The Double Spy Part 3

"And our inter-planetary friend?"

"Well, I don't know about his soul, Chief, but his body isn't around anywhere. I guess it just turned into steam with the rest of the house. A lot of women are going to be sad as h.e.l.l."

I saw the Chief's fists clenched on the desk. He was still taut from the strain of the last few hours. Finally he reached for the silver cigarette box on his desk. His fingers jerked crazily as he put a cigarette in his mouth. He pa.s.sed the box to me. I took one and started fumbling in my pockets for a match. The Chief snapped open the top of his big desk lighter, and held it over to me. I put the cigarette into the flame and drew deeply. The flame was at least three inches high. The Chief leaned forward, his eyes riveted on me. There was a queer, expectant look on his face. I stared back at him, puzzled. Finally he snapped the lighter shut, and turned to the wall.

"It's all right, boys," he said.

A door with grille-work along the front opened up. I saw Joe Evans and Tom Hardy and Jim Reid standing there with tommy guns, pointed right at my head.

The Chief laughed at my expression of bewilderment.

"I wasn't taking any chances, Nat. You can't afford to in a situation like this. No matter how sure you are, you can't gamble the whole future of your own world. I wanted to be d.a.m.ned certain that you really were Nat Brown, and not His Excellency's humble servant from the planet Venus. If you had flinched so much as one eyelash, Nat, when I held that lighter up to your face, three tommy guns would have opened up on you--all at one and the same time."

I felt suddenly limp. I uttered a long audible whistle of relief.

The Chief's voice was low and solemn. "Think what we've escaped, Nat--think how close he came to getting loose on our world!"

I took the letter out and threw it on his desk. "After you read this, Chief, you'll appreciate it a little more. The last paragraph is mine.

I picked up the letter while the boys were loading the TNT down in the bas.e.m.e.nt."

While the Chief was reading the letter I got up and looked at the map of the United States behind him. Each of the colored pinheads had names printed on them. Grouped around Silver Springs, Maryland, were two pins. One was labeled "Chief." The other was labeled "Nat Brown."

I turned to the Chief. "I wish you would do one thing for me."

"I'll do anything for you."

"Instead of calling us 'Chief' and 'Nat Brown,' call us 'Excellency'

and 'Your Humble Servant.'"

The Chief chuckled. "There has never been any humor on that board, and by G.o.d, it's high time there was." He rang the buzzer. "Mrs. Sperling, change the 'Chief' and 'Nat Brown' pins to 'Excellency' and 'Your Humble Servant.'"

Her eyes widened a bit, but the labels were changed on the spot.

When the Chief got to that part about the recommendations he read them out loud. Then he began to pace the room.

"Nat," he said, "I'm going to see that you get some very special recognition for the job you have done. I mean recognition from the White House itself. Of course we can't give it any publicity--at least not yet--but it will mean a lot more money for you."

"Thanks, Chief, I can use it."

"In your opinion, what should we do now, as our next step?" He paused.

"Or should we just do nothing?"

"I think we've got to be careful that they don't send anyone else down here. Or maybe it is 'up' here. We've got to get messages back to his 'Excellency' every once in a while from 'Your Humble Servant.' I know how to do it now. The launching tube is still intact in its shed.

There are ten rockets, so we can send at least ten messages. Time plays in our favor--since they have apparently lost the ability to reproduce themselves, they are dying out. If we can hold them off for a long enough period, we'll be safe forever. The most important thing, Chief, is to be sure we know it if they land any more 'humble servants' on the earth."

The Chief nodded approval. "How can we make sure we'll know it?"

"It's hard to make absolutely sure, but why not send me out on a roving mission to set up an international organization to detect such a creature? What we want is information about anyone, anywhere, who is unusually strong or unusually attractive to women, or eats six or eight meals a day, or who has the other queer powers they have. I could get all the information coming in from all over the world, process it here, and only bother you when we found something suspicious."

The Chief was enthusiastic. "You've thought yourself up a job, Nat.

Take three weeks vacation to get yourself rested up, and then get started."

I walked down the long marble corridors away from the Chief's office, and went down in the elevator and out into the street. As I walked along in the crowds I felt the warmth of bodies as they pa.s.sed me. I suddenly realized the novocaine was beginning to wear off. I didn't get out any too soon. My chin ached and throbbed. That hot searing flame had come so close ... from now on my nightmares would be of that moment when the Chief was holding the lighter to my cigarette. But one thing sang through my being; the battle was won. In a month my world travels for the F.B.I. would start.

Like a phoenix, I, the new Nat Brown, had risen re-born from the ashes of the Nat Brown vaporized by the explosion. What could his thoughts have been, lying tied up on the living room floor waiting for twenty tons of TNT to go off? Waiting, while I held the mirror in front of me and slowly made my face into an exact replica of his. He must have known then that I would get his job, and get his wife, Helene, and finally get his world. He realized then that His Excellency would send down hundreds more like me and that I would be the screen between them and the F.B.I., that I would instruct them and encourage them and give them aid and safety for their missions.

As I neared the Cathedral I looked west on Ma.s.sachusetts Avenue. The sun had just set and the Evening Star was hanging like a lantern in the sky--my homeland, the radiant planet which men on earth call Venus. Venus, they have told me, means love. What a superb and cosmic joke that is! I looked at the beautiful orb on the horizon and was filled with the triumphant excitement of being the earth-man, Nat Brown, of going home to my wife, Helene, one of the thousands who would breed thousands who would breed thousands.