny gave him the coordinates of his destination and the other dialed them hurriedly.
Without a further glance at the man, the Section G operative climbed into the bucket seat and the scooter slid into the Octagon’s hall traffic and began proceeding up one corridor, down another, twice taking to ascending ramps.
He shook his head at his run-in with the guard and actually felt a bit ashamed of the cavalier manner in which he had handled the man. What was it about third-rate people in positions of minor authority?
He must have traveled three kilometers before they got to the Department of Justice alone. It was another half kilometer to the Bureau of Investigation. The scooter eventually came to a halt, waited long enough for Ronny to dismount and then hurried back into the hall traffic.
Ronny entered the office. There was a neatly uniformed reception girl-cum secretary there at the sole desk the room boasted. She had a harassed and cynical eye, was evidently about forty, and looked ultra-efficient, rather than good-looking. She was widely thought of as the operational brains behind Section G, and she was also reputedly sugar on Ronny Bronston.
Ronny said, “Hi, Irene. What’s the jetsam today?”
“Ronny!” Irene Kasansky said, never ceasing for a moment in the flicking of levers and pushing of buttons, “We heard you were shot in that Neu Reich assignment. Shouldn’t you be in bed?”
“It wasn’t as bad as all that. I came to report. Maybe afterwards I’ll ask for some time off to rest and go fishing. Is Sid in?”
She clicked an order-box and spoke into it, listened for a moment and then said, “If I wasn’t a lady, I’d clobber you, you idiotically grinning cloddy.”
She looked up at Ronny. “He’s free.”
“Thanks, Irene,” Ronny said and went through the door behind her. He made one turn to the left and two to the right, in the corridor that stretched beyond, and came up to a door lettered simply,
He knocked and a voice called happily, “Come on in, come on in. It’s always open.”
Ronny entered and found Sid Jakes behind his desk. He was the most off-beat looking high government executive that Ronny Bronston had ever met, Assistant to Ross Metaxa, Commissioner of Section G. His dress was on the ultra-informal side, seemingly more suited to sports wear than a job in the super-conservative Octagon. He couldn’t have been much older than Ronny’s thirty or so and he had a nervous vitality about him that could wear another down in a matter of half an hour.
On Ronny’s appearance, he popped to his feet and dashed about the desk to wring the newcomer’s hand with an enthusiasm that would have suggested they were long separated brothers. “Ronny, old chum-pal,” he said. “My right arm!”
“Thanks, Sid,” the newcomer said sourly. “You keep giving me these sticky assignments and I’ll probably have my own shot off one of these days.”
“Sit down, sit down, old chum-pal,” Jakes said. He rushed his subordinate to a chair, saw him seated, then dashed back around the desk to his own swivel chair.
He said, his voice the nearest to sounding serious that it ever got, “Lee Chang reported that you copped one on Neu Reich. How come you’re up and around?”
Ronny shook his head. “It wasn’t much of a hit. I faked most of it to see how Probationary Agent Willy de Rudder would react. I pretended to be so badly hit that I ordered him to finish me off, so I wouldn’t fall into Number One’s guards’ hands.”
The other cocked his head. “How did de Rudder work out? He looked like he had the makings of a pretty good agent.”
Ronny made a negative motion with his right hand. “He’s not field agent material, Sid.”
His superior said, “Why not?”
“First of all, he missed Number One. And he did it on purpose, though he was under direct order to shoot the funker. Evidently, he couldn’t bring himself to kill an unknowing, defenseless man.”
Sid Jakes didn’t get it. He said, “That gimmicked up bullet wouldn’t have killed him. Especially in view of the fact that we know he wears bulletproof underwear, or whatever, all the time.”
’I know. But I didn’t tell de Rudder that until later. I wanted to see how he’d react, how dedicated a Section G agent he would make.”
