Dan whistled. "So someone is working Galactic into position to jerk the
rug out from under it."
"Exactly."
"What's Galactic doing?"
"They're trying hard to keep this quiet. But meanwhile, no one knows
for sure who the spy is."
"A nice situation," said Dan. "What do we do about this planet Truth?"
* * * * *
"Well," said Kielgaard, "the first thing we do is set a man down and
let him get the lay of the land. We get more agents ready to move in
right behind him. We intend to use the best men available, and nothing
but the latest and best equipment. If things turn out as we intend
them to, whatever organization started this will come out slit up the
middle, stuffed, roasted, and with an apple in its mouth."
Dan said cautiously, "Who's the first agent we set down on this planet?"
"You," said Kielgaard. "And you're going to be up against a deadly
proposition. Our opponent is established on the planet, and we're
going in cold. Fortunately, we've sunk a good part of our profits into
research and it's about to pay off. We have, for instance, installed in
your body cavity a remarkably small organo-transceiver. It uses a new
type of signal which should escape detection under any circumstances
you're likely to face on Truth."
* * * * *
"So I can be more or less constantly in touch with you?"
"In any period of relative calm, yes. During violent action, the
interference of other currents in your brain would drown out the
signal. But we've also run a series of delicate taps to your optic and
auditory nerves, so we should have continuous contact by sight and
sound."
"You mentioned that the cities and towns on the planet were separated
by wilderness. How do I travel?"
"We have a new type of unusually small mataform transceiver." Kielgaard
reached in a drawer and tossed on his desk a smooth olive-colored
object little larger than a package of cigarettes. "The range is only a
few hundred miles, but it uses the new type of signal I've mentioned,
which eliminates the problem of orbiting a set of satellites to relay
the signal. The problem of first putting the mataform transceiver in
the place where you want to go is tricky, but we have a little glider
that ought to do the trick."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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