Agent of Vega and Other Stories Read online

  Agent of Vega & Other Stories

  James H. Schmitz

  This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this book are fictional, and any resemblance to real people or incidents is purely coincidental.

  "Agent of Vega" was first published in Astounding Science Fiction, July 1949. "The Illusionists" was first published in Astounding Science Fiction, in March 1951, under the title "Space Fear." "The Second Night of Summer" was first published in Galaxy, December 1950. "The Truth About Cushgar" was first published in Astounding Science Fiction, November 1950. (The four Agent of Vega stories were first collected and issued in book form under that title by Gnome Press in 1960.) "The Custodians" was first published in Astounding Science Fiction, December 1968. "Gone Fishing" was first published in Astounding Science Fiction, May 1961. "The Beacon to Elsewhere" was first published in Amazing, April 1963. "The End of the Line" was first published in Astounding Science Fiction, July 1951. "Watch the Sky" was first published in Astounding Science Fiction, August 1962. "Greenface" was first published in Unknown, August 1943. "Rogue Psi" was first published in Amazing, August 1962.

  All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form.

  A Baen Books Original

  Baen Publishing Enterprises

  P.O. Box 1403

  Riverdale, NY 10471

  www.baen.com

  ISBN: 0-671-31847-0

  Cover art by Bob Eggleton

  First printing, November 2001

  Distributed by Simon & Schuster

  1230 Avenue of the Americas

  New York, NY 10020

  Production by Windhaven Press, Auburn, NH

  Printed in the United States of America

  SHE LOVES ME, SHE LOVES ME NOT,

  SHE LOVES ME SHE LOVES ME NOT!!!

  Eight large ships came individually out of the darkness between the stars that was their sea, and began to move about the planet Noorhut in a carefully timed pattern of orbits. They stayed much too far out to permit any instrument of space-detection to suspect that the Noorhut might be their common center of interest. Though the men who crewed the eight ships bore the people of Noorhut no ill will, hardly anything could have looked less promising for Noorhut than the cargo they had on board.

  Seven of them were armed with a gas which was not often used any more. A highly volatile lethal catalyst, it sank to the solid surface of a world over which it was freed and spread out swiftly there to the point where its presence could no longer be detected by any chemical means. However its effect of drawing the final breath almost imperceptibly out of all things that were oxygen-breathing was not noticeably reduced by diffusion.

  The eighth ship was equipped with a brace of torpedoes, which were normally released some hours after the gas-carriers dispersed their invisible death. They were quite small torpedoes, since the only task remaining for them would be to ignite the surface of the planet that had been treated with the catalyst.

  All those things might presently happen to Noorhut. But they would happen only if a specific message was flashed from it to the circling squadron—the message that Noorhut already was lost to a deadly foe who must, at any cost now, be prevented from spreading out from it to other inhabited worlds.

  IN THIS SERIES:

  Telzey Amberdon

  T 'n T: Telzey & Trigger

  Trigger & Friends

  The Hub: Dangerous Territory

  Agent of Vega & Other Stories

  Baen Books by Eric Flint:

  Mother of Demons

  1632

  The Philosophical Strangler

  The Belisarius series, with David Drake:

  An Oblique Approach

  In the Heart of Darkness

  Destiny's Shield

  Fortune's Stroke

  The Tide of Victory

  with Dave Freer:

  Rats, Bats & Vats

  Pyramid Scheme

  "That was an epiphany. . . ."

  Mercedes Lackey

  There's a commercial on cable stations lately that talks about moments of epiphany—moments when you understand something that changes your life.

  I've had at least one of those moments—and when it was over, my life had been changed forever.

  It was when, when I was eleven or thereabouts, I went looking in the living room for something to read.

  Now, in my house, books were everywhere and there was very little my brother and I were forbidden to read. We both had library cards as soon as we got past "Run, Spot, run," and by the time I was nine I was coming home with armloads of books every week and still running out of things to read before the week was over. By the time I was ten, I had special permission to take books out of the adult section—yes, in those dark days, you needed a permission slip from your parents to read things that weren't in the children's section.

  Now, the peculiar thing here is that although I read anything that looked like a fairy-tale and every piece of historical fiction I could find, I hadn't discovered classic juvenile science fiction. I can't think why—unless it was because my library didn't have any. It was a very small branch library, and I hadn't yet learned that you could request anything that was in the card-catalog for the whole county-wide system. It might also have been because my branch library had helpfully segregated the juvenile section into "Boys" and "Girls," and I wasn't brave enough to cross the invisible line-of-death dividing the two. I do recall reading two little books called Space Cat and Space Cat Meets Mars and loving them—and also something called City Under the Back Steps about a kid who gets shrunk and joins an ant colony—but that was in a different library, before we moved, and perhaps the books hadn't been so helpfully segregated there. Be that as it may, although I was knee-deep in the historical novels of Anya Seton and Rosemary Sutcliff by then, I hadn't ventured into the adult Science Fiction section. I hadn't fallen headfirst into Andre Norton's myriad worlds, I hadn't joined Heinlein's resourceful heroes, I hadn't discovered Anderson, Asimov, Clarke, Nourse, Simak. . . .

  All that was about to change. Because my father had.

  My father was a science fiction reader; in our house, where library books were everywhere, it was my father who bought the paperbacks. They were divided pretty equally in thirds—suspense (including spy-novels), war, and science fiction.

  It was the start of summer vacation, I had already bored through my stack of nine books, and we weren't going back to the library for another two days. I was desperate. I ventured into the living room, and picked up James Schmidt's Agent of Vega.

  I'm not sure why. It certainly wasn't the cover—in those days, science fiction books were sporting rather odd abstract paintings—possibly trying to divorce themselves from the Bug Eyed Monsters of the pulp covers so that they could be taken Seriously. That wasn't going to happen, not in the Sixties, but you couldn't fault the editors for trying. It wasn't the title—I hadn't a clue what, or who, Vega was, and I wasn't interested in the James Bond books (yet) that featured the only other "agent" I knew of. Perhaps it was just desperation. I asked politely if I could read it, was granted permission, and trotted away to my room with my prize.

  Five minutes later, it was true love.

  It was an epiphany.

  Here was everything I had been looking for—exotic settings, thrills, adventure, heroines who were just as resourceful and brave as the heroes, and something more. There was a magic in the words, but there was more than that. It was imagination.

  No one, no one, since my fairy-tales, had written like this. This James Schmitz fellow seemed as familiar with androids and alien planets as I was with the ice-cream man and the streets of my home town. />
  And here, for the first time, I encountered psionics.

  Psi! There was even an abbreviation for it! Telepathy! Telekinesis! Teleportation! Empathy! Precognition!

  Oh, these were words to conjure with! Better than the magic of the fairy-tales, these were scientific which meant that someone, somewhere (oh let it be me! Me!) might find a way to get one of these powers for himself!

  Much has been made of the "sense of wonder" that science fiction evokes, and believe me, there was nothing to evoke that sense quite like the worlds of James Schmitz. Especially for someone who had never read anything like this before. The man had the right stuff; no doubt of it. By the time that I was done with that book, I was well and truly hooked.

  And my life had just taken that irrevocable, epiphanal change.

  There was no going back; when we got to the library, I flew to the science fiction section, and (once I had cleaned out the Schmitz) proceeded to work my way down the alphabet. I did the same in the school library (earning some peculiar looks from the librarian, I can tell you, since girls weren't supposed to like science fiction). Shortly after that, I discovered that there were whole stores devoted just to books—I had always lived in suburbs, and back in those days, there weren't Malls. There were a few—a very few—strip-malls, few of which devoted any space to anything other than stores with "Boutique" in the name, and there were no real chain bookstores. But we went to Chicago for dental and optometrist appointments, and there in Chicago were bookstores.

  And after that, thanks to the helpful little bits in the back of the books (oh, Ace Doubles! two books—all right, novellas—for the price of one!) I learned that you could actually order books from the company.

  Bliss limited only by my allowance!

  But my allowance didn't allow me to buy all the books I craved, nor did the librarian oblige by ordering nothing but science fiction with the meager budget allocated to her. So, there was nothing for it.

  I had to write my own.

  Now, I never would have come to this moment, if not (again) for James Schmitz. The novels arranged in their imposing hard covers on the library shelves could not possibly have been written by mere human beings, right? I couldn't aspire to that. (Even if the dust jackets had actually featured any information about the authors, thus removing them to the realms of mortals, the librarian had helpfully taken them off because "they always got torn and dirty.") But there was lots of information on the paperback covers—and more, much more about those authors in the science fiction magazines I had discovered in the local drugstore! Why, they even argued with each other in the letter columns, sounding exactly like myself and my little brother in the midst of a squabble! Yes indeed, these books were written by human beings just like me. If they could write books, so could I.

  So, thanks to James Schmitz, I became an author—first an under-the-bed author (who hid my notebooks full of illustrated stories under the bed where my brother wouldn't find them), then turning in my stories to high-school literary contests, then writing as a hobby in college—then writing fanfic and actually getting published (!!!).

  And then, finally, actually, making the big leap into Professional Status.

  Through it all, the memory of that book, that moment, has stayed with me. The sense of wonder and excitement has never faded, and never will.

  Thank you, James Schmitz, wherever you are.

  And thank you, Eric Flint and Jim Baen, for bringing his Right Stuff back again. Maybe some other kid, desperate for something to read, will have an epiphany of his or her own.

  The Confederacy of Vega

  Agent of Vega

  "It just happens," the Third Co-ordinator of the Vegan Confederacy explained patiently, "that the local Agent—it's Zone Seventeen Eighty-two—isn't available at the moment. In fact, he isn't expected to contact this HQ for at least another week. And since the matter really needs prompt attention, and you happened to be passing within convenient range of the spot, I thought of you."

  "I like these little extra jobs I get whenever you think of me," commented the figure in the telepath transmitter before him. It was that of a small, wiry man with rather cold yellow eyes—sitting against an undefined dark background, he might have been a minor criminal or the skipper of an aging space-tramp.

  "After the last two of them, as I recall it," he continued pointedly, "I turned in my final mission report from the emergency treatment tank of my ship—And if you'll remember, I'd have been back in my own Zone by now if you hadn't sent me chasing a wild-eyed rumor in this direction!"

  He leaned forward with an obviously false air of hopeful anticipation. "Now this wouldn't just possibly be another hot lead on U-1, would it?"

  "No, no! Nothing like that!" the Co-ordinator said soothingly. In his mental file the little man was listed as "Zone Agent Iliff, Zone Thirty-six Oh-six; unrestricted utility; try not to irritate—" There was a good deal more of it, including the notation:

  "U-1: The Agent's failure-shock regarding this subject has been developed over the past twelve-year period into a settled fear-fix of prime-motive proportions. The Agent may now be entrusted with the conclusion of this case, whenever the opportunity is presented."

  That was no paradox to the Co-ordinator who, as Chief of the Department of Galactic Zones, was Iliff's immediate superior. He knew the peculiar qualities of his agents—and how to make the most economical use of them, while they lasted.

  "It's my own opinion," he offered cheerily, "that U-1 has been dead for years. Though I'll admit Correlation doesn't agree with me there."

  "Correlation's often right," Iliff remarked, still watchfully. He added, "U-1 appeared excessively healthy the last time I got near him."

  "Well, that was twelve standard years ago," the Co-ordinator murmured. "If he were still around, he'd have taken a bite out of us before this—a big bite! Just to tell us he doesn't think the Galaxy is quite wide enough for him and the Confederacy both. He's not the type to lie low longer than he has to." He paused. "Or do you think you might have shaken some of his supremacy ideas out of him that last time?"

  "Not likely," said Iliff. The voice that came from the transmitter, the thought that carried it, were equally impassive. "He booby-trapped me good. To him it wouldn't even have seemed like a fight."

  The Co-ordinator shrugged. "Well, there you are! Anyway, this isn't that kind of job at all. It's actually a rather simple assignment."

  Iliff winced.

  "No, I mean it! What this job takes is mostly tact—always one of your strongest points, Iliff."

  The statement was not entirely true; but the Agent ignored it and the Co-ordinator went on serenely:

  " . . . so I've homed you full information on the case. Your ship should pick it up in an hour, but you might have questions; so here it is, in brief:

  "Two weeks ago, the Bureau of Interstellar Crime sends an operative to a planet called Gull in Seventeen Eighty-two—that's a mono-planet system near Lycanno, just a bit off your present route. You been through that neighborhood before?"

  Iliff blinked yellow eyes and produced a memory. "We went through Lycanno once. Seventeen or eighteen Habitables; population A-Class Human; Class D politics—How far is Gull from there?"

  "Eighteen hours' cruising speed, or a little less—but you're closer to it than that right now. This operative was to make positive identification of some ex-spacer called Tahmey, who'd been reported there, and dispose of him. Routine interstellar stuff, but—twenty-four hours ago, the operative sends back a message that she finds positive identification impossible . . . and that she wants a Zone Agent."

  He looked expectantly at Iliff. Both of them knew perfectly well that the execution of a retired piratical spacer was no part of a Zone Agent's job—furthermore, that every Interstellar operative was aware of the fact; and finally, that such a request should have induced the Bureau to recall its operative for an immediate mental overhaul and several months' vacation before he or she could be risked on another job.
>
  "Give," Iliff suggested patiently.

  "The difference," the Co-ordinator explained, "is that the operative is one of our Lannai trainees."

  "I see," said the Agent.

  * * *

  He did. The Lannai were high type humanoids and the first people of their classification to be invited to join the Vegan Confederacy—till then open only to Homo sapiens and the interesting variety of mutant branches of that old Terrestrial stock.

  The invitation had been sponsored, against formidable opposition, by the Department of Galactic Zones, with the obvious intention of having the same privilege extended later to as many humanoids and other nonhuman races as could meet the Confederacy's general standards.

  As usual, the Department's motive was practical enough. Its king-sized job was to keep the eighteen thousand individual civilizations so far registered in its Zones out of as much dangerous trouble as it could, while nudging them unobtrusively, whenever the occasion was offered, just a little farther into the path of righteousness and order.

  It was slow, dangerous, carefully unspectacular work, since it violated, in fact and in spirit, every galactic treaty of nonintervention the Confederacy had ever signed. Worst of all, it was work for which the Department was, of necessity, monstrously understaffed.

  The more political systems, races and civilizations it could draw directly into the Confederacy, the fewer it would have to keep under that desperately sketchy kind of supervision. Regulations of membership in Vega's super-system were interpreted broadly, but even so they pretty well precluded any dangerous degree of deviation from the ideals that Vega championed.

  And if, as a further consequence, Galactic Zones could then draw freely on the often startling abilities and talents of nonhuman peoples to aid in its titanic project—

  The Department figuratively licked its chops.