Chapter 8 – Long, Restless Lines...
Sal thought a fellow harvester must have first built the merchant tents surrounding the spaceport.
Giant slices of fabric stitched together and composed the giant tents that rose to encircle each of the land's spaceports. Each tent was crimson, with weather and wear attesting to slight variances of hue. Strands of golden lights circled each tent and pulsed a rising twinkle in emulation of how the firebud sparkled. Sal chuckled. The vendor tents had appeared so magnificent before he had taken his first hop into the stars. But now, after Sal had picked firedrop on the moon AU803 with his gloved hands, the circle of tents swaying so slightly in the wind looked little more than a child's scribbled attempt to capture an alien landscape on rough paper.
As always, people infected the tent city. Restless lines of men and women snaked around the tent, slowly shuffling through wooden gates to reach the vendor counters. Those waiting in line surrounded the tents with a low, buzzing cloud of murmur. As Sal stepped into the rear of a long line, that murmur separated in his hearing into the unique curses and shouts that composed that rumble that never vanished from the tent city whenever a space freighter returned to load the vendors' coolers with firedrop. Helmeted and visored sentries armed with buzzing, electrical batons stood prepared to quickly remove anyone in the line whose curses threatened to turn into violence. Shoving of any kind was enough for a sentry to send an impatient, waiting customer back to the end of a line. Those caught attempting to steal forward positions in the winding lines were often banished from the tent city for months. Repeat offenders could find themselves forever prohibited from the vendors' tents.
Sal sighed as he peeked at the distance that separated him from the firedrop vendors' counters. He considered, for a flash of a moment, holding up his plastic token to see if that marker might part the sea of people ahead of him and give him a clear path to the front of line. But Sal in the next instant recognized the foolishness of such an idea and refrained from pulling that token out of the pocket of his spacer's cargo pants. For he noticed many faces in the rear of his line turn to face, and to snarl, in his direction, and Sal's instincts hissed that those who waited would not welcome his presence, that to hold a plastic marker promising a free firedrop would gain him no favor.
"Seeing it all growing on that moon isn't enough for you?"
A short, round woman growled at Sal. Folds of her face nearly covered her small, dark eyes, and Sal had a discomforting feeling that some burrowing creature was appraising him.
"What?" Sal stammered.
The woman pointed a short, plump finger at Sal's head "Don't play us groundlings for fools, spacer! You're with the ships. You've got the dyed hair. A person can only dye his hair that color on one of those star-hoppers. No one can copy that color on Earth."
More faces in the line turned to glare at Sal. A visored sentry raised a hand to his ear, and mumbled into a radio Sal suspected was hidden within the guard's helmet.
The plump woman spit upon the ground. "You all think we don't know what that dyed hair means. You've harvested the firedrop with your own hands. You've seen it growing on that alien moon with your own eyes. And you all won't even share a picture of that moon with us. You all won't even paint us a picture. And so now you come with one of those little, crimson tokens in your pocket. You won't even have to pay for it. To the rest of us who've had to work so long to afford one of these firedrops, the only thing that plastic token makes you is a thief."
Sal's eyes narrowed at the accusation, and it was him time to snarl.
"Oh, I didn't steal my plastic token. I earned it. Working for it's not such a hard thing to do. You just have to scratch your name on a star freighter's crew roster. You just have to hold down your the contents of your stomach as a rocket launches you into orbit before you're welcomed aboard a starship with no privacy but with plenty of stale air. You just have to float around in space for so long that your skeleton turns weak. You just have to endanger yourself to a hundred and thousand unseen dangers that will crush, freeze and boil you to death in a second. Then, if you're lucky enough to survive a giant, gas planet's gravity while you float in a thin, coffin of a spacecraft to land on a pebble of a moon, you get to see all that firedrop glisten while only the thin fabric and glass of your spacesuit separates you from death's touch. So it's not so complicated to see that firedrop with your own eyes. All you have to do is get off your fat ass and work for it."
The woman threw back her head and her chins wobbled as she roared. "Did everyone hear that? This spacer thinks he works harder than any of us. Thinks he deserves the firedrop more than me and you. I think those are hard words for any of us to swallow, seeing they come from someone who expects a little, plastic token is enough for a blossom."
Sal clenched his fists. He saw how the crowd glared at him. He saw how those in the line ahead of him turned to snarl upon him. Sal felt how those who had gathered in the line behind him stepped forward to crowd him. Sal knew he tempted the ire of a hive filled with buzzing and angry people. Yet Sal didn't care. He could count the faces and curses. The dangers he had faced aboard the Klondike rarely showed him such courtesy. Sal was a harvester, who colored his hair a burning shade of crimson. He would suffer no one claiming that the token he kept in his in pocket did not deserve a firedrop blossom.
"My token is worth plenty of the firedrop," Sal pointed his finger at the woman, "and I'll not be called a thief another time."
"Those are stupid words from a spacer standing in our line!" A nameless face jeered.
"Maybe we'll just take that token from you if it's worth so much." Another man shouted.
Sal turned to face that taunt and fell to his knees as an empty, glass bottle struck the back of his head. Sal shook his head and lifted a hand to the knot he felt swelling beneath this crimson hair, and he worried how badly he had been cut when he withdrew his finger to see it stained with his blood. Rocks whistled past his head, and Sal covered his face an instant before the full onslaught of stones, of glass bits and discarded bottles and cups of coffee flew at him. The crowd hurled whatever projectile they could find at Sal. Sal's mind stammered as he peeked through his fingers, struggling to decide who was first worthy of his own anger out of a crowd teeming with so many attacking faces.
A sudden tingle over Sal's shoulder stiffened the fine hairs on the back of his neck. A buzz jolted past Sal's ears, and he heard the men and women in the crowd closest to him drop upon the ground. Sal squinted through the hot chocolate that had been thrown into his face to watch a pair of helmeted sentries rush to his position, arcs of blue lightning leaping from their electrical batons. Both Sal's attackers and the innocent fell before the sentries' assault, their bodies trembling on the ground as more waves of electricity arced over their heads to tackle more taunting faces among the crowd.
Sal knelt as the blue and white tendrils from the sentries' batons dashed over his head, smiling as he watched those faces that had jeered at him contort and drool as electricity spasmed their muscles. Sal thought of Glazkov IV as the assaulting crowd retreated. It seemed to Sal as if that mighty gas giant had unnaturally materialized in Earth's sky to punish those who would wish to harm one of the harvesters with the red hair, who had earned Glazkov IV's protection by daring the planet's fury to drift upon the small moon and take a glowing firedrop. Sal laughed.
One of the visored sentries placed an iron grip upon Sal's arm and pulled him off his knees.
"Are you trying to get yourself killed?" The dark visor grumbled.
"I've only come to claim the firedrop I was promised."
The dark visor nodded slowly. "Stay close to me. You've come too far in your foolishness to be lost to the crowd now."
The second sentry refrained from firing new bolts of lightning into the crowd to grab Sal's remaining free arm. The sentries quickly pushed Sal through the trembling lines. Sal offered no resistance, and his feet hurried to keep pace with his escort.
They led Sal t
o a small, motorized cart covered by Company logos and advertising slogans. A third sentry was ready behind the wheel as Sal and his escorts jumped unceremoniously into the cart's bed. The cart roared forward before Sal could gather himself, offering no mercy to any of those in line who hesitated before leaping away from the charging wheels. Fear rose in Sal's throat as he worried he would never have the opportunity to advance through the vendor lines receding behind the cart to claim the firedrop his token claimed was owed to him. But Sal voiced no protest to the faceless sentries as the cart turned onto a narrow roadway of smooth asphalt and accelerated towards a mason block building just outside one of the spaceport's gates. Sal's head still swooned and bled from the first blow of that glass bottle, and he had no desire to risk making enemies out of the sentries who had saved him from whatever harm the mob judged he deserved.
The interior of the mason building was tidy and well-lit. Sal scanned his surroundings as the cart slowed to a stop and guessed from the variety of tools and machines throughout the space that the building served as mechanic's garage, emergency room, fire house, cafeteria and police station. The sentries hopped out and pulled Sal from the cart before the vehicle retreated the way from which it had come. The sentries removed their helmets and helped Sal into an examination table as a woman dressed in a white frock swiveled a lamp to examine Sal's scalp made crimson with dye and blood.
The woman grunted as she looked at Sal's injured head. "Where'd you find this spacer?"
A sentry with a gray beard and dark hair shook his head. "He just walked right up to the end of one of the lines in section D15. Guy's got that dyed hair and he just walks right into that crowd. He's either incredibly stupid or brave."
"He's lucky they didn't strip him naked and shave off all his red hair," spoke the second sentry, whose clean face looked little older than seventeen.
The woman pursed her lips. "Not very smart."
Sal wanted to be patient and calm, to show that he appreciated the care shown to him. But the woman pulled hard on another stitch, and Sal's ire flared.
"I can hear all of you," Sal grimaced as the woman answered his retort with a hard pull at another stitch.
The bearded sentry sighed. "I wish they wouldn't do it, but I can't really blame the spacers when they show up all of a sudden in line. The Company doesn't tell them anything about how dangerous the vendor lines can be to anyone with the bright, red hair. The Company refused to admit how dangerous any of the tents are no matter how many riots rumble under all that fabric. Bad public relations."
"Well, the Company's going to find themselves locked out of any of the profits real soon if they don't face up to the violence," the younger sentry added. "Won't be long until the mob takes control of all the vendor counters. The thugs are about to steal it all out from right beneath the Company and the spaceports."
The older sentry chuckled. "You think the mob hasn't already infiltrated the Company?"
Sal felt anxious, and he yearned to scratch at his scalp no matter his new stitches.
"But where else am I supposed to go?" Sal asked as the woman set her needle and thread upon a tray next to the examination table. "The Company handed this token to me as part of my salary. They told me they would notify me when they had a firedrop ready for me. They never got hold of me, and so I decided to go to the lines myself and see if something might've gotten crossed in paperwork or something."
The woman flashed a penlight into Sal's eyes and smiled at the results.
"Afraid that you're not the first spacer who showed up at the tent city for those same reasons," the woman smiled softly at Sal. "I wish I knew where you could go."
The bearded sentry set a hand on Sal's shoulder. "Seems the Company has a hard time stepping up to its promises, son. You're far from the first red-haired space I've pulled out of that crowd. The Company might give you one of those plastic, red tokens to help encourage your space bones to take a first step back on native soil, but they rarely ever exchange that token for a firedrop."
The woman pressed a bandage against Sal's scalp and taped it to his hair. "The spacers seldom put up much of a fight. Most of them disappear before they can push it."
"That's because they always go back," commented the younger sentry.
The woman snorted. "And I'll never understand why they hop back on another starship after the Company so badly betrays them."
"You can't understand because you've never seen the firedrop glowing on its native moon." Sal whispered and his words hushed his company.
The woman squinted at Sal. "Excuse me?"
"None of you have really seen the firedrop. Not how it's meant to be viewed." Sal hopped off of the examination table. "None of you have seen the firedrop pulse in time with the giant Glazkov's heart. A single firedrop is a frail weed compared to what one sees on that minuscule moon. I suppose that token doesn't hold much value to someone who, like me, has walked through the firedrop fields. It takes an entire field to give us that thrill everyone who shuffles through those tent lines so badly craves. A single firedrop set upon a porcelain plate hardly does anything at all for us."
Sal hopped off of the examination table as the woman and the sentries stared, dumfounded, as he grabbed a sentry helmet and strode out of the building. Outside, he gently placed his sore head into the helmet to hide his red hair so that he could cross through the lines beneath the vendor tents and make his way to the small office building that assembled the crew rosters for the Company's star freighters. It would only be a short launch back to the Klondike before claiming that cot in the crew quarters that Captain Darringer promised to reserve for him. It would not be long before the ache in his bones vanished as his skeleton was spared the burden of Earth's gravitation. It would be only a little while while his starship floated to the anomaly; and from there, it would only a be a short hop and a descent before Sal Maddox returned home.
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