Think Yourself to Death

Orkap was suddenly afraid, more afraid than he had ever been in his life. The ubiquitous Mayhem.

The fierce white sun of Ophiuchus IX broiled down on the Empty Places, a featureless desert two-thousand miles across and as lividly white as bleached bone. In all that burning emptiness, the jet cargo craft looked very small and very insignificant, like black midges on the dead white sand.

Midges among midges, the new pilots walked.

One said: "But I see no cargo."

Another: "These outworlders and their mystery…"

All were sweating, all uncomfortable, but all grateful for the twenty credits a flight they would earn, whatever the cargo turned out to be.

"What do you think?" Pandit asked Sria.

"I think I've never been so hot in my life. I feel like I'm being broiled alive."

"Here comes the Denebian now."

They had been driven into the Empty Places in a sand sled. The trip had taken two days but because the sled was air-conditioned no one had objected. When they saw the half dozen jets they knew why a sled had taken them into the wilderness. The jets were small cargo-carriers with room for pilot, co-pilot and perhaps a ton of cargo in each. Whatever it was the Denebians wanted exported, it didn't take up much room.

Orkap of Deneb walked toward them past the first of the jets. He began without preamble: "Your cargo is packed and ready to be moved in an underground vault five hundred yards from here. You will break up into pairs, a pilot and co-pilot for each jet." Sria Krishna and Pandit had already paired themselves together. "You work on your own time, getting the cargo with trundle-sleds, loading it, taking off, delivering it to the Denebian freighter at the spaceport. When you are finished, you collect your pay."

"Where do we sleep?" someone asked.

Orkap smiled. "You didn't come out here to sleep. There is only a limited amount of cargo. The jets are swift. You will be paid according to the amount of work you do. Any other questions?"

"What about food?" a plump young Ophiuchan asked.

"You will be given energy tablets, as many as you wish. Any other questions? No? Good. I have two additional things to say. First, you are not to examine your cargo under any circumstances, either here, or in transit, or on the spacefield. There are televid pick-up units in each jet, so you will be watched at all times. Second – " Orkap paused and let the silence grow and spread across the dazzling white expanse – "there is a spy among you, wearing the body of an Ophiuchan but in reality – well, I don't have to tell you who he is in reality." Orkap smiled grimly. "There is only one body-changer in the galaxy, but one is quite enough."

One of the pilots said, a little breathlessly: "Johnny Mayhem!"

Orkap smiled again. "I am aware of Mayhem's identity," he said, "but I'm not going to do anything about it."

The pilots waited. The sun glared down balefully. "You see," Orkap told them, "we cannot be altogether sure that the rest of you are here simply to earn your twenty credits a flight. Mayhem has unwittingly become our insurance. Find Mayhem! Find the spy among you! A hundred credits bonus to the man who does!"

Pandit looked at Sria, who whistled. The girl said: "If they think we can finish the job without sleep, picking up cargo and flying it to the spaceport and returning for more, then a hundred credits is probably more than any of us will earn. They'll all be looking like hawks for this Mayhem."

"And," Pandit agreed, "if there's a native spy among them, he'd be afraid to show himself for fear they'll think he's Mayhem. Very clever of the Denebians."

"… to work at once," Orkap was saying. He wore a blaster on his hip, the only weapon among them. They all trudged behind him through the burning, faceless sands. Soon they reached a depression from which the sand had been cleared, baring the white bedrock of the Empty Places. In the rock a square opening had been cut, shielded on each side from the shifting sands by an up-curving lip. A ramp led down into darkness.

"You will find your cargo down there. Also enough trundle-sleds to go around," Orkap explained. "The cargo is crated. The crates must remain intact. Is that understood?"

It was understood.

Their sudden mutual suspicion a pall worse than the heat, the Ophiuchans descended the ramp. They needed the money or they wouldn't be here. The money meant more to them than anything: this was no time to be far-sighted. Yet one of them was a spy for the Galactic League – Johnny Mayhem.

One of them, but which?

Pandit made a quick estimate of the number of crates. They were stacked neatly against one wall, each about four feet by four by four. And from the size of them, a single crate would fill the cargo bay of each of the jets. Pandit made a rough estimate. Two dozen crates, perhaps. In the dim light it was hard to tell. Two dozen crates, six jets, twelve Ophiuchans. Four trips for each jet. A half hour to load, ten minutes to unload, an hour and a half by jet to the spacefield. Three hours and forty minutes, round trip. Say, four hours. Four times four, sixteen. Sixteen hours of steady work for eighty credits. No time for mystery or suspicion. Barely time for mistrust…

"You, there!" a voice called. "What are you doing?"

It was one of the other Ophiuchans, quite the biggest of the lot. Pandit had seen him outside and remembered his name. He was Raj Shiva, a tall, muscular, swarthy Ophiuchan, with small, alert, suspicious eyes and a livid scar alongside his jaw.

"Nothing," Pandit said. "Nothing."

"No? The others are loading already. I'll be watching you."

For a hundred credits, Pandit thought furiously, but said nothing. Sria touched his shoulder. "I have one of the trundle-sleds," she said. "Let's get about it."

"Right," said Pandit.

Raj Shiva watched them a few moments longer, then drifted away with his own partner. It took Pandit and Sria, sweating copiously in the tremendous heat, a few minutes less than half an hour to load one of the crates aboard their jet. Three of the other ships were already airborne, whining away toward the spacefield.

Pandit looked at the crate. There were no markings on it anywhere. The wood looked new, but that meant absolutely nothing. In the dry heat of the Empty Places, wood would last a century, a millennium. They could not tell how old it was.

"Ready?" Sria Krishna called from the controls.

Pandit had secured the crate in the cargo bay. "Ready," he responded.

Moments later acceleration thrust them back in the twin pilot seats.

Sria leveled the jet at twenty thousand and they sped at eight hundred miles an hour toward the city and the spacefield just beyond it.

"Do you wonder about it?" Sria asked after a while.

"About what?"

"The cargo."

"We aren't supposed to."

"I know." Sria laughed. "I'm a woman, you see."

Pandit grinned at her. "Curiosity," he said. "A woman's trait on any world."

Sria got up from the pilot chair but Pandit placed his hand on her shoulder and gently shoved her down again. "They have a televid unit aboard," he said, "remember?"

Sria nodded. The jet sped on.

They landed at the spacefield. They were the fourth jet down and one of the other three had taken off on the return leg of the flight. A Denebian Pandit had never seen before was supervising the loin-cloth garbed laborers loading the crates aboard a Denebian spaceship. With Sria he delivered their crate on the trundle-sled, returned with the sled to their jet, and took off.

Just short of four hours from the time they started they returned to the Empty Places. They had gained a little time and were the second team down. From the jet ahead of them, Raj Shiva led a puny, middle-aged co-pilot.

Orkap stood in the underground storage room. Looking at his wrist chrono he said to the four Ophiuchans who came down the ramp: "You made fine time." Raj Shiva's puny companion said something, but Raj Shiva grabbed his arm and they began to load a second crate. Pandit and Sria loaded theirs in silence.

They made their second round trip in four hours exactly. It was completely dark when they returned to the Empty Places. Sria was worried they would overshoot the cargo point, but Pandit brought the little jet down within a few hundred yards of its takeoff point.