colored glass. And some wheeled devices, which might have been toys.
Lester and Hines picked up only token pieces of the fabric. Frank took a
three inch golden ring that glinted with mineral. Except that it looked
decorative, he had no idea of its original purpose.
The broken, fine-boned mummy and the other items were appraised and
bought in a large room across the city. It was already cluttered with
queer fossils and objects. The numbers printed on the two equal checks,
and on the cash in their hands, still looked slightly mythical to Nelsen
and Ramos, to whom a thousand dollars had seemed a fortune.
Later, at the U.S.S.F. headquarters, he was prepared to argue grimly.
Words were in his mind: A vital matter of supply... Without an escort,
we'll still have to try to get through, alone. You have been informed,
therefore, if anything happens, you will be responsible...
He didn't have to say anything like this. They knew. Maybe an old
bitterness had made him misjudge the U.S.S.F. A young colonel smiled
tiredly.
"This has been happening," he said. "We have limited facilities for this
purpose. The U.N.S.F. even less. However, an escort is due in, now. We
can move out again, with you, in seven hours."
"Thank you, sir," Nelsen responded.
Gimp Hines had the better part of the supplies to be purchased already
lined up at the warehouses.
Nelsen counted the money he had left. "Figuring losses and gains, I have
no idea how much I owe J. John--if anything," he laughed. "So I'll make
it a grand--build up my ego... But we owe old Paul more than dough."
"All right, I'm another idiot--I'll mail J. John a similar draft," Ramos
gruffed. "Paul's a problem. He can use money, but he never lived for it.
And you can't buy a friend. We'll have to rig something."
"Yeah--we will," Gimp said. "Couple of times I forgot J. John. But I
lost my shirt on those loads that were lifted off you boneheads. The
Kuzaks reimbursed me for half. Do you two want to cover the other half?
Aw--forget it! Who's got time to figure all this? That old coot doped
himself out a nice catch-dollar scheme, making us promise. Or was it a
leg pull on a highly elusive proposition, where big sums and the
vastness of space seem to match? Hell--I'm getting mixed up again..."
Dave Lester had wandered off embarrassedly, there in the warehouse. But
now he returned, clearing his throat for attention.
"Fellas," he said. "Helen and I want you to come out to our apartment,
now, for dinner."
"Shucks, that's swell, Les," Ramos responded, suddenly curious.
"Here, also," Nelsen enthused.
"Sure," Gimp said. But his smile thinned.
In this gravity, going to Lester's place was a floating glide rather
than a walk. Along a covered causeway, into a huge dome, up a wall with
handholds, onto a wispy balcony. Nelsen and Ramos brought liquor and
roses.
Much of what followed was painful and familiar--in a fantastic setting.
Two young people, recently married, struggling with problems that they
hadn't been able to plan for very well.
While his wife was out of earshot, Lester put his hand on the back of a
chair constructed entirely of fine golden wire--later it developed that
he had made it, do-it-yourself fashion, to be economical--and seemed
more intent on holding it down than to rest his hand.
"Gimp... Frank..." he began nervously. "You helped Helen and me to get
married and get set up out here. The Archeological Institute paid our
way to Pallastown. But there were other expenses... Her--my
father-in-law, died by his own hand while still awaiting trial...
Everything he owned is still tied up... Now, well--you know human
biology... I hope you can wait a little longer for us to begin paying
back your loan..."
Nelsen had a vagrant thought about how money now had to stand on its own
commercial value, rather than rely on the ancient witchcraft of a gold
standard. Then he almost suspected that Lester was being devious and
clever. But he knew the guy too well.
"Cripes, Les!" he burst out almost angrily. "How about your services,
just now, as an archeological consultant? If you won't consider that we
might have meant to make you a gift. Pretty soon you'll have us
completely confused!"
"What a topic for an evening of fun," Gimp complained. "Hey, Helen--can
I mix the drinks?"
"Yes--of course, Mr. Hines. I'll get you the things," she said with
apology in her eyes and voice, as if fussy celebrities had descended on
her small, unsettled, and poor household.
"On the Moon you were a swell cook, Helen," Frank reminded her.
She flashed a small smile. "It was different, there. Things weighed
something, and stayed in place. Here--just breathe hard and you have a
kitchen accident. Besides, I had a garden. We'd like one here, but
there's no room... And in the market..."
"Shucks--it's new here to us, too," Ramos soothed. "Riding an Archer in
space, at zero-G, is different from this..."
Things were a bit less strained, after that, through the skimpy meal,
with its special devices, unique to the asteroids and their tiny
gravity. Clamps to fasten plates to tables and victuals to plates.
Drinking vessels that were half-squeeze bottles. Such equipment was now
available in what might once have been called a dime store--but with
another price-level.
The visitors made a game of being awkward and inept, together. It was
balm for Helen's sensitivity.
"Somebody's got to keep the camera for us, Mex," Frank Nelsen said
presently.
"Yeah--I know. Les'll do it for us," Ramos answered. "He's the best,
there. He can run through all the pictures--make copies with an ordinary
camera... See if he can market them. Twenty percent ought to be about
right for his cut."
Lester tried to interrupt, but Frank got ahead of him. "We owe Gimp for
those loads we lost. Got to cut him into this, as a consultant. You'll
be around Pallastown for a while, helping out with this end of the
Twin's enterprises, won't you, Gimp?"
Hines grinned. "Probably. Glad you slobs got memories. Glad to be of
assistance, anytime. Les is no louse--he'll help old friends. I'll bring
him the camera, out of the safe at my hotel, as soon as we leave
here..."
Lester smiled doubtfully, and then happily. That was how they worked the
fabulous generosity of spacemen in the chips on him.
Nelsen, Ramos and Hines escaped soon after that.
"Three hours left. I guess you guys want to get lost--separately," Gimp
chuckled. "I'll say so long at the launching catapults, later. I've got
some tough guards, fresh from the Moon, who will go along with you. Art
and Joe need them..."
Frank Nelsen wandered alone in the recreation area. He heard
music--_Fire Streak_, _Queen of Serene_... He searched faces, looking
for an ugly one with shovel teeth. He thought, with an achy wistfulness,
of a small hero-worshipping girl named Jennie Harper, at Serene.
He found no one he had ever seen before. In a joint he watched a girl
with almost no clothes, do an incredible number of spinning somersaults
in mid-air. He thought he ought to find himself a friend--then decided
perversely, to hell with it.
He thought of the trouble on Earth, of Ceres, of Tiflin and Igor, of
Fanshaw, the latest leader of the Asteroid Belt toughs--the Jolly
Lads--that you heard about. He thought about how terribly vulnerable to
attack Pallastown seemed, even with its encirclement of outriding guard
stations. He thought of Paul Hendricks, Two-and-Two Baines, Charlie
Reynolds, Otto Kramer, Mitch Storey, and Miss Rosalie Parks who was his
old Latin teacher.
He thought of trying to beam some of them. But hell, they all seemed so
long-lost, and he wasn't in the mood, now. He even thought about how it
was, trying to give yourself a dry shave with a worn-out razor, inside
an Archer. He thought that sometime, surely, perhaps soon, the Big
Vacuum would finish him.
He wound up with a simple sentimental impulse, full of nostalgia and
tenderness for things that seemed to stay steady and put. The way he
felt was half-hearted apology for human moods in which murder would have
been easy. He even had a strange envy for David Lester.
Into the synthetic cellulose lining of a small carton bought at a
souvenir shop, he placed the sixty million-year old golden band with its
odd arabesques and its glinting chips of mineral. Regardless of its
mysterious intentional function, it could be a bracelet. To him, just
then, it was only a trinket that he had picked up.
Before he wrapped and addressed the package, he put a note inside:
"Hi, Nance Codiss! Thinking about you and all the neighbors. This might
reach you by Christmas. Remember me? Frank Nelsen."
Postage was two hundred dollars, which seemed a trifle. And he didn't
quite realize how like a king's ransom a gift like this would seem in
Jarviston, Minnesota.
On leaving the post office, he promptly forgot the whole matter, as
hard, practical concerns took hold of him, again.
At the loading quays, special catapults hurled the gigantic bales of
supplies clear of Pallas. To the Kuzaks, this shipment would now have
seemed small, but it was much larger than the loads Ramos and Nelsen had
handled before. Gimp and Lester saw them off. Then they were in space,
with extra ionics pushing the bales. The guard of six new men was
posted. Nelsen wasn't sure that they'd be any good, or whether he could
trust them all, but they looked eagerly alert. Riding a mile off was the
Space Force patrol bubb.
All through the long journey--beam calls ahead were avoided for added
safety--Nelsen kept wondering if he'd find the post in ruins, with what
was left of Art and Joe drifting and drying. But nothing like that
happened yet, and the shipment was brought through. Business with the
asteroid-hoppers was started at once.
When there was a lull, Art Kuzak talked expansively in his office bubb:
"Good work, Frank. Same to you, Ramos--except that I know you're itching
with your own ideas, and probably won't be around long. Which is your
affair... Never mind what anybody says about Venus, or any other place.
The Belt, with its history, its metals, and its possibilities, is the
best part of the solar system. Keep your defenses up, your line of
communication covered, and you can't help but make money. There are new
posts to set up, help to recruit and bring out, stellene plants and
other factories to construct. There'll be garden bubbs, repair
shops--everything. Time, work, and a little luck will do it. You
listening, Frank?"
Nelsen got a bit cagy with Art, again. "Okay, Art--you seem like a
formal fella. Mex and I joined up and helped out pretty much as informal
company members. But as long as we've put in our dough, let's make it
official, in writing and signed. The KRNH Enterprises--_K_uzak, _R_amos,
_N_elsen and _H_ines. The 'H' could also stand for Hendricks--Paul
Hendricks."
"I _like_ it that way, you suspicious slob," Art Kuzak chuckled.
So another phase began for Nelsen. Offices bored him. Amassing money,
per se, meant little to him, except as a success symbol that came out of
the life he had known. He figured that a man ought to be a success, even
a rough-and-tumble romantic like Ramos, or Joe Kuzak. Or himself, with
both distance and home engrained confusingly into his nature.
One thing that Nelsen was, was conscientious. He could choose and stick
to a purpose for even longer than it seemed right for him.
Mostly, now, during the long grind of expansion, he was afield.
Disturbances on Earth quieted for a while, as had always happened, so
far. The Belt responded with relative peace. Tovie Ceres, the Big
Asteroid, which, like the others, should have been open to all nations,
but wasn't, kept mostly to its own affairs. There were only the constant
dangers, natural, human, and a combination. There was always a job--a
convoy to meet, a load of supplies to rush to a distant point, Jolly
Lads to scare off. Reckless Ramos might be with Nelsen, or Joe Kuzak who
usually operated separately, or a few guards, or several
asteroid-hoppers, most of whom were tough and steady and good friends to
know. Often enough, Nelsen was alone.
At first, KRNH just handled the usual supplies. But when factory and
hydroponic equipment began to arrive, Joe Kuzak and Frank Nelsen might
be out establishing a new post. There'd be green help, bubbing out from
the Moon, to break in. Nelsen would see new faces that still seemed
familiar, because they were like those of the old Bunch, as it had been.
Grim, scared young men, full of wonder. But the thin stream of the
adventurous was thickening, as more opportunities opened. Occasionally
there was a young couple. _Oh, no_, you thought. Then--_well, maybe_.
That is, if somebody didn't crack up, or get lymph node swellings that
wouldn't reduce, and if you didn't have to try to play nursemaid.
Now and then Nelsen was in Pallastown--for business, for relief, for a
bit of hell-raising; to see Gimp and the David Lesters. Pretty soon
there was an heir in the Lester household. Red, healthy, and male.
Cripes--Out Here, too? Okay--josh the parents along. The most wonderful
boy in the solar system! Otherwise, matters, there, were much better
than before. The camera was in a museum in Washington. The pictures it
had contained were on TV, back home. Just another anti-war film, maybe.
But impressive, and _different_. The earnings didn't change Nelsen's
life much, nor Gimp's, nor Ramos'. But it sure helped the Lesters.
David Lester had resigned from Archeological Survey. He was getting
actually sharp. He was doing independent research, and was setting up
his own business in Belt antiques.
Frank Nelsen had another reason for coming to Pallastown. Afield, you
avoided beam communication, nowadays, whenever you could. Someone might
trace your beam to its source, and jump you for whatever you had. But
Gimp Hines could tell Nelsen about the absent Bunch members and the old
friends, while they both sat in the little KRNH office in Town.
"... Paul Hendricks is still the same, Frank. New bunch around him...
Too bad we can't call him, now--because the Earth is on the far side of
the sun. Mitch Storey just vanished into the Martian thickets, during
one of his jaunts. Almost a year ago, now... I didn't see him when I
stopped over on Mars, but he was back at the Station once, after that.
Take it easy, Frank. They've looked with helicopters, and even on the
ground; you couldn't do any more. I'll keep in touch, to see if anything
turns up..."
After a minute, Nelsen relaxed, slightly. "Two-and-Two? I guess he's
okay--with Charlie Reynolds looking after him?"
"Peculiar about Charlie," Gimp answered, looking awed and puzzled. "Got
the news from old J. John, his granddad, when he acknowledged the
receipt of our latest draft, by letter. Hold your hat. Charlie got
himself killed... I'll dig the letter out of the file."
Nelsen sat up very straight. "Never mind," he said. "Just tell me more.
Anything can happen."
"Our most promising member," Gimp mused. "He didn't get much. The Venus
Expedition had to move some heavy equipment to the top of a mountain, to
make some electrostatic tests before a storm. Charlie had just climbed
down from the helicopter. A common old lightning bolt hit him. Somebody
played _Fire Streak_ on the bagpipes--inside a sealed tent--while they
buried him. Otherwise, he didn't even get a proper spaceman's funeral.
Venus' escape velocity is almost as high as Earth's. Boosting a corpse
up into orbit, just for atmospheric cremation, would have been too much
of a waste for the Expedition's rigid economy."
Nelsen had never really been very close to Charlie Reynolds, though he
had liked the flamboyant Good Guy. Now, it was all a long ways back,
besides. Nelsen didn't feel exactly grief. Just an almost mystical
bitterness, a shock and an uncertainty, as if he could depend on
nothing.
"So what about Two-and-Two?" he growled, remembering how he used to
avoid any responsibility for the big, good-hearted lug; but now he felt
surer about himself, and things seemed different.
"I guess the Expedition medic had to straighten him out with
devil-killers," Hines answered. "He bubbed all the way back to Earth,
alone, to see J. John about Charlie. I beamed him, there, before the
Earth hid behind the sun. He was still pretty shaken up. Funny,
too--Charlie's opportunity-laden Venus has turned out to be a bust, for
two centuries, at least, unless new methods, which aren't in sight, yet,
turn up. Sure--at staggering expense, and with efforts on the order of
fantasy, reaction motors could be set up around its equator, to make it
spin as fast as the Earth. Specially developed green algae have already
been seeded all over the planet. They're rugged, they spread fast. But
it will take the algae about two hundred years to split the carbon
dioxide and give the atmosphere a breathable amount of free oxygen, to
say nothing of cracking the poisonous formaldehyde."
"Two-and-Two's back in Jarviston, then?" Nelsen demanded.
"No--not anymore--just gimme breath," Hines went on. "He and Charlie had
figured another destination of opportunity--Mercury, the planet nearest
the sun, everlasting frozen night on one side, eternal, zinc-melting
sunshine on the other. But there's the fringe zone between the two--the
Twilight Zone. If you can live under stellene, you've got a better place
there than Mars might have been. Colonists are going there, to quit the
Earth, to get away from it all. Two-and-Two was about to leave for
Mercury, when I last spoke to him. By now he's probably almost there.
And even under the most favorable conditions, Mercury is hard to
beam--too much solar magnetic interference."
"That poor sap," Nelsen gruffed.
"It probably isn't that bad, anymore," Hines commented. "Sometime I
might go to Mercury, myself--when I get good and sick of sitting on my
tail, here--when I always was a man of action! Mercury does have
possibilities--plenty of solar power, certainly; plenty of frozen
atmosphere on the dark face. Interesting, Frank... Oh, hell, I
forgot--there's a letter here for you. And a package. Just arrived...
I'll scram, now. Got to go down to the quays. Hold the fort, here, will
you?"
Gimp Hines grinned as he left.
Nelsen was glad to be alone. The lonesomeness of the Big Vacuum was
getting grimed into him. When he saw the return name and address on the
package, and the two hundred-ten dollar postage sticker, he thought,
_Cripes--that poor kid--what did I start?_ Then the awful wave of
nostalgia for Jarviston, Minnesota, hit him, as he fumbled to open the
microfilmed letter capsule, and put it in the viewer.
"Hello, Frank--it has to be that, doesn't it, and not Mr. Nelsen, since
you've sent me this miraculous bracelet--which I don't dare wear very
much, since I don't want to lose an arm to some international--or even
interstellar--jewel thief! It makes me feel like the Queen of
Something--certainly not Serene, since it implies calmness and repose,
which I certainly don't feel--no offense to our Miss Sands, whom I
admire enormously. In a very small way I am repaying to you in kind--an
item which I made, myself, and which I know that some spacemen use
inside their Archers. You see, we are all informed in details. Paul,
Otto, Chippie Potter and his dog, and other characters whom you won't
remember, send their best greetings. Oh, I've got Stardust fever, too,
but I'll yield to my folks' wishes and wait, and learn a profession that
will be of some use Out There. May you wear what I'm sending in good
health, safety and fortune. Send no more staggering gifts, please--I
couldn't stand it--but please do write. Tell me how it really is in the
Belt. You simply don't realize how much--"
Nance Codiss' missive rattled along, and the scrawled words got to be
like small, happy bells inside Nelsen's skull. His crooked grin came
out; he unpacked the sweater--creylon wool, very warm, bright red, a bit
crude in workmanship here and there--but imagine a girl bothering, these
days! He donned the garment and decided it fit fine.
Then he tried to write a letter:
"Hi, Nance! I've just put it on--first time--beautiful! It'll stay right
with me. Thanks. Talk about being staggered..."
There he bogged down, some, wondering how much she had changed,
wondering just what he ought to say to her, and who these characters
that he wouldn't remember, might be. Cripes, how old was she, now?
Seventeen? He ended up taking her at her word. He described Pallastown
rather heavy-handedly, and bought some microfilm postcards to go along
with his missive, as soon as he went out to mail it.
But a few hours later, from deep in space, he looked back at the Town,
shining in the distance, and in the blue mood of thinking about Charlie
Reynolds, Mitch Storey, and Two-and-Two, he wondered how much longer it,
or Nance, or anything else, could last. Then he glanced down at the
bright sweater, and chuckled...
Unexpectedly, Ramos remained an active member of KRNH Enterprises for
over a year. But the end had to come. "I told Art I'd let my dough ride,
Frank," he said to Nelsen in the lounge of Post One. "I'll only draw
enough earnings to build me a real, deep-space bubb, nuclear-propelled,
and with certain extra gadgets. A few guys have tried to follow the
unmanned, instrumented rockets, out to the system of Saturn. Nobody got
back, yet. I think I know what they figured wrong. The instruments
showed--well, skip it... I'm going into Town to prepare. It'll take
quite a while, so I'll have some fun, too."
Ramos' eyes twinkled with a secret triumph--before the fact.
"You don't argue a fighting rooster out of fighting," Nelsen laughed.
"Besides, it wouldn't be Destiny--or any fun--to succeed. So accept the
complimentary comparison--if it fits--which maybe it doesn't, you
egotistical bonehead. Good luck--_buena suerte, amigo_. I'll look you up
in Town, if I get a chance..."
Nelsen was always busy to the gills. Progress was so smooth for another
couple of years, that the hunch of Big Trouble building up, became a
gnawing certainty in his nerves.
Of course there were always the Jolly Lads to watch out for--the extreme
individualists, space-twisted and wild. Robbing and murdering could seem
easier than digging. Take your loot into Pallastown--who knew you hadn't
grubbed it, yourself? Sell it. Get the stink blown off you--forget some
terrible things that had happened to you. Have yourself a time. Strike
Out again. Repeat...
Nelsen knew that, through the months, he had killed defensively at least
twice. Once, with a long-range homing bullet--weapons sanctioned by
pious and cautious international agreement, were more lethal, now, to
match the weapons of the predatory. Once by splitting a helmet with a
rifle barrel. When he was out alone, exploring a new post site on a
small asteroid, a starved Tovie runaway had jumped him. Maybe he should
regret the end of that incident.
Trips to Pallastown were increasingly infrequent. But there was one time
when he almost had come specially to see Ramos' new bubb, still under
wraps, supposedly. Well--that erratic character had it out on a long
test run. Damn him! As usual, time was crowding Nelsen. He had to get
back on the job. He had just a couple of hours left.
He wrote a letter to Nance Codiss, answering one of hers--funny, he'd
never yet tried to contact her vocally. Being busy, being cautious about
using a beam--these were good reasons. Now there was hardly enough spare
time to reach twice across the light-minutes. Maybe the real truth was
that men got strangely shy in the silences of the Belt.
"Dear Nance: You seem to be making fine headway in your new courses. All
the good words, for that..."