_It was the Big Sleep for those at Residential
Number 327 this night ... this very dark Martian
night ... this very good night for the Synthi-Rain._
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Planet Stories March 1954.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
It was the eve of the annual synthi-rain and all Mars was settling
down for the big sleep that always went with it. Everything was ready,
reso-skins had been peeled off the pumps a week before.
_Uh huh_, thought the lone attendant at the fuelport outside the city.
You could tell everything was ready, even the traffic was thinning.
Hadn't been a 'copter or anything in for fuel in the last ten minutes.
He eyed the wall clock inside his cubicle. Almost eleven. Might as
well close up and go on home, there wouldn't be any more customers in
tonight.
He suddenly decided to modify that thought as an old hull-weary job
came banging clumsily down into cradle number one and slumped, little
vibration tentacles rippling here and there over its surface. He
sighed, went out the lock, went over to the cradle.
There was a woman in the ship. Not much of a woman, but you never knew
what the big gambling city of Fraon would draw next in the line of
tourists. All kinds.
Like this one. This one could be called typical. Wild black hair on
the dame. Not long, but wild. A little sloppy, like the last-season's
modo-strap she wore on the white skin between her breasts. The strap
looked fringy.
"Fuel, Miss?" he asked.
But the woman didn't seem to hear. She was studying a small scanning
disc, turning it this way and that like somebody pruning herself. Only
not. She was giving the place the once over.
"Yeah," she said finally. "Yeah, but not the kind you think...."
she stopped. She glared suddenly across the ramps at another jet--a
Security Ship--that was coming in fast, settling for the cradle next
to hers.
"No," she said. "No. Changed my mind. How far's Fraon from here?"
"You're on the edges now. Follow the bottom lane and drop when you see
the lights. That be all?"
But the woman didn't answer. She yanked at controls inside the cabin
and the old beat up jet rose with a tired, grumbling roar like the sigh
of a very old man contemplating the long long years that have gone.
Ten minutes later she looked down, yanked once more on the controls.
She'd almost overshot. The ship shuddered violently fore to aft and
then jammed down inside the Administration Port.
She hunched her shoulders inside the plastiskin, let her eyes go up to
a sucker sign off in the distance. She read:
CITY OF FRAON,
GAMBLER'S PARADISE
And in smaller letters beneath: