II
Mort Weidmann was the same Captain Weidmann who’d left an arm in the cockpit of a K class scoutbomber that he’d flown through a formation of Marties while he almost bled to death. He looked very military in his blue and silver uniform. It wasn’t a T.S.N. uniform, of course, but even a Transolar Express rig makes an old soldier feel better.
He was another old friend of mine, like Thorsten. The three of us had been touched by the war, each in our separate ways. Mort was the one who didn’t just feel a yearning for space, who didn’t just ride on a T.S.N. uniform because it was the one available way. Mort had loved the T.S.N. itself, with a pride in the traditions that guys like Thorsten and me hadn’t quite had. He’d been a better officer because of it—and the only one who couldn’t have stayed.
And, as we’d gone our separate ways, so our ways of thinking had changed. Thorsten—well, he’d taken his choice, and some day I might have to go into the Belt and do something about it, but Mort’s attitude hurt. He didn’t have any respect for me—he couldn’t have, for a man who’d resigned his commission and become a planet-hopper.
He stood at the window in his office, his phony arm tucked into a pocket, his moustache moving up and down as he talked to me.
“I don’t know why they picked you, Ash,” he said.
I leaned back in my chair. “I don’t either—unless maybe it’s because they couldn’t find anybody else with my qualifications. Or maybe it’s because they can trust me, and they know it.” I was getting pretty mad. Weidmann was a right guy, but I was getting sick of being offered jobs without being told what they were. Two in two days was a little too much.
Weidmann turned around. “Don’t get edgy, Ash! I’ve got my orders—they came down from the top brass, and I’ll carry them, whether I approve or not. But don’t get me sore. I’m authorized to offer you ten thousand dollars, plus expenses, for one trip to Titan and back. You’ll be carrying extremely valuable cargo, and you’ll be expected to deliver it intact. Do you want the job, or not?”
I didn’t answer him right away. What was wrong with him? There was more than just dislike riding his voice.
“I don’t get,” I stalled. “Like you’ve said, why me? And why Titan? There’s nothing out there. Besides, the Asteroid Belt is full of Marties, to say nothing of Thorsten and his crew. Nobody in his right mind would try to make that trip without a convoy.”
Weidmann flushed. “For your information,” he said, “there’s a small scientific staff in a bubble on Titan. They need a new charge for their power pile, and we’ve got the shipping contract. Our problem is to get it to them without Thorsten or the Martians learning about it and grabbing it up. That’s why we dug you up. We need somebody who can fly it out to them and fight off raiders at the same time. You’re still the best available.”
So that was the big job! No wonder there were so many phony things going on!
“For God, for Country, and for Transolar, huh?” I said, watching the blood leave his face. “Now why should I help you pull your fat contracts out of the fire? What’s it to me if a bunch of technicians don’t get their damn fuel? The stuff’d be worth plenty to either Thorsten or the Marties. Living in the Asteroids isn’t fun—I’ve done it, and it takes power to maintain a bubble. Believe me, they’ll throw everything they’ve got to keep a ship carrying a pile charge from making it past them.”
I must have sounded pretty nasty about it, because Weidmann actually yanked that murderous motorized artificial arm out of his pocket. He pulled up his shoulders and looked at me like I was something floating down a sewer, but he kept his voice even.
“All right, Ash. Ten thousand, plus expenses. You’ll be given a new kind of ship. It’s a model we picked up from a manufacturer who had his contract cancelled by the T.S.N. She was originally designed for armed reconnaissance, and we’ve installed the weapons called for in the original specifications. She’ll outfly anything with jets on it, and stand off a cruiser, given room to maneuver. Does that soothe you, or do you want a convoy, too?” he added scornfully.
I lit a cigarette and pretended to think it over. Actually, of course, I was going to take the job. I would have, anyway, but there were two additional reasons why I wouldn’t turn it down. There was Pat, of course, and her orders. Most important though, had been the fact that the message to report to Weidmann that I’d found in my mailbox at the Spacemen’s Hiring Hall had borne a slightly different Post Office cancellation on the stamp than the usual. The T in United wasn’t quite formed the way it was on the regular stamp. It wasn’t apparent unless you looked for it—but it was as good as a big red sign that spelled out “Official United Terrestrial Government Business—Act as Directed Within,” because that was what it meant.
“Sounds better than I expected,” I admitted. “All right. When do I go?”
Weidmann didn’t show any expression to indicate disappointment or satisfaction. He simply said, “Tonight, after we check over the details. The ship’s equipped with standard T.S.N. controls, and you’ll have lots of time to test her flight characteristics once you get out in space.”
“What happens if she explodes? Don’t I get to test her first?”
“No—there isn’t time, and it would be a dead giveaway.” For the first time, I saw something like satisfaction on Weidmann’s face. “And if she explodes … well, frankly, Holcomb, that’s your problem.”
I spent the afternoon being briefed. One thing was off my mind—if I had official orders to take this job, then the S.B.I. would be keeping a tab on me. It made a difference, knowing that no matter what kind of a mess I got into, somebody would at least know what had happened to me, and, most important, why.
I was given a Company flight suit, and a hip rig for my Sturmey. I put those on, and was taken to within a block of the port in a shuttered car.
Not going all the way to the spaceport was my idea. The reason I gave Weidmann was good enough—there was no sense putting up neon markers to indicate that I was up to something special—but I had a better one than that. I had to give Pat a chance to get in touch with me.
It didn’t work out that way.
I began walking down toward the Transolar revetment, using a shortcut street, looking around for Pat. It was a cinch she’d had some kind of a tail on me, and I was expecting to see her step out of almost any of the doorways I passed.
Instead, I heard something.
Back up the street, the way I had come, boot soles whispered on concrete. I turned around and looked, buried in shadow.
I couldn’t see anything. I turned back around, and kept on walking, and I heard a holster being unsnapped. I stopped to listen, and there was only silence. I moved, and somebody slipped a safety catch.
I leaped suddenly to my right. My shoulders touched the wall of a house. My hands blurred forward, one locking on my holster and holding it down, the other scooping the Sturmey out and clear of the leather, then blurring again as I shot my hand as far away from me as I could, fired down the street, and spun myself away from the building. I fired again, and the street lamp above my head smashed into bits. Then I was in a deep doorway, crouched, waiting, while ribbons of light cut creases in the wall where I’d been.
That was how it began. There were endless minutes of silence, and then someone would drag a heel or kick a step. There’d be the kick of my gun against my palm, and once, the count on their side dropped from five to four.
A dot of light flickered from behind a high gutter, and rock chipped off a wall near my head. I ducked, kissed the sidewalk with my belly, slithered down a flight of steps to a basement alcove, rolled over, and slid behind the stone. On the way down, I fired back, and I heard a rasp of metal on stone. Not the momentary rake of a belt buckle or button, but a gun, dragging its muzzle against curbing while the man who’d fired it kicked his life away in the gutter. I heard it drop the last inch to the street.
I knew they’d be flanking me pretty soon. I heard cloth whisper as two of them slipped off to each side. The fellow they’d left behind began firing from all angles, weaving back and forth to cover them. He put too much pattern in his weave, though, and that was his mistake. The pattern broke, and became random as the guns spun out of his hands before he could even realize there was a shot coming.
Two! I rolled away from behind the steps, crouched, and padded away on the balls of my feet. My boots had special sponge soles on them, but even so, a lance of blue slashed from down the street against my calf. I plowed into the sidewalk, furrowing my face and tearing meat off the knuckles wrapped around my gun. I tried not to catch my breath too loudly as I dragged myself behind the ornamental outcrop of the bannister on the next flight of steps.
My leg felt like there was a railroad spike driven into it, and my knuckles were numb and stiff. I worked my fingers to keep them from freezing up on me, even though jolts of pain came up and hammered at the backs of my eyes. My face felt wet and itchy. I lay there, waiting.
I got one more of them. He decided I was dead, and poked his pale face out against a black wall. The face vanished in a burst of red, and he sprawled back. I chuckled.
There wasn’t much I could do but chuckle. The one guy left had me cold. I had no idea where he was, but he’d seen the flash of my gun. I couldn’t shift position fast enough or quietly enough to get away. All I could do was lie there.
He took a chance and jumped me. I never heard him coming.
A gun bounced off my head, and I went under—But not before I looked up and saw that it was Pat herself.