[Transcriber Note: This etext was produced from Amazing Stories November
1958. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S.
copyright on this publication was renewed.]
[Sidenote: Johnny Mayhem, one of the most popular series characters
ever to appear in AMAZING, has been absent too long. So here's good
news for Mayhem fans; another great adventure of the Man of Many
Bodies.]
They loaded the over-age spaceship at night because Triton's one
spaceport was too busy with the oreships from Neptune during the day to
handle it.
"Symphonies!" Pitchblend Hardesty groaned. Pitchblend Hardesty was the
stevedore foreman and he had supervised upwards of a thousand loadings
on Triton's crowded blastways, everything from the standard mining
equipment to the innards of a new tavern for Triton City's so-called
Street of Sin to special anti-riot weapons for the Interstellar
Penitentiary not 54 miles from Triton City, but never a symphony
orchestra. And most assuredly never, never an all-girl symphony
orchestra.
"Symphonies!" Pitchblend Hardesty groaned again as several stevedores
came out on the blastway lugging a harp, a base fiddle and a kettle
drum.
"Come off it, Pitchblend," one of the stevedores said with a grin. "I
didn't see you staying away from the music hall."
That was true enough, Pitchblend Hardesty had to admit. He was a small,
wiry man with amazing strength in his slim body and the lore of a solar
system which had been bypassed by thirtieth century civilization for the
lures of interstellar exploration in his brain. While the symphony--the
all-girl symphony--had been playing its engagement at Triton's
make-shift music hall, Hardesty had visited the place three times.
"Well, it wasn't the music, sure as heck," he told his critic now. "Who
ever saw a hundred girls in one place at one time on Triton?"
The stevedore rolled his eyes and offered Pitchblend a suggestive
whistle. Hardesty booted him in the rump, and the stevedore had all he
could do to stop from falling into the kettle drum.
* * * * *
Just then a loud bell set up a lonely tolling and Pitchblend Hardesty
exclaimed: "Prison break!"
The bell could be heard all over the two-hundred square miles of
inhabitable Triton, under the glassite dome which enclosed the small
city, the spaceport, the immigration station for nearby Neptune and the
Interstellar Penitentiary. The bell hadn't tolled for ten years; the
last time it had tolled, Pitchblend Hardesty had been a newcomer on
Neptune's big moon. That wasn't surprising, for Interstellar
Penitentiary was as close to escape-proof as a prison could be.
"All right, all right," Pitchblend snapped. "Hurry up and get her
loaded."
"What's the rush?" one of the stevedores asked. "The gals ain't even
arrived from the hotel yet."
"I'll tell you what the rush is," Pitchblend declared as the bell tolled
again. "If you were an escaped prisoner on Triton, just where would you
head?"
"Why, I don't know for sure, Pitchblend."
"Then I'll tell you where. You'd head for the spaceport, fast as your
legs could carry you. You'd head for an out-going spaceship, because it
would be your only hope. And how many out-going spaceships are there
tonight?"
"Why, just two or three."
"Because all our business is in the daytime. So if the convict was smart
enough to get out, he'll be smart enough to come here."
"We got no weapons," the stevedore said. "We ain't even got a
pea-shooter."
"Weapons on Triton? You kidding? A frontier moon like this, the place
would be blasted apart every night. Interstelpen couldn't hold all the
disturbers of the peace if we had us some guns."
"But the convict--"
"Yeah," Pitchblend said grimly. "He'll be armed, all right."
Pitchblend rushed back to the manifest shed as the bell tolled a third
time. He got on the phone and called the desk of the Hotel Triton.
"Hardesty over at the spaceport," he said. "Loading foreman."
"Loading foreman?" The mild, antiseptic voice at the other end of the
connection said it as you would say talking dinosaur.
"Yeah, loading foreman. At night I'm in charge here. Listen, you the
manager?"
"The manager--" haughtily--"is asleep. I am the night clerk."
"O.K., then. You tell those hundred girls of yours to hurry. Don't scare
them, but have you heard about the prison break?"
"Heard about it? It's all I've been hearing. They--they want to stay and
see what happens."
"Don't let 'em!" roared Pitchblend. "Use any excuse you have to. Tell
'em we got centrifigal-upigal and perihelion-peritonitus over here at
the spaceport, or any darn thing. Tell 'em if they want to blast off
tonight, they'll have to get down here quick. You got it?"
"Yes, but--"
"Then do it." Pitchblend hung up.
The escape bell tolled a fourth time.
* * * * *
His name was House Bartock, he had killed two guards in his escape, and
he was as desperate as a man could be. He had been sentenced to
Interstelpen for killing a man on Mars in this enlightened age when
capital punishment had been abolished. Recapture thus wouldn't mean
death, but the prison authorities at Interstelpen could make their own
interpretations of what life-in-prison meant. If House Bartock allowed
himself to be retaken, he would probably spend the remaining years of
his life in solitary confinement.
He walked quickly now, but he did not run. He had had an impulse to run
when the first escape bell had tolled, but that would have been foolish.
Already he was on the outskirts of Triton City because they had not
discovered his escape for two precious hours. He could hole up in the
city, lose himself somewhere. But that would only be temporary.
They would find him eventually.
Or, he could make his way to the spaceport. He had money in his
pocket--the dead guard's. He had a guardsman's uniform on, but stripped
of its insignia it looked like the jumper and top-boots of any spaceman.
He had false identification papers, if needed, which he had worked on
for two years in the prison printshop where the prison newspaper was
published. He had....
Suddenly he flattened himself on the ground to one side of the road,
hugging the gravel and hardly daring to breathe. He'd heard a vehicle
coming from the direction of Interstelpen. It roared up, making the
ground vibrate; its lights flashed; it streaked by trailing a jet of
fire.
House Bartock didn't move until the afterglow had faded. Then he got up
and walked steadily along the road which led from Interstelpen to Triton
City.
* * * * *
"Girls! Hurry with your packing! Girls!"
Sighing, Matilda Moriarity subsided. The girls, obviously, were in no
hurry. That would have been out of character.
Matilda Moriarity sighed again. She was short, stocky, fifty-two years
old and the widow of a fabulously wealthy interstellar investment
broker. She had a passion for classical music and, now that her husband
had been dead three years, she had decided to exercise that passion. But
for Matilda Moriarity, a very out-going fifty-two, exercising it had
meant passing it on. The outworlds, Matilda had told her friends, lacked
culture. The highest form of culture, for Matilda, was classical music.
Very well. She would bring culture to the outworlds.
* * * * *
Triton was her first try and even now sometimes she had to pinch herself
so she'd know the initial attempt had been a smashing success. She
didn't delude herself completely. It had been a brainstorm selecting
only girls--and pretty young things, at that--for the Interstellar
Symphony. On a world like Triton, a world which played host to very few
women and then usually to the hard types who turned up on any frontier
in any century, a symphony of a hundred pretty girls was bound to be a
success.
But the music, Matilda Moriarity told herself. They had listened to the
music. If they wanted to see the girls in their latest Earth-style
evening gowns, they had to listen to the music. And they had listened
quietly, earnestly, apparently enjoying it. The symphony had remained on
Triton longer than planned, playing every night to a full house. Matilda
had had the devil's own time chaperoning her girls, but that was to be
expected. It was their first taste of the outworlds; it was the
outworlds' first taste of them. The widow Moriarity had had her hands
full, all right. But secretly, she had enjoyed every minute of it.
"They say the bell means a prison break!" First Violin squealed
excitedly. First Violin was twenty-two, an Earth girl named Jane
Cummings and a student at the conservatory on Sirtus Major on Mars, but
to the widow Moriarity she was, and would remain, First Violin. That
way, calling the girls after their instruments, the widow Moriarity
could convince herself that her symphonic music had been of prime
importance on Triton, and her lovely young charges of secondary
importance.
"How many times do I have to tell you to hurry?"
"But these gowns--"
"Will need a pressing when you return to Mars anyway."
"And a prison break. I never saw a prison break before. It's so
exciting."
"You're not going to see it. You're just going to hear about it. Come
on, come on, all of you."
At that moment the room phone rang.
"Hello?" the widow Moriarity said.
"This is Jenkins, ma'am, desk. The spaceport called a few minutes ago.
I'm not supposed to frighten you, but, well, they're rather worried
about the prison break. The escaped convict, they figure, will head for
the spaceport. Disguised, he could--"
"Let him try masquerading as a member of _my_ group!" the widow
Moriarity said with a smile.
"All the same, if you could hurry--"
"We are hurrying, young man."
"Yes, ma'am."