Transcriber's Note:
This etext was produced from Galaxy Science Fiction April 1958. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.
the eel
BY MIRIAM ALLEN DeFORD
Illustrated by DILLON
The punishment had to fit more than just the crime—it hadto suit every world in the Galaxy!
e was intimately and unfavorably known everywhere in the Galaxy, butwith special virulence on eight planets in three different solarsystems. He was eagerly sought on each; they all wanted to try him andpunish him—in each case, by their own laws and customs. This had beengoing on for 26 terrestrial years, which means from minus ten to plus280 in some of the others. The only place that didn't want him wasEarth, his native planet, where he was too smart to operate—but, ofcourse, the Galactic Police were looking for him there too, to deliverhim to the authorities of the other planets in accordance with theInterplanetary Constitution.
For all of those years, The Eel (which was his Earth monicker;elsewhere, he was known by names indicating equally squirmy and slimylife-forms) had been gayly going his way, known under a dozendifferent aliases, turning up suddenly here, there, everywhere,committing his gigantic depredations, and disappearing as quickly andsilently when his latest enterprise had succeeded. He specialized inenormous, unprecedented thefts. It was said that he despised stealinganything under the value of 100 million terrestrial units, and most ofhis thefts were much larger than that.
He had no recognizable modus operandi, changing his methods witheach new crime. He never left a clue. But, in bravado, he signed hisname to every job: his monicker flattered him, and after eachmalefaction the victim—usually a government agency, a giantcorporation, or one of the clan enterprises of the smallerplanets—would receive a message consisting merely of the impudentdepiction of a large wriggling eel.
They got him at last, of course. The Galactic Police, like theprehistoric Royal Canadian Mounted, have the reputation of alwayscatching their man. (Sometimes they don't catch him till he's dead,but they catch him.) It took them 26 years, and it was a hard job, forThe Eel always worked alone and never talked afterward.
They did it by the herculean labor of investigating the source of thefortune of every inhabitant of Earth, since all that was known wasthat The Eel was a terrestrial. Every computer in the Federationworked overtime analyzing the data fed into it. It wasn't entirely athankless task, for, as a by-product, a lot of embezzlers, tax evadersand lesser robbers were turned up.
In the end, it narrowed down to one man who owned more than he couldaccount for having. Even so, they almost lost him, for his takingswere cached away under so many pseudonyms that it took several monthsjust to establish that they all belonged to the same person. When thatwas settled, the police swooped. The Eel surrendered quietly; the onething he had been surest of was never being apprehended, and he was sodumfounded he was unable to put up any resistance.
And then came the still greater question: which of the planets was tohave him?