"How can you tell?" asked Clevis eagerly.
"Only because you wouldn't be coming half way across Venus to bring me
a gardenia. So that is a love lotus."
Clevis looked a bit disappointed. "I thought that maybe you might have
some way--"
"What makes you think I'd know more than a botanist?"
Clevis smiled. "Spacemen tend to come up with some oddly interesting
specks of knowledge now and then. No, I didn't really hope that you'd
know more than a botanist. But--"
"So far as I know, there's only one way of telling. That's to try it
out. Thanks, I'll not have my fun that way. That's one thing you can't
pin on me."
"I wouldn't try. But listen, Farradyne. In the past twelve years we
have carefully besmirched the names and reputations of six men hoping
that they could get on the inside. For our pains we have lost all six
of them one way and another. The enemy seems to have a good espionage
system. Our men roam up and down the system making like big-time
operators and get nowhere. The love lotus operators seem to be able to
tell a phony louse when they see one."
"And I am a real louse?"
"You've a convincing record."
Farradyne shook his head angrily. "Not that kind," he snapped. "Your
pals sloughed off my license and tossed me out on my duff to scratch,
but no one ever pinned the crooked label on me and made it stick."
"Then why did they take away your license?"
"Because someone needed a goat."
"And you are innocent?"
Farradyne growled hopelessly. "All right," he said, returning to his
former lethargy. "So just remember that all the evidence was still my
unsupported word against their assumptions. I was acquitted, remember?
Lack of evidence stands on the books. But they took my license and
tossed me out of space and that's as bad as a full conviction. So where
am I? So I'll stop beating my gums about it, Clevis."
Clevis smiled quietly. "You were a good pilot, Farradyne. Maybe a bit
too good. Your trouble was being too sure of yourself. You collected a
few too many pink tickets for cutting didoes and collecting women to
show off in front of. They'd have marked it off as an accident if it
hadn't been Farradyne. Your record accused you of being the hot-pants
pilot, the fly-fly boy. Maybe that last job of yours was another dido
that caught you. But let's leave the ghost alone. Maybe you've learned
your lesson and are willing to make a stab at it again. We need you."
Farradyne grunted and his lips twisted a bit. He got up from the unmade
bed and went to the scarred dresser to pour a stiff jolt from an
open bottle into a dirty glass. He took a sip and then walked to the
window and stood there, staring out into the dusk and talking, half to
himself. Clevis listened.
"I've had my prayer," said Farradyne. "A prayer in a nightmare. A
man fighting against a rigged job, like the girl in that old story
who turned up in her mother's hotel room to find that every trace of
her mother's existence had been erased. Bellhops, and cab driver,
steamship captain and the hotel register, all rigged. Even the police
deny her. Remember? Well, that's Farradyne, too, Clevis. Do you know
what happened? My first error was telling them that someone came into
the control room during landing. They said that no one would do that
because everybody knew the danger of diverting the pilot's attention
during a landing. No one, they said, would take the chance of killing
himself, and the other passengers would stop anyone who tried to go up
the stairs at that time because they knew the danger to themselves.
"Then they practically scoffed me into jail when I told them that
there were three people in the room. A pilot might just as well be
blindfolded and manacled to his chair during landing. He hasn't time
to play games around tables and chairs. So I heard three people behind
me and couldn't look. All I could do was to snarl for them to get the
hell out. So then we rapped the cliff and dumped into The Bog, and I
got tossed out through the busted observation dome. They salvaged the
Semiramide a few months later and found only one skeleton in the room.
That made me a liar. Besides the skeleton was of a woman, and they
all nodded sagely and said, 'Woman? Well, we know Farradyne!' and I
got the works. So," said Farradyne, bitter-sounding once more, "they
suspended me and took away my license. No jobs for a man trained for
space and nothing else. They wouldn't even let me near a spacer--maybe
they thought I might steal one, forgetting that there is no place to
hide. Maybe they thought I'd steal Mars, too. So if I want a drink they
ask me if it's true that jungle juice gives a man hallucinations. If I
light a cigarette I'm asked if it is real laughing grass. If I ask for
a job they want to know how hard I'll work for my liquor, and so I end
up in this godforsaken marsh, playing nurse-maid to a bunch of stinking
toadstools." Farradyne's voice rose to an angry pitch. "The mold grows
on your hide and under your nails and in your hair, and you forget what
it's like to be clean and you lose hope and ambition because you're
kicked off the bottom of the ladder, but you still dream of someday
being able to show the whole damned solar system that you are not the
louse they made you. Then, instead of getting a chance, a man comes to
you and offers you a job because he needs a professional bastard with a
bad record. It's damned small consolation, Clevis."
Farradyne sniffed at the glass and then threw it out the window with
a derisive gesture. "I'll ask for a lot of things," he said quietly,
now. "And the first thing is for enough money to buy White Star Trail
instead of this rotgut."
"That can be done, but can you take it?"
"It'll be hard," admitted Farradyne. "I've been on this diet of soap
and vitriol too long. But I'll do it. Give me a month."
"I can't offer you much," said Clevis. "But maybe this can be hope for
you. Help us clean up the hellblossom gang and you'll do a lot toward
erasing that black mark on your record."
"Just what is the pitch?"
Clevis took a small leather folder from his briefcase and handed it
over. Farradyne recognized it as a space pilot's license before he
opened it. He read it with a cynical smile before he asked, "Where did
you get it?"
"It's probably the only official forgery in existence. The Solar
Anti-Narcotics Department--SAND--has a lot of angles to play. First,
that ticket is made of the right paper and printed with the right
type and the right ink because," and Clevis smiled, "it came from the
right office. The big rubber stamp, 'Reinstated,' is the right stamp
and the initials are put on properly, but not by the right man. The
license will get you into and out of spaceports and all the rest of the
privileges. But it has no listing on the master log at the Bureau of
Space Personnel. It's an excellent forgery, it will not be questioned
so long as you stay out of trouble. The only people who will check on
the validity will be the ones we hope to catch. When they discover that
your ticket is invalid, you may get an offer to join 'em."
"And in the meantime?"
"In the meantime you'll be running a spacer in the usual way. We've
a couple of sub-contracts you can handle to stay in business. You'll
pick up other business, no doubt. But there are two things to remember,
always."
"Two?"
"Two. The first is that you've got to play it flat, no nonsense. Just
remember who and what you are. And just to make sure of it, I'll
remind you again that you are a crumb with a bad reputation. You'll
be running a spacer worth a hell of a lot of dough and there will be a
lot of people asking a lot of other people how you managed the deal.
Probably none of them will ever get around to asking you, but your
attitude is the same as the known gangster whose only visible means
of support for his million-dollar estate and his yacht and his high
living is the small string of hot-dog stands or the dry-goods store.
That he owns all these things is only an indication of thrift and good
management."
"I get it," grinned Farradyne.
Clevis snapped, "This is no laughing matter. What goes along with this
is important. You'll play this game as we outline it to you and in no
other way. The first time we find you playing hanky-panky, we'll have
you by the ears in the morning. And if you cut a dido and get pinned
for it, there you'll be with a forged license and a spacer that will
have some very odd-looking registration papers so far as the Master Log
runs. And no one is going to admit that he knows you. Certainly the
SAND office won't. And furthermore, if you do claim any connection at
any time for any reason whatsoever, we'll haul you in for attempting to
impersonate one of us. You're a decoy, a sitting duck with both feet in
the mud, Farradyne, and no damned good to anybody until you get mired
deeper in the same stinking mud. There'll be more later. Now for the
second item."
"Second? Weren't there ten or twelve in that last delivery?" grunted
Farradyne.
"That was only the beginning. The second is this. Do not, under any
circumstances, make any attempt to investigate that accident of yours."
"Now look," snapped Farradyne hotly, "I've spent four years--"
"In the first place, nothing that you could possibly do would convince
anybody that you were the innocent bystander. So--"
"But I'm telling you--"
"The game you are going to play will not permit you to make any attempt
to clear up that mess. As a character of questionable background, your
attitude must be that of a man caught in a bad show and forced to
undergo visible suffering long enough for the public to forget, before
you can resume your role of professional louse. Got this straight?"
Farradyne looked at Clevis, gaunt has-been looking at success. The
window was dark now, but there were no stars visible from the surface
of Venus, only Terra and Jupiter and Sirius and Vega and a couple of
others that haloed through the haze. The call of the free blackness of
space pulled at Farradyne. He turned back from the window and looked
at the unmade bed, the insect-specked wall, the scarred dresser, the
warped floor. His nose wrinkled tentatively and he cursed inwardly
because he knew that the joint reeked of rancid sweat and mildewed
cloth and unwashed human body, and his nose was so accustomed to this
stink that he could not smell it.
Farradyne came to understand in those few moments while Clevis watched
him quietly, waiting for his decision, that his oft-repeated statement
that there were some things that even a bum wouldn't do was so much
malarkey. Farradyne would have joined the hellblossom operators for an
opportunity to get out of this Venusian mire. He turned to Clevis.
"Let's go," he said.
Clevis cast a pointed look at the dresser.
"There's nothing in the place but bad memories," said Farradyne. "I'll
leave 'em here. Good, bad or indifferent, Clevis, I'm your man no
matter how you want it played. For the first time in years I seem to
want a bath and a clean shirt."
As Clevis headed toward the door Farradyne aimed a solid kick at the
dresser, putting one more scar on its marred flank. "I'm behind you,"
he said.
2
He was rustier than he had realized. For it was not only four years
away from the levers of the control room and the split-second decision
of high speed, it was four years of rotting in skid-row. His muscles
were stringy, his skin was slatey, his eyes were slow and he had
lost tone. He was flab and ache and off his feed. He was slow and
overcompensating in his motions. He missed his aim by yards and
miscalculated his position and his speed and his direction so badly
that Donaldson, who rode in the co-pilot's seat, sat there with his
hands poised over the levers and clutched convulsively or pressed
against the floor with his feet, chewing his lips with concern as
Farradyne flopped the sky cruiser roughly here and there. They
practiced on Mercury where the traffic was very light, in a Lancaster
Eighty-One which was a fine piece of space-cruiser by any man's
opinion, and Farradyne punished the ship like a recruit.
It took him a month to get the hang of it again. A solid month of
severe discipline, living in the ship and taking exercise and routine
practice to refine his control. He found that making the change from
the rotgut jungle juice to White Star Trail was not too hard because
his mind was busy all the time and he did not need the high-powered
stuff to anesthetize. White Star Trail was a godsend to the man who
liked the flavor of fine Scotch whiskey but could not afford to befog
his coordination by so much as a single ounce of the pure quill. It
was a synthetic drink that tasted like Scotch but lacked the alcoholic
kick, and Farradyne learned soon enough that he could forego the jolt
of high-test liquor in favor of the pleasant flavor because he had
discovered ambition again.
Eventually they "soloed" him. Donaldson sat in the easy chair in
the salon below talking to Clevis and he could hear them discussing
problems unrelated to him. Their voices came over the squawk-box
clear enough to understand. It gave Farradyne confidence. He took the
Lancaster Eighty-One into the sky and circled Mercury for a landing,
and for a moment relived that black day in his past, vividly.