Thirty-Eight

It was night.

Lieutenant Lester Bray walked into the front entrance of the Committee palace without noticing that the rear section of the building was almost totally demolished. Exactly how he had got to New Naples was not clear to him. His overall confusion included thoughts unrelated to anything he had ever considered before. And he was dimly aware that somewhere he had lost his uniform and was now dressed in some kind of pants and shirt.

Some of his wits remained. Being Bray, he nodded casually at the guard, said, “Hello, Pete!” and started to walk on as if he were one of the civilian employees.

“Wait a minute, you,” said the large man at the desk, and he said it in a voice that began on a note of surprise and ended in a yell.

Bray stopped, shrugging.

“Who are you?” the guard bellowed.

Really, thought Bray, does he have to be that loud about it? He turned in a pained fashion, but he supposed that, in truth, he had never been known to any of these men and had merely got by in the past because he wore the magic uniform. Quietly, he gave his name, finished, “It just happens that I am wearing civvies tonight, so if you’ll excuse me—” Once more he turned to go.

As he did so, two soldiers came charging out of a door a few feet down the hall, a door which had a light above it, and a sign which read: “Officer of the Guard.” The two men grabbed Bray and brought him back to the desk.

Moments later an Earth federation lieutenant emerged from the guardroom. “What’s the problem?” he asked. “You buzzed.”

The big man pointed at Bray. “This Diamondian says he’s Lieutenant Lester Bray.”

Involuntarily, Bray glanced around for whoever was being referred to. Saw no one. For once he was not quick enough. “What Diamondian?” he asked.

“You!”

…At six a.m., he was interviewed by the ambassador extraordinary, who said, “By this time you probably realize that you are a Diamondian male, not in uniform, about thirty-two years of age; and that according to the identification in your billfold your name is Pierre Magnan.

“Now, here,” Laurent picked up some papers, “I have a printout of the movements of Lieutenant Lester Bray, and they are pretty fantastic. But the final record on him shows that he was on a plane that landed on the edge of Gyuma Ravine two nights ago. Apparently he was at that time a prisoner and in a state of chemically induced hypnosis.”

“That is correct, sir. I was there with Dr. Gerhardt, a green-striped Irsk named Lositeen and a rebel Irsk named Zoolanyt—whom I didn’t see again after we got to our destination. We were taken into a ship, and just about the last thing I remember is Colonel Morton being brought in on a stretcher. He was tied hand and foot.” He broke off, “As for the hypnosis, naturally, with my Intelligence training, I deconditioned myself on that, and it was never a factor.”

Laurent picked up another paper, glanced at it, and then looked up and said, “An Earth federation officer with the rank of major last night entered the hospital where Dr. Gerhardt works and went straight to Gerhardt’s office. He was arrested, but he kept insisting that he was Dr. Gerhardt… And then, here,” the slender fingers touched another paper, “a Diamondian prostitute came in last night shortly after you arrived and said that she was David Kirk. At first the guard thought she wanted to visit Kirk, which,” a wan smile, “would have been more reasonable. But she insisted. And so she is also being held, pending further investigation.”

Laurent spread his beautiful hands, helplessly. “What do you make of all this, uh, lieutenant?”

During those minutes the Bray spirit had surfaced. “I think, sir, we’d better get Kirk, Gerhardt and myself together and see what we can reason out,” said Bray.

Laurent thought that was an excellent idea. He hesitated; then: “I have a report here from Major Luftelet. He says that beginning at 8:22 last night the building over there fought a battle with the magnetic field which surrounds Diamondia. How does that timing fit in?”

The two men stared at each other. Bray gulped finally, “That would be about right, sir… What happened?”

“Well, if I understand Luftelet correctly, which,” Laurent added, “is not always easy to do, the battle lasted a fraction under eight and three quarter minutes, which, according to Luftelet, is within one il of the building’s finite logic number.”

“Then the building won?”

“Luftelet,” said Laurent, “is preparing a report—but I have to say this, lieutenant, when I look at what happened to you, I can’t quite accept that the building’s victory was—total. In fact, following tracer lines on Colonel Morton and Lieutenant Bray, I have dispatched one of our special units to the Gyuma Ravine. They reported in a few minutes ago and said they have detected a large object underground beside a cliff. We may deduce that this is the spaceship to which you referred. Attempts to communicate with those aboard have not been successful. The expedition is proceeding cautiously.”

A brief silence on Bray’s part. Then he said in a low voice, “No word in all this from or about Colonel Morton?”

“None.”