Even in an age when technology had reduced almost all gemstones to baubles, the Alversen Diamonds were beyond man's power to duplicate. They were priceless, and astonishing in beauty. And their theft from the National Space Museum in Houston was little short of a national calamity.
Two weeks later the FBI was still looking for its first useful clue. And the President was turning on the heat and making "suggestions."
"Try to see this the President's way," urged Attorney General Larkle. "Congress is acting salty, the TV comics are making jokes, and the public is annoyed. Maybe the public is frightened, too. A theft like this is enough to make anybody feel unsafe! It's only natural for the President to want somebody he has faith in on the case." FBI Director Caude retorted angrily, "Sure, but the President doesn't have to work with Otto Hoffmann! He doesn't know what an unbearable bitchtard that guy is! Damn it, I've never run into a criminal who could touch Hoffmann for pure despicability!"
"I know," the Attorney General nodded glumly. "I've worked with him before, myself. But we have to admit, Caude, that Hoffmann has shown he can make sense out of situations that stump everybody else. Anyway, the President says get him, so why fight it?"
"Oh, I'm not fighting it! Fact is, I ordered him brought in last night, and word came a couple of hours ago that my agents have located him and are bringing him in now. But I'll be damned if this makes sense to me. We lose maybe half a dozen starships a year, plus a lot of good men, and nobody turns a hair. But let a couple of gaudy rocks get stolen and the whole country's in a swivet!" He paused, and then brightened. "Say, maybe Hoffmann will refuse the assignment. He was pretty burned up at me the last time he did an FBI job."
"Don't count on it," said the Attorney General. "I hear he's hurting for money and his ex-wife's bugging him for back alimony."
At that moment the door opened and Otto Hoffmann himself, with the form and demeanor of an enraged grizzly bear, lumbered in to stand before Caude's desk.
"Okay, fuzz-master," he snarled. "What now?" Hoffman's face, like the faces of many people, wore a perpetual scowl. But whereas most scowls come from squinting in the sun too long, or from long hours of browpuckering thought, Hoffmann's scowl was the genuine article—the exterior display of a loathing (and therefore loathful) inner man.
His small pig-eyes were nearly lost in the vast, ugly, booze-bloated face that hunched above an equally boozebloated body. Nor did the scars of numerous brawls enhance his appearance, although these disfigurements were old and faded. Hoffman had gained a reputation as a "mean drunk," and bar-room habitué s had learned not to tangle with him.
But he was a man of rare ability. The story was that his gift came from an unusual upbringing, from a crackpot father who had taught him at an early age that man's greatest sin was self-deception. As a result Hoffmann saw the world with eyes unobscured by man's stock of comforting fantasies, and this made him very wise. He saw himself the same way, and this made him very bitter.
"Good morning, Mr. Hoffmann," Caude said, trying to be pleasant. "I hope my agents didn't interrupt—I—"
"Skip the small-talk, fuzz!" barked Hoffmann. "What's the deal?"
"We, er, wish to engage your services on a case—"
"My fee is one million dollars, payable in advance."
"A million? In advance?" gasped Attorney General Larkle. "Surely you must be joking, Hoffmann! The amount is out of the question, and payment in advance is against regulations!"
"Look, tumble-tongue, the last time you guys suckered me to do your work for you, I waited ten months for my pay, and then had to go to court to get it. This time I don't start until I have Uncle Skinflint's check certified and deposited. Otherwise, you figure out for yourself what happened to the Alversen Diamonds."
Caude's eyes narrowed. "Who told you this was about the Alversen Diamonds?" he demanded.
Hoffmann sneered, "Try to hide your imbecility, fuzz. If I had to be told why you needed me, I'd be too stupid to do the job in the first place. Well, speak up! I'm not going to stand here all day!"
The men glared at him for an instant, then Larkle said, "I'm prepared to give you a check for five hundred thousand now, and the remaining five hundred thousand will be paid upon your successful solution of the case."
"Okay," said Hoffmann.
"Okay?" asked Larkle in surprise.
"Sure. Give me the check. As soon as it's deposited in my account I'll be ready to go to work. But I know damn well I'll never see that second half-million!"
Feeling as if he had been had, Larkle complied. Was this all Hoffmann had expected to get? he wondered. No matter. Hoffmann had probably guessed the FBI would never have brought him in except for orders from On High, so the dickering advantage had been on Hoffmann's side.
With the check in his beefy hand, Hoffmann said, "I'll be back in half an hour. Get the case file out for me to go over. And bring Alversen in for a conference this afternoon."
"Bring Mr. Alversen in? We couldn't do that!"
"Why not? Your strong-arm goons didn't apologize about dragging me out of bed."
"But—but we—he's Hank Alversen!" sputtered Caude.
"And the law is a respecter of persons!" snarled Hoffmann. "Oh, never mind! If you won't bring him in, arrange for us to go to him. This afternoon." He stuffed the check in a pocket and stomped out of the office.
"He's right about one thing," Larkle growled. "He'll never see that second five hundred thousand, the arrogant S.O.B.!"
"Hell! He put you over a barrel as it was," complained Caude in disgust. "Do you realize I don't earn five hundred thousand in ten years?"
Larkle nodded and grinned. "Don't take it too hard, Caude. I don't mean to let him keep that money."
"Oh," said Caude, and he grinned, too.
When Otto Hoffmann returned from the bank he settled his bulk behind a vacant desk and read through the file on the Alversen Diamonds theft. This, thought Caude, was a waste of time, because there was precious little in the file that had not been in the newscasts.
And everyone knew the story of the gems and their great discoverer, Henry Alversen.
While still in his early twenties, Alversen had been the first man to penetrate the asteroid belt beyond Mars. Afterward, the young NSA pilot had gone on to be the first explorer of the Jovian satellites, and still later he had captained the initial expedition to Saturn.
He was only thirty-five when the starship drive was developed, but he gracefully stepped aside to allow other men the glory of leading the long voyages to the stars. Much remained to be explored within the sun's own system, and Alversen was content to follow through the work he had begun. He surveyed hundreds of the bare rocks and metallic chunks of the asteroid belt. And he set a record for the closest orbital approach to the surface of Jupiter—a record that still stood unchallenged thirty years later.
He found the diamonds in the course of these explorations. The find made him a millionaire many times over, but the discovery had its frustrating side. His report told the story:
He was surveying a small but unusually dense chunk in the asteroid belt when a glittering reflection from deep in a metallic crevice caught his eye. Fascinated and curious, he put a ramjack in the crevice and pried the walls apart, breaking loose a large section of the brittle planetoid in the process. He drifted down to the source of the glitter, and found the partially exposed surface of a globe only a few feet in diameter, a globe with a curiously "manufactured" look. Certainly there was no doubt that the large gems studding its surface had been cut and faceted by some intelligent being.
Two of the gems were loose enough for him to pick free and stow in his pouch. But as he studied the task of releasing the entire globe from the mass of the planetoid, he became aware that the section he had pried free in opening the crevice was drifting away quite rapidly, and his ship was anchored to that chunk.
He dived after his ship, but several minutes passed before he caught up with it. By the time he had boarded it and released the anchor, his treasure trove had drifted out of sight in a direction he could not guess. He spiraled his ship in the vicinity for days of futile search before giving up.
The loss was deplorable, not merely because of the unique qualities of the two diamonds he did bring back, but because the globe was almost certainly a relic of a highly-advanced civilization. There had been speculation since the first telescopic sightings of the asteroids that these fragments were the remains of a planet, perhaps bearing life, that had once occupied the wide orbital gap between Mars and Jupiter. But no fossils or other relics had been found, which made Alversen's Diamonds, and his report of the object they had decorated, of unique interest. Also, no semblance of intelligent life had been found within the seven-parsec sphere of space explored by the starships. The diamonds were man's only evidence that he was not totally alone in all space and time.
And the diamonds had a feature far beyond man's power to duplicate: the planes of their crystalline structure were not flat. The plane that had paralleled the surface of their globular mounting had a positive curvature approximating that of the globe's surface. The diamonds had, in effect, been "wrapped around" the small segments of the globe they had covered. How that curving had been achieved was a matter of considerable scientific debate. Most experts agreed that nothing less than a gravitational field too concentrated to be found in nature—so intense that it created a closed spacewarp in its vicinity—would yield an environment in which such "bent" diamonds could crystallize. The creatures who produced this gravitational field must have been highly advanced, indeed.
The loss of the major portion of his find seemed to take the drive out of Alversen. He returned to Earth, sold the diamonds to the U.S. government, and never ventured into space again. A man of wealth as a result of the sale, and of immense prestige, he lived in pleasant (if perhaps melancholy) retirement.
As for the diamonds, they had been studied, marveled at, speculated over, and finally installed in a special gallery on the top floor of the National Space Museum. Millions of people filed past the well-protected display case to gaze at their clear, wondrous beauty. And then one night they were stolen.
It was strictly a space-age theft, one that would have been impossible a very few decades earlier. Even now, the FBI's experts were hard-pressed to explain just what types of equipment had been used to nullify the surveillance systems, and to muffle the noise made when a gaping hole was torn through the museum's roof.
At last Otto Hoffmann tossed the file aside with a disdainful snort. He got up and stomped into Caude's office. "I'm going to drink some lunch, fuzz," he said.
"When I get back I want to go see old Heroic Hank."
"You can eat on the clopter," said Caude, rising. "I've been in touch with Mr. Alversen. He said to come whenever we wished."
He led the way to the roof where a large-cabin clopter was waiting. The Attorney General was already aboard, and the clopter was quickly in the air speeding westward. Ninety minutes later it drifted down on the Alversen estate in the Rockies. The three men were ushered into the spacious, cheerful living room where Alversen himself made them welcome.
Now in his seventies, Alversen still had the warm sincerity that had always endeared him to close friends, casual acquaintances, and to the public at large. Age had, if anything, actually improved him by contributing a quiet dignity to his bearing.
Larkle and Caude, grumpy and morose from their long clopter ride with the unbearable Hoffmann, brightened immediately in the warmth of Alversen's presence. Hoffmann sulked while they chatted gaily with their host. Finally they got down to business. "As Caude told you on the phone, Hank," said Larkle, "we have asked Mr. Hoffmann to assist us in the diamond theft case, and he wishes to ask you some questions."
Alversen nodded and smiled at Hoffmann. "I'll be most happy to tell you anything I know, Mr. Hoffmann," he said, "but frankly, I don't see how I can be of much help in this deplorable matter."
"Thanks," Hoffmann said ungraciously. "Suppose you start by telling me how you came by the diamonds in the first place."
Alversen looked briefly startled, then said, "Very well, though I doubt if I can recall, after all these years, anything more than you will find in the published reports. But here goes: I was conducting a sampling-survey in the asteroid belt, time-space coordinates T24F13 somethingor-other, QQ700651 dash 445K, when I spotted a planetoid roughly two hundred meters long by—
"Hold it!" Hoffmann snapped peevishly, waving his arms. "I know that bilboesque yarn as well as you do. It's time to come clean, Alversen. Let's have the real poop!"
"Bilboesque?" hissed the scandalized Attorney General. "Come clean? Really, Hoffmann! We didn't bring you out here to insult Mr. Alversen! Hank, I must apologize, but perhaps you know something of Hoffmann by repute.
He's. . .he's. . . " The Attorney General stopped, unequal to the task of finding words to define the obnoxiousness of Otto Hoffmann.
"He's a realist!" Hoffmann himself supplied. "That's what I am, Alversen, a realist! I'm a man with damn few illusions—about the universe or my stinking fellow-man. I was a realist even as a child, the first time I ever heard your fairy tale about finding those diamonds. Let's have the facts this time!"
Alversen was displaying the shocked puzzlement with which the innocent often react to absurd accusations. "I don't. . . " he began, "I . . . I really don't know what to say to you, Mr. Hoffmann. I can only tell you what happened. I can't invent a different story for you!"
"Sure you could," sneered Hoffmann. "You're a good inventor of stories. Listen to me, Alversen! The human race acts foolishly enough when it has accurate knowledge for a guide. When its knowledge is wrong, it acts like a damned idiot. And you've handed the world a hunk of nonsense that could make us behave stupidly enough to get ourselves killed!" He stared disgustedly at the old spaceman and added, "If you don't tell your story straight, I will. It'll sound better coming from you." Alversen glanced helplessly at the others and shrugged, "What do I say to this? Is this some kind of joke?"
"Not one we're in on, I assure you!" huffed Larkle.
"Hoffmann, if this is the best you can do—"
"Keep your cool, mouthpiece," growled Hoffmann.
"I know what I'm doing! Maybe you guys don't know about bowerbirds."
"Bowerbirds?"
"Yeah. They live in Australia and New Guinea. Very amusing animals, and instructive to observe. They get their name from the male bird's habit of building a grass bower in mating season. Then he decorates his bower with bright flowers, leaves, pebbles, pieces of glass-anything that might catch the females' fancy. A lot of ornament stealing goes on, and the sharpest cock winds up with the pick of the decorations in his bower. That gives him the pick of the hens, which makes the system practical."
The FBI Director was glaring fiercely, at him. "Hoffmann," he stormed, "if you're trying to tell us a bowerbird stole the Alversen Diamonds, I swear I'll have you committed!"
"You're close, fuzz, close!" leered Hoffmann with mock approval. "I'm telling you that a creature which frequently displays bowerbird-like behavior stole the diamonds. Of course an ordinary bowerbird couldn't have done it, but this creature could."
"What creature?"
Hoffmann flicked a thumb toward Alversen. "That one."
"This is ridiculous!" protested Alversen. "I haven't been near the Space Museum in five years!"
"Who said you had?" demanded Hoffmann. "You didn't steal the diamonds from the museum. Nobody did."
" What?" yelped the Attorney General. "That's nonsense! They're gone, aren't they?"
Hoffmann shrugged and looked sourer than usual. Finally he said, "Gents, I'm going to kick some of your most cherished beliefs to death, so steel yourselves to bear up under the grief.
"First, Heroic Hank here is no incorruptible paragon. The bowerbird in his soul was too much for him! But don't think too unkindly of him. Each of us contains a touch of bowerbird, along with touches of mouse, skunk, snake, peacock, and so on. Sometimes I wonder if the difference between man and the lower animals is merely that man can choose, from one moment to the next, which other animal's instinctive behavior would best suit his needs." Hoffmann grinned crookedly and added, "For example, I am now copying the hawk, or maybe the buzzard.
"Second, we don't have this neck of the universe to ourselves, as everybody likes to think—though Alversen knows better! In reality we're a minor lifeform around here."
"Our ships have explored the planets of dozens of stars," the Attorney General observed ponderously, "and have found no trace of past or present intelligent life."
"Naturally not!" snapped Hoffmann impatiently.
"Why should superior life hang around something as undependable as a star? They wouldn't be living on planets at all. Look. You know there are more dwarf stars than giant stars. Right? And it follows there are more sub-dwarfs than dwarfs. The smaller stellar bodies are, the more numerous they're likely to be. Within five lightyears of the sun is only one other bright-star system, Alpha Centauri, but there has to be dozens of small stars closer than that—stars too small to radiate noticeable light, but big enough to have slow nuclear fission processes in their interiors to provide them with warm surfaces and atmospheres.
"I'm not making all this up! Sub-dwarfs are in astronomy textbooks—not mentioned often, I admit, but that's because man isn't much interested in little dark stars that have enough gravity and atmosphere to crush him. But life could evolve on such a world and find it quite satisfactory . . . plenty of surface on a world that size to let a society spread itself out! And plenty of similar worlds just light-weeks away, to colonize or to trade with. And a very stable energy situation, because a world like that could outlast two or three suns.
"That's where The People live in this neck of the universe, gents. The People! We, a particular breed of animals, live in what The People must consider barren waste, on a cold little clinker near a scorching ball of gas that throws all sorts of deadly radiation at us. A fit place for bowerbirds, maybe, but not for The People." Alversen smiled. "What you say about the existence of sub-dwarfs is accurate enough, Mr. Hoffmann. But when you speak of these so-called People, I'm afraid you're fantasizing."
"No, I'm real-izing," countered Hoffmann. "I don't miss on telling reality from non-reality, Alversen. Do you think the FBI hired me for my personal charm? You're licked, Heroic Hank! Why don't you give up and confess?"
Alversen chuckled uncomfortably. "It's your story," he shrugged. "Go on with it."
"Okay. The People would be curious enough to explore some of our planets, and naturally, they would be most interested in planets that came closest to offering them a livable environment. If they sent a research team to the sun's system, the team would probably go to Jupiter, our biggest planet. The weather would be chilly for them, but the gravity and air pressure would be almost enough for comfort.
"But one thing would be the same for them and us—the economics of spaceflight. They wouldn't land their spaceship on Jupiter. They would leave it in orbit, and go down to the surface in small shuttle-ships."
He eyed Alversen coldly. "That's where you found the diamonds, Alversen-in a ship they left in orbit around Jupiter! Aside from fooling around in the asteroids, you're also the man who made the closest fly-by of the Jovian surface. Close enough to find their parked spaceship. You went aboard, found the diamonds, stole them, and came home with that innocent tale of a relic on an asteroid.
"That tale had to be nonsense! Maybe a diamond would survive a billion years in an asteroid, practically exposed to open space, but it wouldn't wind up looking like it had been cut yesterday, with all its facets smooth and shiny. Nobody should have believed your story for a minute, but it was your story, and you were the unblemished hero! Besides, your tale put this frightening supercivilization a comforting billion years in the past. So everybody politely pushed reality aside to make way for your fantasy."
"This is the wildest thing I've ever heard!" laughed Alversen, getting to his feet. "Who would like a drink?" Larkle and Caude declined numbly, but Hoffmann said, "If that invitation extends to me, I could do with a shot."
"Certainly," smiled Alversen, going to his bar. "I'm not the thin-skinned sort who would take this personally, Mr. Hoffmann. You were hired to do an important and difficult job for our country, and I sympathize with the vigor and, I'm sure, the sincerity, with which you're trying to do it." He downed a stiff jolt of bourbon, then refilled his glass and brought it, along with Hoffmann's drink, over from the bar. "But there are one or two points in your version that don't jibe with what I would call reality. You say I boarded an alien spaceship, swiped some diamonds, and scurried home. Mr. Hoffmann, surely you realize that the knowledge I could have gained aboard such a ship would be worth far more than all the diamonds I could carry."
Hoffmann nodded and slurped his drink. "That's true, but I'm not criticizing you for taking the diamonds instead. I probably couldn't have done much better myself. That ship must have been incomprehensible, and terrifying. The diamonds were probably the only things you saw that had any meaning to you. In your fright, you couldn't have done much thinking, anyway. You could only react, and with the diamonds staring you in the face, you reacted like a bowerbird."
"I see," grinned Alversen. "Then why didn't these aliens come after me to get their diamonds back?"
"They did. That's why I said the diamonds weren't stolen from the museum. They were reclaimed by their rightful owners!"
"If that's true, why did they do it so sneakily?"
"Not sneakily, but gently, when nobody was in the museum to get hurt," said Hoffmann. "Suppose an Australian rancher is out in his yard, looking at something through a magnifying glass. He leaves the glass there, and the next time he needs it he looks in the yard for it and it's gone. He's seen bowerbirds around, and reasons that one of them took it. This doesn't make him mad at the birds. He understands their instincts. So he goes to the area where the local birds have their bowers, and since his glass was a top prize that would have found its way into the top cock's bower, he gently pulls back the wall of that bower, takes his glass, and goes his way.
"That's what happened to the diamonds. When The People were ready to use their ship again, they saw the diamonds were gone (and I would guess the diamonds weren't there for looks but were parts of the ship's working gear). The People would have noticed us, of course, and watched us as we do bowerbirds, with amusement and mild curiosity. So they would have known the NSA was a sort of pluralized top cock in our society, and would have gone straight to NSA's bower, the Space Museum, to retrieve the diamonds."
Hoffmann finished his drink and looked around at Larkle and Caude, as if studying the effect of his words on them. He sneered at what he saw in their faces.
The Attorney General said in a tight voice, "I'll be a long time apologizing satisfactorily for exposing you to this arrogant nonsense, Hank. I'm truly sorry! May I use your phone for an urgent call?"
"Of course," smiled Alversen, looking a bit saddened. Larkle went to the phone and punched a number. The screen lighted to display the face of the president of the bank in which Hoffmann had deposited his check. The banker smiled in recognition.
"Hi, Pete," he said.
"Hello, Tony," said the Attorney General. "Tony, you have an account for one Otto Hoffmann. I'm hereby impounding that account, on the grounds that Hoffmann defrauded the government out of the five hundred thousand he deposited earlier today."
"All right, Pete. Put through the official notice within six hours, won't you?"
"Okay. But do you mind checking to make sure you have the account?"
"Just a second." The face disappeared briefly, then came back to say, "Yes, we have it. Name of Otto Hoffmann, with a federal check that size deposited today."
"That's the one! Impound it!"
"Right . . . But Pete . . . One thing . . . "
"What's that?" asked Larkle.
"There's only two thousand in the account. Hoffmann made the deposit, and then wrote checks to cover almost the whole amount. Three hundred thousand to Internal Revenue Service, one hundred and twenty thousand to a prepayment trust for a Mrs. Stella Ebert Hoffmann (sounds like he's paying alimony, doesn't it?), and there's one check marked 'one year's rent,' and another for a twelve-month triple-A dining card, and several marked 'payment of account in full.' Only two thousand left. But I'll impound that."
"Forget the whole thing!" bawled the Attorney General, slapping the phone off with a furious gesture. Hoffmann grinned with gloating triumph. "Let's see you start, big shyster," he snickered, "by conning IRS out of three hundred thousand!"
"Go to hell!" grated the Attorney General.
"Hadn't we better leave?" Caude murmured to him.
"Yeah, let's get this S.O.B. outta here!" Larkle barked.
"Again, Hank, my deepest apologies."
Alversen nodded and smiled forgivingly.
"Just one more thing," said Hoffmann. "Alversen, I want to remind you of something I said a while ago. You've got the world believing a dangerous lie, one that could get the whole human race smeared but good! Let's get back to that Australian rancher. When he went to recover his property the first time, he was good-humored about it. But suppose the next time it happened he was badly inconvenienced and got angry. The bowerbirds would no longer be a bunch of amusing goofs; they would suddenly be a damned nuisance. He would go after them with his gun."
Hoffmann rose and lumbered toward the door. "Well, so long, Heroic Hank! Sleep well tonight. One of the billions of lives you're endangering is mine, if you want a cheerful thought to sleep on."
"Wait," said Alversen quietly. They turned to look at him.
"The damned S.O.B.'s right," he gritted. "He's mixed up on some of the details—but he's right. I did lie about the diamonds, and I suppose the rightful owners took them from the museum. It's hard to explain any other way. '
Larkle and Caude sat down again, looking stunned.
"My God!" said Caude at last. "We can't let this get out. It would ruin Hank completely!"
Alversen lowered his head. "Thanks for considering me, but at my age it doesn't matter so much. I made the mistake, and I'm ready to pay for it."
Hoffmann snorted caustically but didn't speak.
"But this could play hell with morale, Hank!" protested Larkle. "The public needs heroes, and it needs them untarnished. I think we'd better hush the whole thing. Hoffmann's talking malarky about the danger, anyway, so there's no need to issue a warning about the aliens. If Hoffmann's summary is true, as you say it is, Hank, then the aliens have shown themselves to be highly civilized and, um, forebearing. If a human should offend them again, surely they will merely get in touch with us, to warn us."
Alversen shook his head. "We can't be sure of that, and the risk is too great to take."
"Some slight risk perhaps," argued the Attorney General. "But isn't it far more likely that they would prefer to talk it out with us?"
Hoffmann sneered and helped himself to some more of Alversen's liquor. "Tell me, big shyster," he demanded. "How likely are you to start a conversation with a bowerbird?"
The silence that followed was long and uncomfortable.