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Chapter 5

Terl was getting suspicious.

It was a whole series of little things.

First, there was the trouble with the money, and trouble with money was one thing Terl would not tolerate.

They had his contracts and Terl had supposed they would simply hand it over in due course. But no. It seemed the two billion Galactic credits had been safeguarded in the Denver branch of the Earth Planetary Bank. Worse, it also seemed that this Brown Limper Staffor was running up huge bills and loans with the Earth Planetary Bank. The most recent had been one to build a castle up on a hill. He wanted to call it "Bergsdorfen" or some such thing.

Brown Limper Staffor, to get the money, had offered as collateral the

Terl contracts.

Directors of the Earth Planetary Bank, a man named MacAdam and a German, had turned up here at the compound with new documents for Terl to sign. And unless they were signed, then the Galactic credits could not be turned over.

The last thing Terl wanted was valid evidence lying about. But there was no help for it. MacAdam said the original contracts were not properly notarized and no one had attested to the signature. Terl had signed them with his left paw since he hated the idea of all this evidence. He could have claimed the first contracts were forgeries he knew nothing about.

But these bankers had typed up brand-new, much more valid-looking contracts. The new ones attested that Terl was political officer, war officer, security officer, and acting head of Intergalactic Mining Company. True enough, locally.

It was pointed out that there was no Earth branch of the company, that there was just the company as a whole. So Terl had to sign as acting for the whole board of Intergalactic Mining Company, and the contract sold “the company and any interests the company might have that could be sold, transmitted, conveyed....” You could read this contract in a way that sold all of Intergalactic everywhere! And all its planets. Or you could read it that it was just this planet and this branch. Very general.

It made Terl's claws curl in fear. If the Imperial government of Psychlo learned of this they would take days to torture him to death. Not in over three hundred thousand years had Intergalactic ever sold any part of itself or its interests.

They had brought a Swiss notary and witnesses. The contract was in English, German, and Psychlo. It had fifteen originals that had to be signed.

But no sign, no money. Terl, rage and fear suppressed, had signed every copy and then Brown Limper had signed as the “Custodian of interests for Any Legally Constituted Government of the Planet, said contract binding on all Successors” and then had also signed an addition to it conveying the contract to the Earth Planetary Bank “to have and to hold and to execute or convey in return for sums advanced.”

With horror Terl saw this document witnessed, stamped, covered with red seals, covered with gold seals, and packaged in wax seals. Fifteen separate copies of it!

But they gave him his money. They said the Denver branch of the bank was closing and they could not keep it there and Terl had to take it right now. Terl raised no objection to that.

They brought the boxes on a flatbed truck and put them in his bedroom.

They gave Terl his copies of the contract and he signed a receipt for those and the money. They all left, and the moment they were out the door, his first act was to shred, burn, and destroy the ashes of his copies. If Psychlo ever got word of it-!

He felt soothed then and he sat and petted the money for a while. Then he realized he couldn't go to bed amid all these boxes.

He got the guards to let him go out to the morgue and get three coffins. It seemed to him that there were fewer coffins there than there used to be. However, he brought the coffins in and put them in the bedroom and got to work putting the money into them, counting it by bundles.

It was late and he still hadn't finished the job so he spread some blankets on one of the coffins and went to sleep.

The next day, still working on packing the money– he had never realized before what an enormous lot of money two billion credits was– he found he was short one coffin. It was going to take four.

Accordingly, he got the guards to let him out and he went to the morgue to get another coffin. On his last visit, there had been one quite close to the door. Now it was no longer there. Somebody was doing something with these coffins.

Only a security chief of Terl's talents and training ever could have gotten to the bottom of it. That he was sure of.

First he questioned guards. Then he questioned a Captunk Arf Moiphy. And he found these Brigantes, these allegedly reliable, trained mercenaries, had been trafficking in coffins with the cadets.

The night duty commando had been selling coffins to the cadets for whiskey. Whiskey was some drink made in Scotland. Intoxicating.

Oh, Terl got the whole story. Late of an evening, some cadet, different ones, would come to the compound with an open pail of whiskey and trade it for a coffin. The guard would simply open the morgue and hand one over and take the whiskey.

It did no good for Captunk Arf Moiphy to show him that the cadets used the lead to make little cast-model spaceships and soldiers. Moiphy even had a couple. Terl knew those. They were for a game called klepp. Those cadets were selling game pieces and game boards made out of melted-down lead coffins. Company coffins!

Terl had demanded to see Snith. He ordered him to put a stop to it.

Three days later, Terl had gotten himself escorted down to the metal supply storeroom to get some needed sheets of material when he noticed that the hangar was nearly empty. There were a few ore carriers and a half-dozen battle planes and that was all that was left in those vast hangars. He had promptly gone to the garage, and that, too, was nearly empty. There were just a dozen flatbeds and a couple of Basher tanks left in there.

The place was being stolen blind! He got hold of Lars and raged at him.

Lars said there had been a lot of crashes and the cadets were simply replacing the lost machines from the hangar.

Just as he was about to rip Lars to bits, it suddenly occurred to Terl that company property was no longer his responsibility. So he let it go.

Three days later there was a tearing argument with Ker.

Sometime since, they had begun to clear away the wreckage and fused wires of the old transshipment rig and now that it was gone, Terl wanted to be sure that the points would be at the correct distances on the poles. He went out and he found...

Ker using the most sloppy, inexperienced machine operator trainees he had to dig the trench for the atmosphere armor ionization cable! There was the trench half-dug. But these trainees had been digging all over the place!

And more! There was equipment scattered everywhere. Cranes, blade scrapers, you name it. Whenever one of these stupid animal trainees had dug something, he had simply left the machine there. Whenever he lifted something, he left the magnetic crane right there.

What a mess!

Standing on the platform, hating the bright winter sun, half-sick from the rotten-quality breathe-gas that was available, Terl had felt like clawing the midget to bits.

“You know better than this!” raged Terl.

“Can I help it if these animals break machines?” shouted Ker.

“Can't you follow a straight, plain plan?” shouted Terl.

“Can I help it if these animals can't follow a straight, plain line?” shouted Ker.

Terl realized Ker had a point. They weren't going to get anywhere standing here shouting. “Look,” said Terl, “it is in your own best interest that I get safely to Psychlo."

“Is it?” said Ker.

Leverage, leverage, Terl told himself.

"I’ll tell you what I will do,” said Terl. "I will put ten thousand credits to your account in the Galactic Bank. You have a numbered account there with quite a bit in it already. But I will add-'

“Brown Limper Staffor paid me a hundred thousand Earth credits just to dig up that cable for you, that cable right over there. It was no easy job and I considered the pay cut-rate!”

Terl thought fast. “All right, I’ll pay you a hundred thousand Galactic credits to help install this firing rig and cooperate.”

“I can get double that from this Brown Limper not to do it,” said Ker.

“You can?” said Terl, suddenly alert. He thought hard. Yes, that Brown Limper had been acting furtively lately, like he was hiding something.

“He wants a certain party!” said Ker.

“He doesn't care if you get to Psychlo or not!”

“But doesn't he know I have to record the deeds?”

“He's only interested in getting one man!” said Ker.

"Look," said Terl, “I will put half a million credits in your account if you cooperate in getting me to Psychlo.”

Ker thought about it. Then he said, "If you will get me new papers and destroy my old company records and deposit seven hundred fifty thousand credits to my account, I’ll see all goes smoothly.”

Terl was about to say he agreed when Ker spoke again: “You will have to make it all right with this Brown Limper Staffor also. Tell me how you intend to trap this man so I can reassure this Staffor. He controls these workers. So add that, and it's a deal.”

Terl looked at Ker. He knew how money-hungry he was. “All right. I’m going to string five hundred Brigantes around outside that atmosphere armor, armed with poisoned arrows. Arrows won't make a concussion if fired and they can shoot that animal to bits if he comes! You whisper that to Staffor and he'll also cooperate with you. It 's a deal then?”

Ker smiled.

Terl went back inside, glad to get his breathe-mask off. He got some kerbango to soothe his nerves.

He reviewed this strange scene. It Staffor. That was the one who was going to mess this plan up. Terl would take care of the animal: he hadn't told Ker he also intended to have Snith and a squad on the platform armed with poisoned arrows or that he had a beautiful beryllium box to hand Staffor. The box would destroy all the evidence, the contract copies, everything.

And Ker, too!

He would have a hostage to handle the animal.

He felt quite satisfied about everything until three nights later when he noticed there were no guards in view. He went out and there they were, sprawled around the morgue, dead drunk.

It was obvious that Snith had used the information just to get a commission in whiskey.

Well, he could handle Snith when the time came.

The one to keep an eye on was this Staffor. His suspicions were right. It was Staffor that was plotting, plotting, plotting. Sneaky rat! It was plain he would try to steal this money back.

Warned, Terl was confident he could outsmart them all.

He went in and checked the money coffins, sealed them, marked them “radiation killed” so nobody on Psychlo would want to open them, and put his private “X” on the bottom of each one.

He would be a wealthy tycoon on Psychlo!

He spread his bedding out on top of the coffins and slept a beautiful sleep with beautiful dreams where royalty bowed when they met The Great Terl on the street. And all evidence and this planet would have been totally destroyed behind him.


Chapter 4 | Battlefield Earth | Chapter 6