"I told you that McCann's death occurred under somewhat suspicious
circumstances."
"Yes," I agreed, "you did."
"McCann and Karpin," he said, "have been partners--unincorporated, of
course--for the last fifteen years. They had found small rare-metal
deposits now and again, but they had never found that one big strike all
the Belt prospectors waste their lives looking for. Not until the day
before McCann died."
"Ah hah," I said. "_Then_ they found the big strike."
"Exactly."
"And McCann's death?"
"Accidental."
"Sure," I said. "What proof have we got?"
"None. The body is lost in space. And law is few and far between that
far out."
"So all we've got is this guy Karpin's word for how McCann died, is that
it?"
"That's all we have. So far."
"Sure. And now you want me to go on out there and find out what's
cooking, and see if I can maybe save the company ten thousand credits."
"Exactly," said Henderson.
* * * * *
The copter took me to the spaceport west of Cairo, and there I boarded
the good ship _Demeter_ for Luna City and points Out. I loaded up on
g-sickness pills and they worked fine. I was sick as a dog.
By the time we got to Atronics City, my insides had grown resigned to
their fate. As long as I didn't try to eat, my stomach would leave me
alone.
Atronics City was about as depressing as a Turkish bath with all the
lights on. It stood on a chunk of rock a couple of miles thick, and it
looked like nothing more in this world than a welder's practice range.
From the outside, Atronics City is just a derby-shaped dome of
nickel-iron, black and kind of dirty-looking. I suppose a transparent
dome would have been more fun, but the builders of the company cities in
the asteroids were businessmen, and they weren't concerned with having
fun. There's nothing to look at outside the dome but chunks of rock and
the blackness of space anyway, and you've got all this cheap iron
floating around in the vicinity, and all a dome's supposed to do is keep
the air in. Besides, though the Belt isn't as crowded as a lot of people
think, there _is_ quite a lot of debris rushing here and there, bumping
into things, and a transparent dome would just get all scratched up, not
to mention punctured.
From the inside, Atronics City is even jollier. There's the top level,
directly under the dome, which is mainly parking area for scooters and
tuggers of various kinds, plus the office shacks of the Assayer's
Office, the Entry Authority, the Industry Troopers and so on. The next
three levels have all been burned into the bowels of the planetoid.
Level two is the Atronics plant, and a noisy plant it is. Level three is
the shopping and entertainment area--grocery stores and clothing stores
and movie theaters and bars--and level four is housing, two rooms and
kitchen for the unmarried, four rooms and kitchen plus one room for each
child for the married.
All of these levels have one thing in common. Square corners, painted
olive drab. The total effect of the place is suffocating. You feel like
you're stuck in the middle of a stack of packing crates.
Most of the people living in Atronics City work, of course, for
International Atronics, Incorporated. The rest of them work in the
service occupations--running the bars and grocery stores and so on--that
keep the company employees alive and relatively happy.
Wages come high in the places like Atronics City. Why not, the raw
materials come practically for free. And as for working conditions,
well, take a for instance. How do you make a vacuum tube? You fiddle
with the innards and surround it all with glass. And how do you get the
air out? No problem, boy, there wasn't any air in there to begin with.
At any rate, there I was at Atronics City. That was as far as _Demeter_
would take me. Now, while the ship went on to Ludlum City and Chemisant
City and the other asteroid business towns, my two suitcases and I
dribbled down the elevator to my hostelry on level four.
* * *
Have you ever taken an elevator ride when the gravity is practically
non-existent? Well, don't. You see, the elevator manages to sink faster
than you do. It isn't being _lowered_ down to level four, it's being
_pulled_ down.
What this means is that the suitcases have to be lashed down with the
straps provided, and you and the operator have to hold on tight to the
hand-grips placed here and there around the wall. Otherwise, you'd clonk
your head on the ceiling.
But we got to level four at last, and off I went with my suitcases and
the operator's directions. The suitcases weighed about half an ounce
each out here, and I felt as though I weighed the same. Every time I
raised a foot, I was sure I was about to go sailing into a wall. Local
citizens eased by me, their feet occasionally touching the iron pavement
as they soared along, and I gave them all dirty looks.
Level four was nothing but walls and windows. The iron floor went among
these walls and windows in a straight straight line, bisecting other
"streets" at perfect right angles, and the iron ceiling sixteen feet up
was lined with a double row of fluorescent tubes. I was beginning to
feel claustrophobic already.
The Chalmers Hotel--named for an Atronics vice-president--had received
my advance registration, which was nice. I was shown to a second-floor
room--nothing on level four had more than two stories--and was left to
unpack my suitcases as best I may.
I had decided to spend a day or two at Atronics City before taking a
scooter out to Ab Karpin's claim. Atronics City had been Karpin's and
McCann's home base. All of McCann's premium payments had been mailed
from here, and the normal mailing address for both of them was GPO
Atronics City.
I wanted to know as much as possible about Ab Karpin before I went out
to see him. And Atronics City seemed like the best place to get my
information.
But not today. Today, my stomach was very unhappy, and my head was on
sympathy strike. Today, I was going to spend my time exclusively in bed,
trying not to float up to the ceiling.
* * * * *
The Mapping & Registry Office, it seemed to me the next day, was the
best place to start. This was where prospectors filed their claims, but
it was a lot more than that. The waiting room of M&R was the unofficial
club of the asteroid prospectors. This is where they met with one
another, talked together about the things that prospectors discuss, and
made and dissolved their transient partnerships.
In this way, Karpin and McCann were unusual. They had maintained their
partnership for fifteen years. That was about sixty times longer than
most such arrangements lasted.
Searching the asteroid chunks for rare and valuable metals is basically
pretty lonely work, and it's inevitable that the prospectors will every
once in a while get hungry for human company and decide to try a team
operation. But, at the same time, work like this attracts people who
don't get along very well with human company. So the partnerships come
and go, and the hatreds flare and are forgotten, and the normal
prospecting team lasts an average of three months.
At any rate, it was to the Mapping & Registry Office that I went first.
And, since that office was up on the first level, I went by elevator.
Riding _up_ in that elevator was a heck of a lot more fun than riding
down. The elevator whipped up like mad, the floor pressed against the
soles of my feet, and it felt almost like good old Earth for a second or
two there. But then the elevator stopped, and I held on tight to the
hand-grips to keep from shooting through the top of the blasted thing.
The operator--a phlegmatic sort--gave me directions to the M&R, and off
I went, still trying to figure out how to sail along as gracefully as
the locals.
The Mapping & Registry Office occupied a good-sized shack over near the
dome wall, next to the entry lock. I pushed open the door and went on
in.
The waiting room was cozy and surprisingly large, large enough to
comfortably hold the six maroon leather sofas scattered here and there
on the pale green carpet, flanked by bronze ashtray stands. There were
only six prospectors here at the moment, chatting together in two groups
of three, and they all looked alike. Grizzled, ageless, watery-eyed,
their clothing clean but baggy. I passed them and went on to the desk at
the far end, behind which sat a young man in official gray, slowly
turning the crank of a microfilm reader.
He looked up at my approach. I flashed my company identification and
asked to speak to the manager. He went away, came back, and ushered me
into an office which managed to be Spartan and sumptuous at the same
time. The walls had been plastic-painted in textured brown, the iron
floor had been lushly carpeted in gray, and the desk had been covered
with a simulated wood coating.
The manager--a man named Teaking--went well with the office. His face
and hands were spare and lean, but his uniform was immaculate, covered
with every curlicue the regulations allowed. He welcomed me politely,
but curiously, and I said, "I wonder if you know a prospector named Ab
Karpin?"
"Karpin? Of course. He and old Jafe McCann--pity about McCann. I hear he
got killed."
"Yes, he did."
"And that's what you're here for, eh?" He nodded sagely. "I didn't know
the Belt boys could get insurance," he said.
"It isn't exactly that," I said. "This concerns a retirement plan,
and--well, the details don't matter." Which, I hoped, would end his
curiosity in that line. "I was hoping you could give me some background
on Karpin. And on McCann, too, for that matter."