I didn't mind the brush-off but the idea of her calling for Perry Acree
to toss me out fanned my slow burn to a blaze.
"That seed-sized cipher?" I scoffed. "Why, for two centi-credits I'd--"
Shanig's door opened and Perry came out. He added up the score in a
blink and jumped to the conclusion that I was waiting to settle with
him.
"Now look, Bill," he began. "I couldn't help it if--"
"That secret agent stunt of yours just cost me five thousand credits,
Acree," I said, cutting him short. "I think you're going to be as sorry
as Shanig before this is over."
He lost the little color he had. "I don't want trouble with you, Mr.
Bailey! Cheryl, will you--"
The girl pushed her buzzer. Her eyes dodged mine, and I could read her
mind like the back of a credit-note. She was making allowances for
Perry but it hurt to call for help.
Shanig's office door opened again and his two uglies came out. Both of
them had freeze guns and the yellow Martie wore my Quantrell blaster
tucked into his belt, but it was plain that they didn't expect to need
them.
"Hey, take it easy!" Perry wailed, not wanting any part of this.
"That's Blaster Bill Bailey you jerks are--"
They closed in, disregarding him, and I cracked their heads together
hard enough to make their knees bend like rubber. Then I took back my
Quantrell and left them holding each other up like a pair of skohl
addicts.
"You can phonovise me at the Argonaut Club if you change your mind
about that weekend on Phobos," I told the redhead. "But don't wait too
long or this will have gone the way of all credits."
I tucked the check away and went out with Perry Acree trailing
apologetically at my heels. Shanig had sent him to bring back the
smiley it seemed, so I let him tag along. He left the _Annabelle_ with
Joey under his arm and that mesmerized Sunday-services look on his
face, and I strolled down to Martian Bankings with my check.
It wasn't really a surprise to find that Shanig had stopped payment on
it. What did give me the devil of a turn, though, was realizing that he
must have double-dealt me about the _Annabelle_, too. If he wouldn't
honor a five-thousand-credit contract he'd certainly balk at giving up
a twenty-thousand-credit ship.
I broke all sprint records back to the spaceyards and slammed the
_Annabelle's_ port practically in the faces of Captain Giles and a
squad of patrolies who had been sent by Shanig to secure his latest
acquisition.
Giles and his crew were yelling blue murder when I cut in the
_Annabelle's_ jets. A moment later they were racing like mad to beat
the apron-flash of the blastoff.
It was all my own fault, I told myself. I should have suspected that
desk-pad-and-stylus snare of Shanig's--he had slipped a telewriter
plate under my contract release, and when I signed it I signed another
paper, by remote control, in another office. A paper that surrendered
my smiley and also my equity in the _Annabelle_.
All I had now was a worthless check and a ship spaced in defiance of
legal foreclosure. I'd be lucky, I figured, if I didn't owe Shanig a
few thousand credits into the bargain.
* * * * *
I didn't hit for open space, knowing that Captain Giles would have a
radar spotting-net out for me. Instead I swung the _Annabelle_ eastward
and whizzed over Syrtis Major toward the abandoned oxygen-reduction
plant where I had hidden Cora, my other smiley. I needed a hideout
while I figured out a campaign to clear myself, and there was a flimsy
old warehouse at the oxy-plant that would screen the _Annabelle_ nicely.
I scouted the desert carefully before drifting in for landing, and saw
nothing but a great desolate ocean of gritty red sand. Back in the days
when Earth was just beginning to cool off that desert might have been a
landscape of sorts, but aeons of oxidation had changed all that. It was
nothing now but a waste of powdered iron rust, sifted fine by a million
winds and patterned by the feet of jackals.
The old reduction plant huddled in a wide, shallow depression made in
years past by the scooping and hauling of sand to the converters.
It reminded me of the ghost towns I had read of as a kid, before
telemovies and stereo-spools replaced the old historical novels
carried over from the twentieth century. It was never haunted by
Indians and buffalo, but it had seen its share of jackals and sand
snakes, and the wild, little, brown baboon-faced Marties of the deserts
had smashed all its windows when the Earthies moved on.
Not many reduction plants were needed on Mars any more. The first homos
to come had to wear atmosphere masks--a first-water paradox, because
the rusty red deserts were full of good oxygen locked up in simple
ferrous oxide form--but they soon changed that. When enough of them
had come they set up atom-powered reduction plants by the hundreds,
breaking the red sand back to its primal elements of iron and oxygen.
They used the iron in their first cities and they let the oxygen go
free. Before the Big Jump there used to be arguments, I've heard, to
the effect that Earthies could never live permanently on Mars because
the air was too thin and oxygen-poor. But unlocking oxygen from the
sand solved half the problem, and the other half never existed.
In the .38 gravity of Mars, any physical action requires only a
fraction more than one-third as much effort as it would require on
Earth. And only one-third as much oxygen is needed to sustain that
effort.
So a hundred years after Earthmen abandoned the Syrtis Major plant,
I had a perfect place to lick my wounds in privacy. I berthed the
_Annabelle_ in the old warehouse, opened her up from bow to stern to
let out the stink of stale tobacco smoke and machine oil, and brought
my second smiley out of the dusty records vault where I had hidden her.
Cora was as affectionate as Joey and twice as eager. She made an
earnest effort to hypnotize me with that euphoric mating call of hers,
but when the khiff root kept me immune she settled down to staring
wistfully across the desert toward Areopolis where Joey radiated back
at her.
I broke out the emergency rations I lived on while prospecting the
asteroids or moon-hopping, and sat down to think. I had to clear myself
with Captain Giles or I'd never see Areopolis or the Argonaut Club
again. I had to break Shanig's claim against the _Annabelle_ or I'd be
an asteroid prospector without a ship. In other words, a bum.
And besides that I'd have to settle with Shanig for the slimy trick he
had pulled on me or I'd be laughed out of the System. For some reason,
considering that angle reminded me again of the unlikely old romances
I'd read of the days when people rode horses and steam engines and
chivvied buffalo around with red-hot stamping irons. They prospected
for the rare earths--gold was a precious metal then, I think--and they
had to keep their reputations as he-men intact or go down before the
pellet guns of their fellow homos.
It seemed to me that things hadn't changed so much, after all. I had
some small reputation of my own in the outlands, and if I let a wizened
little credit-shark like Shanig beat me I was done for.
So I sat in front of the rickety old warehouse and munched my E-rations
and thought about those things until finally, being the honest type, I
had to admit that none of them mattered half as much as getting back
to Areopolis and making another pitch at a streamlined redhead with
scornful green eyes. There was still an outside chance that Cheryl
Trayne might have phonovised me at the Argonaut Bar about that weekend
on Phobos, and....
I was daydreaming about that when the shutter-speed sunset of Mars
flicked away the day and left me sitting in darkness with the Syrtis
Major wind sharp and cold on my face and the wild howling of desert
jackals in my ears.