nauseated by the whole affair that I went into a drinking place and ordered a glass of wine. There were only two other customers in the place as I seated myself at a little table. They had the hard, cruel faces of Kapar fighting men or police. I could see that they were scrutinizing me closely and whispering to one another. Finally they got up and came over and stopped in front of me.
'Your credentials,' barked one of them.
My wine permit was lying on the table in front of me, and I pushed it over toward him. It bore my name and address and a brief description. He picked it up and looked at it and then threw it down on the table angrily. 'I said your credentials,' he snapped.
'Let me see yours,' I said; 'I have the right to know upon what authority you question a law-abiding citizen.' I was right in my demand, although possibly a little foolish in insisting upon my rights. The fellow grumbled and showed me a Zabo badge, and then I handed him my credentials.
He looked them over carefully and then handed them back. 'So you're the fellow who was run over by an automobile a few weeks ago,' he said; 'well, if I were you, I'd be more respectful to Zabo officers, or you may be run over again;' and then they turned and stamped out of the place. It was such things as this that made life in Ergos what it was.
When I got home, Danul told me that two Zabo agents had been there and searched my apartment. I don't know why he told me; because he really had no business to, unless he had been given orders to do so for the purpose of trapping me into some treasonable expression, for it is treason to express any disapproval of an act of the Zabo; I could have been drawn and quartered for what I was thinking of them though.
Now I commenced to be suspicious of Danul, and I wondered if Lotar Canl had lied to me or if this man was an agent without Lotar Canl having any knowledge of the fact. Insofar as suspicion was concerned, I was becoming a true Kapar; I suspected everybody. I think the only man whom I had ever met here that I had perfect confidence in was Horthal Wend, and they had come at night and taken him away.
Chapter Nine
MOREA SAGRA CAME IN SHORTLY after I returned; and I sent Danul out on an errand, so that I might tell her about Horthal Wend.
'That horrible child!' she exclaimed. 'Oh, Tangor!' she cried, 'can't we get out of here?'
'Don't ever speak that name again,' I said. 'Do you want to get me into trouble?'
'I'm sorry; it just came out. Couldn't we get away somehow?'
'And be shot as soon as we return to Orvis?' I said. 'You got yourself into this,' I reminded her, 'and now you've got to grin and bear it and so have I; although I really enjoy it here,' I lied. 'I wouldn't go back to Orvis under any circumstances.'
She looked at me questioningly. 'I'm sorry,' she said. 'You won't hold it against me, will you? Oh, Korvan Don, you won't tell anybody that I said that?'
'Of course not,' I assured her.
'I can't help it,' she said, 'I can't help it. I am almost a nervous wreck. I have a premonition that something terrible is going to happen,' and just then there came a pounding on the door, and I thought that Morga Sagra was going to faint.
'Pull yourself together and buck up,' I said, as I crossed to the door. As I opened it, I was confronted by two high officers of the Kapar fighting force.
'You are Korvan Don?' inquired one of them.
'I am,' I replied.
'You will come with us,' he said.
Well, at least they were not agents of the Zabo; but what they wanted of me I couldn't imagine; and, of course, I did not ask. Since I have been here in Ergos, I have schooled myself to such an extent that I even hesitate to ask the time of day. We were driven at high speed, through crowded streets, to the building in which is the office of the Pom Da, and, after but a moment's wait in an ante-room, I was ushered into the presence of the Great I.
The Pom Da came to the point immediately. 'When you were here before,' he said, 'you told me that before you left that other world from which you say you came, you were working on a ship which you believed would have a radius of something like 48,000,000 miles . One of our foremost inventors has been working along similar lines, and had almost perfected a power amplifier which would make it possible for a ship to fly from Poloda to other planets of our solar system; but unfortunately he recently suffered an accident and died.
'Naturally this important work was carried on with the utmost secrecy. He had no assistants; nobody but he could complete the experimental amplifier upon which he was working. It must be completed.'
'I have had excellent reports of your integrity and loyalty since you have been here. I have sent for you because I believe you are the man best fitted to carry on from where our late inventor left off. It is, naturally, a very important piece of work, the details of which must be guarded carefully lest they fall into the hands of our enemy, who treacherously maintains agents among us. I have convinced myself that you are to be trusted, and I am never wrong in my estimate of men. You will therefore proceed to the laboratory and workshop where the amplifier was being built and complete it.'
'Is it a command, Highest Most High?' I asked.
'It is,' he replied.
'Then I shall do my best,' I said, 'but it is a responsibility I should not have chosen voluntarily, and I cannot have but wished that you might have found someone better fitted than I for so important a commission.' I wished to give him the impression that I was reluctant to work upon the amplifier, for fear that I might otherwise reveal my elation. After weeks of failure and disappointment, and without the faintest ray of hope of ever succeeding in my mission, the solution of my problem was now being dumped into my lap by the highest Kapar in the land.
The Great I, who was such a marvellous judge of men, gave me a few general instructions and then ordered that I be taken at once to the laboratory, and I backed out of his presence with the two officers who had brought me. I thought that I understood now, why I had been watched so closely, and why my apartment had been ransacked so frequently.
As I drove through the streets of Ergos, I was happy for the first time since I had left Orvis; and I was rather pleased with myself too, for I felt confident that my oft-repeated references to the imaginary ship that I had been supposed to have been working on, on Earth had finally born fruit. Of course, I had never been working on any such ship as I described; but I had done considerable experimental work on airplane motors, and I hoped that this would help me in my present undertaking.
I was driven to a neighbourhood with which I was very familiar and was taken to a laboratory behind a home in which I had been entertained– the home of Horthal Wend.
I spent a full week studying the plans and examining the small model and the experimental amplifier that was almost completed. Horthal Wend had kept voluminous notes, and from these I discovered that he had eliminated all the bugs but one. As I worked, I was occasionally aware of being watched; and a couple of times I caught a fleeting glimpse of a face at the window. But whether the Pom Da was having me watched or someone was awaiting an opportunity to steal the plans, I did not know.
The trouble with Horthal Wend's amplifier was that it diffused instead of concentrating the energy derived from the sun, so that, while I was confident that it would propel a ship to either of the nearer planets, the speed would diminish progressively as the distance from the central power station on Poloda increased, with the result that the time consumed in covering the 600,000 miles between the two planets would be so great as to render the invention useless from any practical standpoint.
On the day that I eliminated the last bug and felt sure that I had an amplifier capable of powering the ship to almost any distance from Poloda, I caught a glimpse of that face at the window again, and decided to try to find out who it was who was so inquisitive about my work.
Pretending that I had noticed nothing, I busied myself about the room, keeping my back toward the window as much as possible, until I finally reached the door that was near the window; then I threw the door open and stepped out. There was Horthal Gyl, very red in the face and looking very foolish.
