Crompton Divided Read Online Free PDF

Interstellar Spaceways System (TPISS) desk with its proud slogan, Non est ad astra mollis a terria via.
    He presented his deckle-edged reservation voucher to the android made up to look like Albert Dekker. ‘Ah, so, velly good,’ the android with the mismatched voxtape said. ‘But you gotta pay, Jack! No payee, no tickee, and no tickee, no splacefright.’
    ‘Of course I’m going to pay,’ Crompton said. ‘Would you like it in Aaian pronics or Yggan drunmushies?’
    ‘We only able to glet Getelguesan fioavics. Uranian contemptuous, or American Express traveler’s checks. You no glot? Blank change you money, okay, Joe?’
    Crompton rushed to the bank, where a nubile exchanger from Drumghera IV deftly made change with her opposed and replicating lips. He sped back to the TPISS desk and presented his money to the android.
    ‘Very good, sir,’ the android said. ‘Sorry about that pseudo-Chinese voice earlier. My consistency-autochecking circuits have been malfiring recently and I just haven’t gotten around to seeing the electronician. Those fellows cost a fortune and always send you on to a specialist anyhow. So I put up with it, what else can I do on my salary? And usually it’s okay, but today as my lousy luck would have it the sunspot cycle coincided with an old Fu Manchu movie in the upper lounge, and photosynthetic diffraction did the rest, and so I came on like an absolute fool –’
    ‘My tickeee!’ Crompton gasped.
    ‘Here it is, sir,’ the android said. ‘First stop is Aaia. You’ve got ten-year stopover privileges. The standard lunches are served and you may purchase psychedelics when the craft is in space. Did you ever see any of Albert Dekker’s movies? There is an Albert Dekker festival playing now in the south lounge which you are cordially invited to attend –’
    But the android moonlighter (he had rented his features to the entrepreneur of the Albert Dekker festival – a move that could have cost him his job if the ‘own-face’ rule had been strictly enforced) no longer had anyone before him, for Crompton had rushed off.
    ‘Crompton, Crompton ,’ the android said, and a faint moue of concentration creased his brow. ‘Ah, yes! Rhymes with Pompton!’ And he turned away, satisfied. Androids are never unhappy for long.
    Humans, and especially those whose humanotypes can be subsumed under the aegis Crompton , are frequently unhappy, and frightened as well. Pale, out of breath, his thighs sweating (like all New Yorkers), Crompton rushed to the entrance gate. As he approached it, someone caught his arm in a vicelike grip and pulled him to an abrupt halt. Crompton looked up into the flattish yellow face of an enormous android gotten up to look like a homicidal maniac.
    A thin, shivery voice nearby said, ‘All right, Toto, hold him but do not break him, yet. I want to talk to this fellow, hee hee hee.’
    Crompton’s heart fell into that infinite pit of emptiness that was his stomach. Despairingly he turned and looked into the ancient eyes and at the modern skin of John Blount.
     
     

 
    6
     
     
    ‘Well, Alistair, and what do you have to say for yourself?’ Blount asked.
    Crompton shrugged. Not twenty yards away was the entrance to his spaceship, tantalizingly near, impossibly far away.
    ‘Nothing much,’ he said. ‘How did you find me?’
    Blount smiled pityingly. ‘Only the top executives of the company know the full extent of our security system, Alistair. Special sensors are located in the vaults to register the quantities of the more precious substances present. The quantitative data is fed to a computer, which compares it with continuously upgraded data giving the proper, or formal quantity that should be present at all times. Discrepancies of more than a gram are flashed immediately to mobile security, and simultaneously to me. When I looked over the situation I saw that you were the only possible culprit, and I decided to handle the situation myself.’
    ‘That’s