The Door Through Space | Page 3

is a spy of Nebran!"
"Nebran--" The dwarfish nonhuman gabbled something then doubled
behind me. I saw him dodge, feint in the direction of the gates, then, as
the crowd surged that way, run for the street-shrine across the square,
slipping from recess to recess of the wall. A hail of stones went flying
in that direction. The little toy-seller dodged into the street-shrine.
Then there was a hoarse "Ah, aaah!" of terror, and the crowd edged
away, surged backward. The next minute it had begun to melt away, its
entity dissolving into separate creatures, slipping into the side alleys
and the dark streets that disgorged into the square. Within three minutes
the square lay empty again in the pale-crimson noon.
The kid in black leather let his breath go and swore, slipping his
shocker into its holster. He stared and demanded profanely, "Where'd
the little fellow go?"
"Who knows?" the other shrugged. "Probably sneaked into one of the
alleys. Did you see where he went, Cargill?"
I came slowly back to the gateway. To me, it had seemed that he
ducked into the street-shrine and vanished into thin air, but I've lived on
Wolf long enough to know you can't trust your eyes here. I said so, and
the kid swore again, gulping, more upset than he wanted to admit.
"Does this kind of thing happen often?"
"All the time," his companion assured him soberly, with a sidewise
wink at me. I didn't return the wink.
The kid wouldn't let it drop. "Where did you learn their lingo, Mr.
Cargill?"
"I've been on Wolf a long time," I said, spun on my heel and walked

toward Headquarters. I tried not to hear, but their voices followed me
anyhow, discreetly lowered, but not lowered enough.
"Kid, don't you know who he is? That's Cargill of the Secret Service!
Six years ago he was the best man in Intelligence, before--" The voice
lowered another decibel, and then there was the kid's voice asking,
shaken, "But what the hell happened to his face?"
I should have been used to it by now. I'd been hearing it, more or less
behind my back, for six years. Well, if my luck held, I'd never hear it
again. I strode up the white steps of the skyscraper, to finish the
arrangements that would take me away from Wolf forever. To the other
end of the Empire, to the other end of the galaxy--anywhere, so long as
I need not wear my past like a medallion around my neck, or blazoned
and branded on what was left of my ruined face.
CHAPTER TWO
The Terran Empire has set its blazon on four hundred planets circling
more than three hundred suns. But no matter what the color of the sun,
the number of moons overhead, or the geography of the planet, once
you step inside a Headquarters building, you are on Earth. And Earth
would be alien to many who called themselves Earthmen, judging by
the strangeness I always felt when I stepped into that marble-and-glass
world inside the skyscraper. I heard the sound of my steps ringing into
thin resonance along the marble corridor, and squinted my eyes,
readjusting them painfully to the cold yellowness of the lights.
The Traffic Division was efficiency made insolent, in glass and chrome
and polished steel, mirrors and windows and looming electronic
clerical machines. Most of one wall was taken up by a TV monitor
which gave a view of the spaceport; a vast open space lighted with
blue-white mercury vapor lamps, and a chained-down skyscraper of a
starship, littered over with swarming ants. The process crew was
getting the big ship ready for skylift tomorrow morning. I gave it a
second and then a third look. I'd be on it when it lifted.
Turning away from the monitored spaceport, I watched myself stride

forward in the mirrored surfaces that were everywhere; a tall man, a
lean man, bleached out by years under a red sun, and deeply scarred on
both cheeks and around the mouth. Even after six years behind a desk,
my neat business clothes--suitable for an Earthman with a desk
job--didn't fit quite right, and I still rose unconsciously on the balls of
my feet, approximating the lean stooping walk of a Dry-towner from
the Coronis plains.
The clerk behind the sign marked TRANSPORTATION was a little
rabbit of a man with a sunlamp tan, barricaded by a small-sized
spaceport of desk, and looking as if he liked being shut up there. He
looked up in civil inquiry.
"Can I do something for you?"
"My name's Cargill. Have you a pass for me?"
He stared. A free pass aboard a starship is rare except for professional
spacemen, which I obviously wasn't. "Let me check my records," he
hedged, and