The Belly of Gor Jeetl, by Charles A. Stearns

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The hopeful spires of the Friendship Tower, you will recall, rose steadily, tier upon tier, throughout the year A.D. 4000 plus, despite the fact that it was beginning, more and more, to resemble a neoclassical stock exchange than it did a tower, and that the higher it climbed, the lower sank the estate of diplomatic relations among its backers, the nations of the Alliance of Inner Planets.

The Venusians wanted it on Venus because, as they shrewdly noted, Venus is wide open; the vacationer's planet. Low taxes. Moderate building costs, and a diverting variety of entertainment for the visiting delegates when they should meet. Why the derva-girls alone—

Mars wanted it on Mars, because, they said, the world is centrally located, easily accessible, and the dry climate was sure to preserve the masonry of the Friendship Tower forever, an immortal monument to man's amicability.

The Jovian colonials wanted it on Ganymede, because that would be most convenient (for Jupiter), and the Ganymedians agreed, if Jupiter would meet their share of the cost.

The kindest thing that can be said of the Saturnians, is that they were exceedingly saturnine. They hadn't a chance, and they knew it. Everyone expected trouble with Saturn.

Earth got it on Earth, with an overwhelming majority of one vote and eighty-three million dollars.

The Friendship Tower spitted the occasionally-blue sky over Capitol City in less than eleven months from the time its corner-stone was laid, and waited in awesome emptiness for the first friendly meeting of worlds within it.

If there was anyone who was completely satisfied with the Tower, it must have been Christopher M. Berthold, who first sketched it with gilt pen on a drawing board, and later drew it in bold lines of steel and plastic on the green horizon of his mother Earth. But Chris Berthold was a dour young man who had never in his life admitted that anything satisfied him.

By no coincidence, the man who built the tower was one of the three most famous architects in the solar system, at the age of only thirty one, but he held the obsession, apparently, that this fame was fleeting, that his public was a fickle group and might abandon him at any moment, that he ought to keep his insurance up, and his unemployment benefits in good standing, just in case. In short, the hell with life, the gloomy old thing.

All this did not keep Camilla Reed from loving him. It merely kept her at her distance. As a reporter for the Gazette, she had known him publicly for five years. As the freckle-faced little girl next door (remember?), she had been acquainted with his virtues and his idiosyncrasies since childhood, and worshipped them.

The only thing was, Camilla was still freckle-faced, and she had not grown up into a ravishingly beautiful young woman, the way freckle-faced little girls do in stories. Chris Berthold did not grovel at her feet—in fact, he scarcely seemed to know that she was alive—and nobody, so far, was living happily ever after. It was most discouraging.

Girl reporters are supposed to be fascinatingly flippant. Camilla often stammered through interviews. They are supposed to be vivacious, with lovely red hair; she was quiet, diminutive, and her hair was an indeterminate shade of brown. Reporters are supposed to be ill-mannered, inconsiderate of the privacy of others, cocky, devilish. Camilla was none of these.

That was the reason she often got into places no other newsperson could, scooped ace reporters, and came away leaving a warm, co-operative glow in the hearts of important people. And she didn't even suspect it.

She was on hand, along with five hundred and seventeen other reporters the day they opened the Friendship Building to the first Congress of the Alliance. The other five hundred and seventeen reporters were collaring the delegates as they arrived, pumping them dry of words, and setting them free. Camilla was only looking for Chris Berthold.

She discovered him, at last, in the visitor's gallery, where he hadn't any business to be. She sacrificed her seat in the reserved section, tramped on three sets of toes getting out, and made for him like a homing pigeon.

The mezzanine level was crowded. Fifteen acres of milling, pleasantly buzzing humanity—and some of them not so human. She pushed her way among them, wishing, for once, that she were six inches taller. She had marked her course by a pillar, but now all pillars were beginning to look alike. It was half an hour before she found him, leaning against the railing, staring not at the boiling sea of humanity below, but moodily at the domed roof.

He turned, recognized her with a faintly absent glare. "Hello, Cam. What're you doing here?"

She repressed a desire to run her fingers through his hair. Darkly exciting hair it was. "Covering," she said vaguely. "Imagine us running into each other here. Why, you ought to be down there with the Vips. The rest of them, I mean."

He snarled. "There's too many on the proscenium now. The flooring will warp. I warned them about it." He grumbled at length about the stinginess of the Government, and the cupidity of certain fly-by-night contractors. It was a familiar tirade. She listened patiently until he was finished. It didn't matter to Camilla what he talked about it. She just loved to hear his voice.

"I think it's wonderful," she said. "I mean a place that will hold a hundred thousand people. It's a shame that you can stand right here among all these people, and nobody even recognizes you—the man who built it."

"I like it this way," he said. "Supposing it falls down tomorrow. Then where would I be?"

She started to laugh, and his look froze her. Camilla bit her lip. "I don't see you around much lately," she said, desperately changing the subject.

"I know." A lag in the conversation. They watched the panorama below. Loudspeakers were blaring out the names of the delegates as they arrived.

The loudspeaker: "HIS EXCELLENCY, LORD CHANCELLOR OF MORDANA, THIRD DISTRICT, MARS."

A red beetle-being, scarcely four feet tall, followed by a retinue of twenty guards and assistants, scurried along the roped-off aisle to the central council table.

A dark-suited group of humanoids, faintly alien in aspect, walking close together. They looked faintly disdainful of the proceedings. Which was Yun Brool? They were identically dressed.

"You can bet the one in the middle is Brool," Camilla said to Chris. "Jovians are always afraid of being assassinated."

"Umm," said Christopher Berthold, gazing suspiciously at a rubberneck a few yards away, who showed every evidence that he was about to scratch his initials in one of the pseudo-marble columns with his pen-knife.

His answer was drowned. "DR. GOR JEETL, ASSISTANT COMMISSIONER OF FOREIGN RELATIONS, FIRST ADMINISTRATIVE DISTRICT, SATURN."

There was a lull of sound below, followed by a high-pitched song of excitement. It had been rumored that Saturn would send no representative to this meeting.

Dr. Gor Jeetl was alone, but it might have been remarked (as doubtless it was many times) that he was quite a congregation by himself. He appeared to be of Terran extraction, except that no Earthman of modern times was ever so huge. He must have weighed more than the entire Martian contingent.

Roughly eight feet in height, his girth was such that when he walked it was like the progression of an out-sized balloon, all dressed in loose-fitting blue uniform.

Gor Jeetl, if he sensed the hostility in that gigantic meeting house, gave no sign of it. Propelling his paunch agilely before him, he beamed benignly upon them all as he made his way to the council table.

He took a seat—rather, tried to take a seat. It was impossible. A hurried conference. They brought another quickly, without confining arm-rests. He flowed onto it, gratefully.

The guards began to clear the main floor, boosting the crowd back upstairs. It was almost time for the assembly to come to order.

But there was something not right here. Camilla sensed it. An undercurrent of tenseness about the great table below. The look on Chris's face. A wolf-like watchfulness. Chris always expected the worst, she knew from hard experience, but this was something special.

"They're frightened," she said with sudden inspiration. "Why are they frightened?"

Chris gave her a look of sour disapproval. "You're a reporter," he said accusively. "If I tell you something, can you keep it under your hat until the thing's done with?"

He didn't look at her. "There's a rumor going around among the delegates," he said. "They say a bomb has been smuggled in. Nothing to it, of course, but—"

"Nonsense. Anyway, I only care about the building. Diplomats are a dime a dozen."

This isn't like him, Camilla was thinking. He's always predicting calamities, but now—

"You could be killed here," he said, with no particular inflection. "But I don't suppose you could be talked into leaving if you knew the roof was coming down on your head?"

"What?" she laughed, "and have the city editor slit my throat?" But her heart leaped. It had sounded almost as though he were just a little concerned for her safety.

"I suppose you're right," he said after a moment. "Where were you intending to have lunch?"

"Don't eat here," he advised her glumly. "The vendomats are sluggish. The heating coils are inadequate, and the selectors should have had cadmium breakers instead of the cheap stuff. I designed it that way, but you can't tell them anything. Well, I've got to be getting along. See you later."

Telug Three-seven-gee, lately of Venus, was not so frivolous as his brilliantly red comb made him appear. It arched his carapaced back and stood stiffly erect upon his bald pate, like the plumed helmet of ancient Greek warriors, quivering slightly as he endeavored to hear and annotate everything that was said. He was Amanuensis Extraordinary to his party, and his keen ears were highly trained.

He was the first to hear the ticking sound. It was not like the tick of a watch. Subtly different. It was, however, rather like something else he had heard once. But that could not be.

Furtively he glanced around him. Over there sat the Martian delegation, brilliant, cynical little creatures. Near them were the Earth men. And on the other side, the black tunicked Jovians.

To his right was his own party. Nothing among them would make such a sound, he was certain.

On Telug's other side sat the Saturnian representative, Dr. Gor Jeetl. Dr. Jeetl sat tranquilly listening to the discourse of a hundred diplomats with a fixed smile on his circular face. His abdomen rested comfortably upon his knees, making a kind of dais upon which to place his folded arms.

The ticking was coming from Gor Jeetl. It was extremely faint. No one but Telug could have heard it.

Efficient secretary that he was, he immediately penned a note, folded it twice, and passed it down to the leader of his party, Madong Five-seven-ex. It might have noted that Telug's topknot had turned quite pale.

Madong, resplendent in his custard-yellow suit, read the note. He leaned over so that he could catch Telug's eye, past the three Venusians that sat between them. Telug nodded gravely.

Madong pressed the red button in front of him, requesting audience. He was recognized by the chairman.

Madong stood. His heavy lips felt dry. He licked them with bulbous, blue tongue. "Mr. Chairman," he said, "the Venusian delegation respectfully requests permission to withdraw from the assembly of Friendship until further notice."

Mr. Chairman eyed him keenly. He was a shrewd Ganymedian. "May we ask the reason for this request?"

An ominous ripple progressed around the table, affecting every person except, perhaps, one Gor Jeetl. He was gravely contemplating his silver belt buckle.

"Obviously," the Ganymedian chairman said, "we cannot permit the gentlemen from Venus to leave unless they consent to explain their action."

Madong, emissary of Venus, sprang up with apparent agitation. He started around the table, heels clicking loudly on the floor. It seemed that it required fifteen minutes for him to circumnavigate that huge circle, but it could not have been half so long.

"Are you sure?" the chairman said, louder than he had intended. Everyone jumped. Almost everyone.

The chairman rapped with his gavel. "We will take a recess," he said. "Fifteen minutes." He turned and whispered to two khaki-clad Terran guards.

The delegates sprang up willingly, milled about, chattering among themselves as they left the conference area.

Arising was quite a problem for Dr. Gor Jeetl. He had no arm-rests on his chair, you will recall, on which to brace his hands. Nevertheless, he was sure that he could make it. He turned sidewise on his inadequate seat, placed one hand on the back of his chair and made a heroic effort. Nothing happened. A heavy weight on each shoulder was holding him down.

Two white-gloved clad hands. He looked up with some surprise into the faces of the two guards.

There was not the slightest trace of compassion there. Two gendarmes sans merci.

The Captain of the Friendship Tower Guards was a fearless, red-faced man. Captains of the Guard are always red-faced and fearless. He spitted the Assistant Commissioner of Foreign Relations of Saturn with his gimlet eye, an impressive man who knew the overwhelming weight of his own personality.

The gallery was silent. The people knew that something extraordinary was going on, so they quelled the normal impulse to discuss it in order to satisfy that strongest of human yearnings. If they were quiet there was a bare possibility that they might hear something. The Word was not yet in the air. When it came they would change from rational beings into a huge, slavering beast—a mob. But the time was not yet; the beast lay hidden.

Gor Jeetl appeared mildly curious as to the reason for this sudden surplus of attention with which he was being deluged.

"Why am I held, Captain?" he asked. "It seems most inhospitable, to say the least. Think what this may do to the relations between our worlds, yours and my native Saturn."

"Come, come," the Captain said. "The game's up. We know all about you, Fatty. One of the Venusian party heard the ticking."

Gor Jeetl turned crimson throughout the vast expanse of his sagging jowls and three chins. "So you know!" he breathed. "I shall report your rudeness, nonetheless."

"Sure. Do that. Meanwhile, just where is it? You were scanned when you came in, along with everyone else."

"Here, of course," said Gor Jeetl, placing a hand upon his stomach with dignity. "Clever of them, and most convenient, I will admit, though I have loathed the knowledge. If only—"

The Captain laid his ear to the vast expanse of stomach. His eyes widened. "Incredible," he said. "When is the—the machine set for?"

"I see no harm in divulging that now," Dr. Jeetl said. "It is timed for Earth noon."

"You see no harm—you see no—!" The Captain tried to laugh, and strangled on it. He looked like a man reprieved from the grave. "There's time, you imbecile! Supposing we spirited you out of here—dropped you in the ocean?"

"Please!" Dr. Gor Jeetl smiled wanly. "The mechanism is extremely delicate. You are likely to upset it talking of such unpleasant things."

The Captain took out a tiny instrument and waved it like a wand over Gor Jeetl's middle. The pinpoint light on the gadget blinked rapidly.

"Of course. Don't you see the diabolical cleverness of the Saturnian's choice. Inside him, there'd be room for a whole armoury."

"There is only one thing to do," the Captain of the Guard said, "and that is to clear the area at once. Rogers, you will inform the Superintendent, and also the platoon leader on the gallery floor. I'll take care of things here."

But his last words were lost in a savage roar that grew into a tornadic fury of sound, filling the hall, battering at their ears, threatening sanity.

For someone had been indiscreet. The crowd had the Word, and had become the beast.

It was exactly 11:18 when they broke. In the history of that decade there had been no comparable disaster. Nine died. Thousands were injured. They poured down the spiral causeways like the flood of spring rains over a dam, and it was said later that only the superb designing job of the architect, Christopher Berthold, prevented casualties from being much higher.

It required twenty minutes to clear the building. It would have taken six, if it could have been done in orderly fashion.

The police were to clear the sector of the city for three miles in each direction. There was no need. No citizen stopped running half so near as that. Of course, later on, when the panic had subsided, the streets had to be roped off and guarded to prevent them from trooping back, for fear they might miss something. That was human nature, and to be expected.

The diplomats were herded, with diplomacy, into the Grand Solar Hotel in another part of the city, and closely guarded. The Friendship Tower, looming whitely against the skyline, was suddenly vacant.

Well, almost vacant. In the great meeting hall, at the table which dwarfed even his respectable figure, sat the delegate from Saturn, Dr. Gor Jeetl, obediently following the orders of Terran authorities. He was the merest speck in the vast place, and if there had been any there to see, they would have noted a stolid determination in the set of his mouth—the look of a dedicated man.

For, after all, it had been Saturn's plan, people said, merely to destroy the building; the destruction of ten thousand beings had been, in itself, incidental, it it had occurred. The fission bomb planted in Gor Jeetl's belly through some incredible operation would accomplish its purpose, and there was nothing anyone could do about it.

The City Fathers had gathered on a rooftop, five miles away, to watch the destruction. Some of the most important men on Earth were there. Observation wings cautiously shied around the area, taking last pictures, waiting for the grandest shot of all.

Some felt sorry for Chris Berthold, the man who had spent five years designing the Friendship Tower. But Berthold was not there. He had other things on his mind.

He had been a third of the way around the blockaded area when he discovered his first clue. He tried to run the barricade. The guard had his job to do. He saw only a hatless, wild-eyed young man with a sandy crew-cut, trying to commit suicide.

"Have you seen a girl come out of here?" Chris said. "Golden-brown hair. Blue eyes. Blue suit. Black shoulder bag. Think!"

The guard shook his head. "Comin' out—no. Not more'n five hundred that meet that description, I'd say. Are you crazy or something? Say—there was one tried to get through here a minute ago that fits that description to a "T." I wouldn't let her in. The whole place is due to blow any minute, or didn't you know?"

"Trying to get in? But that wouldn't have been Camilla. Even a newspaperwoman would have better sense."

"She was nuts," the guard said. "She was crying and saying something about they couldn't blow up the Friendship Tower after this guy had worked so hard on it, and she was going to stop it."

"She got out and went back!" Chris said. "Good God! And it's only fifteen minutes to twelve. She must've gotten through somewhere."

"She got past me. What you want me to do, shoot her in the back? You think I was going to run in there after her? You think—"

Christopher Berthold, who had never so much as shoved a fellow human being in his life, struck the guard with a large, enthusiastic fist, just over the left eye. The guard, unprepared, went down and stayed down. Chris took the squad car, parked at the curb, and roared off in the direction of the Tower. The guard said later that there had been a maniacal glint in his eye.

She had gotten through, all right. He saw her legs twinkling up those eighteen broad steps—one for every member planet and satellite nation of the Friendship Alliance. She was running.

It was exactly four minutes until twelve by his watch. He ran after her, sick with the knowledge that he must be too late.

There in the portal he caught her arm. Her cheeks were tear- and grime-streaked as she turned, startled, to face him. Her hair was in disarray. But she was beautiful, and she had never been beautiful before.

"I couldn't bear to see it go. The only thing you ever l-loved. Your life work. Oh, I knew how you felt, despite the fact that you always grumble so."

"You're crazy," he said dully. "Completely crazy. Do you think I'd trade your life for a building? Stop crying and come on; it's too late to turn back now. We've got to stop the madman if we can."

They hurried, and the empty Tower, silent as a cathedral, mocked them with the echoes of their pounding feet.

In the center of the rotunda, the big table, where men were to have met as good neighbors, glistened in the light from the transparent door, more than a quarter of a mile above.

He greeted them with a grave nod. "Why have you come back?" he said. "Never mind answering. The world is full of madness today."

"Listen," Chris said, "the contrivance is supposed to go off in three minutes. Isn't there any way you can delay it until this girl is in the clear. Surely you have nothing against her."

Gor Jeetl turned disillusioned eyes upon Camilla. "She is a lovely, innocent girl," he said. "Almost a child, I can see that. I am sorry—truly sorry that she must be here to witness my degradation. But there is nothing I can do." There was a tear in his eye. "It will go off at precisely twelve o'clock. I regret to say that the scientists of Saturn build well."

"Then there's nothing more to do except wait," Chris said. He put his arms about Camilla. It was never too late for some things. "Listen," he said, "I want to tell you something."

"One minute and a half ..." Camilla said. And she was strangely happy, because she had thought that Christopher's arm would never be around her, even in death. "What is it?"

"I love you," he said. "Oh, I know I'm a heel, but I've got to say it. So there. If only his damned ship had been blasted out of the air before it got to Earth, things would have been different!"

Dr. Gor Jeetl looked shocked at the thought of inserting such a violent emotion in this tender moment, for he was a romanticist, at heart.

There was a soft, but clearly audible sound emerging suddenly from somewhere within the cavernous depths of Gor Jeetl. A pleasant, bell-like tone, like a sweet-voiced alarm clock. The Saturnian turned his face away, and it was contorted with emotion.

"The warning signal," Chris said. "Goodby, darling." He kissed her. It was quite an expert kiss for a young man more experienced in reading decitrig slide rules. He intended that it should last until the end. But he ran out of breath. It seemed quite a long time, and still nothing had happened.

But the curious expression was still on Gor Jeetl's face. Not fear; not the anticipation of the end. Something almost like repugnance.

"You did not laugh," Gor Jeetl said. "For that I thank you." He waited, while they stared in horrified expectation. "Oh, you need not stay any longer," he said. "It is all over. My ignominy is complete now, is it not? I am ready to go home."

Still no answer. "Wait a minute," said Chris after a moment, "just what is it that's inside you? A belated light was dawning.

"Why you must know, of course. It is an artificial stomach. Many years ago I had an ulcer. They removed my digestive system and installed a mechanical thing in its place. There was no longer any hunger pangs to warn me that I need nourishment, therefore the bell within me. I shall never forgive them for that. I did not ask for it. I, Gor Jeetl, to be embarrassed three times daily!" The Saturnian was frankly crying now. He propped his chins on his belly and wiped his nose with his shirt collar. "The ticking?" said Chris in an odd voice.

"Oh, it ticks a little now and then. It needs overhauling. If it hadn't been for that accursed, long-eared Venusian! They jumped at the chance, of course, to humiliate me! No one would have known, otherwise." He slumped on the table, wracked with sobs. "That man's stomach should bring shame upon his entire nation!" he blubbered.

"Don't you understand," Chris shouted in his ear, "We thought it was a bomb. Everybody thought it was a bomb; that Saturn had determined to blow up Friendship Tower just to spite Earth!"

Gor Jeetl looked up at him through small, bleary eyes. Uncomprehending eyes. "Oh, my dear young man!" he said.

"It's lunch time," said Chris. "The vendomat will be empty. Before we go back to tell the others, we could get a bite to eat there ... together."

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The Belly of Gor Jeetl

By Charles A. Stearns