didn't know if the impulse to write _Darling_, was just his own
loneliness, which any girl with a kind word would have filled. He didn't
know her, or that part of himself, very well. He kept remembering her as
she had been. Then he'd realize that memory wasn't a stable thing to
hang onto. Everything changed--how well he had learned that! She was
older, now, intelligent, and at school again, studying some kind of
medical laboratory technology. Certainly she had become more
sophisticated and elusive--her gay letters were just a superficial part
of what she must be. And certainly there were dates and boyfriends, and
all the usual phases of getting out of step with a mere recollection,
like himself. Nelsen had some achy emotions. Should he ask for her
picture? Should he send one of himself?
He just scribbled on, ramblingly, as usual. Yep, in a new Archer Seven,
you could undo a few clamps, pull a foot up out of a boot, and actually
change your socks... Inconsequential nonsense like that. He ended by
telling her not to worry about any knicknacks he might send--that they
came easy, out here. He microposted the letter, and mailed a square of
soft glass-silk of many colors.
Then he pronounced a few cuss words, laughed at himself for getting so
serious, shrugged, and with the casualness of hopper with his pockets
loaded, moved toward the rec area, which was some distance off.
It was night over this part of rapidly growing Pallastown. Moving along
a lighted causeway, he saw the man with the shovel teeth. Glory, had
_he_ managed to survive so long? His mere presence, here, seemed like a
signal of the end of peace. Nelsen and Ramos used to practice
close-contact tactics at zero-G, in space. So Nelsen didn't even wait
for the man to notice him. He leaped, and sped like an arrow, thudding
into the guy's stomach with both of his boot heels. Shovel Teeth was
hurled fifty yards backward, Nelsen hurtling with him all the way.
Unless Nelsen wanted to kill him, there wasn't any more to do. Partial
revenge.
He wasn't worried about anybody except the guy's Jolly Lad henchmen.
There was nobody close by. Now he did a quick fade, sure that nobody had
seen who he was, during the entire episode. No use to call the
cops--there were too many uncertainties about the setup in wild,
polyglot Pallastown. Nelsen moved on to the rec area.
He didn't go into a garishly splendid place, named _The Second Stop_.
Thus, he didn't see its owner, whose identity he had already heard
about, of course. Not that he wouldn't have liked to. But there wasn't
any time to get involved in a long chat with a woman... Nor did he see
the tall, skinny, horse-faced comic, known only as Igor, go through
slapstick acrobatics that once would have been impossible...
By a round-about route he proceeded to the catapults, where Gimp Hines
was waiting for him. They had been conversing just a short while ago.
"Did you drop in on Eileen?" Gimp asked right away.
"No. There'll be other occasions," Nelsen laughed. "Someday, if we live,
she'll own all the joints in the solar system."
"Uh-huh--I'd bet on it... By the way, there's a grapevine yarn around.
Somebody kicked Fanshaw--the Jolly Lad big-shot--in the belly. You,
perhaps?"
"Don't listen to gossip," Nelsen said primly. "Are you serious about
going to Mercury?"
"Of course. There are people to take over my office duties. I'll be on
my way in a couple of weeks. I think you'd like to come along, Frank."
Nelsen felt an urge that was like a crying for freedom.
"Sure I would. But I'm bound to the wheel. Cripes, though--watch
yourself, fella. Don't _you_ get into a mess!"
"Hell--you're the mess specialist, Frank. Fanshaw isn't here for fun.
And there's been that new trouble at home..."
A Tovie bubb, loaded with people, and a Stateside bubb, both in orbit
around the Earth, had collided. No survivors. But there was plenty of
blaming and counter-blaming. Another dangerous incident. Glory--with all
the massed destructive power there was, could luck really last forever?
Frank Nelsen got back to Post One, okay. But later, riding in to Post
Three, just in an Archer Six, with a couple of guards for company, he
picked up a long-lost voice, falsely sweet, then savage at the end:
"I'm a Jinx, aren't I, Frankie? A vulture. Nice and cavalier, you are. I
bet you hoped I was dead. Okay--Sucker...!"
Tiflin didn't even answer when Nelsen tried to beam him.
Nelsen was able to save Post Three. The guards and most of the personnel
were experienced and tough. They drove the Jolly Lads back and deflected
some chunks of aimed and accelerated asteroid chips, with new defense
rockets.
Joe Kuzak, at Post Seven, wasn't so lucky, though Frank had tipped him
off. Half of the post was scattered and pirated. Six fellas and the wife
of one of them--a Bunch from Baltimore--were just drying shreds that
drifted in the wreckage. Big Joe, though he had a rocket chip through
his chest, had been able to beat off the attackers, with the help of a
few asteroid-hoppers and his novice crew which turned out to be more
rugged than some people might have expected.
Frank got to them just as it was over--except for the cursing, the
masculine tears of grief and rage, the promises of revenge. Luckily,
none of the women had been captured.
Joe Kuzak, full of new antibiotics and coagulants, was still up and
around. "So we knocked off a few of them, Frank," he said ruefully in
his office bubb. "Several were in Tovie armor. Runaways, or agents?
They're crowding us, boy. Hell, what a junk heap this post is going to
be, to sort out..."
"Get to it," Nelsen commented.
"You've got something in mind?"
"Uh-huh. Coming in, I heard somebody address somebody else as Fan.
Fanshaw, that would be. And I kind of remembered his voice, as he
cracked out orders. He was with this group. I'm going after him."
"Good night...! I'll send some of my crowd along."
"Nope, Joe. They'd spot two or more guys. One, they won't even believe
in. This is a lone-wolf deal. Besides, it's personal... Shucks--I don't
even think there's a risk..."
There, he knew he exaggerated--especially as, huddled up to resemble a
small asteroid-fragment, he followed the retreating specks. His only
weapon was a rapid-fire launcher, using small rockets loaded only with
chemical explosive. He felt a tingle all through him. Scare, all right.
Ahead, as he expected, he saw three stolen bubbs blossom out. There'd be
a real pirates' party, like he'd seen, once. They'd have a lookout
posted, of course. But the enormity of the Belt made them cocky. Who
could ever really police very much of it? One other advantage was that
Jolly Lads were untidy. Around the distant bubbs floated a haze of
jettisoned refuse. Boxes, wrappings, shreds of stellene. Nelsen had
figured on that.
Decelerating, he draped a sheet of synthetic cellulose that he'd brought
along, loosely over his armored shape. Then he drifted unobtrusively
close. At a half-mile distance, he peered through the telescope sight of
his launcher. The bubbs were close together. The lookout floated free.
Him, he got first, with a careful, homing shot.
Immediately he fired a burst into each bubb, saw them collapse around
their human contents. The men inside were like cats in limp bags, the
exits of which could no longer be found. Calmly he picked the biggest
lumps of struggling forms, and fired again and again, until there was no
more motion left except an even rotation.
He soon located Fanshaw. His unarmored body was bloated and drying, his
mouth gaped, his shovel teeth were exposed to the stars and the distant,
naked sun. Nelsen had to think back to six dead young men and a girl, to
keep from feeling lousy. Had Fanshaw been just another guy invading a
region that was too big and terrible for humans?
With something like dread, Nelsen looked for Tiflin, too. But, of
course, that worthy wasn't around.
Nelsen picked up some space-fitness cards. Quite a few nations were
represented. Joe would have to turn in the cards to the respective
authorities. Noting its drift course, Nelsen left the wreckage, and
hurried back to Post Seven, before other Jolly Lads could catch up and
avenge their pals.
"Fanshaw's groups will fight it out for a new leader, Joe," he said.
"That should keep them busy, for a while..."
Succeeding months were quieter. But the Tovies had lost no advantage.
They had Ceres, the biggest of the asteroids, and their colonies were
moving in on more and more others that were still untouched, closing
them, against all agreements, to any competition.
The new Archer Seven which Nelsen presently acquired, had a miniature TV
screen set in its collar. Afield, he was able to pick up propaganda
broadcasts from Ceres. They showed neat, orderly quarters, good food,
good facilities, everything done by command and plan. He wondered glumly
if that was better for men who were pitted against space. The rigid
discipline sheltered them. They didn't have to think in a medium that
might be too huge for their brains and emotions. Maybe it was more
practical than rough-and-tumble individualism. He had a bitter picture
of the whole solar system without a free mind in its whole extent--that
is, if another gigantic blowup didn't happen first...
Nelsen didn't see Ramos' new bubb, nor did he see him leave for Saturn
and its moons. The guy had avoided him, and gone secretive. But over a
year later, the news reached Nelsen at Post Eight. A man named Miguel
Ramos had got back, more dead than alive, after a successful venture,
alone, to the immediate vicinity of the Ringed Planet. His vehicle was
riddled. He was in a Pallastown hospital.
Frank Nelsen delegated his duties, and went to see Ramos. The guy seemed
hardly more than half-conscious. He had no hands left. His legs were off
at the knee. Frostbite. Only the new antibiotics he had taken along, had
kept the gangrene from killing him. There was a light safety belt across
his bed. But somehow he knew Nelsen. And his achievement seemed like a
mechanical record fixed in his mind.
"Hi, Frank," he whispered hurriedly. "I figured it right. Out there,
near Saturn, clusters of particles of frozen methane gas are floating
free like tiny meteors. The instrumented rockets didn't run into them,
and they were too light to show clearly on radar. But a bubb with a man
in it is lots bigger, and can be hit and made like a sieve. That's what
happened to those who went first. Their Archers were pierced too. I had
mine specially armored, with a heavy helmet and body plating... The
particles just got my gloves and my legs. Cripes, I got pictures--right
from the rim of the Rings! And lots of data..."
Ramos showed the shadow of a reckless grin of triumph. Then he passed
out.
Later, Nelsen saw the photographs, and the refrigerated box with the
clear, plastic sides. Inside it was what looked like dirty, granular
snow--frozen water. Which was all it was. Unless the fact that it was
also the substance of Saturn's Rings made a difference.
Saturn--another of the great, cold, largely gaseous planets, where it
would perhaps always be utterly futile for a man to try to land...
Ramos, the little Mex who chased the girls. Ramos, the hero, the
historical figure, now...
Cursing under his breath, Nelsen wandered vaguely to _The Second Stop_.
There, he saw what probably every spaceman had dreamed of. Lucette of
Paris swimming nude in a gigantic dewdrop--possible where gravity was
almost nil. Music played. Beams of colored light swung majestically,
with prismatic effects through the great, flattened, shimmering ovoid of
water, while Lucette's motions completed a beautiful legend...
Two figures moved past Nelsen in the darkened interior. The first one
was tall and lean. Then he saw the profile of a lean face with a bent
nose, heard a mockingly apologetic "Oh-oh..." and didn't quite realize
that this was Tiflin, the harbinger of misfortune, before it was too
late to collar him. Nelsen followed as soon as he could push his way
from the packed house. But pursuit was hopeless in the crowded causeway
outside.
A few minutes later, he was in Eileen Sands' apartment. It was not his
first visit. Eileen seldom danced or sang, anymore, herself. She was
different, now. She wore an evening dress--soft blue, tasteful. Here,
she was the cool, poised owner, the lady.
"Tiflin hasn't been around here for a long time, Frank," she was saying.
"You know that his buddy entertained for me for a while. I have an
interested nature, but Tiflin never gave me anything but wisecracks.
There are lots of Tovies around--there's even a center for runaways. I
don't ask questions of customers usually. And technically, all I can
require of a comic is talent. This Igor had a certain kind. What is the
difficulty now?"
Frank Nelsen looked at Eileen almost wearily for a second. "Just that
Tiflin is somehow involved with most of the bad luck that I've ever had
out here," he said, grimly. "And if Pallastown were destroyed, everybody
but the Tovies might as well go home from the Belt. The timing seems to
me to be about right. They'd risk it, feeling we're too scared to strike
back at home. The Jolly Lads--who are international--could be encouraged
to do the job for them."
Sudden hollows showed in Eileen's cheeks. "What are you going to do?"
she asked.
"Nothing much for me to do," he answered. "I only happened to notice,
while I was coming in to Pallas, that all the guard stations, extending
way out, were quietly very alert. But is that enough? Well, if they
can't cope with an attack, what good am I? We're vulnerable, here. I
guess we just sit tight and wait."
She smiled faintly. "All right--let's. Sit, relax, converse. Stop being
the Important Personage for a while, Frank."
"Look who's talking. Okay--what do you know that's new to tell?"
"A few things. I keep track of most everybody."
He took her slender hand, brown in his angular fist, that was pale from
his space gloves. "Gimp, first," he said.
"Still on Mercury, with Two-and-Two. Two-and-Two was a bricklayer, a
good beginning for a construction man. That seems to be paying off, as
colonists move in. Gimp is setting up solar power stations."
"Encouraging information, for once. Here's a hard one--Jig Hollis. The
real intelligent man who stayed home. I've envied him for years."
"Hmmm--yes, Frank. Intelligent, maybe--but he never quite believed it,
himself. His wife stayed with him, even after he turned real sour and
reckless. One night he hit a big oak tree with his car. Now, he is just
as dead as if he had crashed into the sun at fifty miles per second. He
couldn't take knowing that he was scared to do what he wanted."
"Hell!" Nelsen said flatly.
"Now who else should I gossip about?" Eileen questioned. "Oh, yes--Harv
Diamond, hero of our lost youth, who got space fatigue. Well, he
recovered and returned to active duty in the U.S.S.F. Which perhaps
leaves me with just my own love life to confess." She smiled lightly.
"Once there was a kid named Frankie Nelsen, who turned out to be a very
conscientious jerk. Since then, there have been scads of rugged,
romantic characters on all sides... You're going to ask about Miguel
Ramos."
She paused, looked unhappy and tired. "The celebrity," she said. "Mashed
up. But he'll recover--this time. I've seen him--sent him flowers, sat
beside him. But what do you do with a clown like that? Lock him in the
closet or look at him through a telescope? Goodbye--hello--goodbye. A
kid with gaudy banners flying, if he lives to be forty--which he never
will. They'll be giving him artificial hands and feet, and he'll be
trying for Pluto. A friend. I guess I'm proud. That's all. Anything else
you want to know?"
"Yeah. There was a cute little girl at Serene."
"Jennie Harper. She married one of those singing Moon prospectors.
Somebody murdered them both--way out on Far Side."
Frank Nelsen's mouth twisted. "That's enough, pal," he said. "I better
go do my sitting tight someplace else. Keep your Archer handy. Thanks,
and see you..."
Within forty minutes David Lester was showing him some pictures that a
hopper had brought in from a vault in a surface-asteroid.
On the screen, great, mottled shapes moved through a lush forest.
Thousands of tiny, flitting bat-like creatures--miniature pterodactyls
of the terrestrial Age of Reptiles--hovered over a swamp, where millions
of insects hung like motes in the light of the low sun. A much larger
pterodactyl, far above, glided gracefully over a cliff, and out to sea,
its long, beaked head turning watchfully.
"Hey!" Nelsen said mildly, as his jaded mind responded.
Lester nodded. "_They_ were on Earth, too--as the Martians must have
been--exploring and taking pictures, during the Cretaceous Period. Oh,
but there's a perhaps even better sequence! Like the Martians, they had
a world-wrecking missile, which they were building in space. Spherical.
About six miles in diameter, I calculate. Shall I show you?"
"No... I think I'll toddle over to the offices, Les. Keep wearing those
Archers, people. Glad the kid likes to play in his..."
Nelsen had donned his own Seven, with the helmet fastened across his
chest by a strap. At the KRNH office, there was a letter, which luckily
hadn't been sent out to Post Eight. The tone was more serious than that
of any that Nance Codiss had sent before.
"Dear Frank: I'm actually coming your way. I'll be stopping to work at
the Survey Station Hospital on Mars for two months en route..."
He read that far when he heard the sirens and saw the flashes of
defending batteries that were trying to ward off missiles from
Pallastown. He latched his helmet in place. He was headed for the
underground galleries when the first impacts came. He saw four domes
vanish in flashes of fire. Then he didn't run anymore. He had his small
rocket launcher, from the office. If they ever came close enough... But
of course they'd stay thousands of miles off. He got to the nearest
fallen dome as fast as he could. Everybody had been in armor, but there
were over a hundred dead. Emergency and rescue crews were operating
efficiently.
He glanced around for indications. No explosive, chemical or nuclear,
had yet been used. But there was the old Jolly Lad trick: Accelerate a
chunk of asteroid-material to a speed of several miles per second by
grasping it with your gloved hands, while the shoulder-ionic of your
armor was at full power. Start at a great distance, aim your missile
with your body, let it go... Impact would be sheer, blasting
incandescence. A few hundred chunks of raw metal could finish
Pallastown... Were these just crazy, wild slobs whooping it up, or real
crud provided with a purpose and reward? Either way, here was the
eternal danger to any Belt settlement.
Nelsen could have tried to reach an escape-exit into open space, but he
helped with the injured while he waited for more impacts to come. There
was another series of deflecting flashes from the defense batteries. Two
more domes vanished... Then--somehow--nothing more. Evidently some of
the attackers had been only half hearted, _this time_. Reprieve...
Almost four hundred people were dead. It could have been the whole Town.
Then spreading disaster. All Nelsen's friends were okay. The Posts
called in--okay, too. Nelsen waited three days. He wanted to help
defend, if the attack was renewed. But now the U.N.S.F. was
concentrating in the vicinity. For a while, things would be quiet, Out
Here. Just the same, he felt kind of fed up. He felt as if the end of
everything he knew had crept inevitably a little closer.
He beamed Mars--the Survey Station. He contacted Nance. He had known
that she should have arrived already. He was relieved. He knew what the
region between here and there could be like when there was trouble.
"It's me--Frank Nelsen--Nance," he said into his helmet-phone, as he
stood beyond the outskirts of the Town, on the barren, glittering
surface of Pallas. "I'm still wearing the sweater. Stay where you are.
I've never been on Mars, either. But I'll be there, soon..."
His old uncertainties about talking to her evaporated now that he was
doing it.
"For Pete's sake--Frank!" he heard her laugh happily, still sounding
like the neighbor kid. "Gosh, it's good to hear you!"
He left for Post One, soon after that. Nowadays, it was almost a
miniature of the ever more magnificent--if insecure--Pallastown. He kept
thinking angrily of Art Kuzak, getting a little overstuffed, it seemed.
The hunkie kid, the ex-football player who had become a big commercial
and industrial baron of the Belt. Easy living. Cuties around. And poor
twin Joe--just another stooge...
Nelsen went into the office, his fists clenched overdramatically. "I'm
taking a leave, Art--maybe a long one," he said.
Art Kuzak stared at him. "You damned, independent bums--you, too,
Nelsen!" he began to growl. But when he saw Nelsen's jaw harden, he got
the point, and grinned, instead. "Okay, Frank. Nobody's indispensible. I
might do the same when you come back--who knows...?"
Frank Nelsen joined a KRNH bubb convoy--Earthbound, but also passing
fairly close to Mars--within a few hours.
VII
Frank Nelsen meant the journey to be vagabond escape, an interlude of to
hell with it relief from the grind, and from the increasingly uncertain
mainstream of the things he knew best.
He rode with a long train of bubbs and great sheaves of smelted metal
rods--tungsten, osmium, uranium 238. The sheaves had their own
propelling ionic motors. He lazed like a tramp. He talked with
asteroid-hoppers who meant to spend some time on Earth. Several had
become almost rich. Most had strong, quiet faces that showed both
distance- and home-hunger. A few had broken, and the angry sensitivity
was visible.
Nelsen treated himself well. He was relieved of the duty of eternal
vigilance by men whose job it was. So, for a while, his purpose was
almost successful.
But the memory--or ghost--of Mitch Storey was never quite out of his
mind. And, as a tiny, at first telescopic crescent with a rusty light
enlarged with lessened distance ahead, the ugly enigma of present-day
Mars dug deeper into his brain.
Every twenty-four hours and thirty-eight minutes--the length of the
Martian day--whenever the blue-green wedge of Syrtis Major appeared in
the crescent, he beamed the Survey Station, which was still maintained
for the increase of knowledge, and as a safeguard for incautious
adventurers who will tackle any dangerous mystery or obstacle. His
object was to talk to Nance Codiss.
"I thought perhaps you and your group had gotten restless and had
started out for the Belt already," he laughed during their first
conversation.
"Oh, no--a lab technician like me is far too busy here, for one thing,"
she assured him, her happy tone bridging the distance. "We came this far
with a well-armed freight caravan, in good passenger quarters. If we
went on, I suppose it would be the same... Anyway, for years you didn't
worry much about me. Why now, Frank?"
"A mystery," he teased in return. "Or perhaps because I considered Earth
safe--instinctively."
But he was right in the first place. It _was_ a mystery--something to do
with the startling news that she was on the way, that closer friendship
was pending. The impulse to go meet her had been his first, almost
thoughtless impulse.
He was still glad that she wasn't out between Mars and the Belt, where
disaster had once hit him hard. But now he wondered if the Survey
Station was any better for anybody, even though it was reputed to be
quite secure.
The caravan he rode approached his destination no closer than ten
million miles. Taking cautious note of radar data which indicated that
space all around was safely empty, he cast off in his Archer with a
small, new, professional-type bubb packed across his hips. Inside his
helmet he lighted a cigarette--quite an unusual luxury.
It took a long time to reach Phobos. They gave him shots there--new
preventative medicine that was partially effective against the viruses
of Mars. Descent in the winged rocket was rough. But then he was gliding
with a sibilant whistle through a natural atmosphere, again. Within
minutes he was at the Station--low, dusty domes, many of them deserted,
now, at the edge of the airfield, a lazily-spinning wind gauge,
tractors, auto-jeeps, several helicopters.
He stepped down with his gear. Mars was all around him: A few
ground-clinging growths nearby--harmless, locally evolved vegetation.
Distant, coppery cliffs reflecting the setting sun. Ancient excavations
notched them. Dun desert to the east, with little plumes of dust
blowing. Through his Archer--a necessary garment here not only because
the atmosphere was only one-tenth as dense as Earth-air and poor in
oxygen, but because of the microscopic dangers it bore--Nelsen could
hear the faint sough of the wind.