Hotel Cosmos

by Jonathan Burke

Genres: Science Fiction; Alien Contact; Time Travel

Synopsis

Harrison got to the hotel less than ten minutes after the manager had visio'd him. Two men followed him in, one of them sauntering casually across to the desk and giving no sign of recognition. Twenty yards away the squad car hummed a throbbing note as it generated the screen which would impenetrably surround the hotel until Harrison had finished. The man at the desk said: "Room with a bath for two days." "Earth atmosphere. sir?" said the desk clerk.

Release date: September 30, 2015

Publisher: Gateway

Print pages: 111

Sample

HARRISON got to the hotel less than ten minutes after the manager had visio’d him. Two men followed him in, one of them sauntering casually across to the desk and giving no sign of recognition.

Twenty yards away the squad car hummed a throbbing note as it generated the screen which would impenetrably surround the hotel until Harrison had finished.

The man at the desk said: “Room with bath for two days.”

“Earth atmosphere, sir?” said the desk clerk.

“Do I look like a Martian?”

“No, sir. Certainly not, sir.”

“Well, then …”

Harrison turned to the man who was with him and jerked his thumb in the direction of a door adjoining the desk.

“Come on, Brady.”

The desk clerk said: “Excuse me, sir, if you want to see the manager——”

“Interplanetary Investigation Bureau,” said Harrison tersely. “The manager sent for us.”

He knocked once, and pushed the door open without waiting for an answer. The manager got up from behind his desk and began talking at once.

“Glad you got here so fast. But let’s get it straight. I don’t want to make a big thing of this.”

“You don’t want to make a big thing of it?”

“I’ve got the reputation of the hotel to think of.”

“Too bad,” said Harrison tersely. “You sent for us.”

“Yes, but I don’t want to scare all the folks away.” The manager peered at him. “Who are you, anyway? Why didn’t Lanza come?”

“Lanza’s gone back home to Earth. I’m in charge now.”

“Oh.” The manager sounded dubious. “Lanza.” he said, “was always very—well, cooperative.”

“So we heard. That’s one reason why he was recalled.”

“Look … This is a good class hotel. I can’t afford to frighten business away. I want this thing cleared up quickly and without a lot of fuss, whatever it is.”

“Whatever it is,” Harrison echoed. He narrowed his bleak grey eyes and squinted ironically at the plump little man. “Shall I tell you what it is?”

“One of these damned mimic races, I suppose.”

“Yes. A specimen of one of them. The smartest of them all—a Uranian.”

“Oh,” said the manager blankly.

“Never had a Uranian in your hotel before?”

“No.”

“You’ve got a lot to learn. And this one is deadly. He’s escaped from the penal colony over at Pellucin.”

The manager uttered an unhappy moan and clutched his fat paunch.

“I knew it would happen sooner or later. I knew it. I always said there’d be trouble from that colony.”

“Why did you choose this planet, then?” said Harrison shortly. “Why didn’t you open a hotel some place else? No,” he added quickly, as the anguished man showed every sign of launching into a detailed answer, “don’t bother. Leave it. Forget I asked.”

Brady, hearing footsteps outside, opened the door and watched a long-limbed girl coming across the hall. She was headed for the main door. He slipped out and followed her. A moment later he came in and said:

“Dame wanted to go out for a walk in the grounds.”

“You told her the place was cut off?”

“Yeah. She still went on out.”

Harrison shrugged. “She’ll walk smack into the wall of force. She’ll be back.”

Brady said: “You don’t think maybe this is a false alarm, chief?”

The manager made an indignant noise in his throat, and Harrison wagged his head.

“Thanks for the suggestion, Brady. But for the time being we’ll act on the assumption that it’s genuine.”

Brady nodded. “Always like to get it square,” he said. He had an odd, toneless voice, and rather heavy, immobile features. When Harrison spoke to him again, his response came with a sort of formal neatness, as though relays had clicked somewhere and provided him with a cut-and-dried formula.

“Go and see the house detective,” Harrison said, “and then do some quiet snooping.”

“I’ll do that,” said Brady. “The usual routine.”

“If you get a chance to apply the refraction test, use it——”

“Naturally. That’s the way I’m built, chief.”

“Shoot if you have to—but remember they’re hard to kill.”

When Brady had gone, plodding out with sober determination, Harrison turned back to the manager. “I suppose we can take it that it wasn’t a mirage?”

“It was no mirage,” squealed the manager indignantly.

“All right, then. Tell me just what it was.”

“I told you over the visio.”

“Details,” said Harrison; “let’s have details. You know we’re in a tricky position on this planet. Nobody loves the I.I.B. The locals don’t like the penal colony, and they don’t like the Bureau. If there’s going to be any rough stuff, we want a clear case.” He leaned back and made sure that the door was shut. “All right, let’s have it.”

The Hotel Cosmos was one of the most impressive buildings in Junction City. It could certainly claim to be the most impressive hotel. The others weren’t even worthy of the name of hotel. Itinerant spacemen from the ships that converged on this springboard planet, this bleak but invaluable world that was a junction between two great star systems, weren’t looking for quietness and civilised surroundings. After being cooped up in ships for months on end, they wanted to raise hell. Nobody stopped here for long: a night, or perhaps at the most two or three nights while ships were being refuelled or sometimes repaired in the spacious docks.

Gambling saloons lined the rowdy streets. It was a town of ephemeral pleasures. You didn’t stay here, and you didn’t care what the place was like. There was no question of politeness, of leaving the place as you would have wished to find it. You got drunk and threw away some of the space credits that had been piling up during those weary months of travel. Perhaps you had a woman. The women weren’t all you might have wished for, but at least they were young. Few of them lived to be old.

Freighters and military ships put in, and their crews ravaged the town. From time to time a grim prison ship would settle down and deliver its cargo of misery to the colony of Pellucin. Then it would return with official freight. It never took anyone away from the penal colony. Prisoners who came to Pellucin came to stay.

Passenger vessels rarely called at this raw, rough outpost. When one did come in, on some inter-galactic trip, the passengers might arrange to be awakened from their luxurious suspended animation just out of curiosity, so that when they got home they could say they had seen Junction City. Their curiosity was, as a rule, soon satisfied, and in no time at all they would be seeking refuge in Hotel Cosmos. Here they would huddle into the bar or look out from the long perslite windows of the lounge on to the sprawling, garish town below, speculating about the awful things that might be going on there. The hotel also catered for the administrators and officials who passed through. It was well equipped, ready to cope with anyone from the known planetary systems. It could even make shift to accommodate unexpected newcomers in its specially pressurised rooms, with an adjustable atmospheric control plant.

The owner and manager was Mr. Oliver. Plump and eternally perspiring, he rarely left the shelter of his own building. He liked the artificial Earth gravity of his well appointed rooms rather than the giddy lightness of the outdoors. Besides, there were too many crooks out there who would have been glad to hold him up and beat some of his money out of him. He trembled when he thought of the jungle creatures who prowled around out there. They resented his hotel just as they resented the strong I.I.B. representation on the planet and the penal colony hundreds of miles away, over on the cold side of the world: the colony was no real nuisance to them, but it kept reminding them of their own possible futures, and they found that irritating.

The natives of the planet had, at first, neither welcomed nor resented the pioneers who established the original station here. They were slender bipeds with frail wings that assisted movement, enabling them to skim above the ground after a good thrust away with their feet, but that could not sustain them in flight for any great distance and that would not work at any considerable altitude. They had lived simple unambitious lives. It was only in the course of time that, having slowly and almost indifferently learned to read and to acquire various ideas from the newcomers, they developed nationalistic convictions and began to demand their freedom. They had never made any use of this freedom when they had had it, and could not even now be called an oppressed race—only a small part of the planet was in foreign hands—but with the stubborn illogicality that was such a feature of their make-up they took every opportunity of protesting to the Bureau about fancied abuses and insults. They were great arguers and pleaders, with a talent for disconcerting irrelevancies that led every argument into confusion. The military authorities and the Bureau had little time for such endless, frustrating discussions. They had discovered that it was best not to provoke trouble in the first place. Steer clear of the Peebies—that was good policy. Remember the lawsuits and interminable complaints and the long-drawn-out bickering over that Peebie who was shot by mistake during the investigation into the Casey’s Saloon murder. Remember, and watch your step …

Harrison knew the instructions. He knew them, and as a recent arrival on the planet he was determined to play safe.

“But this was no mirage,” Mr. Oliver insisted.

He had been coming along the second floor corridor of the hotel, walking quietly so that he might have a chance of coming unexpectedly on one of the staff—Sirian refugees, most of them, flatteringly obsequious by nature but also incorrigibly lazy—taking an unauthorised rest. He turned the corner, and saw one of the guests, a Sirian squadron commander, coming out of his room and going towards the lift. And then, when the lift had gone down, the same man came once more out of the room and padded silently off in the direction of the second floor lounge.

“I thought I was seeing things. Well, who wouldn’t? But I glanced into the lounge, and there he was—one of them was, anyway—looking through the official directory. And I went downstairs—fast—and there was the other, in the bar. He spends a lot of time in the bar, that one … that is, one of them does—I mean, the one I think he is …” He flapped his arms despairingly.

Harrison said: “You didn’t call the local police?”

“Peebie police?” said Oliver scornfully. “Can’t trust ’em a yard. And I didn’t want to look a fool. I thought the best thing was to check with you. But I didn’t know it was going to be like this. I——”

There was a rap on the door. Oliver looked at Harrison. Harrison nodded. Oliver called out:

“Come in.”

The door opened, and a young woman came in. She was tawny haired and had a proud, beautiful mouth. She was long-legged without being lanky. Even in the middle of his lamentations the manager could not repress a fat, yearning smile. She brought magic and excitement into the room.

She said: “Mr. Oliver, I can’t get out of the building. Something’s happened. What does all this mean?”

Then she turned and saw Harrison. Her brown-flecked eyes opened wide, and a flush ran warmly under her smooth cheeks.

“You …! What are you doing here?”

Harrison fumbled incredulously for words. He saw that she was as lovely as ever, and knew that his belief that he had forgotten her was nonsense. He hadn’t forgotten, and never could: and that was bad.

At last he managed to say: “I volunteered. I thought it was time I got away. Any objections?”

“It’s nothing to do with me,” she said tautly.

Isn’t it? his eyes silently asked her. She looked away.

“I’m so very sorry, Miss Lovat,” said the manager, automatically falling into his professional manner. “It’s most distressing, I know. Most distressing. But this officer is here to—er—to make some routine enquiries, and it has been necessary to close the hotel for a short period. You won’t be inconvenienced for long, I promise you.”

“Don’t be too free with your promises,” advised Harrison.

There was a moment’s silence. Then the girl said:

“Still playing bloodhounds?”

“When there’s a nasty smell,” he said curtly, “it’s my job to follow it.”

“And you have authority to stop anyone going out of this building?”

“Yes,” said Harrison. “Until we’ve got the … the creature we’re looking for.”

She stared at him imperiously for a few seconds, as though to defy him, then turned and went out of the room.

Harrison felt a constriction . . .