The Rithian Terror

I

Somewhere in the city, a monster was hiding.

Lying back against the limousine's cushions. Thorne Spangler let his mind dwell on that thought, absorbing it with the deliberate enjoyment of a small boy sucking a piece of candy. He visualized the monster, walking down a lighted street, or sitting in a cheap hired room, tentacles coiled, waiting, under the shell that made it look like a man—or a woman. And all around it, the life of the city going on: Hello, Jeff. Have you heard? They're stopping all the cars. Some sort of spy case … My sister tried to fly out to Tucson, and they turned her back. My cousin at the spaceport says nothing is coming in or leaving except military ships. It must be something big.

And the monster, listening, feeling the net tighten around it.

The tension was growing, Spangler thought; it hung in the air, in the abnormally empty streets. You could hear it: a stillness that welled up under the beehive hum—a waiting stillness, that made you want to stop and hold your breath. Spangler glanced at Pembun, sitting quietly beside him. Does he feel it? he wondered. It was hard to tell. You never knew what a colonial was thinking. Probably he decided, he's most heartily wishing himself back on his own sleepy planet, far from all this commotion at the hub of the Universe.

For Spangler himself, this moment was the climax of a lifetime. The monster—the Rithian—was only the catalyst, the stone flung into the pool. The salient fact was that just now, for as long as the operation lasted, all the interminable workings of the Earth Empire revolved around one tiny sphere: Earth Security Department, North American District, Southwestern Sector. For this brief time, one man, Spangler, was more important than all the others who administered the Empire.

The car decelerated smoothly and stopped. Two men in the pearl-gray knee breeches of the city patrol barred the way, both with automatic weapons at the ready. Behind them, the squat bulk of a Gun Unit covered half the roadway. Two more patrolmen came forward and flung open all four doors of the car, stepping back smartly into crossfire positions. "All out," said the one with the sergeant's cape. "Security check. Move!"

As Spangler passed him, the sergeant touched his chest respectfully. "Good evening, Commissioner."

"Sergeant," said Spangler, in tranquil acknowledgment, smiling but not troubling himself to look at the man directly; and he led Pembun and the chauffeur to the end of the queue.

As the line moved on, Spangler turned and found Pembun craning his short neck curiously. "It's a stereoptic fluoroscope," Spangler explained with languid amusement. "That's one test the Rithian can't meet, no matter how good his human disguise may be. One of these check stations is set up at each corner of every tenth avenue and every fifth cross-street. If the Rithian is fool enough to pass one, we have him. If he doesn't, the house checks will force him out. He doesn't have a chance."

Spangler stepped between the screen and the bulbous twin projectors, and saw the glowing, three-dimensional image of his skeleton appear in the hooded screen. The square blotch at the left wrist and the smaller one near it were his communicator and thumb-watch. The other, odd-shaped ones lower down were metal objects in his belt pouch—key projectors, calculator, memocubes and the like.

The technician perched above the projector said, "Turn around. All right. Next."

Spangler waited at the limousine door until Pembun joined him. The little man's wide, flat-nosed face expressed surprise, interest, and something else that Spangler could not quite define.

"'Ow did you ever get 'old of so many portable fluoroscopes in such a 'urry?" he asked.

Spangler smiled delightedly. "It's no miracle, Mr. Pembun, just adequate preparation. Those 'scopes have been stored and maintained, for exactly this emergency, since twenty eighteen."

"Five 'undred years," said Pembun wonderingly. "My! And this is the first time you've 'ad to use them?"

"The first time." Spangler waved Pembun into the car. Following him, he continued, "But it took just under half an hour to set up the complete network. Not only the fluoroscopes were ready, but complete, detailed plans of the entire operation. All I had to do was to take them out of the files."

The car moved forward past the barrier.

"My!" said Pembun again. "I feel kind of like an extra nose." His eyes gleamed faintly in the half-dark as Spangler turned to look at him.

"I beg your pardon?"

"I mean," said Pembun, "it doesn't seem to me as if you rilly need me very much."

That expressionless drawl, Spangler thought, could become irritating in time. The man had been educated on Earth; why couldn't he speak properly?

"I'm sure your advice will prove invaluable, Mr. Pembun," he said smoothly. "After all, we have no one here who's actually had… friendly contact with the Rithians."

"That's right," said Pembun, "I almost forgot. We're so used to the Rithi, ourselves, it's kind of 'ard to remember that Earth never did any trading with them." He pronounced "Rithi" with a curious whistling fricative, something between ih and s, and an abrupt terminal vowel. It was not done for swank, Spangler thought; it simply came more naturally to the man than the Standardized "Rithians." Probably Pembun spoke the Rithian tongue at least as well as he spoke standard English.

Spangler half-heartedly tried to imagine himself a part of Pembun's world. A piebald rabble, spawned by half a dozen substandard groups that had left Earth six centuries before. Haitians, French West Africans, Jamaicans, Puerto Ricans. Low-browed, dull-eyed loafers, breeders, drinkers and brawlers, speaking an unbelievable tongue corrupted from already degraded English, French and Spanish. Colonials—in fact, if not in name.

"We couldn't do any trading with the Rithians, Mr. Pembun," he said at last, softly. "They are not human."

"Yes, I recollec' now, Commissioner," the little man replied humbly. "It jus' slipped my mind for a minute. Shoo, I was taught about that in school. Earth's 'ad the same policy toward non-'uman cultures for the last five 'undred years. If they 'aven't got to the spaceship stage yet, put them under surveillance and make sure they don't. If they 'ave, and they're weak enough, give them a quick preventive war. If they're too strong, like the Rithi—delaying tactics, subversion, sabotage, divide-and-rule. Then war." He chuckled. "It makes my 'ead ache jus' thinking about it."

"That policy," Spangler informed him, "has withstood the only meaningful test. Earth survives."

"Yes, sir," said Pembun vacuously. "She certainly does."

The things, Spangler thought half in mockery, half in real annoyance, that I do for the Empire!

A touch of his forefinger at the base of the square, jeweled thumbwatch produced a soft chime and then a female voice: "Fourteen-ten and one quarter."

Spangler hesitated. It was an awkward time to call Joanna; the afternoon break, in her section, came at fourteen thirty. But if he waited until then he would be back at the Hill himself, tied up in a conference that might not end until near quitting time. It was irritating to have to speak to her in Pembun's presence, too, but there was no help for it now. He had been too busy to call earlier in the afternoon—Pembun's arrival had upset his schedule—and his superior, Keith-Ingram, had chosen to call him while he was on the way to the spaceport, occupying the whole journey with fruitless discussion.

He had not called her for three days. That had been deliberate; this Rithian business was only a convenient pretext. It was good strategy. But Spangler knew his antagonist, knew the limits of her curiosity and pride almost to the hour. Any longer delay would be dangerous.

Spangler reached for the studs of the limousine's communicator, set into the front wall of the compartment. His wrist-phone would have been easier and more private, but he wanted to see her face.

"You'll excuse me?" he said perfunctorily.

"Of cawse." The little man turned toward the window on his side of the car, presenting his back to Spangler and the communicator screen.

Spangler punched the number. After a moment the screen lighted and Joanna's face came into view.

"Oh—Thorne."

Her tone was poised, cool, almost expressionless—that was to say, normal. She looked at him, out of the screen's upholstered frame, with the expression that almost never changed: direct, gravely intent, receptive. Her skin and eyes were so clear, her emotional responses so deliberate and pallid that she seemed utterly, almost abstractly normal: a type personified, a symbol, a mathematical fiction. Everything about her was refined and subdued: her gesture, movements, her rare laughter. Her face itself might have been modeled to fit the average man's notion of "aristocracy."

That, of course, was why Spangler had to have her.

In this one respect, she was precisely what she looked— the Planters were one of the oldest, most powerful, and most unassailably patrician families in the Empire. Without such an alliance, Spangler knew painfully well, he had gone as far as he could, and a good deal farther than a less determined man would have hoped. With her, he would only have begun —and his children would receive, by right of birth, all that he had struggled to gain.

In nearly all other ways, Joanna was a mirror of deception. She seemed cool and self-possessed, but was neither; she was only afraid. It was fear that delayed and censored every word she spoke, every motion: fear of betraying herself, fear of demanding too much, fear of giving too much.

He let the silence lengthen until, in another second, it would have been obvious that he was hesitating for effect. Then he said politely, "I'm not disturbing you?"

"… No, of course not." The pause before she answered had been a trifle longer than normal.

She's hurt, Spangler thought with satisfaction.

"I would have called earlier, if I could," he said soberly. "This is the first free moment I've had in three days."

It was a lie, and she knew it; but it was so near the truth that she could accept it, if she chose, without loss of dignity. That was the knife-edge on which Spangler had hung his fortunes. Deliberately, knowing the risk, he had drawn their relationship so thin that a touch would break it.

Had there been any other course he could have taken? Despite himself, Spangler's anxiety led him through each stage of the logic again, searching for a flaw.

Cancel the approach direct. He had asked her to marry him, for the first time, a week after they had become lovers. She had refused without hesitation and without coyness; she meant it.

Cancel the approach dialectical. Joanna had a keen and capable mind, but she could be as stubborn as any dullard.

There is no argument that will wear down a woman's "I don't want to."

Cancel the approach violent: tentatively. Four days ago, at the end of a long weekend they had spent together in the Carpathians, he had tried brutality—not on impulse, but with calculated design which had achieved its primary object: he had reduced her to tears.

After that, apology and reconciliation. After that, silence: three days of it. Silence wounds more than a blow, and wounds more deeply.

Joanna had spent her whole life in retreating from things which had injured her.

But Spangler had three things on his side: Joanna's affection and need for him; ordinary human perversity, which desires a thing, however often refused, the instant it is withdrawn; and the breaking of the rhythm. Rhythm, however desirable in some aspects of the relations between sexes, is fatal in most others. Request, argument, violence— If he had begun the cycle again, as both of them subconsciously expected, he would simply have made his own defeat more certain.

As it was, he had weakened her resistance by making her gather it against a thrust that never came…

Joanna said, "I understand. You do look tired, Thorne. You're all right, though, aren't you?"

Spangler said abruptly, "Joanna, I want to see you. Soon. Tonight. Will you meet me?"

Before, his tone had been almost as casual as hers, and he had watched the minuscule changes in her expression that meant she was softening toward him. Now he spoke urgently, and saw her stiffen again.

Never let her rest, he thought. Never let her get her balance… He spoke softly again: "It will be the last time, if you decide it that way. But let me see you tonight."

"… All right."

"Shall I send a car for you?"

She nodded, and then her image dissolved. Spangler leaned back, with a sigh, into the cushions.

"My," said Pembun, "look at aw the taw buildings!"

They were stopped twice more before they reached Administration Hill, and went through a routine search at the entrance. From there, the trip to Security Section took less than a minute. The chauffeur left them at Spangler's office door and took the limousine to the motor pool three levels below.

Contrasted with the group that was waiting at the conference table, under the hard, clear glow-light, Pembun looked like a shabby mongrel that had somehow crawled into a purebred kennel. His skin was yellowish under the brown; his jowls were wider than his naked cranium; his enormous ears stuck out straight from his head. His tunic and pantaloons were correctly cut, but he looked hopelessly awkward in them.

After all, Spangler reminded himself carefully, the man could not help being what he was.

"Gentlemen," he said, "allow me to present Mr. Jawj Pembun of Manhaven. Mr. Pembun was a member of the colonial government before his planet gained its independence, and since that time has been of service to the Empire in various capacities. He brings us expert knowledge of the Rithians. Lieutenant Colonel Cassina, who is our liaison with the Space Navy—his new aide, Captain Wei—Dr. Baustian of the Bureau of Alien Physiology—Mr. Pemberton of the Mayor's staff—Miss Timoney and Mr. Gordon, of this office."

Pembun shook hands with all of them without any noticeable sign of awe. To the Mayor's spokesman he said affably, "You know, Pemberton was origin'ly my family's name. They just gradually shortened it to Pembun. That' a coincidence, isn't it?"

Pemberton, a fine-boned young man with pale eyes and hair, stiffened visibly.

"I hardly think there is any relation," he said.

Spangler picked up a memo spool that lay before him and tapped it sharply against the table. "At the suggestion of the Foreign Relations Department," he said delicately, "Mr. Pembun was brought in from Ganymede especially for this emergency. I arranged for his passage through the cordon and met him personally at the spaceport." In short, gentlemen, he thought, this incredible little man has been wished on us by the powers that be, and we shall have to put up with him as best we can.

"Now," he said, "I imagine Mr. Pembun would like to be brought up to date before we proceed." There was a snort from Colonel Cassina which Spangler pointedly ignored. He began the story, covering the main points quickly and concisely. Pembun stopped him only once to ask a question.

"Are you sure that's all the Rithi there were to begin with— just seven?"

"No, Mr. Pembun," Spangler admitted. "We don't yet know how or by whom they were smuggled through to Earth, therefore we must consider the possibility that others are still undetected. To deal with that possibility, Security is patrolling the entire planet, using a random-based spot check system. But we know that these seven were here, and that one of them is still at large. When we find him, we hope to get all the information we need. The idea of suicide is repugnant to these Rithians, I understand."

"That's right," said Pembun soberly. "I guess you can take him alive, all right. Prob'ly could 'ave taken all seven after the accident, if your patrolmen 'adn' shot so quick."

"Those were city patrolmen," said Pemberton acidly, with a flush on his cheekbones, "not Security men. Their conduct was perfectly in order. When they arrived on the scene of the accident, and saw three men attempting to aid four others whose bodies were torn open, exposing the alien shapes underneath, they instantly fired on the whole group. Those were their orders; that was what they had been trained to do in any such event. They would have been right, even if one of the Rithians had not escaped into the crowd."

Pembun shook his head, smiling. "I'm not so good at paradoxes," he said. "They jus' mix me up."

"There is no paradox, Mr. Pembun," said Spangler gently. "A fully equipped Security crew can take chances with an unknown force which a municipal patrol cannot. A patrolman, discovering an alien on this planet, must kill first and investigate afterwards—because an alien spy or saboteur, by definition, has unknown potentialities. Planning centuries in advance, as we must, we obviously can't foresee every possible variant of a basic situation; but we can and do lay down directives which will serve our best interests in the vast majority of cases. And we can't, Mr. Pembun, we cannot allow crucial decisions to be made on the spot by non-executive personnel."

Colonel Cassina cleared his throat impatiently. "Shall we get on?"

"Just one moment. Mr. Pembun, I want to make this point clear to you if I can. Interpretation is the dry rot of law. One interpretation, and the law is modified; two, the law is distorted—three hundred million, and there is no law at all, there is pure anarchy. In a small system, of course—a single planet, for example—there are only a few intermediate stages between planning and execution. But when you consider that we're dealing here with an empire of two hundred sixty planets, an aggregate of more than eight hundred billion people, you'll realize that directives must be rigid and policy unified. In an emergency, the lower-echelon official who acts according to his own personal interpretation may be right or wrong. The similar official who follows a rigid policy, prepared to meet the widest possible variety of actual situations, will be right—in ninety-nine point nine out of a hundred cases. We take the long view; we can't afford to do otherwise."

Pembun nodded seriously. He said, "We 'ad the same trouble at 'ome—on a smaller scale, of course. Right after we declared our independence, we formed a federation with the two other planets in our system, Novaya Zemlya and Reunion. It seemed like a good idea—you know, for mutual defense and so on. But we found out to keep that big a gover'ment running we 'ad to stiffen it up something dreadful, an' some'ow or other it didn' seem to be as cheap to run as three diff'rent gover'ments, either. So we split up ag'in."

Spangler kept his urbane expression with difficulty. Colonel Cassina's neck was brick red, and Dr. Baustian, Captain Wei and Miss Timoney were staring at Pembun in frank amazement. The others looked embarrassed.

Really, it was a waste of time to take any pains with a barbarian like this. Try to explain the philosophy behind the workings of the greatest empire in history, and all Pembun got out of it was a childish analogy to the history of his own pipsqueak solar system!

He regarded the little man through narrowed lids. Come to think of it, was Pembun really as simple as he appeared, or was he snickering to himself behind that stolid yellow-brown face?

He had said several things which could only be explained by the worst of bad taste or the sheerest blind ignorance. After Spangler's reference to Manhaven's "gaining its independence"—surely a polite way of putting it, since Manhaven had seceded from the Empire only on Earth's sufferance, at a time when she was occupied elsewhere—Pembun had said, "After we declared our independence—"

Carelessness, or deliberate, subtly pointed insult?

Was Pembun saying, "There are two hundred sixty planets and eight hundred billion people in your Empire, all right—but there used to be a lot more, and a century from now there'll be a lot less."

Insufferable little planet-crawler…

Colonel Cassina said, "Mr. Pembun, do I understand you to suggest that we too should split up as you put it? That the Empire should be liquidated?"

Cassina snorted and sputtered. Pemberton's face was white with indignation. It was remarkable, Spangler thought with one corner of his mind, how easily Pembun was able to rub them all the wrong way. If it could possibly be arranged, future conferences would be held without him.

"Gentlemen," he said, raising his voice a trifle, "shall we continue?"

After they had left, Spangler sat alone in his inner office, absently toying with the buttons that controlled the big information screen opposite his desk. He switched on one organizational chart after another, without seeing any of them.

Pembun had behaved himself, in a manner of speaking, after that clash with Cassina. But the things he had said had become not merely irritating, but disquieting.

It had started with the usual complaint from Pemberton, speaking for the mayor. Like almost every planetary and local government department except Security, the city administration wanted to know when the Rithian would be captured and the planetwide blockade ended.

Spangler had assured him that the Rithian could not possibly remain concealed for more than a week at the utmost.

And then Pembun had remarked, "Excuse me, Commissioner, but I b'lieve it would be safer if you said two months."

"Why, Mr. Pembun?"

"Well, because Rithi got to 'ave a lot of beryllium salts in their food. The way I see it, this one Rithi wouldn' 'ave more than six or eight weeks' supply with 'im. After that, you can either tie up all the supplies of beryllium salts, so 'e 'as to surrender or starve, or jus' watch the chemical supply 'ouses an' arrest anybody 'oo buys them. Either way, you got 'im. Might take a little more than two months. Say two and a 'alf or three."

"Mr. Pembun," Spangler said with icy patience, "that's an admirable plan, but we're not going to need it. The house checks will get our Rithian before a week is up."

"Clear everybody out of a building, an' wawk them all past one of those fluoroscopes?"

"That's it," Spangler told him. "One area at a time, working inward from the outskirts of the city to the center."

"Uh-mm," said Pembun. "Only thing is, the Rithi got no bones."

Spangler raised his brows and glanced at Dr. Baustian. "Is that correct, doctor?"

"Well, yes, so I understand," said the physiologist tolerantly, but I assume that would be indication enough—if the fluoroscope showed a very small cartilage and no bones at all?"

Laughter rippled around the table.

"Not," said Pembun, "if 'e swallowed a skel'ton."

Cassina said something rude in an explosive voice. Spangler, incredulous amusement bubbling up inside him, stared at Pembun. "Swallowed a skeleton?"

"Uh-mm. You people wouldn' know 'bout it, I guess, becawse you 'aven' done any trading with the Rithi—scientific trading least of awl—but the Rithi got…" He hesitated. "Our name for it is mudabs boyd; I guess in Standard that would be 'protean insides.' "

"Protean!" from Dr. Baustian.

"Yes, sir. Their outside shape is fixed, almos' as much as ours, or they wouldn' need any disguises to look like a man; but the insides is pretty near all protean flesh—make it into a stomach, or a bowel, or a bladder, or w'atever they want. They could swallow a yuman skel'ton, all right—it wouldn' inconvenience them at awl. An' they could imitate the rest of a man's insides well enough to fool you. They could make it move natural, too. That means they wouldn' need any braces or anything, jus' a plastic shell for a disguise.

"I 'ate to say it, but I don' believe those fluoroscopes are going to do much good."

In a moment, the table had been in an uproar again.

Spangler grunted, switched on his speakwrite and began to dictate a report of the conference. "To Claude Keith-Ingram, Chief Comm DeptSecur," he said. "Most Secret. Most Urgent." He thought for a moment, then rapidly gave an account of Pembun's statement, adding that Dr. Baustian doubted the validity of his information, and that Pembun admitted he had never seen any actual evidence of the Rithians' alleged protean ability.

He read it over, then detached the spool and tossed it into the out tube.

He was still unsatisfied.

He had done everything he could be expected to do, exactly according to regulations. If policy were to be changed, it was not for him to change it. Logic and instinct both assured him that Pembun was not to be taken seriously.

But there was something else Pembun had said that still bothered him, for a reason he could not explain. He had not included it in his report; it would have seemed, to put it mildly, frivolous.

Pembun had said:

"There's one more thing you got to watch out for—those Rithi got a 'ell of a sense of yumor."

Spangler passed his hand over the intercom. "Gordon," he said.

"Yes, sir?"

"Did you find quarters for Mr. Pembun?"

"Yes sir."

"Where is he?"

"G-level, section seven, Suite One-eleven."

"Right," said Spangler, flicking his hand over the intercom to break the connection. He stood up, walked out of the office, and buzzed a scooter.

"G-level," he said into its mechanical ear.