"You're batso!" I snapped. "My name's Sam Space. I was booked for Bubble City. Look up my reservation."
He gave me a cool stare, and then ruffled through a long passenger listing. "I have no entry on any MarsLine flight for you, Mr. Space."
I was sore. I began spitting words at him. "I don't know what kind of runaround you're feeding me, but I'm not buying it. Either you ‘relying or your data is all cockeyed. I was definitely booked to accompany a shipment of coldpac bodies being shipped on board the Reagan to Dr. Emmanuel Q. Umani on Mars." I paused for breath. "Now, don't tell me you've never heard of him!"
The deskrep raised a slow eyebrow. "Why — why, yes … I've heard of Dr. Umani. Naturally. He's in all the papes."
"I don't get you."
"He was assassinated two Earth-days ago in Bubble City. Dr. Umani had been using another body, but they verified the ID through brain analysis. Three Moon criminals were apparently involved."
"Go on," I said softly.
"They also eliminated Dr. Umani's adopted daughter, a Miss Esma Umani, as well as the businessman she had contacted."
"Remember the businessman's name?"
He bit his lower lip, concentrating. "Wait … I have a pape here somewhere. Ah!" He brought one out, handed it to me.
I read the story and sighed. "Okay, I want you to book me on the next flight out for Mars."
"Gladly, sir."
I had a funeral to attend.
* * *
I stared down at the corpse in the plastocasket: a big, beefy guy in his middle-thirties with a scar on his right cheek and a cruel mouth. Black hair, thick eyebrows. It was a face that had taken a lot of wallops, and the nose was dented, the ears pugged.
"Too bad, Sam," I said, "you were a good man."
It was me, and no mistake. The eyes were closed but they were my eyes — dark and deep and as cruel as the mouth. I even recognized the cheap grey pseudsuit; I'd bought it on Uranus from a crooked little clothes hawk with six arms and no soul.
"Are you a friend of the deceased?" A soft-looking Funeral Captain was standing next to me, attempting to look properly bereaved.
"We grew up together in Old Chicago," I said. "But we've been out of touch for a while. I just read about his death in the papes. Thought I'd stop by and pay my last respects."
"How very thoughtful of you. I am sure that Mr. Space would have appreciated the gesture. How do you like him?"
"Huh?"
"Our job, I mean. The face is so composed, so at peace with the world. When we got him he was something of a mess."
"He looks great," I said.
The soft man nodded and clucked. "Indeed, the arrangement and presentation of the deceased is an exacting art. And one, I might say, which is not fully appreciated in our hurry-skurry times."
"I'll bet," I said. "Did they nail the goons who cooled him?"
The Captain shook his head sadly. "No, the assassins are still at large." He brightened. "But I do have the bodies of Miss Umani and her father on display. Would you care to view them?"
I'd seen enough stiffs. When you check out your own corpse it tends to depress you. "No, thanks, I'll pass on the other stiffs."
He leaned closer to me, eyes moist and curious. "And just what is your name, sir? For the register, of course."
I adjusted my fake moustache. My realputty nose itched. I couldn't afford to scratch it. Not without tipping my disguise.
"Hammet," I said. "With just one ‘t' on the end. A lot of people spell it wrong."
"Of course," he said, writing it down carefully, "One ‘t' only. Are you staying on in Bubble City, Mr. Hammet? For the services?"
"Fraid not," I said.
"I think you'd enjoy them. We conduct them in rather high style."
"I'm sure you do," I said, "but I'm in kind of a rush." I grinned."You know — our hurry-skurry times and all."
"I quite understand, sir." He nodded, fading back into the curtains.
I took one last look at poor dead Sam. And chuckled. "You sap," I said to him. "You should have kept that .38 handy between cases."
He didn't bat an eye.
He just went on looking composed.
Five
By now I knew what had happened to me, and I also knew there was only one man who could take care of the problem. The last time I'd seen him he'd been living under the Art Museum in Old Chicago.
So that's where I went.
The ancient lions flanking the entrance glared at me as I mounted the wide marble steps. In their plastoconversion they'd lost a good deal of their original majesty, but a plastolion is a lot easier to keep clean than a granite one. When I was a kid they used to get dirt in their stone pores; now they were immaculate.
At the top, a guard stopped me. "We're closed," he said. "Come back in the morning."
"I'm not here to peek at your collection," I said. "I need to see Nathan Oliver. He still live here?"
The guard gave me a grudging nod. "One floor down. He's our resident restorer. And if you ask me, he's also a crackpot."
"Nobody asked you," I snapped. "Do I see him?"
"You expected?"
"No. But he'll know me. Tell him Sam Space is here."
I waited while he went down to Oliver, patting the warm plastorump of the nearest lion. I still preferred granite.
When the guard returned he was pop-eyed.
"Well, what'd he say?"
"He … he says you can't be here!"
"Why not?"
"Because you're dead."
"That's beside the point," I growled. "Let me talk to him. I'll straighten things out."
I started to brush past. He took a fast step back and jerked a .22 ventrib LR beamer from his clamshell and aimed it at me. "I think you're some kind of —"
That's as far as he got. I used a flying switchover on him, chopping the .22 from his hand with my left foot while my right fist whacked the air out of his belly. Then I put him to sleep with the butt of my .38 and trotted downstairs to the lower floor, pulling off my false nose and discarding my trick ginger moustache on the way down.
Nathan Oliver went ashen when he saw me. His mouth gaped and his fat jowls quivered.
"S — S — S — S —"
He couldn't say my name.
"I'm no ghost, Nate, if that's what you're afraid of," I grinned. "It's your ole buddy, Sam. In the flesh."
He couldn't believe it. "But — the papes — the vids. They all reported your murder. Sam — you can't be alive!"
"I'm not. At least one of me isn't. He was gunned down by Loonies in Bubble City."
"Then you're his twin brother."
I chuckled. "In a way you could say that. If you'll relax and get that death's-head expression off your kisser I'll fill you in on the whole smazz."
We walked into his main liferoom and Oliver slid into a deep plush pseudovelv chair, patting at his round pink cheeks with a silk hankie. In the draped yellow lounge robe he wore Nate was bell-shaped, and his naked feet seemed absurdly small against the chilled marble flooring.
"You always liked to go barefoot on marble," I said, remembering. "You're an odd duck, Nate, yet you're the only man in this world who can get me out of the jam I'm in."
"Convince me I'm not going insane," he pleaded. "Convince me that you're not some type of mad apparition sent by the cosmic Lord to plague me for my sins."
"I'm just Sam," I told him. "Or one of him, anyway. Some of me are alive and some of me are dead. At the moment your world has one of each. Which is why I'm here to see you. I want out."
"Out of what?"
"Of this world. It's yours, not mine. It's the wrong one for me. Nate."
His apprehension had drained away by this stage. He stowed the hankie and pushed his fat body free of the chair. "What you need is a drink. Scotch. Straight up, as I recall."
"You recall right," I said. "Yeah, I could use a touch of the creature about now."
He poured me a stiff one. It fired my insides like rock
et fuel. We both sat down and I told him what had happened, making it brief. "I was hired by this triplehead from Venus to guard a shipment of spare bodies. Before I could get the job done I was waylaid by a babe with winking nips. She conned me into coming up to her unit in Allnew York where I was sapped and transferred from my world to this parallel one."
"For what purpose?"
"They wanted me out of the picture for their own reasons. So they pulled the old parallel universe switcheroo."
Oliver nodded, double chins wobbling. He walked to the drinkcab and fixed me another Scotch. While I downed it he pondered the situation. Nate always loved to ponder situations.
"You've come to me because you think that I may be able to send you back?"
"You guessed it, Nate," I said. "When we knew each other, in my world, you had the same job here at the Museum, restoring 20th-Century movie art, but your hobby involved time and space transportation. You were able to send trees and bushes into other dimensions. But I wasn't sure, in this universe, that you still had the same hobby. But you were worth a try."
"Oh, I do indeed putter about with time," he assured me. "Just last week I successfully transported a male gorilla into another universe. At least I think that's where he went. My indicator indicated it. With gorillas, you can't be sure of anything."
"Ever tried it with a human?"
"Not yet." His eyes gleamed in padded flesh. "You'll be my first."
We entered his workroom, the area in which he restored the cinema artifacts which made up the museum's collection. Half-restored studio backdrops, in sections, were scattered about the long workroom. Film star posters were everywhere, in various stages of repair. A giant rubber boulder stood in one corner, next to a rubber cliff. Both were seedy and peeling.
"I've been tinkering with this time stuff long enough to feel fairly secure in what I do," said Nate, bypassing the cinema items and leading me toward his hobby lab. "The amusing thing is, with two Sam Spaces involved, I should have immediately realized that you'd been transported." He rumbled with inner laughter, holding his vast stomach. "The joke's on old Nathan!"
"What worries me," I admitted, "is that there's bound to be an infinite number of universes in which Nathan Oliver didn't become a time tinkerer and I didn't become a private detective. What if I end up in one of those?"
"What you say is true. However, the closest ones to us in the cosmic stream are almost identical to our own. An incident or two may vary, yet the basic patterns are fixed. Since you were killed in the act of being hired for your present assignment we must assume that you are in a direct-line universe — which makes sending you back much less complicated."
Oliver's hobby lab was a mass of tubes, vats, switches and vegetation. He had plants and small trees sitting next to bushes and barrel cactus. I snagged my coat on a thorn.
"Over here, Sam," he directed.
Oliver took a potted petunia out of a tall, cone-shaped receptacle and waved me inside. "You take the petunia's place," he instructed me. "I was about to send it off. I'll send you instead."
"I hope you know where the hell I'm going," I said. This whole business seemed to verge on the haphazard, and I was rapidly losing faith in the fat man. If he fouled this, I could end up anywhere. And maybe the next Nathan Oliver, if I could find him, wouldn't know a damn thing about parallel universes. I'd be stuck for sure. I began to sweat.
"Don't worry about a thing," soothed Oliver, fingering several small dials along the side of the metal cone. "I'll have you back home in wink." He peered intently at me. "When did you awaken in this universe? What time was it? That's important."
"Exactly 01800 hours. I checked the tree shadows. I'm never wrong on tree shadows."
"Hmmmm … and when were you attacked? — in your world, I mean."
I ran a slow finger along my chin. "I'll have to estimate. Let's see — we left the Agnew at 01600 and took a cab right out to Cen Park. I'd put it at 01620."
"Splendid!" The fat tinkerer beamed. "I can put you practically spot-on. It's much tougher without a time-table."
"Say, just how did those ginks send me here in the first place? I didn't see any dimensional junk in the unit when I woke up."
"They must have used a portable rig. More sophisticated than mine. This equipment is still a bit on the cumbersome side, but it works . I'm sure it works."
"It damn well better," I said.
Oliver adjusted me in the cone seat, making certain I was in the right cosmic position; he attached several metal doodads to my neck and head. Then he stepped back, obviously pleased with himself. "When I activate this nodule-type activator you'll feel dizzy, then sickish. As these sensations pass, you should spin into blackness and thus out of this universe. Is all that clear?"
"Yeah, yeah. Let's get cracking. I want to find the dame that had me sapped. And maybe there's still time, in my world, to save doc Umani."
Nate fiddled with more dials, clucked his fat pink tongue against the roof of his mouth, then looked over at me. "Ready?"
"Right."
His eyes gleamed. His chins quivered. "Gook luck, Sam."
"Thanks, Nate. Thanks for the ride."
I got dizzy.
I got sickish.
And, with a great sparking hum, I spun into blackness.
* * *
I woke up where I'd fallen, in Nicole's unit in Cen Park South. One thing was for sure: I wouldn't have to go looking for her.
Totally nude, Nicole was stretched out on the floor next to me, eyes open and staring.
She was as stiff as a Christmas turkey.
Six
Nicole was still a prime looker. They hadn't done anything to her face, and her body seemed to be unmarked.
She was lying on her back. I flipped her over and found the deep laser wound that had sliced into her flesh from neck to hips. Looked like the work of a .48 PA tri-beam rimfire Gripper — but I couldn't be sure.
Whoever had done the job had been in a big hurry because my .38was still on the floor where I'd dropped it. I picked it up, checked the load. Okay. Now I owned two .38s — this one and the one under my coat from the other universe. At least I had something to show for the trip.
Nicole's murder had all the earmarks of a double-cross. Apparently whoever was after Umani had used the girl to decoy me here, then put her away for good after I was safely transported out of the scene. They didn't want to leave any witnesses around loose, and a good-looking piece of fluff always has a tendency to shoot off her mouth to the wrong Joe.
They'd made certain her mouth stayed shut.
There was nothing I could do about Nicole but the unit was worth a frisk. Last time I'd searched the wrong crackerbox. In that world this place belonged to a seventy-six year-old bed widow who liked walking neardogs in the afternoon.
I figured this time I'd get lucky and find something I could use in the case. And I did.
They'd taken Nicole's purse but they'd been in too much of a rush to grab her trip trunk. It was just to the left of the door where she'd set it down after entering the unit. Inside, neatly tucked away between a pair of scented glosex blouses, I found a faxletter addressed to Nicole S. Tubbs, source punched Domehive, Saturn. I unlooped the fabcovering and read:
——
My dear and delightful Miss Tubbs:
Word has reached us that Dr. Umani's daughter has hired a private investigator named Space to accompany a coldpac body shipment from Earth to Mars. He must be detoured. And you have been selected for this assignment. Meet him on ship-board and arrange for him to escort you to your life unit. We will have an agent there to deal with him.
You will be paid well for this service.
F.
——
I sighed. F. had paid her well, all right, whoever he was. With a laser cut to the heart. I had my clue. It didn't look like much but when you're in my kind of game you play the hand that's dealt you. With any luck, F. could be my ace.
* * *
I checked ou
t the Reagan by vidwire and was told it had arrived in Bubble City on schedule. Which surprised me. Next, I piped the number Esma had given me for Dr. Umani's lab unit on Mars — and was amazed to hear him answer.
"Yassah, boss. Somebody wanna gab wif dis ole black man?"
Obviously, he was still inside the jazz singer's body.
"Doctor, it's me, Sam Space. I thought they'd have harmed you by now."
"No, I'm quite healthy despite your ineptitude," growled Umani, reverting to his normal voice. "The coldpac shipment arrived on time — no thanks to you — and Esma is now de-icing a hard-drinking Scottish highlander for me to occupy. I'll be slipping into him as soon as she's ready."
"That's it!"
"What's it?"
"That explains why they didn't try to destroy the shipment. I'm certain the Scottish highlander is booby-trapped. I'd stake my rep on it. Probably rigged with some type of self-destruct mechanism. No doubt they've booby-trapped the entire lot. Once your brain is placed in anyone of those bodies you're a dead duck."
"I fear you may be right, Mr. Space."
"So stay inside the NewOld New Orleans jazz singer until fresh bodies can be sent to you. I'll be with the next shipment. But first I've got to hop over to Saturn on a lead. Can you sit tight for a while until I contact you?"
"Well, I would imagine so," grumped Umani, "but I do need to climb into a man who drinks more." Then his voice softened. "Still, I really enjoy strumming a banjo — and this is the only body I've had which can do that."
"Fine. Stay inside it and keep strumming. And be sure Esma sticks with you. My guess is your enemies won't try anything else at the moment. They'll be waiting for you to make a brain jump into a rigged coldpac. Which gives me some working time."
"Do you have a line on who they are?" he wanted to know.
I gulped. "Don't you know who's been trying to kill you?"
"I received a faxnote three Earth weeks ago demanding that I cease work on my experiment or I would not live to continue it. There was no full signature. Simply an initial."
Space For Hire (Seven For Space) Page 3