Читать книгу The Selected Sci-Fi Stories - Mack Reynolds - Страница 6
ОглавлениеHe spoke Russian. Fine. So what? Could he simply march up to the spacecraft and knock on the door? Or would he make himself dangerously conspicuous by just getting any closer than he now was to the craft?
As he stood now, he felt he was comparatively safe. He was sure the Russkies had marked him down as a rather ordinary American. Heavens knows, he'd worked hard enough at the role. A simple, average tourist, a little on the square side, and not even particularly articulate.
However, he wasn't going to accomplish much by remaining here in this room. He doubted that the Stilyagi would get in touch with him either by phone or simply knocking at the door.
"O.K., Paco," he said. "Let's go. In search of the pin-up girl—Moscow style."
They walked down to the lobby and started for the door.
One of the Intourist guides who had brought them from the railroad station stood to one side of the stairs. "Going for a walk, gentlemen? I suggest you stroll up Gorky Street, it's the main shopping center."
Paco said, "How about going over into Red Square to see the spaceship?"
The guide shrugged. "I don't believe the guards will allow you to get too near. It would be undesirable to bother the Galactic delegates to the Soviet Union."
That was one way of wording it, Hank thought glumly. The Galactic delegates to the Soviet Union. Not to the Earth, but to the Soviet Union. He wondered what the neutrals in such countries as India were thinking.
But at least there were no restrictions on Paco and him.
They strolled up Gorky Street, jam packed with fellow pedestrians. Shoppers, window-shoppers, men on the prowl for girls, girls on the prowl for men, Ivan and his wife taking the baby for a stroll, street cleaners at the endless job of keeping Moscow's streets the neatest in the world.
Paco pointed out this to Hank, Hank pointed out that to Paco. Somehow it seemed more than a visit to a western European nation. This was Moscow. This was the head of the Soviet snake.
And then Hank had to laugh inwardly at himself as two youngsters, running along playing tag in a grown-up world of long legs and stolid pace, all but tripped him up. Head of a snake it might be, but Moscow's people looked astonishingly like those of Portland, Maine or Portland, Oregon.
"How do you like those two, coming now?" Paco said.
Those two coming now consisted of two better than averagely dressed girls who would run somewhere in their early twenties. A little too much make-up by western standards, and clumsily applied.
"Blondes," Paco said soulfully.
"They're all blondes here," Hank said.
"Wonderful, isn't it?"
The girls smiled at them in passing and Paco turned to look after, but they didn't stop. Hank and Paco went on.
It didn't take Hank long to get onto Paco's system. It was beautifully simple. He merely smiled widely at every girl that went by. If she smiled back, he stopped and tried to start a conversation with her.
He got quite a few rebuffs but—Hank remembered an old joke—on the other hand he got quite a bit of response.
Before they had completed a block and a half of strolling, they were standing on a corner, trying to talk with two of Moscow's younger set—female variety. Here again, Paco was a wonder. His languages were evidently Spanish, English and French but he was in there pitching with a language the full vocabulary of which consisted of Da and Neit so far as he was concerned.
Hank stood back a little, smiling, trying to stay in character, but in amused dismay at the other's aggressive abilities.
Paco said, "Listen, I think I can get these two to come up to the room. Which one do you like?"
Hank said, "If they'll come up to the room, then they're professionals."
Paco grinned at him. "I'm a professional, too. A lawyer by trade. It's just a matter of different professions."
A middle-aged pedestrian, passing by, said to the girls in Russian, "Have you no shame before the foreign tourists?"
They didn't bother to answer. Paco went back to his attempt to make a deal with the taller of the two.
The smaller, who sported astonishingly big and blue eyes, said to Hank in Russian, "You're too good to associate with metrofanushka girls?"
Hank frowned puzzlement. "I don't speak Russian," he said.
She laughed lightly, almost a giggle, and, in the same low voice her partner was using on Paco, said, "I think you do, Mr. Kuran. In the afternoon, tomorrow, avoid whatever tour the Intourist people wish to take you on and wander about Sovietska Park." She giggled some more. The world-wide epitome of a girl being picked up on the street.
Hank took her in more closely. Possibly twenty-five years of age. The skirt she was wearing was probably Russian, it looked sturdy and durable, but the sweater was one of the new American fabrics. Her shoes were probably western too, the latest flared heel effect. A typical stilyagi or metrofanushka girl, he assumed. Except for one thing—her eyes were cool and alert, intelligent beyond those of a street pickup.
Paco said, "What do you think, Hank? This one will come back to the hotel with me."
"Romeo, Romeo," Hank sighed, "wherefore do thou think thou art?"
Paco shrugged. "What's the difference? Buenos Aires, New York, Moscow. Women are women."
"And men are evidently men," Hank said. "You do what you want."
"O.K., friend. Do you mind staying out of the room for a time?"
"Don't worry about me, but you'll have to get rid of Loo, and he hasn't had his eighteen hours sleep yet today."
Paco had his girl by the arm. "I'll roll him into the hall. He'll never wake up."
Hank's girl made a moue at him, shrugged as though laughing off the fact that she had been rejected, and disappeared into the crowds. Hank stuck his hands in his pockets and went on with his stroll.
The contact with the underground had been made.
* * * * *
Maintaining his front as an American tourist he wandered into several stores, picked up some amber brooches at a bargain rate, fingered through various books in English in an international bookshop. That was one thing that hit hard. The bookshops were packed. Prices were remarkably low and people were buying. In fact, he'd never seen a country so full of people reading and studying. The park benches were loaded with them, they read as the rode on streetcar and bus, they read as they walked along the street. He had an uneasy feeling that the jet-set kids were a small minority, that the juvenile delinquent problem here wasn't a fraction what it was in the West.
He'd expected to be followed. In fact, that had puzzled him when he first was given this unwanted assignment by Sheridan Hennessey. How was he going to contact this so-called underground if he was watched the way he had been led to believe Westerners were?
But he recalled their conducted tour of the Hermitage Museum in Leningrad. The Intourist guide had started off with twenty-five persons and had clucked over them like a hen all afternoon. In spite of her frantic efforts to keep them together, however, she returned to the Astoria Hotel that evening with eight missing—including Hank and Loo who had wandered off to get a beer.
The idea of the KGB putting tails on the tens of thousands of tourists that swarmed Moscow and Leningrad, became a little on the ridiculous side. Besides, what secret does a tourist know, or what secrets could he discover?
At any rate, Hank found no interference in his wanderings. He deliberately avoided Red Square and its spaceship, taking no chances on bringing himself to attention. Short of that locality, he wandered freely.
At noon they ate at the Grand and the Intourist guide outlined the afternoon program which involved a general sightseeing tour ranging from the University to the Park of Rest and Culture, Moscow's equivalent of Coney Island.
Loo said, "That all sounds very tiring, do we have time for a nap before leaving?"
"I'm afraid not, Mr. Motlamelle," the guide told him.
Paco shook his head. "I've seen a university, and I've seen a sport stadium and I've seen statues and monuments. I'll sit this one out."
"I think I'll lie this one out," Loo said. He complained plaintively to Hank. "You know what happened to me this morning, just as I was napping up in our room?"
"Yes," Hank said, "I was with our Argentine Casanova when he picked her up."
* * * * *
Hank took the conducted tour with the rest. If he was going to beg off the next day, he'd be less conspicuous tagging along on this one. Besides it gave him the lay of the land.
And he took the morning trip the next day, the automobile factories on the outskirts of town. It had been possibly fifteen years since Hank had been through Detroit but he doubted greatly that automation had developed as far in his own country as it seemed to have here. Or, perhaps, this was merely a showplace. But he drew himself up at that thought. That was one attitude the Western world couldn't afford—deprecating Soviet progress. This was the very thing that had led to such shocks as the launching of the early Sputniks. Underestimate your adversary and sooner or later you paid for it.
The Soviets had at long last built up a productive machine as great as any. Possibly greater. In sheer tonnage they were turning out more gross national product than the West. This was no time to be underestimating them.
All this was a double interest to a field man in Morton Twombly's department, working against the Soviets in international trade. He was beginning to understand at least one of the reasons why the Commies could sell their products at such ridiculously low prices. Automation beyond that of the West. In the Soviet complex the labor unions were in no position to block the introduction of ultra-efficient methods, and featherbedding was unheard of. If a Russian worker's job was automated out from under him, he shifted to a new plant, a new job, and possibly even learned a new trade. The American worker's union, to the contrary, did its best to save the job.
Hank Kuran remembered reading, a few months earlier, of a British textile company which had attempted to introduce a whole line of new automation equipment. The unions had struck, and the company had to give up the project. What happened to the machinery? It was sold to China!
Following the orders of his underground contact, he begged out of the afternoon tour, as did half a dozen of the others. Sightseeing was as hard on the feet in Moscow as anywhere else.
After lunch he looked up Sovietska Park on his tourist map of the city. It was handy enough. A few blocks up Gorky Street.
It turned out to be typical. Well done so far as fountains, monuments and gardens were concerned. Well equipped with park benches. In the early afternoon it was by no means empty, but, on the other hand not nearly so filled as he'd noticed the parks to be the evening before.
Hank stopped at one of the numerous cold drink stands where for a few kopecks you could get raspberry syrup fizzed up with soda water. While he sipped it, a teen-ager came up beside him and said in passable English, "Excuse me, are you a tourist? Do you speak English?"
This had happened before. Another kid practicing his school language.
"That's right," Hank said.
The boy said, "You aren't a ham, are you?" He brought some cards from an inner pocket. "I'm UA3-KAR."
For a moment Hank looked at him blankly, and then he recognized the amateur radio call cards the other was displaying. "Oh, a ham. Well, no, but I have a cousin who is."
Two more youngsters came up. "What's his call?"
Hank didn't remember that. They all adjourned to a park bench and little though he knew about the subject, international amateur radio was discussed in detail. In fifteen minutes he was hemmed in by a dozen or so and had about decided he'd better make his excuses and circulate around making himself available to the stilyagi outfit. He was searching for an excuse to shake them when the one sitting next to him reverted to Russian.
"We're clear now, Henry Kuran."
Hank said, "I'll be damned. I hadn't any idea—"
The other brushed aside trivialities. Looking at him more closely, Hank could see he was older than first estimate. Possibly twenty-two or so. Darker than most of the others, heavy-set, sharp and impatient.
"You can call me Georgi," he said. "These others will prevent outsiders from bothering us. Now then, we've been told you Americans want some assistance. What? And why should we give it to you?"
Hank said, worriedly, "Haven't you some place we could go? Where I could meet one of your higher-ups? This is important."
"Otherwise, I wouldn't be here," Georgi said impatiently. "For that matter there is no higher-up. We don't have ranks; we're a working democracy. And I'm afraid the day of the secret room in some cellar is past. With housing what it is, if there was an empty cellar in Moscow a family would move in. And remember, all buildings are State owned and operated. I'm afraid you'll have to tell your story here. Now, what is it you want?"
"I want an opportunity to meet the Galactic Confederation emissaries."
"Why?"
"To give them our side, the Western side, of the ... well, the controversy between us and the Soviet complex. We want an opportunity to have our say before they make any permanent treaties."
Georgi considered that. "We thought it was probably something similar," he muttered. "What do you think it will accomplish?"
"At least a delaying action. If the extraterrestrials throw their weight, their scientific progress, into the balance on the side of the Soviet complex, the West will have lost the cold war. Every neutral in the world will jump on the bandwagon. International trade, sources of raw materials, will be a thing of the past. Without a shot being fired, we'd become second-rate powers overnight."
Georgi said nothing for a long moment. A new youngster had drifted up to the group but one of those on the outskirts growled something at him and he went off again. Evidently, Hank decided, all of this dozen-odd cluster of youngsters were connected with the jet-set underground.
"All right, you want us to help you in the conflict between the Soviet government and the West," Georgi said. "Why should we?"
Hank frowned at him. "You're the anti-government movement. You're revolutionists and want to overthrow the Soviet government."
The other said impatiently, "Don't read something into our organization that isn't here. We don't exist for your benefit, but our own."
"But you wish to overthrow the Soviets and establish a democratic—"
Georgi was waggling an impatient hand. "That word democratic has been so misused this past half century that it's become all but meaningless. Look here, we wish to overthrow the present Soviet government, but that doesn't mean we expect to establish one modeled to yours. We're Russians. Our problems are Russian ones. Most of them you aren't familiar with—any more than we're familiar with your American ones."
"However, you want to destroy the Soviets," Hank pursued.
"Yes," Georgi growled, "but that doesn't necessarily mean that we wish you to win this cold war, as the term goes. That is, just because we're opposed to the Soviet government doesn't mean we like yours. But you make a point. If the Galactic Confederation gives all-out support to the Soviet bureaucracy it might strengthen it to the point where they could remain in office indefinitely."
* * * * *
Hank pressed the advantage. "Right. You'd never overthrow them then."
"On the other hand," Georgi muttered uncomfortably, "we're not interested in giving you Americans an opportunity that would enable you to collapse the whole fabric of this country and its allies."
"Look here," Hank said. "In the States we seem to know surprisingly little about your movement. Just what do you expect to accomplish?"
"To make it brief, we wish to enjoy the product of the sacrifices of the past fifty years. If you recall your Marx"—he twisted his face here in wry amusement—"the idea was that the State was to wither away once Socialism was established. Instead of withering away, it has become increasingly strong. This was explained by the early Bolsheviks in a fairly reasonable manner. Socialism presupposes a highly industrialized economy. It's not possible in a primitive nor even a feudalistic society. So our Communist bureaucracy remained in the saddle through a period of transition. The task was to industrialize the Soviet countries in a matter of decades where it had taken the Capitalist nations a century or two."
Georgi shrugged. "I've never heard of a governing class giving up its once acquired power of its own accord, no matter how incompetent they might be."
Hank said, "I wouldn't call the Soviet government incompetent."
"Then you'd be wrong," the other said. "Progress had been made but often in spite of the bureaucracy, not because of it. In the early days it wasn't so obvious, but as we develop the rule of the political bureaucrat becomes increasingly a hindrance. Politicians can't operate industries and they can't supervise laboratories. To the extent our scientist and technicians are interfered with by politicians, to that extent we are held up in our progress. Surely you've heard of the Lysenko matter?"
"He was the one who evolved the anti-Mendelian theory of genetics, fifteen or twenty years ago."
"Correct," Georgi snorted. "Acquired characteristics could be handed down by heredity. It took the Academy of Agricultural Science at least a decade to dispose of him. Why? Because his theories fitted into Stalin's political beliefs." The underground spokesman snorted again.
Hank had the feeling they were drifting from the subject. "Then you want to overthrow the Communist bureaucracy?"
"Yes, but that is only part of the story. Overthrowing it without something to replace the bureaucracy is a negative approach. We have no interest in a return to Czarist Russia, even if that were possible, and it isn't. We want to profit by what has happened in these years of ultra-sacrifice, not to destroy everything. The day of rule by politicians is antiquated, we look forward to the future." He seemed to switch subjects. "Do you remember Djilas' book which he wrote in one of Tito's prisons, "The New Class"?"
"Vaguely. I read the reviews. It was a best seller in the States some time ago."
Georgi made with his characteristic snort. "It was a best seller here—in underground circles. At any rate, that explains much. Our bureaucracy, no matter what its ideals might have been to begin with, has developed into a new class of its own. Russia sacrifices to surpass the West—but our bureaucrats don't. In Lenin's day the commissar was paid the same as the average worker, but today we have bureaucrats as wealthy as Western millionaires."
Hank said, "Of course, these are your problems. I don't pretend to have too clear a picture of them. However, it seems to me we have a mutual enemy. Right at this moment it appears that they are to receive some support that will strengthen them. I suggest you co-operate with me in hopes they'll be thwarted."
For the first time a near smile appeared on the young Russian's face. "A ludicrous situation. We have here a Russian revolutionary organization devoted to the withering away the Russian Communist State. To gain its ends, it co-operates with a Capitalist country's agent." His grin broadened. "I suspect that neither Nicolai Lenin nor Karl Marx ever pictured such contingencies."
Hank said, "I wouldn't know I'm not up on my Marxism. I'm afraid that when I went to school academic circles weren't inclined in that direction." He returned the Russian's wry smile.
Which only set the other off again. "Academic circles!" he snorted. "Sterile in both our countries. All professors of economics in the Soviet countries are Marxists. On the other hand, no American professor would admit to this. Coincidence? Suppose an American teacher was a convinced Marxist. Would he openly and honestly teach his beliefs? Suppose a Russian wasn't? Would he?" Georgi slapped his knee with a heavy hand and stood up. "I'll speak to various others. We'll let you know."
Hank said, "Wait. How long is this going to take? And can you help me if you want to? Where are these extraterrestrials?"
Georgi looked down at him. "They're in the Kremlin. How closely guarded we don't know, but we can find out."
"The Kremlin," Hank said. "I was hoping they stayed in their own ship."
"Rumor has it that they're quartered in the Bolshoi Kremlevski Dvorets, the Great Kremlin Palace. We'll contact you later—perhaps." He stuck his hands in his pockets and strode away, in all appearance just one more pedestrian without anywhere in particular to go.
One of the younger boys, the ham who had first approached Hank, smiled and said, "Perhaps we can talk a bit more of radio?"
"Yeah," Hank muttered, "Swell."
* * * * *
The next development came sooner than Henry Kuran had expected. In fact, before the others returned from their afternoon tour of the city. Hank was sprawled in one of the king-sized easy-chairs, turning what little he had to work on over in his mind. The principal decisions to make were, first, how long to wait on the assistance of the stilyagi, and, if that wasn't forthcoming, what steps to take on his own. The second prospect stumped him. He hadn't the vaguest idea what he could accomplish singly.
He wasn't even sure where the space aliens were. The Bolshoi Kremlevski Dvorets, Georgi had said. But was that correct, and, if so, where was the Bolshoi Kremlevski Dvorets and how did you get into it? For that matter, how did you get inside the Kremlin walls?
Under his breath he cursed Sheridan Hennessey. Why had he allowed himself to be dragooned into this? By all criteria it was the desperate clutching of a drowning man for a straw. He had no way to know, for instance, if he did reach the space emissaries, that he could even communicate with them.
He caught himself wishing he was back in Peru arguing with hesitant South Americans over the relative values of American and Soviet complex commodities—and then he laughed at himself.
There was a knock at the door.
Hank came wearily to his feet, crossed and opened it.
She still wore too much make-up, the American sweater and the flared heel shoes. And her eyes were still cool and alert. She slid past him, let her eyes go around the room quickly. "You are alone?" she said in Russian, but it was more a statement than question.
Hank closed the door behind them. He scowled at her, put a finger to his lips and then went through an involved pantomime to indicate looking for a microphone. He raised his eyebrows at her.
She laughed and shook her head. "No microphones."
"How do you know?"
"We know. We have contacts here in the hotel. If the KGB had to put microphones in the rooms of every tourist in Moscow, they'd have to increase their number by ten times. In spite of your western ideas to the contrary, it just isn't done. There are exceptions, of course, but there has to be some reason for it."
"Perhaps I'm an exception." Hank didn't like this at all. The C.I.A. men had been of the opinion that the KGB was once again thoroughly checking on every foreigner.
"If the KGB is already onto you, Henry Kuran, then you might as well give up. Your mission is already a failure."
"I suppose so. Will you have a chair? Can I offer you a drink? My roommate has a bottle of Stolichnaya vodka which he brought from the boat."
There was an amused light in her eyes even as she shook her head. "Your friend Paco is quite a man—so I understand. But no, I am here for business." She took one of the armchairs and Hank sank into another opposite her.
"The committee has decided to assist you to the point they can."
"Fine." Hank leaned forward.
"Tomorrow your Progressive Tours group is to have a conducted tour of the Kremlin museum, Ivan the Great's Tower, and the Assumption Cathedral."
"In the Kremlin?"
She was impatient. "The Kremlin is considerably larger than most Westerners seem to realize. Originally it was the whole city. The Kremlin walls are more then two kilometers long. In them are a great deal more than just government offices. Among other things, the Kremlin has one of the greatest museums and probably the largest in the world."
"What I meant was, with the space emissaries there, will tours still be held?"
"They are being held. It would be too conspicuous to stop them even if there was any reason to." She frowned and shook her head. "Just because you will be inside the Kremlin walls doesn't mean that you will be sitting in the lap of the extraterrestrials. They are probably well guarded in the palace. We don't know to what extent."
Hank said, "Then how can you help me?"
"Only in a limited way." She pulled a folder paper from her purse. "Here is a map of the Kremlin, and here one of the Palace. Both of these date from Czarist days but such things as the general layout of the Kremlin and the Bolshoi Kremlevski Dvorets do not change of course."
"Do you know where the extraterrestrials are?"
"We're not sure. The palace was built in the Seventeenth Century and was popular with various czars. It has been a museum for some time. We suspect that the Galactic Confederation delegates are housed in the Sobstvennaya Plovina which used to be the private apartments of Nicolas the First. It is quite define that the conferences are being held in the Gheorghievskaya sala; it's the largest and most impressive room in the Kremlin."
Hank stared at the two maps feeling a degree of dismay.
She said impatiently, "We can help you more than this. One of the regular guide-guards at the facade which leads to the main entrance of the palace is a member of our group. Here are your instructions."
They spent another fifteen minutes going over the details, then she shot a quick glance at her watch and came to her feet. "Is everything clear ... comrade?"
Hank frowned slightly at the use of the word, then understood. "I think so, and thanks ... comrade." He, as well as she, meant the term in its original sense.
He followed her to the door but before his hand touched the knob, it opened inwardly. Paco stood there, and behind him in the corridor was Char Moore.
The girl turned to Hank quickly, reached up and kissed him on the mouth and said, in English, "Good-bye, dollink." She winked at Paco, swept past Char and was gone.
Paco looked after her appreciatively, back at Hank and said, "Ah, ha. You are quite a dog after all, eh?"
Char Moore's face was blank. She mumbled something to the effect of, "See you later," directed seemingly to both of them, and went on to her room.
Hank said, "Damn!"
Paco closed the door behind him. "What's the matter, my friend?" he grinned. "Are you attempting to play two games at once?"
* * * * *
The morning tour was devoted to Red Square and the Kremlin. Immediately after breakfast they formed a column with two or three other tourist parties and were marched briskly to where Gorky Street debouched into Red Square. First destination was the mausoleum, backed against the Kremlin wall, which centered that square and served as a combined Vatican, Lhasa and Mecca of the Soviet complex. Built of dark red porphyry, it was the nearest thing to a really ultramodern building Hank had seen in Moscow.
As foreign tourists they were taken to the head of the line which already stretched around the Kremlin back into Mokhovaya Street along the western wall. A line of thousands.
Once the doors opened the line moved quickly. They filed in, two by two, down some steps, along a corridor which was suddenly cool as though refrigerated. Paco, standing next to Hank, said from the side of his mouth, "Now we know the secret of the embalming. I wonder if they're hanging on meathooks."
The line emerged suddenly into a room in the center of which were three glass chambers. The three bodies, the prophet and his two leading disciples flanking him. Lenin, Stalin, Khrushchev. On their faces, Hank decided, you could read much of their character. Lenin, the idealist and scholar. Stalin, utterly ruthless organization man. Khrushchev, energetic manager of what the first two had built.
They were in the burial room no more than two minutes, filed out by an opposite door. In the light of the square again, Paco grinned at him. "Nick and Joe didn't look so good, but Nikita is standing up pretty well."
Trailing back and forth across Red Square had its ludicrous elements. The guide pointed out this and that. But all the time his charges had their eyes glued to the spaceship, settled there at the far end of the square near St. Basil's. In a way it seemed no more alien than so much else here. Certainly no more alien to the world Hank knew than the fantastic St. Basil's Cathedral.
A spaceship from the stars, though. You still had to shake your head in effort to achieve clarity; to realize the significance of it. A spaceship with emissaries from a Galactic Confederation.
How simple if it had only landed in Washington, London or even Paris or Rome, instead of here.
They avoided getting very near it, although the Russians weren't being ostentatious about their guarding. There was a roped off area about the craft and twenty or so guards, not overly armed, drifting about within the enclosure. But the local citizenry was evidently well disciplined. There were no huge crowds hanging on the ropes waiting for a glimpse of the interplanetary celebrities.
Nevertheless, the Intourist guide went out of his way to avoid bringing his charges too near. They retraced their steps back to Manezhnaya Square from which they had originally started to see the mausoleum, and then turned left through Alexandrovski Sad, the Alexander Park which ran along the west side of the Kremlin to the Borovikski Gate, on the Moskva River side of the fortress.
Paco said, "After this tour I'm in favor of us all signing a petition that our guide be awarded a medal, Hero of Intourist. You realize that thus far he has lost only two of us today?"
Some of the others didn't like his levity. They were about to enter the Communist shrine and wisecracking was hardly in order. Paco Rodriquez couldn't have cared less, being Paco Rodriquez.
The stilyagi girl had been correct about the Kremlin being an overgrown museum. Government buildings it evidently contained, but above all it provided gold topped cathedrals, fabulous palaces converted to art galleries and displays of the jeweled wealth of yesteryear and the tombs of a dozen czars including that of Ivan the Terrible.
* * * * *
They trailed into the Orushezhnaya Palace, through the ornate entrance hall displaying its early arms and banners.
Paco encouraged the harassed guard happily. "You're doing fine. You've had us out for more than two hours. We started with twenty-five in this group and still have twenty-one. Par for the course. What happens to a tourist who wanders absently around in the Kremlin and turns up in the head man's office?"
The guide smiled wanly. "And over here we have the thrones of the Empress Elizabeth and Czar Paul."
Unobtrusively, Hank dropped toward the tail of the group. He spent a long time peering at two silver panthers, gifts of the first Queen Elizabeth of England to Boris Godunov. The Progressive Tours assembly passed on into the next room.
A guard standing next to the case said, "Mr. Kuran?"
Without looking up, Hand nodded.
"Follow me, slowly."
No one from the Progressive Tours group was in sight. Hank wandered after the guard, looking into display cases as he went. Finally the other turned a corner into an empty and comparatively narrow corridor. He stopped and waited for the American.
"You're Kuran?" he asked anxiously in Russian.
"That's right."
"You're not afraid?"
"No. Let's go." Inwardly Hank growled, Of course I'm afraid. Do I look like a confounded hero? What was it Sheridan Hennessey had said? This was combat, combat cold-war style, but still combat. Of course he was afraid. Had there ever in the history of combat been a participant who had gone into it unafraid?
They walked briskly along the corridor. The guard said, "You have studied your maps?"
"Yes."
"I can take you only so far without exposing myself. Then you are on your own. You must know your maps or you are lost. These old palaces ramble—"
"I know," Hank said impatiently. "Brief me as we go along. Just for luck."
"Very well. We leave Orushezhnaya Palace by this minor doorway. Across there, to our right, is the Bolshoi Kremlevski Dvorets, the Great Kremlin Palace. It's there the Central Executive Committee meets, and the Assembly. The same hall used to be the czar's throne room in the old days. On the nearer side, on the ground floor, are the Sobstvennaya Plovina, the former private apartments of Nicholas First. The extraterrestrials are there."
"You're sure? The others weren't sure."
"That's where they are."
"How can we get to them?"
"We can't. Possibly you can. I can take you only so far. The front entrance is strongly guarded, we are going to have to enter the Great Palace from the rear, through the Teremni Palace. You remember your maps?"
"I think so."
They strode rapidly from the museum through a major courtyard. Hank to the right and a step behind the uniformed guard.
The other was saying, "The Teremni preceded the Great Palace. One of its walls was used to become the rear of the later structure. We can enter it fairly freely."
They entered through another smaller doorway a hundred feet or more from the main entrance, climbed a short marble stairway and turned right down an ornate corridor, tapestry hung. They passed occasionally other uniformed guards, none of whom paid them any attention.
They passed through three joined rooms, each heavily furnished in Seventeenth Century style, each thick with icons. The guide brought them up abruptly at a small door.
He said, an air almost of defiance in his tone, "I go no further. Through this door and you are in the Great Palace, in the bathroom of the apartments of Catherine Second. You remember your maps?"
"Yes," Hank said.
"I hope so." The guard hesitated. "You are armed?"
"No. We were afraid that my things might be thoroughly searched. Had a gun been found on me, my mission would have been over then and there."
The guard produced a heavy military revolver, offered it butt foremost.
But Hank shook his head. "Thanks. But if it comes to the point where I'd need a gun—I've already failed. I'm here to talk, not to shoot."
The guard nodded. "Perhaps you're right. Now, I repeat. On the other side of this door is the bathroom of the Czarina's apartments. Beyond it is her paradnaya divannaya, her dressing room and beyond that the Ekaterininskaya sala, the throne room of Catherine Second. It is probable that there will be nobody in any of these rooms. Beyond that, I do not know."
He ended abruptly with "Good luck," turned and scurried away.
"Thanks," Hank Kuran said after him. He turned and tried the door-knob. Inwardly he thought, All right Henry Kuran. Hennessey said you had a reputation for being able to think on your feet. Start thinking. Thus far all you've been called on to do is exchange low-level banter with a bevy of pro-commie critics of the United States. Now the chips are down.
* * * * *
The apartments of the long dead czarina were empty. He pushed through them and into the corridor beyond.
And came to a quick halt.
Halfway down the hall, Loo Motlamelle crouched over a uniformed, crumpled body. He looked up at Hank Kuran's approach, startled, a fighting man at bay. His lips thinned back over his teeth. A black thumb did something to the weapon he held in his hand.
Hank said throatily, "Is he dead?"
Loo shook his head, his eyes coldly wary. "No. I slugged him."
Hank said, "What are you doing here?"
Loo came erect. "It occurs to me that I'm evidently doing the same thing you are."
But the dull metal gun in his hand was negligently at the ready and his eyes were cold, cold. It came to Hank that banjos on the levee were very far away.
This lithe fighting man said tightly, "You know where we are? Exactly where we are? I'm not sure."
Hank said, "In the hall outside the Sobstvennaya Plovina of the Bolshoi Kremlevski Dvorets. The czar's private apartments. And how did you get here?"
"The hard way," Loo said softly. His eyes darted up and down the corridor. "I can't figure out why there aren't more guards. I don't like this. You're armed?"
"No," Hank said.
Loo grinned down at his own weapon. "One of us is probably making a mistake but we both seem to have gotten this far. By the way, I'm Inter-Commonwealth Security. You're C.I.A., aren't you? Talk fast, Hank, we're either a team from now on, or I've got to do something about you."
"Special mission for the President," Hank said. "Why didn't we spot each other sooner?"
Loo grinned again in deprecation. "Evidently because we're both good operatives. If I've got this right, the extraterrestrials are somewhere in here."
Hank started down the corridor. There was no time to go into the whys and wherefores of Loo's mission. It must be approximately the same as his own. "There are some private apartments in this direction," he said over his shoulder. "They must be quartered—"
A door off the corridor opened and a tall, thin, ludicrously garbed man—
Hank pulled himself up quickly, both mentally and physically. It was no man. It was almost a man—but no.
Loo's weapon was already at the alert.
The newcomer unhurriedly looked from one of them to the other. Then down at the Russian guard sprawled on the floor behind them.
He said in Russian, "Always violence. The sadness of violence. When faced with crisis, threaten violence if outpointed. Your race has much to learn." He switched to English. "But this is probably your language, isn't it?"
Loo gaped at him. The man from space was almost as dark complected as the Negro.
The extraterrestrial stepped to one side and indicated the room behind him "Please enter, I assume you've come looking for us."
They entered the ornate bedroom.
The extraterrestrial said, "Is the man dead?"
Loo said, "No. Merely stunned."
"He needs no assistance?"
"Nothing could help him for half an hour or more. Then he'll probably have a severe headache."
The extraterrestrial had even the ability to achieve a dry quality in his voice. "I am surprised at your forebearance." He took a chair before a baroque desk. "Undoubtedly you have gone through a great deal to penetrate to this point. I am a member of the interplanetary delegation. What is it that you want?"
Hank looked at Loo, received a slight nod, and went into his speech. The space alien made no attempt to interrupt.
When Hank had finished, the extraterrestrial turned his eyes to Loo. "And you?"
Loo said, "I represent the British Commonwealth rather than the United States, but my purpose in contacting you was identical. Her Majesty's government is anxious to consult with you before you make any binding agreements with the Soviet complex."
The alien turned his eyes from one to the other. His face, Hank decided, had a Lincolnesque quality, so ugly as to be beautiful in its infinite sadness.
"You must think us incredibly naive," he said.
Hank scowled. He had adjusted quickly to the space ambassador's otherness, both of dress and physical qualities, but there was an irritating something—He put his finger on it. He felt as he had, some decades ago, when brought before his grammar school principal for an infraction of school discipline.
Hank said, "We haven't had too much time to think. We've been desperate."
The alien said, "You have gone to considerable trouble. I can even admire your resolution. You will be interested to know that tomorrow we take ship to Peiping."
"Peiping?" Loo said blankly.
"Following two weeks there we proceed to Washington and following that to London. What led your governments to believe that the Soviet nations were to receive all our attention, and your own none at all?"
Hank blurted, "But you landed here. You made no contact with us."
"The size of our expedition is limited. We could hardly do everything at once. The Soviet complex, as you call it, is the largest government and the most advanced on Earth. Obviously, this was our first stop." His eyes went to Hank's. "You're an American. Do you know why you have fallen behind in the march of progress?"
"I'm not sure we have," Hank said flatly. "Do you mean in comparison with the Soviet complex?"
"Exactly. And if you don't realize it, then you've blinded yourself. You've fallen behind in a score of fields because a decade or so ago, in your years between 1957 and 1960, you made a disastrous decision. In alarm at Russian progress, you adopted a campaign of combating Russian science. You began educating your young people to combat Russian progress."
"We had to!"
The alien grunted. "To the contrary, what you should have done was try to excel Russian science, technology and industry. Had you done that you might have continued to be the world's leading nation, until, at least, some sort of world unity had been achieved. By deciding to combat Russian progress you became a retarding force, a deliberate drag on the development of your species, seeking to cripple and restrain rather than to grow and develop. The way to win a race is not to trip up your opponent, but to run faster and harder than he."
Hank stared at him.
The space alien came to his feet. "I am busy. Your missions, I assume, have been successfully completed. You have seen one of our group. Melodramatically, you have warned us against your enemy. Your superiors should be gratified. And now I shall summon a guide to return you to your hotels."
A great deal went out of Hank Kuran. Until now the tenseness had been greater than he had ever remembered in life. Now he was limp. In response, he nodded.
Loo sighed, returned the weapon which he had until now held in his hand to a shoulder holster. "Yes," he said, meaninglessly. He turned and looked at Hank Kuran wryly. "I have spent the better part of my life learning to be an ultra-efficient security operative. I suspect that my job has just become obsolete."
"I have an idea that perhaps mine is too," Hank said.
* * * * *
In the morning, the Progressive Tours group was scheduled to visit a co-operative farm, specializing in poultry, on the outskirts of Moscow. While the bus was loading Hank stopped off at the Grand Hotel's Intourist desk.
"Can I send a cable to the United States?"
The chipper Intourist girl said "But of course." She handed him a form.
He wrote quickly:
SHERIDAN HENNESSEY
WASHINGTON, D. C.
MISSION ACCOMPLISHED
MORE SATISFACTORILY
THAN EXPECTED.
HENRY KURAN
The girl checked it quickly. "But your name is Henry Stevenson."
"That," Hank said, "was back when I was a cloak and dagger man."
She blinked and looked after him as he walked out and climbed aboard the tourist bus. He found an empty seat next to Char Moore and settled into it.
Char said evenly, "Ah, today you have time from your amorous pursuits to join the rest of us."
He raised an eyebrow at her. Jealousy? His chances were evidently better than he had ever suspected. "I meant to tell you about that," he said, "the first time we're by ourselves."
"Hm-m-m," she said. Then, "We've been in Russia for several days now. What do you think of it?"
Hank said, "I think it's pretty good. And I have a sneaking suspicion that in another ten years, when a few changes will have evolved, she'll be better still."
She looked at him blankly. "You do? Frankly, I've been somewhat disappointed."
"Sure. But wait'll you see our country in ten years. You know, Char, this world of ours has just got started."
