The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Double Spy, by Dan T. Moore

This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org


Title: The Double Spy

Author: Dan T. Moore

Illustrator: Sanford Kossin

Release Date: March 26, 2010 [EBook #31788]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE DOUBLE SPY ***




Produced by Sankar Viswanathan, Greg Weeks, and the Online
Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net

THE DOUBLE SPY

By Dan T. Moore

Illustrator: Sanford Kossin

DEAR EXCELLENCY:

The communicating time will be here soon. I have started this letter early to be sure it will be ready. This is the first time I have felt safe when communicating with you. Our enemies at home can solve such extraordinarily complex ciphers that I have always been uneasy before. They cannot possibly solve an entirely new language like this one; a language based on an utterly different theory from our own; with new symbols; and even set down with a different writing instrument. Our long periods of study together have brought their reward. Your Excellency, I appreciate the rare privilege of knowing a language that only one other person at home knows, and that one person, yourself.

I am having many dangers and horrors in America. As we both realized, it is impossible to carry out my mission without lots of their money. I could not even begin my work, nor buy the expensive equipment needed for my experiments without finding a way to make money.

In only a few weeks I discovered the quickest and easiest way to do it was to become an entertainer. The people here like to be shocked and astonished. Naturally I am well equipped to do both. I was an immediate sensation. I got into what New Yorkers call "The Big Time."

Each night at 8:30 I went to a theatre in a place called Times Square and put on my act. Thousands of people paid to see me. I was very well paid. There is a newspaper here called "Variety." It carried an article about me. The headline said: STRONG MAN TERRIF WOW SOCKEROO 100G 3D. The numbers at the end mean the theatre took in $100,000 during my third week. After the article appeared every seat was sold weeks in advance.

You will be amused, Excellency, when you hear what I did in this show. I came out on the stage practically nude except for an abbreviated leopard skin. I walked over to a pile of iron rods. They were half-inch concrete reinforcing bars about six feet long. I picked one out and dropped it on the floor. It made a terrible crash. This was to prove to the audience that it was real. Then I wrapped it around my neck and tied it in a regular four-in-hand necktie knot. It was a little hard to get the ends to come out even. I had to pull and haul to arrange them just right. This caused tremendous laughter. They knew no one could do this with an iron reinforcing bar. They were sure it was a trick.

I chose the man in the audience who was laughing the loudest and asked him to come up on the stage. With a little persuasion he did so. I selected another iron bar and wrapped it around his neck. Then I tied it in a four-in-hand knot and adjusted the ends until they were perfect. I asked him to take the necktie off. He grabbed it with both hands and tried. His face turned purple with effort, but of course he could not even budge it. Everyone laughed loudly. Finally twenty men from the audience volunteered to help. They all started pulling and hauling. They couldn't get the iron necktie off. Then the audience became silent. They looked at each other uneasily. There were frightened whispers.

That was the time to break the tension. I would spit on the floor. As my saliva hit the stage it burst into flames and a smell of perfume drifted through the theatre. It was my turn to look surprised and scared. Everyone howled with laughter, and the tension was broken for all but the man with the iron necktie who remained forlorn and miserable. Finally I removed his necktie and let it drop to the floor. It made a tremendous crash. Everyone was impressed all over again.

Next I grasped a horizontal bar and chinned myself fifty times with one hand. Again everyone became silent. They all knew no one has ever done that before. In many ways they are like us. For example, when they get scared their body heat rises like ours. As the heat came up to me from the audience I could feel the change in my sensors. It made my chin warm. I found that when my chin got warm it was time to break the tension. I did it by demonstrating magic tricks.

You will smile, Excellency, when you hear what they call magic here. I was tightly blind-folded. Some people came up on the stage, and I announced exactly how many there were. I pointed to exactly where each one was standing, and indicated which were males and which were females. This made a most tremendous impression. I could hear gasps in the audience. I was told that the people rubbed their eyes as if they could not believe what they were seeing. You will understand, Excellency, that I accomplished this by turning on the male principle. The women here are so exquisitely receptive to it that when it is on their excitement causes changes in their body heat. It was simple for me to sense those fluctuations in temperature and to know which of the people before me were female.

Next I put a piece of paper on a metal rack across the stage. I concentrated heat waves on it from my cupped hand. The paper burst into flames. As they say here on the street they call Broadway, that "brought down the house." They clapped and whistled and made me do it again and again. Luckily they conceived of it only as a wonderful trick.

I ended the act by choosing a very unusual looking man from the audience. He came up on stage and we went behind a screen together. When we reappeared a few seconds later the audience screamed because I had twisted my face around to look exactly like his. Believe me, the reaction was terrific. Slowly I let my face slip back to "normal." If they realized there is no normal and that I could leave my face that way permanently, that would have been too much of a shock. They would have become silent and terrified and suspicious. I might have been in danger.

I had to calculate carefully how much these people could take without realizing there was something alarmingly different about me. I learned my lesson one night. I turned on the male principle too strongly and some of the women in the audience became very agitated. Everyone was embarrassed. After the show the theatre manager came to my dressing room and asked me to have a drink with him at a little bar across the street.

When we sat down he stared at me in a queer manner. "Just exactly what happened tonight?" he demanded.

I looked surprised. "Weren't you satisfied with the act?" I asked. "The audience seemed to like me."

"They liked you too much."

I laughed. "You mean those silly females who tried to drag me off the stage?"

He narrowed his eyes and thrust his face close to mine. "If I hadn't had the best-trained ushers in New York there'd have been a panic and a riot in there. How come?"

I shrugged. "The women in your town seem remarkably excitable."

"And in your town?"

"Not so," I declared truthfully. How truthfully Your Excellency well knows.

"There's something peculiar about you," he said, "something very peculiar." He leaned back in his chair and his glance swept over me. "Suppose you cut out the leopard skin," he said, "and wear a jersey and trousers."

I laughed to myself. He thought my bare body, my bulging muscles had been the cause of the trouble. What a fool! Is Your Excellency laughing too? However, I dared not disagree with him. By that time he had had many drinks. He was looking mean. He reached over and grabbed the lapel of my coat in his fist.

"What the hell kind of a guy are you?" he snarled at me.

My hands twitched. I wished I could have picked him up and tied him in a four-in-hand knot around his own neck.

"Who the hell are you?" he repeated.

I yawned and stretched and got to my feet. "Not even a strong man now," I said casually, "just a tired man."

I left the bar.

After that incident I was careful with the male principle. When the audience left each night I turned it on very slightly—only enough to be sure that the women would do their best to get back to see me again.

But before I go any further in this account of my adventures, Your Excellency, let me tell you about the women here. The greatest difference between the Americans and ourselves is in the women. They are extraordinary. Some of them are beautiful beyond belief. My researches completely confirm your much-criticized hypotheses concerning our own women. If our enemies who object so strongly to Your Excellency's statements could be here for only one hour they would become your devoted supporters. American women are the proof that your theories are correct. Your famous attempt to explain some of the incongruous and apparently ridiculous passages in our ancient manuscripts by assuming the existence of a now-vanished female principle is irrefutably demonstrated by these women, Your Excellency.

Here, the female principle exists, and as you predicted, most of the women are therefore entirely different from ours. The term used in this language is "femininity." It is a devastatingly attractive thing—but almost impossible to explain. I will make an attempt.

Senseless, reasonless, even foolish motions of the body and the hands, the expressions of the eyes and the mouth, the way the head is moved and tilted are a part of it. So are unusual tones of the voice and special ways in which things are said. Laughter, a whisper, the direction of the glance, the fingers' pressure—these, too, are parts of it.

There are infinitely various types of adornment which hang on the body, fabrics in delicate or brilliant colors which cling and flow, gleaming stones at throat and wrists. The faces are enchantingly painted, the hair shining and arranged in numerous wonderful designs. There is an aura of the scent of flowers and fruits.

I tell you, Excellency, everything about this femininity assails the senses. It is so potent that once having experienced it the mere recollection causes the pulses to pound and throb. My hand trembles as I write these words to you. I am confused and disturbed and wild with a longing I never knew at home. I wish to meet Your Excellency's high standards in preparing this report, and yet I am unable to be scientific. The logic of the laboratory cannot be employed.

As soon as I could I began to hunt desperately for the secret of the female principle. I analyzed the soil, the food, the water, and the air by our own most refined methods. I found nothing to help us. I went to the risky extreme of killing two of their women. One possessed an unusual amount of this femininity. The other, who seemed to have very little of it, was essentially like one of our own women. There was not the slightest chemical difference in their bodies. Dead, they were precisely the same. But alive, Your Excellency, they were overwhelmingly dissimilar.

I was able to kill the unfeminine one scientifically without emotion or regret. But, although it was clearly my duty, I could hardly bring myself to kill the other one. I had known her for several days. Her femininity almost prevented my continuing with the experiment. She told me that she loved me.

I don't know if I have the skill to explain to you what this "love" is. Briefly, it means that the woman was in a mental state—a receptive mental state, Excellency, infinitely more violent than the peak our women reach after intensive application of the male principle. Your Excellency, she was that way all of the time.

This brings me to another extraordinary difference between them and us. The men here lack the male principle. They obviously don't need it because of the existence of the female principle in the women. If the men had it, as we have, I leave it to Your Excellency's vivid imagination as to what would be happening here.

In general the men are enough like us to be called humanoids in our sense of the word. They have about the same intelligence quotient that we have, and are physically almost identical except for our induced modifications. As Your Excellency predicted they do not have these since they have not yet discovered the methods of inducing them. As a result, while they have the same muscular potential as we do, they are far weaker, and their life span is not more than 70 or 80 years by their calendar.

They do not have heat sensors, so they stumble around in the dark and trip over things like children. They squander more energy on electric lights than on anything else in the economy. Also, their hearing and eyesight cannot be compared to ours. I am always hearing and seeing things without their suspecting it. A low conversation across the room is perfectly audible to me. Much of my best information comes this way. Naturally, since they completely lack heat generators, they cannot set things on fire.

To get back to the account of my activities, Excellency; my biggest mistake was in killing the two women for the femininity research. This got me into terrible trouble. They feel strongly about killing women here. Now that I appreciate their women, I can see why.

The local police were not hard to handle, but they have a central police system called the F.B.I. It is comparable to Your Excellency's organization in techniques and training, and in some ways even superior to it. When the F.B.I. started investigating me, things got serious immediately.

One day my heat sensor detected a man standing outside my front door. He was a huge bulky man. I sensed a mass under his left arm pit. My heat sensor analyzed it. It reflected heat like iron, but there seemed to be some small pieces of lead there too.

The man was polite and apologetic when I opened the door. He tipped his hat. He said that he had come to the wrong apartment. Then he asked, "How did you know I was standing outside the door?"

Without thinking, I uttered the first thing that came into my head. "I saw your shadow."

His eyes widened only slightly. He had good control of himself. "How could you see a shadow through a wooden door?" he asked softly.

I was exasperated at my mistake but I smiled the way people here do when they are at a disadvantage. "I do not explain my tricks," I told him. "I earn my living by performing them at the theatre."

I closed the door.

The next night I was experimenting with the male principle. I sat on a bench in a place called Central Park and practiced on the women as they went by. I discovered that the more feminine the women the greater the effect the wave has on them. Some would hesitate and look around as they walked by me. Some would stop and stare at me in a puzzled fashion. I was growing tired and ravenously hungry. I decided that when the next attractive woman passed me I would generate one last powerful wave, and then go on to a restaurant.

I allowed a few unfeminine ones to go by. Then I saw her, a lovely blonde girl about twenty-five years old. Her hair was a mass of short curls that covered her head with a uniform thickness like the styles in our Second Renaissance Period. She had on a black dress and was carrying a black bag in her hand. I sensed small pieces of different types of metals in her bag. She was walking slowly and weeping. Occasionally she dabbed at her nose with a piece of white cloth.

She was so beautiful, Excellency. Her warmth started flowing over my chin when she was at least sixty feet away. I decided to wait until she was quite close and then to engulf her with the full force of the male principle. I was shaken and impatient. Even at the highest point of excitement, though, Your Excellency should know that the importance of my mission was in my mind. When she was on the sidewalk directly in front of me I did as I had planned. She stopped. Her handkerchief dropped to the ground, and then her bag. She looked at me wildly. She ran over and sat on the bench beside me. She put her arms around my neck and kissed me.

"Why were you crying?" I asked.

"I don't remember," she said. "I don't care."

I closed my eyes. My senses were responding to her warmth and her scent. Suddenly there was a blast of male heat on my chin. I started and stared. There standing above us was the huge heavy man of the night before. The mass of metal was still under his left arm pit. He had an odd expression on his face. He was watching the girl as if her condition was answering a question for him.

In a sudden flash of intuition everything was clear to me. The girl was a decoy. I had fallen neatly into a trap. I had thoughtlessly demonstrated my power to the F.B.I, man—a power I could not explain by saying it was a trick.

I pushed the girl away and stood up. The man's eyes were fixed upon me with horror. I saw that he knew there was something monstrous and menacing about me. Something he did not understand. Something that meant terrible danger to him and his kind. His right hand started to creep towards the mass of metal under his arm. I cupped my hand towards him and started accumulating a heat charge. His glance dropped fearfully. It fell to my hand, and his temperature went up. He had undoubtedly seen me burn pieces of paper in the theatre.

His right hand fumbled in his pocket and he drew out a little package. "Have a cigarette?"

I shook my head. He put one in his own mouth and lighted a match. In spite of the strongest effort of my will I jumped back. I jerked my hand up over my chin. A little stick of wood with a flaring flame on the end of at least 600 degrees Centigrade, right in front of my heat sensors, took my breath away. The searing heat burned right into my brain. It was like some of the tortures in Your Excellency's Force Number Five.

The heavy man observed all of this, but he did not understand it. He looked at the girl, who had risen and was leaning against me, oblivious of everything.

"You've got quite a way with women, haven't you?" he said. He dragged on his cigarette. The tip flamed up painfully. I shrank back and again brought my hand up to protect my chin.

"What's the matter with you?" the man asked sharply.

I did not know how to answer. I stood mute and waiting.

"I want to go now, and I want to take that girl with me. Do you understand?" The man's voice was harsh with anger.

I shut the principle off. The girl lifted her head, but she appeared to be in a trance. The man took her arm and they walked off through the park. A murderous rage against the heavy man filled me. I cupped my hand. He was well within range—but then I thought of my mission, Excellency, and let him go. For hours afterwards that lovely girl who was taken from me was in my thoughts.

Your Excellency, two suggestions come out of this experience. They both concern our induced modifications. Any of us who come to America should be able to shut off the heat sensor at will. With everyone here smoking and lighting cigarettes and turning on 300-watt light bulbs in one's face, with automobiles approaching at night shooting out two searing heat beams in front of them, the environment is too full of shocks. It is too easy for us to be spotted because of this weakness.

Also, Your Excellency, a change must be made in the connection between all of the induced modifications. When I accumulate a heat charge, that means that the male principle is automatically on. When I was accumulating a charge to kill the heavy man, the principle was affecting the woman, and she was reacting to it. The combination was not desirable at that time. When I light the paper at the theatre, the male principle is also on, and affects the women in the audience. We can use the male principle without using the heat ray. Why can't we use the heat ray without using the male principle? This modification should be induced.

The next afternoon there was a matinee performance at the theatre. It was crowded. The management had even provided for standing room at the back of the theatre. I started, as usual, by selecting an iron reinforcing bar and tying it into a four-in-hand around my neck.

To my surprise, although it looked exactly the same, it was much harder to bend. I never did get the ends quite even.

I had just put the second bar around the neck of the stooge from the audience when I noticed something queer. Although this was usually the place for hilarious laughter, everyone was silent. I looked out over the audience. A man was standing in the aisle, just a few feet from the stage. He was pointing a gun right at me. It was the heavy man.

As I turned around he said, "Put up your hands."

I put them up.

He spoke in a loud, deep voice, "This is no gag, ladies and gentlemen. This man on the stage is the most dangerous and cold-blooded murderer in America. He is the murderer of Lydia Davis and Genevieve Scott."

Several other men stood up. They all had masses of metal under their left arm pits. The heavy man gave them an order. "Go up on the stage and handcuff him. Use five pairs of handcuffs."

Then he spoke to the audience. "Ladies and gentlemen, today we substituted tempered steel bars for the reinforcing bars. Twenty ordinary men couldn't have bent one of those bars. What you have witnessed was no trick. The man you see on the stage is not like us. He has the strength of at least forty men. Please remain in your seats. We can handle this situation."

The audience gasped and murmured. A woman screamed.

The group of men started walking towards the stage. My hands were up. I cupped my right one and gave the heavy man a full charge of heat. His hair went up in a bright orange flame. He dropped the red hot gun from his smoking hand, and fell to the floor. He frantically rolled around the aisle trying to put out his flaming clothes.

One of the other men shot at me. The little piece of lead came toward me, flew over my shoulder. It was going at about 900 feet per second. This was enough to kill me, Excellency. I became panic-stricken. I fled into the wings. I was followed by a storm of little whistling lead pellets.

The stagehands scattered hysterically before me as I ran down the steps and out the stage door entrance. The street in front of the theatre was packed with police cruisers and athletic-looking men in blue uniforms.

Before anyone saw me, I cupped my hand, and fired the gas tank of the nearest police cruiser. The ray of the male principle went out with the heat ray. As I ran by the flaming car, all of the women in the street felt something important. They all turned and looked at me.

Policemen started shooting. They piled out of their cars. The street was echoing with yells and shouts. I was terrified. I exerted an enormous effort of will and mustered every atom of energy at my command. I sent a full-power heat blast up the street. I have never marshalled a bigger blast, even in the contests at our training school in Area Twelve.

Fifteen automobiles burst into flames. Twenty or thirty men and women fell screaming to the sidewalk, their clothes burning. A flock of roasted pigeons fell smoking out of the sky. A black cloud condensed over the street, and a forked tongue of lightning flashed from it. Every woman within a quarter of a mile felt the hot electrical force of the male principle. I dived into the Times Square subway entrance and sprinted down the stairs. There was a men's washroom at the end of the platform.

I heard the wild tumult of pursuit behind me. I pushed open the door. A man was there washing his hands. I strangled him, tore off his clothes, and put them on myself. Hastily, I twisted my face about so that I looked like an entirely different person. I opened the door and started walking slowly back down the platform.

A platoon of policemen with drawn guns was sprinting down the platform towards me. They were followed by a yelling mob of civilians which included hundreds of women. They swept by me. I was safe, but shivering with fear, Excellency. I was spent. I couldn't have mustered up a heat ray strong enough to warm the end of my nose.

I stumbled around the corner and away from that neighborhood. Then I went into the first restaurant I saw, and gorged. After a five dollar plank steak, three glasses of milk, one glass of beer, and apple pie a la mode I was still ravenous; still energy-minus.

I went a block up the street, into another restaurant, and bolted down exactly the same meal again. Strength started to flow slowly through my veins. After one more meal in still another restaurant, my confidence returned.

The newspapers handled the affair with amazing restraint. The facts brought in by their reporters naturally sounded fantastic to the editors, so they rearranged them to "make sense." The reticence of the authorities, particularly the F.B.I., helped to convert what might have caused a national panic into just an unusually spectacular chase after an escaped murderer. The burning cars were laid to hooliganism on the part of the bystanders. The people who got burned, so the stories explained, were hurt by the gasoline explosions of the burning cars. The mass hysteria of the women was caused by the excitement. The papers said that the steel necktie worn by my stooge at the theatre had to be cut off by a water-cooled electric saw. They said that however I did it, it was a clever trick.

The next few days, Your Excellency, were the most difficult of my stay here. I knew that the full power of not only the F.B.I., but of the whole national government, would be concentrated to destroy me. I had to hide—hide, and get a new start.

The money in the pockets of my borrowed suit didn't last long. I couldn't possibly risk presenting myself as a strong man or a magician again. I became a ditch digger and a day laborer, and finally drifted into the professional wrestling racket. Many of the top wrestling promoters live in Washington, D. C. I rented a little white clapboard house with green shutters, out in the country beyond Silver Springs, Maryland.

I was careful to keep myself a second-rate wrestler. This was exasperating, Your Excellency. At any time I could have beaten three or four of their best wrestlers simultaneously. Everything was fixed so I won and lost when they told me to. We even practiced how we were going to win or lose before each match. I was very obedient and very scared.

I did everything not to attract attention. I started to use the male principle again, but so sparingly that everything looked natural.

I tried to fit into the life of the community and become an American. I joined a Bowling League. I learned to play a game called "Canasta."

I got to be great friends with a man named Nat Brown, an automobile mechanic. He lived with his extraordinarily beautiful wife, Helene, in a house about a half mile away.

The Browns used to ask me to dinner, and I would meet their friends. I grew very fond of them. We would sit around and drink beer and play cards and talk until late at night about politics and philosophy and love and everything else on earth. It was by far the swiftest part of my education in America, living with these lighthearted, charming people who obviously liked me.

The only disadvantage was the problem raised by my increasing fondness for Helene Brown. She was a vivid incarnation of the female principle, and yet I knew I must not touch her. I had a constant battle with myself to maintain the disinterested relationship necessary to continuing with these people without complication.

Both Nat and Helene Brown used to come to see me wrestle whenever I had a match in Washington. Whether I won or lost we would go out and drink beer together. I would sometimes bring another girl along. More and more I started to feel like a real native American. A couple of close friends, Excellency, did a lot for your humble servant.

Three days ago I was riding along Connecticut Avenue in my new car. When I stopped for a light, I saw a familiar face in the crowd crossing the street. It was the tall heavy man, the F.B.I. agent who had tracked me down and tried to capture me in the theatre the night of the big battle. I could sense the mass of metal carried under his left arm.

He was hurrying along with another man. When I saw who it was my blood froze in my veins. It was my neighbor, Nat Brown. He also had a mass of metal under his left arm.

It was clear to me then that, in spite of my precautions, the F.B.I. had spotted me weeks ago. How, I do not know. Nat Brown was their surveillance agent.

I drove home immediately to finish this letter and get it off to you. I may not be alive tomorrow. The launching apparatus is concealed in a tool shed about a half a mile behind the house. I am going to put down my recommendations and get this off immediately—before it's too late.

As I see it, Excellency, there are only four courses available to us:

Since these people have such a short life span our descendants will live hundreds of years longer than theirs. The present race will slowly be bred out due to the infirmities of its men. Our men and their women will create a race superior to both.

If I can find a way to escape from the F.B.I., and establish myself once more in safety I will try to justify Your Excellency's confidence in your humble servant.

I put the letter down on my desk. It certainly told most of the story. It needed only a final paragraph. Then I sat down at the typewriter and added it:

I am closing now, Your Excellency. Tomorrow will be the transmission date for this letter. I may not communicate with you again for some time, but please understand, Excellency, that I am your humble and devoted servant and have tried to carry on in strict accordance with your wishes.

I put the letter into an envelope and put it in my pocket. Then I got into my car and drove down through the city to the northwest wing of the Department of Justice Building. The elevator girl smiled. "Haven't seen you for a long time, Nat. Don't you work for the F.B.I. any more?"

I smiled back at her, "The Chief has had me up to a lot of out-of-town devilment."

I passed Jack and Tex in the hall, and we waved to each other. They wanted to talk, but I was in too much of a hurry. "The Chief wants me," I said, without slowing down.

When I reached the Chief's office Mrs. Sperling gave me a broad grin. "Hello, Nat. The Chief's been waiting for you."

I went down the little corridor into the Chief's room. He was sitting at his desk looking grim and tense. On the wall behind him was a huge map of the United States. It had clumps of vari-colored pins all over it. His deep voice boomed across the room.

"Hello, Nat. How is the Chief of the Venusian Desk?"

"Well, if you want to know the truth, Chief, I'm pretty god damned relieved. Some jobs are fun. But my hair has been standing on end so much since you gave me this job that it's going to need about a year's rest. No man wants his hair to have a nervous breakdown."

The Chief looked at me fondly. "Well, I can't say you carried your mission out quietly. It practically blew me out of bed, and I live at least ten miles away."

"Joe did a hell of a good job with the TNT," I said. "How the hell he ever got twenty tons of it down in the basement in three hours I'll never find out."

A slight frown came over the Chief's face. "Are you sure our Venusian friend was there?"

"Absolutely."

"How—absolutely?"

"I called him on the telephone. When he answered I pressed the button. I heard the explosion over the wire, half a second before it practically tore down my own house. When I got over there a big crowd was collecting." I took a deep breath. "Not much for them to look at, though—just a big black smoking hole in the ground."

"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 hell."

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 passed 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 damned 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 basement."

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 God, 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 passed 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 Massachusetts 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.

End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Double Spy, by Dan T. Moore

*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE DOUBLE SPY ***

***** This file should be named 31788-h.htm or 31788-h.zip *****
This and all associated files of various formats will be found in:
        http://www.gutenberg.org/3/1/7/8/31788/

Produced by Sankar Viswanathan, Greg Weeks, and the Online
Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net


Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions
will be renamed.

Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no
one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation
(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without
permission and without paying copyright royalties.  Special rules,
set forth in the General Terms of Use part of this license, apply to
copying and distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works to
protect the PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm concept and trademark.  Project
Gutenberg is a registered trademark, and may not be used if you
charge for the eBooks, unless you receive specific permission.  If you
do not charge anything for copies of this eBook, complying with the
rules is very easy.  You may use this eBook for nearly any purpose
such as creation of derivative works, reports, performances and
research.  They may be modified and printed and given away--you may do
practically ANYTHING with public domain eBooks.  Redistribution is
subject to the trademark license, especially commercial
redistribution.



*** START: FULL LICENSE ***

THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG LICENSE
PLEASE READ THIS BEFORE YOU DISTRIBUTE OR USE THIS WORK

To protect the Project Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting the free
distribution of electronic works, by using or distributing this work
(or any other work associated in any way with the phrase "Project
Gutenberg"), you agree to comply with all the terms of the Full Project
Gutenberg-tm License (available with this file or online at
http://gutenberg.org/license).


Section 1.  General Terms of Use and Redistributing Project Gutenberg-tm
electronic works

1.A.  By reading or using any part of this Project Gutenberg-tm
electronic work, you indicate that you have read, understand, agree to
and accept all the terms of this license and intellectual property
(trademark/copyright) agreement.  If you do not agree to abide by all
the terms of this agreement, you must cease using and return or destroy
all copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in your possession.
If you paid a fee for obtaining a copy of or access to a Project
Gutenberg-tm electronic work and you do not agree to be bound by the
terms of this agreement, you may obtain a refund from the person or
entity to whom you paid the fee as set forth in paragraph 1.E.8.

1.B.  "Project Gutenberg" is a registered trademark.  It may only be
used on or associated in any way with an electronic work by people who
agree to be bound by the terms of this agreement.  There are a few
things that you can do with most Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works
even without complying with the full terms of this agreement.  See
paragraph 1.C below.  There are a lot of things you can do with Project
Gutenberg-tm electronic works if you follow the terms of this agreement
and help preserve free future access to Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
works.  See paragraph 1.E below.

1.C.  The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation ("the Foundation"
or PGLAF), owns a compilation copyright in the collection of Project
Gutenberg-tm electronic works.  Nearly all the individual works in the
collection are in the public domain in the United States.  If an
individual work is in the public domain in the United States and you are
located in the United States, we do not claim a right to prevent you from
copying, distributing, performing, displaying or creating derivative
works based on the work as long as all references to Project Gutenberg
are removed.  Of course, we hope that you will support the Project
Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting free access to electronic works by
freely sharing Project Gutenberg-tm works in compliance with the terms of
this agreement for keeping the Project Gutenberg-tm name associated with
the work.  You can easily comply with the terms of this agreement by
keeping this work in the same format with its attached full Project
Gutenberg-tm License when you share it without charge with others.

1.D.  The copyright laws of the place where you are located also govern
what you can do with this work.  Copyright laws in most countries are in
a constant state of change.  If you are outside the United States, check
the laws of your country in addition to the terms of this agreement
before downloading, copying, displaying, performing, distributing or
creating derivative works based on this work or any other Project
Gutenberg-tm work.  The Foundation makes no representations concerning
the copyright status of any work in any country outside the United
States.

1.E.  Unless you have removed all references to Project Gutenberg:

1.E.1.  The following sentence, with active links to, or other immediate
access to, the full Project Gutenberg-tm License must appear prominently
whenever any copy of a Project Gutenberg-tm work (any work on which the
phrase "Project Gutenberg" appears, or with which the phrase "Project
Gutenberg" is associated) is accessed, displayed, performed, viewed,
copied or distributed:

This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org

1.E.2.  If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is derived
from the public domain (does not contain a notice indicating that it is
posted with permission of the copyright holder), the work can be copied
and distributed to anyone in the United States without paying any fees
or charges.  If you are redistributing or providing access to a work
with the phrase "Project Gutenberg" associated with or appearing on the
work, you must comply either with the requirements of paragraphs 1.E.1
through 1.E.7 or obtain permission for the use of the work and the
Project Gutenberg-tm trademark as set forth in paragraphs 1.E.8 or
1.E.9.

1.E.3.  If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is posted
with the permission of the copyright holder, your use and distribution
must comply with both paragraphs 1.E.1 through 1.E.7 and any additional
terms imposed by the copyright holder.  Additional terms will be linked
to the Project Gutenberg-tm License for all works posted with the
permission of the copyright holder found at the beginning of this work.

1.E.4.  Do not unlink or detach or remove the full Project Gutenberg-tm
License terms from this work, or any files containing a part of this
work or any other work associated with Project Gutenberg-tm.

1.E.5.  Do not copy, display, perform, distribute or redistribute this
electronic work, or any part of this electronic work, without
prominently displaying the sentence set forth in paragraph 1.E.1 with
active links or immediate access to the full terms of the Project
Gutenberg-tm License.

1.E.6.  You may convert to and distribute this work in any binary,
compressed, marked up, nonproprietary or proprietary form, including any
word processing or hypertext form.  However, if you provide access to or
distribute copies of a Project Gutenberg-tm work in a format other than
"Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other format used in the official version
posted on the official Project Gutenberg-tm web site (www.gutenberg.org),
you must, at no additional cost, fee or expense to the user, provide a
copy, a means of exporting a copy, or a means of obtaining a copy upon
request, of the work in its original "Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other
form.  Any alternate format must include the full Project Gutenberg-tm
License as specified in paragraph 1.E.1.

1.E.7.  Do not charge a fee for access to, viewing, displaying,
performing, copying or distributing any Project Gutenberg-tm works
unless you comply with paragraph 1.E.8 or 1.E.9.

1.E.8.  You may charge a reasonable fee for copies of or providing
access to or distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works provided
that

- You pay a royalty fee of 20% of the gross profits you derive from
     the use of Project Gutenberg-tm works calculated using the method
     you already use to calculate your applicable taxes.  The fee is
     owed to the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark, but he
     has agreed to donate royalties under this paragraph to the
     Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation.  Royalty payments
     must be paid within 60 days following each date on which you
     prepare (or are legally required to prepare) your periodic tax
     returns.  Royalty payments should be clearly marked as such and
     sent to the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation at the
     address specified in Section 4, "Information about donations to
     the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation."

- You provide a full refund of any money paid by a user who notifies
     you in writing (or by e-mail) within 30 days of receipt that s/he
     does not agree to the terms of the full Project Gutenberg-tm
     License.  You must require such a user to return or
     destroy all copies of the works possessed in a physical medium
     and discontinue all use of and all access to other copies of
     Project Gutenberg-tm works.

- You provide, in accordance with paragraph 1.F.3, a full refund of any
     money paid for a work or a replacement copy, if a defect in the
     electronic work is discovered and reported to you within 90 days
     of receipt of the work.

- You comply with all other terms of this agreement for free
     distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm works.

1.E.9.  If you wish to charge a fee or distribute a Project Gutenberg-tm
electronic work or group of works on different terms than are set
forth in this agreement, you must obtain permission in writing from
both the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation and Michael
Hart, the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark.  Contact the
Foundation as set forth in Section 3 below.

1.F.

1.F.1.  Project Gutenberg volunteers and employees expend considerable
effort to identify, do copyright research on, transcribe and proofread
public domain works in creating the Project Gutenberg-tm
collection.  Despite these efforts, Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
works, and the medium on which they may be stored, may contain
"Defects," such as, but not limited to, incomplete, inaccurate or
corrupt data, transcription errors, a copyright or other intellectual
property infringement, a defective or damaged disk or other medium, a
computer virus, or computer codes that damage or cannot be read by
your equipment.

1.F.2.  LIMITED WARRANTY, DISCLAIMER OF DAMAGES - Except for the "Right
of Replacement or Refund" described in paragraph 1.F.3, the Project
Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation, the owner of the Project
Gutenberg-tm trademark, and any other party distributing a Project
Gutenberg-tm electronic work under this agreement, disclaim all
liability to you for damages, costs and expenses, including legal
fees.  YOU AGREE THAT YOU HAVE NO REMEDIES FOR NEGLIGENCE, STRICT
LIABILITY, BREACH OF WARRANTY OR BREACH OF CONTRACT EXCEPT THOSE
PROVIDED IN PARAGRAPH F3.  YOU AGREE THAT THE FOUNDATION, THE
TRADEMARK OWNER, AND ANY DISTRIBUTOR UNDER THIS AGREEMENT WILL NOT BE
LIABLE TO YOU FOR ACTUAL, DIRECT, INDIRECT, CONSEQUENTIAL, PUNITIVE OR
INCIDENTAL DAMAGES EVEN IF YOU GIVE NOTICE OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH
DAMAGE.

1.F.3.  LIMITED RIGHT OF REPLACEMENT OR REFUND - If you discover a
defect in this electronic work within 90 days of receiving it, you can
receive a refund of the money (if any) you paid for it by sending a
written explanation to the person you received the work from.  If you
received the work on a physical medium, you must return the medium with
your written explanation.  The person or entity that provided you with
the defective work may elect to provide a replacement copy in lieu of a
refund.  If you received the work electronically, the person or entity
providing it to you may choose to give you a second opportunity to
receive the work electronically in lieu of a refund.  If the second copy
is also defective, you may demand a refund in writing without further
opportunities to fix the problem.

1.F.4.  Except for the limited right of replacement or refund set forth
in paragraph 1.F.3, this work is provided to you 'AS-IS' WITH NO OTHER
WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO
WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTIBILITY OR FITNESS FOR ANY PURPOSE.

1.F.5.  Some states do not allow disclaimers of certain implied
warranties or the exclusion or limitation of certain types of damages.
If any disclaimer or limitation set forth in this agreement violates the
law of the state applicable to this agreement, the agreement shall be
interpreted to make the maximum disclaimer or limitation permitted by
the applicable state law.  The invalidity or unenforceability of any
provision of this agreement shall not void the remaining provisions.

1.F.6.  INDEMNITY - You agree to indemnify and hold the Foundation, the
trademark owner, any agent or employee of the Foundation, anyone
providing copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in accordance
with this agreement, and any volunteers associated with the production,
promotion and distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works,
harmless from all liability, costs and expenses, including legal fees,
that arise directly or indirectly from any of the following which you do
or cause to occur: (a) distribution of this or any Project Gutenberg-tm
work, (b) alteration, modification, or additions or deletions to any
Project Gutenberg-tm work, and (c) any Defect you cause.


Section  2.  Information about the Mission of Project Gutenberg-tm

Project Gutenberg-tm is synonymous with the free distribution of
electronic works in formats readable by the widest variety of computers
including obsolete, old, middle-aged and new computers.  It exists
because of the efforts of hundreds of volunteers and donations from
people in all walks of life.

Volunteers and financial support to provide volunteers with the
assistance they need, are critical to reaching Project Gutenberg-tm's
goals and ensuring that the Project Gutenberg-tm collection will
remain freely available for generations to come.  In 2001, the Project
Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation was created to provide a secure
and permanent future for Project Gutenberg-tm and future generations.
To learn more about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation
and how your efforts and donations can help, see Sections 3 and 4
and the Foundation web page at http://www.pglaf.org.


Section 3.  Information about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive
Foundation

The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation is a non profit
501(c)(3) educational corporation organized under the laws of the
state of Mississippi and granted tax exempt status by the Internal
Revenue Service.  The Foundation's EIN or federal tax identification
number is 64-6221541.  Its 501(c)(3) letter is posted at
http://pglaf.org/fundraising.  Contributions to the Project Gutenberg
Literary Archive Foundation are tax deductible to the full extent
permitted by U.S. federal laws and your state's laws.

The Foundation's principal office is located at 4557 Melan Dr. S.
Fairbanks, AK, 99712., but its volunteers and employees are scattered
throughout numerous locations.  Its business office is located at
809 North 1500 West, Salt Lake City, UT 84116, (801) 596-1887, email
[email protected].  Email contact links and up to date contact
information can be found at the Foundation's web site and official
page at http://pglaf.org

For additional contact information:
     Dr. Gregory B. Newby
     Chief Executive and Director
     [email protected]


Section 4.  Information about Donations to the Project Gutenberg
Literary Archive Foundation

Project Gutenberg-tm depends upon and cannot survive without wide
spread public support and donations to carry out its mission of
increasing the number of public domain and licensed works that can be
freely distributed in machine readable form accessible by the widest
array of equipment including outdated equipment.  Many small donations
($1 to $5,000) are particularly important to maintaining tax exempt
status with the IRS.

The Foundation is committed to complying with the laws regulating
charities and charitable donations in all 50 states of the United
States.  Compliance requirements are not uniform and it takes a
considerable effort, much paperwork and many fees to meet and keep up
with these requirements.  We do not solicit donations in locations
where we have not received written confirmation of compliance.  To
SEND DONATIONS or determine the status of compliance for any
particular state visit http://pglaf.org

While we cannot and do not solicit contributions from states where we
have not met the solicitation requirements, we know of no prohibition
against accepting unsolicited donations from donors in such states who
approach us with offers to donate.

International donations are gratefully accepted, but we cannot make
any statements concerning tax treatment of donations received from
outside the United States.  U.S. laws alone swamp our small staff.

Please check the Project Gutenberg Web pages for current donation
methods and addresses.  Donations are accepted in a number of other
ways including checks, online payments and credit card donations.
To donate, please visit: http://pglaf.org/donate


Section 5.  General Information About Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
works.

Professor Michael S. Hart is the originator of the Project Gutenberg-tm
concept of a library of electronic works that could be freely shared
with anyone.  For thirty years, he produced and distributed Project
Gutenberg-tm eBooks with only a loose network of volunteer support.


Project Gutenberg-tm eBooks are often created from several printed
editions, all of which are confirmed as Public Domain in the U.S.
unless a copyright notice is included.  Thus, we do not necessarily
keep eBooks in compliance with any particular paper edition.


Most people start at our Web site which has the main PG search facility:

     http://www.gutenberg.org

This Web site includes information about Project Gutenberg-tm,
including how to make donations to the Project Gutenberg Literary
Archive Foundation, how to help produce our new eBooks, and how to
subscribe to our email newsletter to hear about new eBooks.