Arbiter
Date: 2023-02-27T00:00:00+00:00
Keywords: Science fiction; Conspiracies -- Fiction; Space colonies -- Fiction; Diplomats -- Fiction; Detective and mystery stories -- Appreciation -- Fiction

The Project Gutenberg eBook of Arbiter

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Title: Arbiter

Author: Sam Merwin

Illustrator: Alex Schomburg

Release date: February 28, 2023 [eBook #70173]

Language: English

Original publication: United States: Standard Magazines, Inc, 1953

Credits: Greg Weeks, Mary Meehan and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net

*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ARBITER ***

ARBITER

a novelet by
SAM MERWIN, JR.

[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Thrilling Wonder Stories August 1953.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]

Ivan Rutherford Y Barra, Permanent Secretary of the United Planets, watched the thin trail of fire in the star-sprinkled night sky and felt stirrings of familiar panic. Although he had greeted incoming representatives of the inner and outer planets some three hundred-odd times during his six-year tenure as Permanent Secretary—although the curved window through which he watched was a two-foot-thick panel of plexiquartz—although he knew the descending space-ship was chained to its landing beam more securely than Prometheus to his mythical rock—yet panic persisted.

It seemed to Rutherford, as it seemed to everyone else in the reception building at Lackawanna Spaceport, as if the great ship from Venus were headed directly for himself, must inevitably squash him like an ant under a size-twelve boot. It was not a nice feeling.

He looked for reassurance, across the vast girth of the spaceport, at the flood-lit faery-towers of Newark, rising like some odd subterranean extrusion from the flat Jersey meadow. Behind him lay the long rampart of the palisades, behind the palisades the even more incredible faery-towers of Manhattan.

It would be nice, Rutherford thought, if the intricate negotiations that lay ahead of him could be managed as simply and safely as would be the landing of the Venerian ship. He took his big Oom Paul from his lips, said to Mahmoud Singh, his personal secretary, who stood at his elbow, "Sometimes I wish protocol didn't demand our presence here every time a Grade-One space-visitor comes in. When I think of the time consumed...."

"Unfortunately it's part of your job, sir," said Mahmoud Singh softly. Like Rutherford he spoke the interplanetary Lingua Franca—a blend of English, Spanish, Russian, German, Hindu and Chinese, with more recent elements of Venerian, Martian and Ganymedean.

Rutherford studied him through a cloud of pipe-smoke, wishing not for the first time that Mahmoud were not quite so literal-minded. His secretary was an attractive young man, wearing his dusky Hindu head atop the broad-shouldered graceful warrior's body inherited from Turkish and Circassian forebears on his mother's side.

He wondered what might happen if Mahmoud's passionate heritage should break through the rigid shell of deportment that encased it—stopped wondering as the uniformed space-aide at his other elbow said, "Oh-oh! She's still in a spin. Look out below!"

Rutherford felt a sick weakness invade his body. The Astarte, growing ever larger, was spinning slowly, inexorably, as it descended toward Earth. The inner core was gyroscopically stable, ensuring crew and passengers against disaster—but with the outer hull still in spin, the final braking blast might flicker death in any direction. He ground his teeth hard into the stem of his heavy Boer pipe.

After more than three decades of uneventful landings at Lackawanna, there had been two like disasters in the past four months. In the first the braking blast had hurled its lethal brilliance to the southeast—and the southernmost tip of Jersey City had been sheared off as by some cosmic spatula. The second, five weeks earlier, had sliced off the tallest of Hoboken's towers, spreading a rain of molten death for a radius of half a mile.

This time a sudden plume of pure-white flame—almost blinding even through the polarized plexiquartz—flared out directly toward Newark. For a brief endless instant the faery-towers glowed golden—and then, like gold in a smelter, began to soften, to dissolve. The flame flickered out as the globular ship came none-too-gently to rest on the landing area—yet its afterglow persisted and brightened ruddily as molten steel and stone were transmuted into flame.

The globular ship landed none-too-gently.

"That tears it," said the uniformed space-aide tersely. "They'll never stand for three in a row."

Rutherford took the bitten-off stem of his pipe from between his lips, picked up the pipe itself from the plastoleum floor. He turned to Mahmoud, whose dark complexion had turned grey, said, "Mahmoud, observe relief measures taken—and give me a report in the morning. Commodore Willis"—this to the uniformed space-aide—"please attend me through the ceremony."

Under the circumstances the reception was perfunctory—minus the usual flourishes the occasion demanded. The horridly beautiful spectacle of Newark ablaze forbade more than a shell of formality. Juan Kurtz, the stocky pasty-faced Venerian plenipotentiary, seemed stubbornly set upon absolving his planet of all guilt.

He said, for the benefit of the vidar-cameras, "Please tell the folk of Mother Earth that I speak for all Venus when I say that we shall give freely from our hearts to those who have suffered loss through this ghastly accident." He went on in his chill precise way, uttering sympathy that seemed more mental than emotional.

Rutherford's attention, however, was focussed more intently upon grizzled weed-thin Erasmus Chen-Smith, United Planets Ambassador-at-Large, who had also come in on the Astarte. Chen-Smith looked definitely unwell. Yellow of countenance, he leaned heavily on the shoulder of an attendant.

"Sorry, Ivan," he croaked. "Picked up a fine case of Venus carrot-poisoning. See you tomorrow—three o'clock." Then his eyes closed, his head fell forward. Had not Commodore Willis leapt in to give a hand he would have collapsed on the plastoleum floor.

Riding back to Manhattan alongside Kurtz in a United Planets helicar, Rutherford had a defeatist feeling that the current problems confronting United Planets and himself were insurmountable. The disaster at Lackawanna Spaceport might prove the proverbial last straw.

"How serious do you expect the repercussions to be, Excellency?" the Venerian Plenipotentiary inquired. Like Rutherford's, his eyes were on the vidar-screen, which displayed in full-colored horror the Newark holocaust. Like Rutherford's, his real thoughts were elsewhere, his vista far more universal.

"Very serious, Honorable," Rutherford replied. "My guess is that Earth Government will suspend operations in all spaceports within danger-radius of any community pending further safeguards."

"Impossible!" Kurtz exploded, his usual taut diplomatic poise shattered. "It will mean disruption of all interplanetary trade."

"Is trade so important," Rutherford asked, "when it means destruction of life?" He looked ruefully at his broken pipe, needing a smoke to restore his own emotional balance.

Kurtz snorted, then said, "If the men and women who risk constant death in the Great Desert of Venus raising colla-cactus for snug Earthfolk ever heard such sentiments from you—"

"I am fully aware of how they would feel," Rutherford told him firmly. "Yet they risk their lives deliberately, seeking assured profit. What profit is there for those who died tonight in Newark—or earlier in Hoboken and Jersey City?"

The envoy made a deprecatory gesture, said, "But these accidents—the first in thirty years—it's several thousand to one against there being another, ever."

Rutherford said, "There need not have been these—if your people had stuck to the Schupps Drive instead of installing Kennelleys."

This time Kurtz gesture was impatient. He said, "And lose a week at parihelion in transit? My people would never accept that. Competition with lighter-gravitied Mars and Ganymede is far too tight to cut payloads for more fuel and risk having our rivals beat us."

The two officials rode the rest of the way in silence.

In the study of his twelve-room suite at the New Waldorf, Rutherford replaced the broken stem of the Oom Paul with another kept for emergencies in a drawer of his black-walnut smoking cabinet. Then he said, "Jacques, this is the first pipe-stem I've bitten through since I was awaiting confirmation of my appointment to this post."

Commodore Willis joggled ice-globes in his glass of Martian lichenwasser. He was a tall well-cut specimen whose unexpectedly alert and disciplined intelligence twinkled beneath the ineradicable bronze of deep space. He said, "Want me to stand by, sir?"

"If you wish," said Rutherford. "But it's unlikely we'll get a full disaster report before morning. I'm going out for a bit."

Minutes later he departed, smiling inwardly at the suspicion he read on his space-aide's handsome countenance. Possessed of a sound and, to the more serious souls about him, at times disrupting sense of humor, Rutherford knew very well what the younger man was thinking. It would inevitably concern himself and—women.

Chuckling openly he slipped out the private entrance at sidewalk level beneath his tower apartment, casually acknowledged the salutes of the two sentries in their slate-grey uniforms, hopped nimbly into a waiting vehicab. Sinking back onto its airmoss cushions he gave the address of a house in the Old City.

In the near-total rebuilding of New York that ran parallel with its development as Interplanetary capital, the city planners had wisely left a charming segment of the old city, extending from the Plaza north, along Central Park East to Ninety-sixth Street and east to Lexington Avenue, intact. Here were mixed in polyglot and charming disarray the Swedish moderne apartment houses of the mid-twentieth century, the white-stone-and-concrete structures of the 1920's, the marble mansions and granite palaces of earlier decades and the chocolate-colored brownstones that had preceded them.

It was to one of the last-named, a rather-shabby house in the mid-Seventies, that the vehicab took Rutherford. He paid off the driver and ascended a flight of sandstone steps to a heavy wooden double-door beside which an antique brass bell-pull gleamed softly in the dimness of old-fashioned street lights.

He pulled it twice—then three times—then waited. A red-faced jovial-looking man, his paunch italicized by the long out-of-date tattersall vest that covered it, opened the door and said, "You are late, Brother Goodwin. The meeting is already in progress."

"It was unavoidable, Brother van Dyne," said Rutherford. He went on inside, climbed a flight of steps to enter a long double-room that resembled a museum hall. Its walls were hung with every sort of lethal weapon, from crude flint axe-heads of the troglodytes, through arbalests, poniards, pistols, pikes and hang-ropes, to modern ray-inducers. Around three sides of the chamber, in transparent cases, were miniature reenactments of famous crimes of fact and fiction, from Cain and Abel, through Aggie Borden, the Pit and the Pendulum, a tub-slaying by Dr. Crippen and others, to the twenty-first-century assassination of the Premier of Mars via death-ray.

At the open end stood a platform, complete with scholarly-looking lady speaker, who was addressing some two-score seated listeners on the trend away from the fictional detective puzzle toward sadistic violence during the second quarter of the last century. Rutherford nodded to a scattering of acquaintances as he slipped into a seat.

The Permanent Secretary of the United Planets was an incurable crime-mystery-story addict. Of all honors that had befallen him he prized most highly his membership in the Mystofans, a small association of like addicts who met bi-weekly in the Old City house to discuss the more arcane aspects of their hobby. Hypnotics and truth sera had rendered crime detective a mere matter of questioning for almost a century, had thereby eliminated not only most major felonies but the literature about them as well.

Half-listening to the speaker, who had just moved from Raymond Chandler to Mickey Spillane, Rutherford considered how complete was the democracy of the Mystofans, who hid their outside names and stations beneath the alias of a favorite author or character. Thus the tattersall-vested doorman, a disciple of Philo Vance, became S. S. van Dyne while Rutherford, who delighted in the indolent brilliance of Nero Wolf, was Archy Goodwin, the names of Wolf as well as of Rex Stout, his creator, having already been preempted.

About him Rutherford recognized Sister Sayers, otherwise a leading woman attorney, Brother Lecoq, a Fifth Avenue shoe-clerk, Sister Allingham, a vidar chanteuse, Brother Holmes, in real life a university dean. The members came from all walks and branches of society, united only by their hobby.

After the speech there was an open symposium, during which the discussion ranged from such primitives as Poe and Collins to the sophistications of Agatha Christie and the violences of Dashiell Hammett, with digressions on the techniques of thuggee and the mackerel-shine decadence of Matthew Head. Thereafter all moved downstairs for the traditional pilsener and smorgasbord and good general talk.

While Rutherford was washing down a piece of smoked salmon with pilsener, an exceedingly comely young lady approached him and introduced herself as Sister Rhinehart. She explained that she was a new member and had been given to understand Brother Goodwin was interested in purchasing original Rex Stout manuscripts. Large grey eyes, slightly tilted, gleamed with animal attractiveness as she added, "Of course mine isn't a Nero Wolf—it's about one of his lesser-known creations, a sheriff named Tecumseh Fox."

"Which one?" asked Rutherford, donning a mask of disinterest. If the girl only realized, a Tecumseh Fox original, by its very rarity, was far more valuable than a Nero Wolf. It was to mystery manuscript collectors like comparing a Button Gwynnett autograph to the greater but far commoner signature of George Washington.

"The title is Bad for Business," the girl told him and Rutherford sensed that if it were genuine he was on the trail of a major find. Asked how she came to own it Sister Rhinehart explained that her maternal grandfather, an antique fancier, had picked it up among the contents of an old attic somewhere in Connecticut. "I hate to part with it," she concluded gravely, "but I'm a Mary Roberts Rhinehart fan myself and I do need some extra money just now. If I hadn't happened to be in town for this meeting the idea of selling it would never have occurred to me."

She added that she could have the script ported in from her Maryland home by noon on the morrow, would bring it to him after lunch. Rutherford, excited at the prospect of such a purchase, offered his name and address but the girl smiled, said she knew who he was and that her name was Turina Vascelles.

Ruefully she added, "I've got to get back to the restoration of my family's estate. It's an endless job. Builders today no longer seem to care about doing the sort of work they did so lovingly back in the nineteen fifties. And the expenses! You can understand why selling this manuscript should prove a real windfall."

"Of course, my dear," said Rutherford benignly. The lift he got from the encounter stayed with him all the way back to his suite and, later, through the three-hour vigil he and Commodore Willis maintained, listening to reports of the Lackawanna disaster, which grew worse every few minutes. When at last he turned in, having received word the fire had been checked, the known deaths had passed two thousand and appeared to be but a fraction of the total expected.

"Our Venerian friends," he told the commodore over a nightcap of lichenwasser, "have got to be curbed. If they don't replace their Kennelleys with Schupps Drives they may find themselves boycotted."

"They'll never do it," said the space-aide somberly. "They can't see themselves cutting profits for the sake of a few lives. They may try to boycott Earth if you seek to enforce the rules."

Rutherford sighed and said, "Don't remind me, Jacques. But popular opinion will cut the ground out from under me if I don't try." He shrugged, added, "Perhaps science will come up with an answer—or perhaps poor Chen-Smith has a solution tucked away in that big brain of his. It's a damned shame he had to come down with carrot-poison just now."

"Rotten breaks all around," said the commodore, who was beginning to show the effects of the lichenwasser. He hiccuped, apologized, rose unsteadily and bade Rutherford good-night.

The Permanent Secretary shed all official worries as he slid into bed. This ability, plus his sense of humor, enabled him to endure the ceaseless tensions of his job without cracking. It was commonly accepted amongst the well-informed that, without his tact and human talents, the United Planets would long since have fallen into jarring disunion. But now some insiders were saying openly that the job might be growing too much even for him.

He came to grips with it at ten the following morning, when he sat with delegations from Mars and Ganymede at a long table in the East River Secretariat. The visitors had come to protest the original Planet Exploitation Agreement of 2016, which put the moons of Jupiter under Martian dominion and those of Saturn under a Venerian mandate. At that time, since Man had barely explored, much less exploited, the satellites of the two heavy planets, the division was academic.

Now, in 2073, it was topical and red-hot. The Jovian moons had long since been settled and their colonists, in alliance with Mars, insisted the treaty be altered to free the moons of Saturn from Venus. They based their claim on proximity, colonial experience and the fact that Venus was not yet ready to take advantage of its mandate.

Aloha Svensen, the dark-skinned silver-blond Chief Delegate from Ganymede, stressed their claim in slow controlled accents that barely revealed the fires raging beneath. "If the treaty is not soon altered, our administration will be unable to prevent settlers from colonizing Titan privately. And if the Venerians seek to remove them we shall have to support our people with force if necessary."

"Hear, hear!" said Martian Plenipotentiary Feruccio van Zandt.

"We must have lebensraum to follow our natural course of expansion," the comely Aloha concluded. "We will get it—by peaceful means if possible. But we shall get it, never fear."

"Let's look at the record," said Rutherford. He quoted from a paper Mahmoud Singh slipped deftly in front of him. "Mars, according to the most recent census, has a population of two hundred forty-six million, Ganymede five and a half, the other satellites a total of less than two. Yet Earth is self-sufficient with a population exceeding six billions. Do I hear rightly when you talk of lebensraum?"

This evoked a storm of protest. Earth, the delegates insisted, was a rich planet on which life was easy. It was nothing like hacking our existence on globes never meant for human habitation. Hardship had bred pioneers of tougher cast than the billions at home, men and women who could not be curbed by laws to them unreasonable. And so on.

At noon Rutherford presided over the luncheon of official greeting for the Venerian legates, whose arrival the night before had caused the Newark holocaust. Nor was the tone lightened by recent news that Earth Government had suspended operation of all spaceports within twenty miles of human habitation, pending development of new safety measures. This left open but a handful of emergency fields in such unlikely commercial locations as the Andes, the Rockies, the Gobi and Sahara Deserts.

Juan Kurtz fumed between courses and speeches, once muttered to Rutherford, "I can't guess the consequences of this ill-considered act, Excellency—but I fear they may be serious."

"I think we may work something out," replied the Permanent Secretary with optimism he was far from feeling. He was glad to get back to his hotel suite for a brief respite following the luncheon. He even toyed briefly with the idea of resigning and hibernating in the microfilm library of the Mystofan Club.

He had almost forgotten Turina Vascelles and her manuscript when, shortly before three o'clock, Mahmoud announced the girl's arrival and ushered her into his study. She was beguiling in a brief three-piece boulevard suit, carried a plastocase under one slim arm.

"I do hope you'll find it what you want," she told him, opening the case on his desk and withdrawing a thick manuscript of yellowed typewriter bond. She handed him a transparent envelope, added, "And here are the authentications."

Interplanetary problems faded from Rutherford's consciousness—as he studied first the authentications, then the manuscript itself, his interest and excitement mounted. Pending comparison tests with other Wolf manuscripts, typewriter and fingerprint and radioactive tracer tests, he could not definitely name it a genuine Rex Stout. But it looked genuine, it felt genuine, it had the authentic aura. When at last he had completed his examination he told the girl as much, asked if she'd mind leaving it in his hands while further tests were made.

"Of course not, Brother Goodwin," she said, rising from the chair in which she had been quietly sitting and smoking an everbac cigarette. "My address is on the authentication papers." She departed gracefully and Rutherford, staring wistfully after her and wishing himself two decades younger, was roused from his reverie by Mahmoud, who entered to inform him that Erasmus Chen-Smith was waiting in the small drawing room.

Rutherford looked at his watch, opened his mouth to upbraid his secretary for not informing him sooner, recalled having left strict orders not to be disturbed, said nothing. It was close upon four o'clock, which meant he must have kept the Ambassador-at-Large waiting almost an hour. He bustled into the small drawing room, apologies ready on his tongue.

Erasmus Chen-Smith lay on his back, sprawled out on the carpet. His mouth was open, his skin even yellower than it had been the night before. He was as dead as a man can be.

Rutherford's first thought was self-recriminatory—it was he who had sent his colleague on the mission that had caused his death. His second was to summon help.

The Medical Service experts, quickly upon the scene, were mildly puzzled. The young physician-in-charge told Rutherford, "Superficial fluoro-examination reveals sudden crystallization of the liver. You say he was suffering from Venerian carrot-poison?" He shrugged, added, "It's odd—we've had no deaths from that disease in five years. Must have been some peculiarly personal susceptibility. But crystallization of the liver.... Well, we'll have it pinned in a few hours or days. We'll keep you informed, Excellency."

"I'd appreciate it," said Rutherford. "The Ambassador was more than a colleague—he was an old and valued friend."

Mahmoud, close at hand, said piously, "A great misfortune—especially at this time."

Rutherford filled his pipe, thought it over and nodded. It might be more than a misfortune—it might be disaster, particularly if the late Chen-Smith, during the course of his informal investigations of conditions on Venus, had uncovered any vital facts at variance with official facts. If the Ambassador-at-Large had kept written or photographic records—but Rutherford shook his head and inhaled. So delicate were the times, so reliable the dead man's memory and character, he had decided not to risk putting anything on tape.

Mahmoud cleared his throat to bring Rutherford out of his abstraction, said, "I regret intruding at this moment but the Venerian delegation has been awaiting your presence in the large drawing room—since three-fifteen. They may resent...."

They did resent. The Permanent Secretary found himself with a thoroughly disgruntled delegation on his hands. Rutherford apologized, explained briefly that Chen-Smith was dead. But Kurtz, the Venerian Plenipotentiary, said stiffly, "On behalf of my planet I can only express my deepest sympathies. However, the life or death of Ambassador-at-Large Chen-Smith is not the purpose of our visit."

He paused to look quickly at the Venerian Ambassador, Yamurai Corrigan, whose hair flamed redder than ever thanks to the unusual pallor of his face. Rutherford, applying all the Nero Wolf psychological acuteness he could muster, sought vainly to read the quick disturbed glance the two official visitors exchanged. Mere anger, in men so disciplined to the niceties of interplanetary diplomacy, could not account for their disturbed state.

Kurtz, acting as spokesman, looked almost in a state of collapse as he went on to say, "Our purpose is to make plain to Your Excellency that the announcement of the closing of the spaceports has been received with high disfavor at Venus City. My colleague"—with a nod toward Yamurai Corrigan—"and I have been instructed to inform the United Planets Secretariat that unless the suspension is revoked within one week, Earth-time, Venus will be forced to seek other channels for its commerce."

It was ultimatum, Rutherford realized, as the Venerians bowed their way out with stiffness unusual even for them. Coupled with the war-threat of the morning from the Martian and Jovian Satellite delegations, to say nothing of the tragic death of Chen-Smith, it represented for Rutherford the most desperate crisis either he or the United Planet Secretariat had ever faced.

He sank into an armchair, poured some lichenwasser from the carafe depleted by the Venerians during their wait. But it tasted slightly bitter and he returned the tumbler to tabletop, barely sipped, said to the hovering Mahmoud, wondering if his metabolism were awry, "Dat's de trouble wid dis job. It's disfavor and dat favor and...."

Mahmoud regarded him sadly and said, "Perhaps a brief rest, Excellency. It has been a most fatiguing night and day."

"Thanks—but not now," replied Rutherford, wondering what perversity had driven him to the infantile pun in front of his secretary. All at once he could not abide the sight of him. "Mahmoud," he said, "I want you to prepare a précis on the new Martian-Satellite demands and the exact state of negotiations—oh, and on your way out tell Commodore Willis I want to see him in half an hour."

"Yes, sir," said Mahmoud, bowing respectfully. But his eyes were not respectful as he said from the door, "Excellency, perhaps I presume but I still think a brief rest would—"

"It would drive me balmier than you think I am now," he snapped rudely at the Hindo-Turk. Alone he walked to the window-wall and looked out at the lacy patterns of Manhattan, bathed in the lingerie hues of the sunset. But his mind was not on the incredible spectacle. He was considering patiently the chain of circumstances that had brought the United Planets and himself into their present predicament.

What Americans of a century ago had termed "the breaks" had been running against both the organization and himself with a recent persistence that was more than a little frightening. The squabble between Mars and Ganymede and Venus over the Saturnian satellites had long been foreseen, of course. Under ordinary circumstances, while a major interplanetary problem, it was one that should long since have been settled by reasonable concessions all around.

But circumstances of late had not been ordinary. The unprecedented series of spaceport accidents at Lackawanna had made the Venerians even testier than usual about their rights among the planets. Faced with the threat of commercial losses through enforced use of the comparatively light Schupps Drive in their heavier gravity, they had been in no mood to grant concessions to anyone. Which, in the illogical course of events, had put up the collective back of the Mars-Ganymede faction.

Then there were the more personal, more human, channel breakdowns of the past twenty-four hours. First, of course, was Chen-Smith's coming down with Venerian carrot-poison on the Astarte. No one else on the big ship, among crew or passengers, had been similarly affected. There had followed in quick order the third Lackawanna disaster, the two ultimata between which was sandwiched Chen-Smith's death.

Rutherford did some silent swearing. It was almost like a conspiracy. For instance, if Turina Vascelles had not buttonholed him last night with her Rex Stout manuscript, he would not have arranged to see her and kept Chen-Smith waiting. The Permanent Secretary cursed the evil day that had seen his induction into Mystofan membership.

Such thinking, he well knew, was not only idle, it was psychologically dangerous. He wondered if he were acquiring a persecution complex at this late date, went back to his barely-sipped glass of lichenwasser, sipped it again, stared at it....

It did taste bitter—beyond any sharpness that might be given it by his own disturbed metabolism. He sat down, relit his pipe, waited until Commodore Willis entered, told him to help himself to a drink. The space-aide poured himself a tumblerful from the carafe, took a healthy swig, all but spat it out, regarded Rutherford reproachfully.

"Sorry, Jacques," said the latter. "I have to know. What does it taste like to you?"

"Like a dose of salts," Willis said angrily. "This isn't export lichenwasser, this is the genuine Martian article."

"I suspected as much," Rutherford told him drily. "Somebody seems to have made a mistake. The Venerian delegation was here this afternoon. They looked exceedingly uncomfortable."

"I should hope so!" Willis began to chuckle. Then he grew serious, added, "I heard about poor Chen-Smith. Another putrid break."

"A tragic one," Rutherford told him absently. His mind was suddenly operating on all jets. Lichenwasser from Mars, which had gradually become the favorite interplanetary drink, took two basic forms—disregarding various flavorings and degrees of intoxicating strength. The original, or "genuine Martian," had an exceedingly high mineral content whose effect upon humans unconditioned to the thin atmosphere of the red planet was that of epsom salts. It was even more effective upon Venerians than upon Earthmen. Not until this mineral content was processed out of the drink, as in the "export" variety, had it attained more than domestic popularity.

Someone, it seemed, had made the error of filling the carafe in the large drawing room with the native variety, usually reserved only for visitors from Mars. Or had it been an error? Rutherford got up, entered the small drawing room next door, put the carafe to his lips, tasted its contents—and made a face. It was the same.

"Something up?" inquired Commodore Willis, who had followed him curiously.

"It could be," said Rutherford, again sitting down and pulling on his pipe. "It just could be." He was probably being an utter damned fool, he thought, to suspect anything. But if his suspicions proved justified.... It was too much for a Mystofan. Suppose the chain of misfortune had been induced; suppose he and United Planets were facing a conspiracy rather than a chain of misfortune at all.

He said, "Jacques, I'm probably out of my mind but here it is." And then he told his space-aide of his growing suspicions. The Commodore listened with growing excitement, asking occasional questions. But when Rutherford had finished he shook his handsome head.

"You could be right, chief," he said, "but even if you are and get the facts, how can you stop our conspirator short of criminal action? Just about everyone involved has diplomatic immunity to police interrogation. And without hypnotism or truth sera...."

"Jacques," said Rutherford when his aide's voice trailed off, "have you ever heard of proof? I know it's old-fashioned but police did use to capture and convict criminals before sera and hypnotism came into use. They went out and dug up the facts."

Commodore Willis said, "The way I heard it, they just rounded up all the suspects and beat hell out of them until someone confessed."

Rutherford winced, said, "Such things undoubtedly happened—but not usually. Especially if the suspects had any standing. Then the police had to find truth that would stand up in court."

Willis sank into a chair and stared at his chief. "But good Lord, sir!" he exclaimed. "How are you going to go about it?"

"I'm going to try to assemble all the facts I can get. Also all the rumors and unproven gossip. Confidentially—very confidentially—I'm putting you in charge. I want you to get somebody from the Astarte drunk. Find out why the ship spun in if you can—and find out how it happened that only poor Chen-Smith got carrot-sickness."

"Can do," said the space-aide, sitting up. "Anything else, sir?"

Rutherford smiled at his aide's eagerness even though matching excitement burned within himself. He said, "Perhaps you'll assign the Astarte investigation to someone you can trust—because I want you to look up a girl. The name she uses—or used—is Turina Vascelles. She came to see me this afternoon. I want to know all about her—especially whom she knows in the United Planets Secretariat." He went on to describe the girl with the Rex Stout manuscript.

Willis' eyebrows rose. He said, "Turina sounds like quite a dish of tea. I would be off-duty when she showed today!" He added, "What about this manuscript she brought you, sir?"

"I'll take care of that little matter myself," Rutherford told him, getting up. "Remember, Jacques, time is, as they used to say, awasting. I want this information by breakfast tomorrow."

"On my way," said the Commodore with a grin.

"Good luck, Jacques," said Rutherford, wondering why his military aide should have a sense of humor while his civilian aide had none. By rights, he felt, it should be the other way around.

He dined alone that evening and almost at once doubted the wisdom of having done so. For with solitude he began to consider the strange death of Chen-Smith and his thoughts at once ranged to poison. By the time he finished his potage Ganymede he was suffering from a fine case of heartburn.

It was his first contact with murder—he had already so labeled it in his mind—and while he enjoyed it vicariously in fiction he found the fact not only undramatic but frightening. Belching unhappily Rutherford decided he could not eat another mouthful.

He was in the act of picking up the manuscript Turina Vascelles had left with him when Mahmoud came in bearing the précis Rutherford had requested. He regarded his chief with surprise, asked him where he was going. Rutherford told him it was none of his business, relented to say, "Just going to show this manuscript—back by midnight."

Reconsidering the "coincidences" of the past twenty-four hours which had kept him from conferring with Chen-Smith he decided the genuineness of the manuscript was a key factor. If it were real the coincidence theory might hold. If not....

On a non-meeting night the Mystofan clubhouse held only the staff and a few researchers and scholars digging into the microfilm library on the third floor. Rutherford checked through the Rex Stout file first, found that while the Club had in its possession or knew the record or whereabouts of almost all Stout manuscripts, it did not have a copy of Bad for Business.

Rutherford sighed, then demanded filmostats of manuscripts chronologically bracketing the one the girl had given him. A few minutes of study in the comparison viewer assured him that his deductive instincts had not led him astray. There was no doubt that the author or his typist had used a different machine on Bad for Business—or that it had been typed at a later date, perhaps as a prop in the web of deception of which he was beginning to think himself the center.

He turned in the manuscript for more professional testing, which would determine the period of the typewriter used, the age of the paper and other tiny but conclusive facts. Personally he felt satisfied it was intended as a hoax, probably a temporary one by its crudeness.

Then, on impulse, he turned to toxicology. Lichenwasser was listed as definitely non-poisonous, though the laxative qualities of its unprocessed varieties were mentioned. Discouraged, he looked up mineral salts, which were under the same heading, found nothing relevant save in one minute sub-heading, in which it was stated that salts given to anyone taking a sulfa derivative, could produce death through crystallosis of the liver. He turned to Venerian carrot-sickness—and then he closed the book and went home.

It was a rather haggard Jacques Willis who roused him early the next morning, his eyes alight above the circles beneath them. He mixed himself an antiope, gave Rutherford a verbal report while the latter dressed. "That was quite an assignment, sir," he began.

"Did you find the girl?" the Permanent Secretary asked.

"Oh, I found her all right," said the space-aide. "She's not exactly unknown around the hotel." He paused, fought back a grin, added solemnly, "She works out of Zora MacLean's."

Rutherford needed a moment to digest this. He had accepted the certainty that the peddler of the false Stout manuscript was not what she pretended—but her poise and appearance were scarcely in accord with his preconceived notion of a professional joy-girl. Rutherford, who had all his life shied clear of commercial sex, was shaken, even though he told himself he was an idiot to feel thus about her.

"I called on Zora and managed to worm some facts out of her," Willis went on. He coughed discreetly, added, "We're old friends—it's part of my job to see that visiting space-officers are—suitably entertained while in town."

"I'm well aware of that," said Rutherford drily.

The younger man went on. "Hilda—the girl's real name is Hilda Considine—has been out on call for a couple of days. I finally managed to run her down—and that took some doing—by pretending she was wanted by one of the Venerian Embassy's staff. Your little playmate is quite a dish!" He paused for a reminiscent leer.

"You may skip the irrelevant details," Rutherford told him.

"Yes, Your Relevance," countered the space-aide, grinning. Then, "All Hilda knew was she'd drawn a chore that included being put into an outfit called Mystofans with phony references to contact you." Willis looked at his chief slyly, added, "I never knew you went in for that sort of frivolity, sir."

"You may skip my frivolities as well," said Rutherford.

The account from then on was concise. Hilda-Turina had carried out orders, had been well-paid by a large amiable gentleman with an eccentric fondness for old-fashioned waistcoats. So, Rutherford thought a trifle sadly, Brother van Dyne was one of them. He asked when the girl had drawn the assignment.

"Just a couple of days back," Willis replied promptly.

Rutherford wondered how the conspirators could have prepared the false manuscript so quickly. Then he began to realize to what lengths they had gone in planning. They had evidently had Bad for Business ready for some time, had merely called in the girl at the last moment. He asked Willis about the Astarte.

"I put Captain Krakauskas on the job," the space-aide told him. "Johnny has friends in the Venerian fleet, including some of the gang aboard the Astarte. He had to buy a lot of lichenwasser but he finally dug it out of one of the mates. The Venerians swear their Kennelleys are safe. The first foul-up—the Jersey City one—they're ready to accept as one of those things that are bound to happen every thirty years or so. But the others...." Willis shrugged.

"Sabotage?" said Rutherford.

"They swear it—and a cute job too." Rutherford shook his close-cropped head, added, "They're still working on it—very hush-hush. Oh, and there's no doubt Ambassador Chen-Smith was deliberately poisoned. They found a cache of the stuff in the garbage-disposal unit. The chef and his gang got hypnosis and truth sera but nobody knew from nothing. The whole gang's getting nervy."

"I hardly blame them," said Rutherford thoughtfully. "Well, if we can clear the mess up at this end they can stop worrying. Somebody's stirring a thick finger in the interplanetary stew."

"You can say that again, sir," Commodore Willis affirmed. "I hope my work has been satisfactory."

"You have done very well, Jacques—especially for a first effort," Rutherford told him, then added, "You might ask Mahmoud to invite the Martian Ganymedean and Venerian representatives here for a breakfast conference. Eleven o'clock—and be on hand yourself."

"I wouldn't miss it for a trip to Centaurus," said Commodore Willis as he left the bedroom.

When the space-aide had left Rutherford rose and paced the carpet. He felt a stirring in his adrenal glands, a rising sense of excitement. Like Nero Wolf, his idol, he was going to bring the human elements of a criminal conspiracy together and, instead of applying the twenty-first century commonplaces of hypnotics and truth sera, was going to confront them with material elements amounting to proof. And if he handled the situation correctly he was going to save the Solar System from disaster.

But less pleasant emotions undermined his euphoria. What, he wondered, if he were wrong, wholly or partially, in the theory he had reared? What if, instead of triumph and peace, the breakfast conference instead brought failure and with it a quickening of the factors threatening the planets with dissolution?

It was not, for the usually calm Rutherford, a happy time.

The breakfast itself was sumptuous. The long sideboard and even longer table in the large dining room of Rutherford's suite were laden with such comestibles as swamp plums from Venus, moss oranges from Mars and ice bread from Ganymede, to supplement such Earth staples as kumquat juice, plankton steaks, hashed-brown plantains and grilled shark's tongues. For beverages, along with coffee and tea, there were stone brandy from the asteroid settlements and the inevitable Martian lichenwasser.

Rutherford noted with grim inner amusement that the Venerian delegation ate sparingly, looked green about the jowls. The Martians and their satellite allies showed slightly more normal gusto. But even their usually hearty appetites were restrained by the tension that gripped all present. Politeness was present but in gelid form and conversation was subject to fits and starts like a leaky jet.

Finally, when the table had been cleared, the Permanent Secretary gathered himself and said, "Very well, ladies and gentlemen—to business. I believe all of us are facing problems that demand immediate settlement."

There was a sudden babel of voices, followed by equally sudden silence, as each speaker halted to let the others continue. Rutherford smiled thinly, wished he had not eaten, nerved himself for the supreme effort ahead. He wondered if Nero Wolf had ever felt as unsure as he in a similar situation.

He said quietly, "I hope that for a few minutes you will allow me to talk without interruption. Discussions, questions and explanations may follow when I have finished—if they are necessary."

There was another moment of silence. Juan Kurtz opened his mouth to speak, then closed it and nodded. The others murmured their assent. Rutherford looked at them one by one, then at Mahmoud Singh and Commodore Willis, who sat at the far end of the long table he headed. He cleared his throat, began to speak.

"If possible," he told them, "I want each of you to hear me out with all the detachment you can muster. There are many and complex issues involved and each must be considered in its proper relations to the others. However, the basic problem is an ancient one—it reaches back to the dawn of civilization, when the first small mudhut community branched forth its first subsidiary settlement.

"That settlement grew and solved its own problems of survival—and in doing so came into conflict with the differing needs of the parent community. Ultimately the communities separated—perhaps peacefully but more probably in bloody battle with axe and sling. And thereby was set a pattern that applies down to the present day."

He paused to fill his pipe and light it, continued with, "The colonies of North America revolted from Britain in the eighteenth century to become the United States. A hundred or more years ago, when the vast British and French and Dutch empires dissolved following World War Two, it looked as if the colonial problem were ended forever.

"But then came space-flight and settlement of the near planets. No one knows better than you how different from life on Earth is existence on Mars or Venus or the Jovian moons or the rough-and-ready asteroids. Each planet and satellite has, in its own way, proved inhospitable to Man, has induced in its inhabitants a return in some form to more primitive ways of life to insure survival.

"To all of your peoples the restrictions imposed by Earth have become increasingly burdensome—as has competition for markets here and on your neighboring planets and satellites. Hardship has bred impatience and exasperation, especially since Earth, with its vast population, has remained the chief market.

"On Mars, with its immense desert areas, new soil is demanded to feed a growing population. It is perhaps only natural that, having already settled the Jovian moons, Mars' more aggressive citizens should eye greedily the moons of Saturn, left fallow by their Venerian owners."

Juan Kurtz' chin set stubbornly and again he opened his mouth to speak. But Rutherford quelled the bristling Venerian with a smile and a gesture, went on to say, "The people of Venus, with its heavier gravity, resent any attempt to regulate the power of their space-drives in the name of safety on Earth. Such regulation imposes on them a definite commercial handicap, not shared by the inhabitants of the other planets.

"The recent tragic accidents at Lackawanna and the popular reaction they caused have brought matters to a head. Within the past twenty-four hours I have received ultimata from both sides. Venus threatens to bypass Earth entirely in favor of direct trade with Mars and Ganymede. Mars and Ganymede threaten to occupy Titan and other Saturnian satellites by force unless mandate restrictions are changed."

"Which my people will never permit," growled Kurtz sotto voce.

Rutherford ignored him, said, "These conflicts, serious as they are, in themselves present no insoluble problems. Wise concessions by all parties involved, including Earth, could until two days ago have settled them to the satisfaction of all—perhaps may yet do so. Any other course, ladies and gentlemen, is unthinkable. For war, with the weapons that exist today, would inevitably damage and might even destroy the entire inhabited Solar System."

Aloha Svensen, looking like a South Sea Viking woman, said, "War, even total destruction, may under some conditions be preferable to unendurable peace."

Feruccio van Zandt, the Martian envoy, looked unhappy but nodded his support of the bellicose Ganymedean. Rutherford studied them both briefly, then shook his head and said, "I think not. As a preliminary step toward negotiation I sent Ambassador-at-Large Erasmus Chen-Smith to Venus to investigate true conditions and feelings there at first hand. As you know he returned on the Astarte."

He paused again, to relight his Oom Paul, told them, "And with his return we pick up another and more dangerous thread. On the final meal before landing Chen-Smith was given an induced case of Venerian carrot-poisoning."

"Induced?" queried Juan Kurtz, his gaze darkening. "Explain yourself more fully, please, Excellency."

"It is my intention," Rutherford told him. "Honorable, if you will question your ship's officers you'll discover that the poison was recovered from the garbage-disposal unit before atomization."

Kurtz looked about to burst but managed to restrain himself. Rutherford asked, "Now why should anyone take such a desperate measure to give an important personage a non-fatal poison? Undoubtedly because Chen-Smith, in the course of his investigation, had discovered something amounting to guilty knowledge. He was poisoned so that he would be unable to report to me immediately upon landing, thus affording the poisoner or someone higher in the chain of conspiracy time to dissuade him from making a report. When Chen-Smith refused he was murdered viciously in this very suite yesterday afternoon."

"Murdered?" said the Martian envoy. "Chain of conspiracy? Surely, Excellency, such words are a trifle melodramatic."

"I hardly think so in view of the evidence I have assembled," Rutherford replied.

"Evidence?" asked Aloha Svensen. "What do you mean by evidence, Excellency?"

"Concrete proof of what occurred," replied Rutherford. "Statements by witnesses, means and methods, revelation of motive and opportunity on the part of those implicated."

"This is archaic," snorted Juan Kurtz. "May I inquire why such methods were deemed needful in such instance?"

"Because," said Rutherford, "it seemed at least possible that certain guilty parties might be vested with diplomatic immunity to the techniques of our twenty-first century police." Then, as a murmur of protest arose, "Fortunately such is not the case. Investigation, however, has disclosed a subtle and intensely dangerous and well-planned conspiracy.

"For instance, the use of carrot-poison to keep poor Chen-Smith from talking to me caused us to suspect a branch of the conspiracy aboard the Astarte, which in turn caused us to suspect the nature of the recent Lackawanna accidents. We have reason, if not proof, to feel certain that the last two were the result of deliberate sabotage. In this instance truth sera are being applied to the crew voluntarily, and should turn up the culprits in short order."

Kurtz actually beamed and said, "Then the spaceport suspension—"

"Will be relaxed as soon as the facts are learned," Rutherford told him. "But to get back—this discovery suggested that Chen-Smith was made ill, later killed, because he had the misfortune to learn that someone was tampering with the Kennelleys."

"Just how was Ambassador-at-Large Chen-Smith—murdered?" asked an undefiant and curious Aloha Svensen. "There has been no public report of such a crime."

"Because it has not yet been reported," Rutherford told them. He turned to the pale Venerians and said, "I owe you gentlemen an apology. I have reason to believe you may have suffered some slight indisposition as a result of your visit here yesterday."

There was an uncomfortable stirring among the Venerians. The Martians and Ganymedeans looked curious. Kurtz finally said with a deprecatory gesture, "It was nothing, Excellency."

"It was the poison that killed Chen-Smith," Rutherford stated. Despite a stir of alarm he went on to say, "Do not worry—it will do you no further harm. You see, our criminal substituted unprocessed lichenwasser in the drawing-room carafes of this suite. And when Chen-Smith refused to alter his report, he pretended amiability and offered him a drink—and Chen-Smith died."

"Then why are we alive, Excellency?" Kurtz inquired.

"Because you had not been given an induced and highly aggravated form of carrot-poisoning, gentlemen," Rutherford told them. "I have established that during the early miracle-drug era of the twentieth century great care had to be taken not to give patients under sulfa treatment saline laxatives lest they die of crystallization of the liver.

"My poor colleague was first given a powerful Venerian sulfa poison, far more dangerous than any of the sulfa derivatives our ancestors knew, then impregnated with unprocessed lichenwasser. He was dead in but a few minutes. Had we not suspected some of the circumstances surrounding his death we might never have discovered the conspiracy—or at any rate not in time. As it is, I feel safe in assuring you that we shall be able to meet within a day or so and solve our problems without vicious artificially stimulated enmities to hamper our work."

"But what was the motive behind this conspiracy?" Aloha Svensen asked, frowning.

"The oldest motive for crime outside of hunger—power," Rutherford replied. "Our chief conspirator is a man who, through sublimation of his craving to rule the System, is willing in the name of the highest possible motives to let part of that System destroy itself so that he can seize the reins. He is socially as dangerous as a Communist—or a Puritan."

"Who is this murderer?" the woman from Ganymede was beginning to glow with anger.

"Why"—Rutherford looked around the table blandly, "I'm afraid it's my somewhat too-efficient secretary, Mahmoud Singh. He thought of every factor but one when he brewed his unpleasant little brew—a man who never lived. I fear that his literal mind could never encompass such an intangible."

"You're joking, sir," said Mahmoud Singh from the end of the table. "You must need a vacation."

"I'll overlook your insolence, Mahmoud," said Rutherford. "But if anyone takes a vacation it will be you, I fear."

"Who was this man who never lived?" Kurtz inquired.

"His name was Nero Wolf," said Rutherford. "He was a fat figure of twentieth-century mystery fiction"—he paused to look down at his own modest paunch—"who solved crimes by studying people and deducing how they would behave in certain situations." He eyed Mahmoud sternly, added, "No, Mahmoud, it has to be you."

"So far I have heard no evidence at all that points to me," replied the secretary silkily. "And as your secretary I am hardly in a position to waive immunity to truth sera and hypnotics."

"True enough." Rutherford was almost jovial. "But we have evidence—plenty of it. Hilda Considine has already talked—and our mutual friend with the fondness for loud waistcoats is currently under hypnotics in the hands of the police."

Mahmoud's dark skin went ashy grey. As he sat there he seemed to shrivel and dissolve like one of the towers of Newark for whose destruction he had been responsible. He said, "You are not fit to hold your post—a trifler, a jester, a player of games." He was speaking directly to Rutherford. "Any System which places a man like you on top deserves the purge it was going to get. And then would come the chance to rebuild...."

"Why, you!" cried Commodore Willis, pinioning Mahmoud's arms as the latter pulled a ray-inducer from beneath his jacket. A flurry of expertly-planted fists reduced the murderer to unconsciousness.

It was some little while before he was taken away under guard and the delegates, their congratulations complete, departed.

Rutherford, feeling at once sixteen and a hundred years old, refilled his pipe in the study and smiled at Commodore Willis, who blurted, "What put you onto Mahmoud anyway, sir?"

"Simple deduction, Jacques," replied Rutherford. "It had to be someone who knew about my belonging to the Mystofans. The members are sworn to secrecy and most of them are honest. It had to be someone who knew my appointments and habits. Once I scented the shape of the conspiracy it wasn't hard to put the finger on poor Mahmoud."

"Poor Mahmoud!" Willis snorted. "Why not me?"

"Don't be an idiot," Rutherford told him. "You know I'll transfer you back to space-duty whenever you wish. Why murder to get it?"

"And sit cooped up in one of those tin bathrooms for weeks on end!" retorted the space-aide. "No thanks—there's more action here. By the way, sir, about this—these Mystofans—how does a guy get to be a member?"

Rutherford considered his space-aide thoughtfully, recalled that the action-type had its place in mystery fiction as well as the big brains. He said, "It's not easy but I'll help you with your entrance thesis—Brother Martin Kane."

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