Then the door at the rear of the hall opened and Pete turned with the rest and saw three people enter.
“Well, speak of the devil,” Jerry Sells said. “Or at least, the devil’s wife. What do you want here, Rachel?”
The older woman in the trio was a plump, motherly looking person with mild blue eyes and an open, disarming manner. “Why, Jerry Sells,” she accused. “That’s a terrible thing to say about a body.”
Pete was surprised. With the distances involved and his having been away at school, his never having seen Rachel Barry before was not extraordinary. But he’d hardly expected a plump motherly type. Observing her for the first time, he wasn’t sure what he had expected, not knowing quite what a fire-eater would look like.
The miner called Dave was scowling ferociously. “You got a nerve, Rachel. Coming here after all the ore you been stealing from the boys.”
“Stealing!” Rachel Barry stared in what appeared to be honest amazement. “I only take what I find lying loose on the asteroids.”
“Sure! Ore somebody else loosens.”
“But there’s plenty to go around. And I’ve got a family to raise.”
“And we’re paying the bill,” someone yelled.
“That’s a mean thing to say,” Rachel Barry protested. “You’re all strong men. I’m only a weak woman. I haven’t got the strength to mine ore the way you do!”
“You got me crying in my beard,” a miner hooted. “Let’s take up a collection for her.”
Pete was only half listening. His attention was on the girl who stood between her mother and the broad-shouldered, bush-bearded man who had come in with them. This was Jane, Rachel Barry’s oldest daughter.
Pete knew Jane Barry by sight. They’d been at school on Parma at the same time—before Pete went off to higher classes on Mars. But he’d never been particularly attracted to her. In fact, quite the opposite. He’d seen her as bold and brassy and not his idea of what a well-bred girl should be.
They’d exchanged casual hellos, and it had not been snobbishness on Pete’s part because Jane had shown no inclination to cultivate his friendship either.
So that was how it had stood—two people whose personalities didn’t seem to mesh.
The man who had accompanied the two women hung back. He was frowning and seemed either worried or embarrassed.
As Jerry Sells pounded his gavel for order, the wounded miner came to his feet and pointed to the trio. “Hey!” he yelled. “I wanna—”
Jerry Sells had straightened his walking-beam shoulders and taken a deep breath. “Shut up!” he bellowed in a voice that shook the walls.
The wounded man dropped into his seat as though he’d been hit on the top of the head. “I was only gonna tell you…”
“We’ll have some order in this meeting or I’ll start cracking some heads. Now, Rachel—why did you come here? This is a Brotherhood meeting. You don’t belong to the Brotherhood, so you don’t belong here.”
“But I want to join,” Rachel Barry said brightly.
“She wants to join!” a member groaned. “She steals our ore and then comes in and wants to be one of us.”
Another called, “Wouldn’t you rather we’d all give you orbit charts on our best claims, Rachel?”
“That’s not fair!” Rachel Barry protested.
It was at this point that the real excitement started.
Jane Barry, her eyes flashing anger, had just stepped forward in her mother’s defense. “You’re all mean and greedy and heartless,” she cried. “I wouldn’t let my mother join your Brotherhood—”
She was interrupted by the wounded Blaney who had been sulking over the injustices done him. His indignation rekindled, he came resolutely to his feet and pointed again.
“I got a complaint, blast it! That bushy-face there is one of the three bleeders that stole my ore!”
The reaction of the men was instantaneous.
A sudden question came into Pete’s mind. The man that the complaining Blaney pointed to was Homer Deeds. Could he also have been responsible for the load of shale dropped on Pete’s father? An ugly roar went up and chairs were tipped over. Nearby miners moved toward the male member of the Barry trio and he took a slow, backward step.
Without thinking, Pete was up and out of his chair. The danger here was potent. The mood of the miners was such that violence could flare instantly. In fact it was flaring, and Pete’s instincts threw him into action.
He leaped forward and grabbed the bearded man by the arm, putting himself in the way of the advancing miners. His quick movement threw them slightly off-balance and they hesitated.
“Out! Quick!” Pete snapped. He pushed the man toward the door.
Rachel Barry, not able to react quickly, had looked around, confused, and been pushed down into a chair. Thus, she was out of harm’s way.
But Jane had turned and was on the other side of the bearded man, helping Pete push him toward the door.
“Hurry, Uncle Homer!”
They went through the door and Pete slammed it behind him and turned the key that had been left in the lock when the meeting opened.
They were in the anteroom now. The anteroom was a feature of practically all buildings in the Belt, public or private; the place where magnetic boots, an absolute requirement for outdoor movement, were left; they resembled rubbers used on the bigger planets during rainy weather.
“Grab a pair!” Pete directed as he dived toward the pile.
The man Jane had called Uncle Homer seized a pair of the boots and started toward the door.
“No,” Pete said. “Put them on. Well have time. It’s worth it.”
He picked up a pair and handed them to Jane, but she pushed them away, her eyes snapping. “I’ll get my own, thank you!”
Pete’s anger flared. “All right, you little spitfire. But do it! Don’t just stand there. Those men mean business.”
Someone hit the door now and Pete knew the next battering effort would be greater and the door would soon give. He regretted that the magnetic unit switch was not in the anteroom. Had that been the case he could have switched it off and degravitized the hall, leaving the miners to flounder helplessly.
“All right,” he said, “let’s go!”
Uncle Homer was already pulling his boots toward the outer door. It was like a man walking in deep mud, with the double pull of the boots and the hall’s gravity unit.
Jane was straining at her boots, lifting them with great difficulty. Pete seized her arm to help. Angrily, she shook it off.
“All right,” he snapped. “Stay here, then. They won’t hurt you or your mother.”
Jane reversed quickly. “No! I want to go too. Please help me.”
Pulling his extra burden toward the already opened door, Pete pushed Jane through after Uncle Homer, who had helped no one but himself. Instantly the double gravity pressure abated and the three were able to run along the surface of the asteroid against the adjusted gravity pull of the boots.
“My car’s right over there. Hurry. It will carry three in an emergency.”
The door had smashed open inside, and now Pete’s wisdom in stopping to don the boots became apparent.
The pursuing miners didn’t take the time. They snatched up boots in both hands and rushed through the outer door. The result would have been funny if the situation hadn’t been so fraught with ugly danger.
A skilled acrobat could carry a pair of boots on a low-gravity surface and do very well, but it took practice that the miners didn’t have. The trick of moving against a gravity that pushed downward from their hands, rather than pulling against the asteroid surface from their feet, was too much for most of them. Fine balancing abilities lacking, their hands and feet changed places and the dozen or so who had emerged presented the grotesque picture of a pursuit group walking on their hands.
Thus,
pursued only by the yells of rage from the comparatively helpless miners, Pete was able to cram his companions into his monocar and take off in safety.
He lifted the car some hundred feet and arced around until he found the beep and then straightened away on the three-second beam.
“Where are we going?” Jane Barry asked.
“I’m pointed toward Juno, but we can’t go too far with this load. Where is your ship?”
“We’re cabled down on Pallas, but I can’t leave Parma now. I’ve got to wait for Mother.”
The little black-haired vixen was beginning to really annoy Pete. “Then why didn’t you stay with her?”
“You said they wouldn’t hurt her—and they won’t.”
“Of course they won’t. They’ll see that she gets back to her ship, too.”
In truth—as Pete well knew—the miners of the Brotherhood had a sort of grudging regard for Rachel Barry. While rough and uncultured, they were nonetheless chivalrous. Their complaints against Rachel were mainly from frustration. They saw her as a zany addlepate more than an enemy; an annoyance more than a menace.
The three were packed in like sardines and now Uncle Homer writhed and spoke for the first time. “You can let me out here. It’s safe now. I’ll make my own way.”
Pete made no objection as he started to lower the monocar. He didn’t like the man and was embarrassed at even appearing to be on his side.
“Where will you go, Uncle Homer?” Jane asked. There was concern in her voice.
He mumbled something about having friends, thus not really answering her question, and then climbed out of the monocar and moved off into the darkness without a word of thanks.
“The grateful type,” Pete murmured with sarcasm he couldn’t hide.
Jane turned on him as he again lifted the car into the black space above. “You want thanks? All right. I’ll thank you for him. Thanks.”
“I wasn’t asking for gratitude.”
“Then what were you asking for?”
“Nothing. Absolutely nothing. The next time I’ll let them take your uncle out and toss him into space.”
“And they’d do it, too. They’d throw an innocent man off an asteroid without giving him a chance to say a word in his own defense.”
Scowling, Pete pushed angrily at the headpiece of his oxygen unit. It was attached to the supply belt, a unit all Belt people wore as an article of clothing, attaching the headpiece whenever they stepped out of pressurized areas. The unit was so constructed that the headpiece was pulled down to the belt on a light spring when not in use. But the spring on Pete’s unit was out of adjustment and the headpiece kept pushing back up toward his face, giving him a somewhat undignified appearance.
“Milt Blaney identified him as one of the men who robbed and shot him, didn’t he?”
“He said Uncle Homer was one of them. But how could he be sure? Is that enough evidence to destroy a man?”
“I’m not siding with the miners. I’m not defending them. I saved your uncle from them, didn’t I?”
“Good lord! Do you want a medal?”
Pete realized he’d never before known the meaning of pure frustration. How did you argue with a stubborn creature like Jane Barry? The headpiece came up and pushed against his mouth. He jerked it down.
“Why don’t you get that thing fixed? You look ridiculous pushing it away all the time.”
“We were talking about your Uncle Homer, not about my oxygen unit. I’ve heard a few things about him.”
“You mean you’ve heard things about the Barrys. Everybody talks about us.”
“We were talking—”
“About the Barrys,” Jane went on furiously. “You’ve no doubt heard things about Mother and me and my sisters. Tell me—what have you heard about my little sister, Colleen? She’s eight years old. Does she go around jumping claims, too?”
“You’re—you’re impossible!” Pete muttered through gritted teeth.
Jane’s glowing eyes reflected pleasure in the light from the monocar’s radar screen. She enjoyed the helpless anger she’d produced in Pete.
“Your headpiece is hitting you in the face again,” she said sweetly.
Pete jammed the pesky thing back into its tube and when he spoke again it was with grim relief. Gauging himself by the Juno blip on the screen, he’d angled across to nearby Pallas and was finally happy to announce, “There’s the Snapdragon,” and almost added: I hope it collapses on the next take-off. Then he realized he was being childish and swiftly repaired his manners. “I’ll drop you by the port.”
“Thank you,” Jane said icily.
And on that note, they parted, Pete breathing a deep sigh of relief as he lifted the monocar off Pallas and headed for home. The night had held more excitement than he cared for. He was an orderly, reasonable person, he told himself stoutly, and he liked orderly procedures and reasonable people.
Therefore, he would send Betcha Jones to the next Brotherhood meeting.
And he’d definitely avoid meeting Jane Barry again.
CHAPTER FOUR
CLAIM TO A WORLD
The next morning Pete slept late. His knowing this was more instinctive than anything else as there were few visible signs to indicate time in the Belt. The light from the sun was of a fairly steady density everywhere on the sunless sides of the largest planetoids. This density would have been considered little more than twilight by the natives of the great inner planets, because the reflective surfaces in the Belt were skimpy and broken—about the same as the Earth’s sun, standing a foot or so above the horizon.
Chronometers measured the passing hours and days, of course, but Pete knew it was late on the basis that Belt people calculated their days and nights—by merely glancing out the heavy quartz window and thus giving his instincts some scant material to work with.
He got out of bed and indulged in the luxury of a shower, visualizing Betcha’s objections, had he known. Betcha considered such ridiculous personal sanitation as completely unnecessary. “Nonsense kids learn at them fancy schools,” he’d once snorted.
After a rubdown, Pete donned his heat unit, another of the personal items vitally necessary in the Belt. This consisted of a light garment worn next to the skin, a tight-fitting union suit that was battery-heated into a thermal shield against the steady zero-minus-one-hundred-degree temperature outside the enclosures. Maximum convenience was achieved by almost instantaneous heating at the simple snap of a switch. Also, the suit had specially constructed collars and cuffs that threw out quick heat to protect otherwise exposed surfaces, although helmets and gloves were not scorned.
Dressed for the day, Pete passed the kitchen where Betcha had left his breakfast on the stove and went to his father’s bedroom.
Joe Mason was sleeping, and Pete tiptoed in and looked down at his father. It wasn’t often that anyone caught the fiercely proud old man off guard. But this was one of the times, and Pete was a little shaken at what he saw. Stripped of its perpetual scowl of defiance and with the keen eyes closed, Joe Mason presented a different image: that of a hurt, tired man against whom stubborn, relentless time was winning its battle.
The cheeks were sunken and there was a pallid cast to the skin that had braved the harsh and frigid reaches of space for so many years. The deep lines Pete had known for so long were even deeper now, showing the extent of his father’s suffering since the accident; suffering the old man would have died from rather than admit to.
After studying his father’s face for awhile, Pete laid a hand on his shoulder.
“Dad…”
Joe Mason’s eyes snapped open and he instantly replaced the mask that had dropped away during sleep.
“Oh—Pete. I was resting my eyes a little, waiting for you to come in.”
“I overslept, I’m afraid.”
“I told Betcha not to wake yo
u up. You’re still a growing lad and you need your rest. Here—push this blasted cast so I can sit up.”
Pete helped his father into a sitting position. He fully expected a cross-examination as to the previous night’s meeting. So he was surprised when his father sat silent for a time, scowling at the wall behind the foot of the bed. Then he suddenly turned his piercing eyes on his son.
“Pete. I want you to go out prospecting.”
“Prospecting? Why, Dad, I thought we had some good claims that were just waiting—”
The old man shook his head impatiently. “Not exactly—not exactly. Oh, if we had a full crew and I was on my feet, we could pay the time and cost of working them, but the way things are, we need a richer strike.” He’d looked away, but now he glanced quickly back. “We’re in no danger of violating the Brotherhood Code. The returns, even if we worked them, would be low enough to justify abandonment. So we’ll hold them in reserve for a while, and I want you to go out and hit a big one for us.”
“Why, sure, Dad. I can’t think of anything I’d rather do.”
“Copper prices are good. Hit a nice vein somewhere, and we’ll have money to burn.”
Pete grinned and hooked his fist across his father’s chin in the old man’s favorite gesture of affection. “Sure, Dad. Just watch me. In a couple of days I’ll come in here and report the biggest strike since Crazy Carter claimed that derelict ship filled with platinum bars.”
He was referring to a fabulous Belt incident that had long since become legendary—a miner who’d become a millionaire on a single salvage operation.
“You do that, son,” Joe Mason said.
“In the meantime, you just lie there and get well and plan what we’ll do with the money.”
Pete’s smile vanished as he left the bedroom. He passed up breakfast, stowing some dry provender into his monocar, and as he took off into the Belt, his spirits were low.
He moved with the stream and rode comfortably along, thoroughly at home in a world that would have terrorized the native of a solid planet.
An asteroid the size of a football floated along just ahead. Pete approached it, nuzzled it aside with the nose of his monocar, and watched it drift astern.
Rocket from Infinity Page 3