Combat Part 4

Loo, who was now reclined on his bunk, said, "That's approximately the same reason I visit the Soviet Union."

Hank said quietly, "Who's sending you, Paco? Or are you on your own?"

"No, my North American friend. My lips are sealed but I represent a rather influencial group. All is not jest, even though I find life the easier if one laughs often and with joy."

Hank closed his bag and slid it under his bunk. "Well, you should have had this influencial group pony up a little more money so you could have gone deluxe cla.s.s."

Paco looked at him strangely. "That is the point. We are not interested in a red-carpet tour during which the very best would be trotted our for propaganda purposes. I choose to see the New World as humbly as is possible."

"And me," Loo said. "We evidently are in much the same position."

Hank brought himself into character. "Well, lesson number one. Did you notice the teeth in that steward's face? Steel. Bright, gleaming steel, instead of gold."

Loo shrugged hugely. "This is the day of science. Iron rusts, it's true, but I a.s.sume that the Soviet dentists utilize some method of preventing corrosion."

"Otherwise," Paco murmured reasonably, "I imagine the Russians expectorate a good deal of rusty spittal."

"I don't know why I keep getting into these arguments," Hank said.

"I'm just going for a look-see myself. But frankly, I don't trust a Russian any farther than I can throw one."

"How many Russians have you met?" Loo said mildly. "Or are your opinions formed solely by what you have read in American publications?"

Hank frowned at him. "You seem to be a little on the anti-American side."

"I'm not," Loo said. "But not pro-American either. I find much that is ridiculous in the propaganda of both the Soviets and the West."

"Gentlemen," Paco said, "the conversation is fascinating, but I must leave you. The ladies, crowding the decks above, know not that my presence graces this ship. It shall be necessary that I enlighten them. _Adios amigos!_"

The _Baltika_ displaced eight thousand four hundred ninety-six tons and had accommodations for three hundred thirty pa.s.sengers. Of these, Hank Kuran estimated, approximately half were Scandinavians or British being transported between London, Copenhagen, Stockholm and Helsinki on the small liner's way to Leningrad.

Of the tourists, some seventy-five or so, Hank estimated that all but half a dozen were convinced that Russian skunks didn't stink, in spite of the fact that thus far they'd never been there to have a whiff. The few such as Loo Motlamelle, who was evidently the son of some African paramount chief, and Paco Rodriquez, had also never been to Russia but at least had open minds.

Far from black bread and borscht, he found the food excellent. The first morning they found caviar by the pound nestled in bowls of ice, as part of breakfast. He said across the table to Paco, "Propaganda. I wonder how many people in Russia eat caviar."

Paco spooned a heavy dip of it onto his bread and grinned back. "This type of propaganda I can appreciate. You Yankees should try it."

Char was also eating at the other side of the community type table.

She said, "How many Americans eat as well as the pa.s.sengers on United States Lines ships?"

It was as good an opportunity as any for Hank to place his character in the eyes of his fellow Progressive Tours pilgrims. His need was to establish himself as a moderately square tourist on his way to take a look-see at highly publicized Russia. Originally, the C.I.A. men had wanted him to be slightly pro-Soviet, but he hadn't been sure he could handle that convincingly enough. More comfortable would be a role as an averagely anti-Russian tourist--not fanatically so, but averagely.

If there were any KGB men aboard, he wanted to dissolve into mediocrity so far as they were concerned.

Hank said now, mild indignation in his voice. "Do you contend that the average Russian eats as well as the average American?"

Char took a long moment to finish the bite she had in her mouth. She shrugged prettily. "How would I know? I've never been to the Soviet Union." She paused for a moment before adding, "However, I've done a certain amount of traveling and I can truthfully say that the worst slums I have ever seen in any country that can be considered civilized were in the Harlem district and the lower East Side of New York."

All eyes were turned to him now, so Hank said, "It's a big country and there are exceptions. But on the average the United States has the highest standard of living in the world."

Paco said interestedly, "What do you use for a basis of measurement, my friend? Such things as the number of television sets and movie theaters? To balance such statistics, I understand that per capita your country has the fewest number of legitimate theaters of any of--I use Miss Moore's term--the civilized countries."

A Londoner, two down from Hank, laughed nastily. "Maybe schooling is the way he measures. I read in the _Express_ the other day that even after Yankees get out of college they can't read proper. All they learn is driving cars and dancing and togetherness--wotever that it."

Hank grinned inwardly and thought, _You don't sound as though you read any too well yourself, my friend._ Aloud he said, "Very well, in a couple of days we'll be in the promised land, I contend that free enterprise performs the greatest good for the greatest number."

"Free enterprise," somebody down the table snorted. "That means the freedom for the capitalists to pry somebody else out of the greatest part of what he produces."

By the time they'd reached Leningrad aside from Paco and Loo, his cabinmates, Hank had built an Iron Curtain all of his own between himself and the other members of the Progressive Tours trip. Which was the way he wanted it. He could foresee a period when having friends might be a handicap when and if he needed to drift away from the main body for any length of time.

Actually, the discussions he ran into were on the juvenile side. Hank Kuran hadn't spent eight years of his life as a field man working against the Soviet countries in the economic sphere without running into every argument both pro and con in the continuing battle between Capitalism and Communism. Now he chuckled to himself at getting into tiffs over the virtues of Russian black bread versus American white, or whether Soviet jets were faster than those of the United States.

With Char Moore, though she tolerated Hank's company, in fact, seemed to prefer it to that of whatever other males were aboard, it was continually a matter of rubbing fur the wrong way. She was ready to battle it out on any phase of politics, international affairs or West versus East.

But it was the visitors from s.p.a.ce that actually dominated the conversation of the ship--crew, tourists, business travelers, or whoever. Information was still limited, and Taas the sole source.

Daily there were multilingual radio broadcasts tuned in by the _Baltika_ but largely they added little to the actual information on the extraterrestrials. It was mostly Soviet back-patting on the significance of the fact that the Galactic Confederation emissaries had landed in the Soviet complex rather than among the Western countries.

Hank learned little that he hadn't already known. The Kremlin had all but laughingly declined a suggestion on the part of Switzerland that the extraterrestrials be referred to that all but defunct United Nations. The delegates from the Galactic Confederation had chose to land in Moscow. In Moscow they should remain until they desired to go elsewhere. The Soviet implication was that the alien emissaries had no desire, intention nor reason to visit other sections of Earth. They had contacted the dominant world power and could complete their business within the Kremlin walls.

Leningrad came as only a mild surprise to Henry Kuran. With his knowledge of Russian and his position in Morton Twombly's department, he had kept up with the Soviet progress though the years.

As early as the middle 1950s unbiased travelers to the U.S.S.R. had commented in detail upon the explosion of production in the country.

By the end of the decade such books as Gunther's "Inside Russia Today"

had dwelt upon the ultra-cleanliness of the cities, the mushrooming of apartment houses, the easing of the restrictions of Stalin's day--or at least the beginning of it.

He actually hadn't expected peasant clad, half starved Russians furtively shooting glances at their neighbors for fear of the secret police. Nor a black bread and cabbage diet. Nor long lines of the politically suspect being hauled off to Siberia. But on the other hand he was unprepared for the prosperity he did find.

[Ill.u.s.tration]

Not that this was any paradise, worker's or otherwise. But it still came as a mild surprise. Henry Kuran couldn't remember so far back that he hadn't had his daily dose of anti-Russianism. Not unless it was for the brief respite during the Second World War when for a couple of years the Red Army had been composed of heroes and Stalin had overnight become benevolent old Uncle Joe.

There weren't as many cars on the streets as in American cities, but there were more than he had expected nor were they 1955 model Packards. So far as he could see, they were approximately the same cars as were being turned out in Western Europe.

Public transportation, he admitted, was superior to that found in the Western capitals. Obviously, it would have to be, without automobiles, buses, streetcars and subways would have to carry the brunt of traffic. However, it was the spotless efficiency of public transportation that set him back.

The shops were still short of the pinnacles touched by Western capitals. They weren't empty of goods, luxury goods as well as necessities, but they weren't overflowing with the endless quant.i.ties, the hundred-shadings of quality and fashion that you expected in the States.

But what struck nearest to him was the fact that the people in the streets were not broken spirited depressed, humorless drudges. In fact, why not admit it, they looked about the same as people in the streets anywhere else. Some laughed, some looked troubled. Children ran and played. Lovers held hands and looked into each other's eyes.

Some reeled under an overload of vodka. Some hurried along, business bent. Some dawdled, window shopped, or strolled along for the air.

Some read books or newspapers as they shuffled, radar directed, and unconscious of the world about them.

They were only a day and half in Leningrad. They saw the Hermitage, comparable to the Louvre and far and above any art museum in America.

They saw the famous subway--which deserved its fame. They were ushered through a couple of square miles of the Elektrosile electrical equipment works, claimed ostentatiously by the to be the largest in the world. They ate in restaurants as good as any Hank Kuran had been able to afford at home and stayed one night at the Astoria Hotel.

At least, Hank had the satisfaction of grumbling about the plumbing.