Though Gris' attempt to get back in his slave girl's good graces by karate-chopping her prepubescent sex partners and blaming a theft on them has failed, "Aside from such minor hitches as the locket, my plan was going smoothly enough." He goes back to check on that mysterious construction and brushes aside questions from Faht Bey, who he guesses suspects Gris to be the one stealing heroin shipments from the base... oh, is that subplot still going on?
Anyway, the workers eventually finish constructing what turns out to be a platform, painted in radar-eating "absorbo-coat," of heavy steel - or what looks like heavy steel. It's really hollow aluminum, just perfect for... huh. I just realized that these aliens, who can synthesize metals, paint on stealth coatings, build telescopes that see through walls, and harness black holes for energy, are making things out of the same building materials we've been using for over a hundred years.
Anyway, it's a hollow platform Gris is going to smuggle his crates of gold in. The construction is so important, he points out, that he actually pays the workers for finishing it. Then he suits up, fetches the thoroughly inoculated Antimancos from the hospital, and "Nervous now from the very prospect of having to be convincingly calm," explains his plan: they're going to go to Switzerland, where Gris is going to deposit those worthless gold-painted lead bars, which he's also loaded onto the platform. Gris will do reconnaissance, figure out which vault the Swiss keep their treasure in, and later, after they have a plan, he and the Antimancos will come back and "lift the whole thing away with the line-jumper!"
Instead of asking why Gris needs the whole line-jumper and pirate crew to merely drop him off before flying home, why several crates of fake gold are better at finding a Swiss vault than a single bar, why he would need to fight his way out from a routine deposit, or why he thinks the Swiss won't test the gold-painted lead before putting it in a vault, the Antimancos are absolutely pumped up and already dreaming about what they can buy with a platform's worth of Swiss gold. They plan to take off within a hour. And that's Chapter Five.
Chapter Six starts with a description of this "line-jumper:"it's shaped like a church bell, because the Voltarians have evolved far beyond our primitive human definitions of "aerodynamics." The two-pilot, six-passenger control deck is on the top, there's a simple engine room underneath, and beyond that I know nothing. I guess whatever you're grabbing goes inside the "bell," but where are the engines? All around the cargo bay? And they don't set fire to whatever you're hauling? Where could you stick the engines on a bell-shaped aircraft to make it fly properly?
The flying bell secures Gris' platform with both safety lines and tractor beams, a crewman tests to make sure it's radar-proof, and they're off for Switzerland. It doesn't take long for Gris to start worrying, after an engineer notices that the platform they're carrying is heavier than usual. Then Gris realizes that, in his Freudian "baublephobia" caused by a recent gravel-throwing incident, he's forgotten the star-shaped emblem that can use magical Voltarian science to neutralize the pirate crew if they get unruly. So he spends the flight worrying if the Antimancos are going discover his ruse and chuck him from the ship. He prays to an unnamed "god of voyagers," who as far as I can tell didn't make an appearance during the Prince Caucalsia's christening back at the end of book one, then he beseeches a god of pirates, which might be the coolest thing Hubbard's ever come up with, even if it's just an unrealized concept used in a throwaway line.
When a crewman shouts "It's time to dump him now!" Gris faints in terror, but the announcement is only because they've arrived over Kloten Airport in Zurich. The line-jumper's instruments can't make out any script on the signs a hundred thousand feet below, so they pick a likely candidate for a customs building, descend "twenty miles like a rocket in reverse," set Gris and the platform down, and take off with a parting cry of "Don't leave a single man alive!"
Yeah, they're gone for good. Remember, the plan isn't for them to hang around, wait for Gris to tell them where the gold is going, then swoop in and take the whole vault, they're going all the way back to Turkey, where an indeterminate amount of time later Gris will come up with a proper attack plan. So the chapter ends with Gris on a platform filled with real gold but bearing fake gold, alone in a snowstorm, "amazed to still be in the world of living things!"
No, nobody's going to wonder where the platform came from, why the plane that dropped it off never made contact with the control tower, or why it's built around a smuggling compartment. The Swiss are renowned for their discretion.
Back to Chapters Three and Four
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