Cinnabar was inside of the sunlight zone by a thousand miles and its
sun was always in the same spot of the sky. It was a well-contrived
city, built so that the streets were lighted either directly or from
reflections. Cinnabar was also one of the show-cities of the solar
system; but Farradyne found that it did not show him the right things.
He could have learned more about hellflowers on Terra because New York
had a larger Public Library than Cinnabar.
Farradyne tried everything he could think of but made no progress. His
trail had turned to ice after Cahill's death. He loafed and he poked
his nose in here and there and drank a bit and varied his routine from
man-about-town to the spaceman concerned about his future. There was
only one bright spot: his listing had been tentatively taken up by a
group of schoolteachers on a sabbatical, who had seen Mercury and now
wanted a cheap trip to Pluto. Farradyne accepted this job for about
three weeks later. It gave him a payload to Pluto, and when he got
there it would be time to do the subcontracting job Clevis had set up
as a combined source of revenue and a means of contact. Once each month
Farradyne was to haul a shipment of refined thorium ore from Pluto to
Terra, a private job that paid well. In the meantime, Farradyne could
nose around Mercury to see what he could see. Then he could haul his
schoolteachers to Pluto and pick up his thorium, which definitely made
his actions look reasonably normal to the official eye.
On the end of the drums of refined thorium there would be a spot of
fluorescent paint, normally invisible. He was to wash this spot off so
long as he had nothing to report; if it remained then something was
wrong with Farradyne, or he had something to report. Clevis would know
what to do next.
And so Farradyne watched the date grow closer and closer and his hopes
of having something to report dimmed.
He cursed under his breath at the futility of it, and realized that his
curse must have been audible when he felt a touch on his elbow and a
voice asking, "Is it that bad?"
He turned slowly, his mind working fast to think of something to say
that would not be leading in the wrong direction. "I was--" he started,
and then saw that the voice, which had been low-pitched enough to have
been the voice of a rather small, thin man, had come from the throat
of a tall dark-haired woman who sat beside him at the bar. "--just
wondering what strangers did for excitement on Mercury," he finished
lamely.
"Spaceman?"
"Yes."
She laughed in her low contralto. "I guessed it. Is Cinnabar so
inhospitable?"
"To strangers it seems so."
"To me it seems quite normal. It makes the rest of the solar system
sound like a very exciting place."
"Born on Mercury?"
"No," she said, shaking her head. "I was born on Venus. I spent four
years on Terra before my folks brought me to Mercury. But my last
space trip took place when I was nine. Tell me, what is New York like?"
"Buildings and people and mad rushing around. Any change in the last
hundred years has been for taller buildings, more people, and a higher
general velocity of humanity."
"But--"
"I know, the way I put it sounds a bit harsh. But anybody can find
anything they want somewhere in New York if he has the money to buy it."
* * * * *
She smiled calmly. "I'll show you that Cinnabar is not an inhospitable
place," she said. "You may take me to dinner if you wish."
"I wish," he chuckled. "And since we haven't a mutual friend to
introduce us, I'm Charles Farradyne."
"How do you do?" she said solemnly, putting a lithe hand in his. "I'm
Carolyn Niles." She took a little step out from the bar and made him
a slight curtsy. He saw that she was almost as tall as he was, and he
grinned as he thought that her figure was far better than his.
"How shall we meet?" he asked.
"We shall not meet," said Carolyn. "You shall drive me home where
we will have cocktails with my folks. You will be an old friend
of Michael's, who is a sort of school-chum of my brother. After
cocktails I will change and you will make polite conversation with my
family--none of which eat personable young men, though they may scare
them to death by having father show them the fine collection of Terran
shotguns he owns. Then we will go out to your spacecraft, and you will
change while I roam around and investigate the insides."
"Done," agreed Farradyne.
Something rapped him on the elbow and he had to look down before he saw
a boy of ten or so with a green-paper lined box containing flowers. The
young merchant had an eye for business; he eyed Farradyne knowingly and
smiled at Carolyn fetchingly. "Corsage? One dollar."
Farradyne grinned--and then almost recoiled before he realized that
nowhere in the solar system could a love lotus be purchased for a
dollar. These were definitely gardenias. He bought one to cover up his
confusion, and as he handed it to Carolyn he wondered whether having
a good-looking woman in a car outside a florist shop might not be the
password to the purchase of the hellflower. Carolyn pinned the gardenia
in her dark hair as she smiled her thanks, then led him from the bar
to an open roadster almost as low and long as the curb it was parked
against. Carolyn handed him her keys and Farradyne drove according to
her directions until they came to a rather large rambling home just
outside of the city limits.
* * * * *
He was received graciously. Her father was a tall, distinguished man
with a dab of gray at the temples and a rather stern face that became
completely friendly whenever he smiled, which was very frequently.
Carolyn's mother was tall and dark with only a sprinkle of gray;
Carolyn's stature seemed natural in that tall family. The brother was
not present, which made it completely easy for Farradyne who could not
have given any account of his friendship for the unknown Michael.
Mr. Niles mixed a pitcher of martinis and inquired about the spaceman
business. Farradyne explained how it was. Mrs. Niles laughed at his
story about fish one day and fins the next and said that she thought
it couldn't be that bad, really. Farradyne grinned. Mr. Niles observed
that a man who can operate a spacer and pay off a mortgage on the craft
must not be entirely penniless or without prospects.