DEAD GIVEAWAY
BY RANDALL GARRETT
Illustrated by Martinez
[Transcriber's note: This etext was produced from Astounding Science Fiction August 1959.Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
Logic's a wonderful thing; by logical analysis, one can determine thenecessary reason for the existence of a dead city of a very high orderon an utterly useless planet. Obviously a shipping transfer point!Necessarily...
"Mendez?" said the young man in the blue-and-green tartan jacket. "Why,yes ... sure I've heard of it. Why?"
The clerk behind the desk looked again at the information screen."That's the destination we have on file for Scholar Duckworth, Mr.Turnbull. That was six months ago." He looked up from the screen,waiting to see if Turnbull had any more questions.
Turnbull tapped his teeth with a thumbnail for a couple of seconds, thenshrugged slightly. "Any address given for him?"
"Yes, sir. The Hotel Byron, Landing City, Mendez."
Turnbull nodded. "How much is the fare to Mendez?"
The clerk thumbed a button which wiped the information screen clean,then replaced it with another list, which flowed upward for a fewseconds, then stopped. "Seven hundred and eighty-five fifty, sir," saidthe clerk. "Shall I make you out a ticket?"
Turnbull hesitated. "What's the route?"
The clerk touched another control, and again the information on thescreen changed. "You'll take the regular shuttle from here to Luna, thentake either the Stellar Queen or the Oriona to Sirius VI. Fromthere, you will have to pick up a ship to the Central Worlds—either toVanderlin or BenAbram—and take a ship from there to Mendez. Notcomplicated, really. The whole trip won't take you more than threeweeks, including stopovers."
"I see," said Turnbull. "I haven't made up my mind yet. I'll let youknow."
"Very well, sir. The Stellar Queen leaves on Wednesdays and theOriona on Saturdays. We'll need three days' notice."
Turnbull thanked the clerk and headed toward the big doors that led outof Long Island Terminal, threading his way through the little clumps ofpeople that milled around inside the big waiting room.
He hadn't learned a hell of a lot, he thought. He'd known that Duckworthhad gone to Mendez, and he already had the Hotel Byron address. Therewas, however, some negative information there. The last address they hadwas on Mendez, and yet Scholar Duckworth couldn't be found on Mendez.Obviously, he had not filed a change of address there; just asobviously, he had managed to leave the planet without a trace. There wasalways the possibility that he'd been killed, of course. On a thinlypopulated world like Mendez, murder could still be committed with littlechance of being caught. Even here on Earth, a murderer with the rightcombination of skill and luck could remain unsuspected.
But who would want to kill Scholar Duckworth?
And why?
Turnbull pushed the thought out of his mind. It was possible thatDuckworth was dead, but it was highly unlikely. It was vastly moreprobable that the old scholar had skipped off for reasons of his own andthat something had happened to prevent him from contacting Turnbull.
After all, almost the same thing had happened in reverse a year ago.
Outside the Terminal Building, Turnbull walked over to a hackstand andpressed the signal button on