Collected Short Fiction

by C. M. Kornbluth

  “Then drag the old dog out; I would have words with him.”

  “I,” she said, “am the proprietor.”

  Jerry smiled gently. “Enough of this,” he said. “I refer to the illustrious Francis X. Adams, alias the Rusty Nut, alias the Creaking Screw—”

  He paused. Her eyes were full of tears. She looked up. “He was my father,” she said, “You’re Leigh, aren’t you? They told me of your ways. Father died while you were in space. I’ve come from Earth to take care of his business.” She blew her nose on a silly little handkerchief, and said, “If there’s anything I can do for you—”

  Jerry felt lower than a snake’s belly. He stammered an apology of some sort and went on, “As a matter of fact I did have a deal to talk over. I want to buy out your concern.” As a matter of fact he had wanted to do nothing of the sort, but he thought it out quickly. The expense would cripple him for a while, but he’d be able to dispose of the Bluebell at a loss and get some operating capital, and one more job like that Argol and he’d be right back where he was now with only a little time wasted and she did have blue-grey eyes and what did a woman know about salvage anyway—

  “Not for sale, Mr. Leigh,” she said coolly.

  That shocked him—he had thought that he was doing her a favor. He decided to be a big brother. “Miss Adams, I think you ought to accept. Not for my sake, but for yours. You have had no experience at the work; you’ll be at the mercy of your employees, and salvage men are the toughest mob in space. Your father could handle the company, but—”

  She set her pretty jaw. “Just that,” she said. “My father could handle them and so can I.”

  What was a man to do in the face of such madness? Perhaps—“What about a shipmaster, Miss Adams? Your profits will all run into his salary.”

  “No, Mr. Leigh—my father did it and I can do it. I’m going to pilot my own ship.”

  With that he exploded—no woman had ever piloted a rocket ship, he said; and also he said that no woman ever would pilot a rocket ship, and that if she thought she was going to learn to pilot a ship she was just plain crazy to try and learn on a salvage scow; and further he said that the salvage scow is notorious throughout all space as the crankiest, most perverted, perverse and persnickety brand of vessel that flies; that to run a scow you had to be born in the space-lanes and weaned on rocket-juice—

  “I don’t know about the rocket-juice,” she said, “but I was born on the Jupiter-Earth liner.” Jerry gasped for breath.

  “Is there anything else?” she said. “Because if there isn’t I’d like to get some work done on my father’s accounts.”

  “No,” said Jerry thickly. He was dangerously near apoplexy. “Nothing else.” And he walked out of the office muttering, “Accounts . . . get some work done on my father’s . . .” Dammit! A woman couldn’t fly a scow, and she wouldn’t believe that very obvious fact until she was smeared over half of the landing field.

  Like a man in a dream he found himself at the offices of the Salvage Field Commission, paying his field dues. An official, dazed, asked if anything was wrong. Did he expect to die, or something?

  “No,” said Jerry thickly, “but I expect to get potted in about twenty-five minutes. Would you mind coming along?”

  “Not at all,” said the official. In fact he felt the need of a drink after having beheld the ungodly spectacle of the Leigh Salvage Company paying up on time.

  MANY hours later all that was left of the two was a very small noise in the corner of a saloon on Broadway, at the corner of Le Bourse. Half of the small—very small—noise was saying to the other half at intervals, “Wimmin can’t never fly . . . Wimmin can’ never fly . . . Wimmin can’ never fly . . .” And the second half of the very small noise was replying to the first, “Yeh . . . they cer’nly don’t . . .” At length the proprietor told a hackie to please take them away, and what happened to the official nobody ever found out, but Jerry awoke next morning in his hotel room with a pair of blue eyes wavering in front of his face. They weren’t real, though—vanished with the first draught of bicarb.

  His phone rang, and he winced. It was the Salvage Field Commission, and they wanted to know what he had done with Sweeny. Sweeny? Oh, yeah—no; he didn’t remember a thing. To hell with Sweeny. Were there any jobs to be done? He wanted to get off Mars before he got drunk again. There was a long pause while the commission looked up today’s sheet. Yes—one bullion ship wrecked between Mercury and Venus. Carrying iridium. Speed was essential; therefore the agreement was on a strictly competitive basis; any or all salvage companies registered could try for it simultaneously. The owner of the ship agreed to buy back the cargo falling to the salvager at market quotations out of hand. First scow to get a grapple on, had her. Laufer and Burke had filed intention claims, and were starting off in a couple of hours; so had Bluebell.

  “Who? What master?”

  “Er . . . Adams. Holy smokes! Alice Adams!”

  Jerry swore. “You’ll have to stop that kid. She doesn’t know how to fly.”

  “You’d better come down, then. You seem to know more about this mess than I do. Hurry up if you want a crack at the Carpathia—that’s the bullion ship.”

  “Expect me in twenty minutes or less.” Hastily he dressed, his hangover forgotten, muttering to himself things about slap-happy blondes. Schopenhauer, he decided, had approximately the right idea.

  For the second or third time in his life he was not late for an appointment; twenty minutes saw him bursting through to the office of the commissioner.

  “Well?” he demanded violently. “Are you going to let her fly? In a race like this is going to be, she’ll not only smash up herself and her crew but any of the rest of us who get in what she seems to think is her way.”

  The body wrapped around the telephone voice answered heavily, “There’s nothing to be done about it. For some obscure reason the ‘sons or other issue of the deceased licensee shall retain the towage and salvage permits of the deceased, and all appurtenances thereof,’ according to regulations.

  “The license for towage, etc., includes an operator’s card; therefore we discovered that a crack-brained female who has never flown before inherits a flying permit without physical examination or experience. I’m going to write my congressman; that seems to be all that anyone can do about it just now. Shall I fill out an intention for you on that Carpathia?”

  “Yeah. I won’t be back,” he snapped, half way through the door.

  HE FOUND Sven in a cheap rooming-house near the port.

  “You round up the rest of the crew!” he yelled, “and be at the field by twelve noon or you’re all fired and busted.” He tore away and jumped into a taxi. “To the salvage field, buddy, in a helluva rush!”

  He was oiling the space lock when the others arrived, led by Big Sven. He stared at them. “Often,” he said, “I have wondered what happens to space lice when they crawl off the ship. I now perceive that I should have known.” Each and every man of them had at least one black eye; each had cuts and bruises about the temples. “Well—forget the good times. There’s iridium drifting free between Mercury and Venus, and we’re going to snag it. And if we don’t sink our grapples into that hulk before any other space-tramp, you worms go hungry. Clear? Now get to stations; in ninety seconds we take off. I said ninety!’

  The men filed into the stubby ship holding their heads. A hangover is nothing to take with you on a spaceflight. If they could have left their heads behind they would have done it. With creakings of abused muscles and battered bones, they strapped themselves into hammocks and pads.

  The crew of Leigh Salvage, Incorporated was in a bad way.

  The takeoff was uneventful as such things go; Jerry mentally noted that he had blown away a small corner of the salvage-table, just another item to subtract from the profit, if any.

  Once again in space, the captain was at the look-out plate, eyes and hands and brain bent five hundred kilos out into the vacuum. “Particle sighted ahead,” he d
roned, “in our third quadrant. Salvage scow Bluebell. Full speed ahead to pass her.” His fingers played over the master’s board, and the blunt ship roared ahead. They were near—dangerously near—the Bluebell. A blast from the steering fins and the scow jolted into a new course. Jerry never took chances—hardly ever. They slowed acceleration far in advance of the other vessel; that was another contract tied up and in the bag. The captain relaxed—That Adams girl . . . of course she couldn’t handle a ship. Anybody could make a not too disastrous takeoff, but she’d smear hell for leather when she tried to land.

  A signal light flashed on his board, and he snapped on his communication beam. There was a long pause while the power built up, then a voice from the grid, “Scow Bluebell calling scow Leigh Salvage, Incorporated. Give way. We’re going to pass you in your first quadrant. That’s all.”

  Jerry gaped. Unheard of? “Scow Leigh to Bluebell!’ he snapped. “Listen, insane female; you’re not driving a French taxi. There are ethics and rules in this game we’re playing. Do you want to be blackballed and become an outlaw tug?” There was another reason than need of that cargo for his anger—maybe, just maybe, she could get back onto the field without busting herself wide open if she were alone, but with a cargo as big as the Carpathia she wouldn’t have a chance in a million. He thought of what a short towing line could do, and grimaced.

  “We’re passing, Scow Leigh. That’s all.” The light on his board died. That was all. Well for her sake . . . and for his own—

  “Full speed ahead, and then some more, Sven. It’s a race.”

  But it wasn’t much of a race; the Bluebells port fin exploded, and her acceleration stopped. Jerry grinned. “We’ll pick her up on the way back and leave her ship there. The farther apart those two are, the safer for both of them . . . Hey! Stations! Hulk Carpathia ahead!” And the salvage ship jockeyed for position, drew alongside of the bullion transport and clamped on with a clash of metal against metal. The crew prepared to board.

  CHAPTER THREE

  Crime in Space

  JERRY reached for the phone, his brow grooved. “Broadway three thousand,” he said. The voice with the smile answered, “One moment, please,” giving him time to reflect on the superfluity of machinery. Less efficient than a dial-phone, maybe, but that touch of warmth and humanity—“Here’s your party, sir.”

  “Central Office, Interplanetary Police.”

  “This is Captain Leigh, of Leigh Salvage, Incorporated. I wanted to see you about—”

  “About the peculiar state of the Carpathia. Come on up.”

  “Yeah,” said Jerry, baffled. “That’s what I wanted to see you about.” How did they know? And maybe they had a lead on the vanished Miss Alice Adams? He hoped so.

  He was received in the offices of the Interplanetary Police by a very old man who introduced himself as Major Skeane. Jerry took a seat and opened the valise he had brought. “I don’t know how much you know about the business of the Carpathia,” he said, “so I’ll begin at the beginning. Please examine these—exhibit A.”

  “These” were the contents of his valise—small, heavy chunks of metal. Skeane grunted. “Once spheres,” he said, “apparently cast in a shot tower; then sandblasted to suggest natural formations. Some filed by hand, even. These, I take it, were the particles that wrecked the bullion ship?”

  Jerry wet his lips. “Yes,” he said. “It looks like a put-up job for sure. And Alice—that’s Master Adams, of the scow Bluebell—she’s disappeared. We were racing her for the Carpathia and she broke down about half a million kilos from the hulk. I meant to pick her up on the way out to Mars and maybe tow her ship in, too, but when we got grapples on her we found her scow deserted—not a man left on her! Have you people got any dope on that business?”

  Major Skeane scratched his head. “Captain,” he said, “I’m sorry to inform you that while you do not jump to false conclusions, neither do you shine in the formulation of true ones. Do you see no logical relationship between the two events?”

  Jerry considered, and paled. “None,” he said angrily. “And instead of antilogising, you might be out hunting down the swine that would try to profit by the deaths of two score men.”

  “The rebuke is undeserved,” smiled the old man. “We have the wrecker of the bullion ship—or a least we know who did it, and how.”

  “Anybody I know?” asked Jerry.

  “I believe so. The saboteur is Miss Adams, of Bluebell.”

  The younger man stiffened in his chair. “No!” he cried. And then persuasively, “she might be crazy as a flea, but wrecking—never!”

  “You do us an injustice. We were warned to watch her the moment she landed on Mars. Our agents assured us that she was a girl with ambitions; they kept track of her, reporting to us for the customary considerations. One man in particular—LeMouchard—has kept us posted, and he’s as much to be trusted as anyone these days. To my mind—and I am the officer in charge of this case—the alleged disappearance of Miss Adams is conclusive proof of her guilt. She failed to cash in on the particularly rich opportunity that she created for herself and thus destroy the evidence, and so was picked up by a confederate, with her presumably equally guilty crew. I expect her now to continue her career from another base; possibly another planet, until she makes a slip. Then we shall trace her and deliver her to the execution cell.”

  “I see,” said Jerry, fighting to keep calm. But he didn’t see and somewhere there was a horrible mistake which had cost the lives of a score of men and would yet cost the life of that girl with the blue-grey eyes who had tried to pass him and had nearly wrecked her ship and his own, he thought.

  Skeane broke in. “Will you leave that valise of junk here? We need some material evidence. And I want you to swear to a description of the girl.”

  “Sure,” said Jerry vaguely. “Anything you say.”

  “Right. Hair, blonde; shade thirty-three plus on the I.P. scale. Eyes, blue-grey—shade nine. Weight—Captain! Come—”

  Jerry was walking slowly through the outer office, his mind in a state of terrible confusion. He didn’t know what to do for himself or her. Attack it with logic, he decided fuzzily. For effects there are causes. Assuming flaws in the line of Skeane’s logic, discover the points of specific strain and test them. Hah—he had mentioned “agents”—those, he supposed, were informers. And—what was his name?—LeMouchard. Weak link number one: now to test it. He walked into a store. “A bottle of olive oil, please. A big one.” That was the first step.

  IN MARS there are many hidden ways. For every city there is a shadow-city twisting its tunnels and warrens beneath the sunlight and air. It was through these dark passages that Jerry wandered—to check, as he thought, on official deduction, of course.

  Reeking with oil and dressed in the rags of an outlaw space-tug’s crew, he passed into the dismal underworld as one of its own creatures. In not many hours he was to be found in a low dive swilling the needled ethyl that passes as potable among the scum of a solar system. It was easy to make friends of a sort there—the price of a drink took care of it.

  Jerry wasn’t drunk, in spite of the terrible cargo of rot-gut he had been stowing away, but he was just a bit ill, for his stomach was well lined with olive oil, sovereign remedy and anti-intoxicant. He was buying liquor for a slimy little man through no altruistic motives; for this was LeMouchard, informer to the police. Gently he questioned him. Of course, he was strictly on the legit, but he hadn’t always been, no? And those camels of the gendarmerie that made themselves the great ones, a good man—like our comrade here, yes?—could wrap them around his finger, no?

  And surely he was not such a fool as to play with only one master when the pay from two was twice as great? He thought not. Oh, yes—that clever business of the Bluebell girl! He, Jerry, would give a pretty penny to know in whose dazzling intellect that task had been conceived and brought to fruition. Was it—could it be—that he; Jerry, was standing in the presence of the man? But no! But yes! Then surely
that was worth another drink of the so gentle ethyl. And so the great LeMouchard was in the pay of the police and one other. Might he, Jerry, be permitted to inquire as to who had availed himself of the services of so great a man? LeMouchard looked owlishly over a drink. “Oui,” he croaked. “It is permitted.” His face flushed abnormally, and he shook his head like a dazed fighter. “The English, I forget how you call him . . . Le bon petit roi d’Yvetot—the king with the little orchestra. It is . . .” he bowed forward, his eyes bulging. “Carbon?” he said. “Sa Majesty’ Carbon.” His ratty face hit the tabletop. Out cold.

  King Carbon—coal. King—Cole? Old King Cole? That seemed to be the idea. But what was a merry old soul with a small orchestra doing on Mars with a stool-pigeon? He returned to his hotel room and phoned the Interplanetary Police.

  “Major? What do you know about Old King Cole?”

  There was a pause. “I believe,” said the thin grey voice of Major Skeane, “that he died just fifteen years ago. A bit before your time.”

  “As I understand it he never lived. What are you talking about?”

  “Early space pirate. Good man, too. Crashed on Pluto two days after I was assigned to his case. I was a terror in those days; he must have been afraid of my rep. They all were, then. Did I ever tell you about Ironface Finkle, the Mercurian Menace? I brought him down . . .”

  “Very interesting; very—this King Cole—I want to know more about him. I suppose you found his remains?”

  “On Pluto? Don’t be silly. When they crash there they stay crashed. This Ironface had had a better position than I did, naturally; I made it a point never to be unfair to the men I was assigned to, since my name alone struck terror—”

  “Naturally, Major. How did King Cole work?”

  “The usual way: ramming and boarding. Now Finkle had a tricky twist to his technique and had me baffled for a time—”

  “That’s too bad,” said Jerry tiredly. “How old was Old King Cole when he—ah—crashed?”