Astounding Science Fiction Stories Vol 1

by Anthology

  "Here she comes with Myra," said his host. "Name's Eileen."

  Dudley smiled at Mrs. Fisher and was introduced to the red-haired girl with her. Eileen eyed him speculatively, then donned her best air of friendliness. The evening passed rapidly.

  For the next few days, besides seeing the Fishers and looking up the men who were to be his crew, Dudley spent a lot of time with Eileen. There seemed to be little difficulty about her getting time off from whatever her official duties were. She showed him all the bars and movie theatres and other amusements that the underground city could boast, and Dudley made the most of them in spite of his recent visit to Terra. On the Mars-bound rocket, they would be lucky, if allowed one deck of cards and half a dozen books for the entertainment of the four of them.

  It was on the "evening" of his third day that the specter haunting the back of his mind pushed forward to confront him. He had listened for gossip, but there had been no word of the discovery of an unauthorized arrival. Then, as he was taking Eileen to her underground apartment, he heard his name called.

  There she was, with an escort of three young men he guessed to be operators of the machinery that still drilled out new corridors in the rock around the city. Somehow she had exchanged the black slack suit for a bright red dress that was even more daring than Eileen's. In the regulated temperature, clothing was generally light, but Dudley's first thought was that this was overdoing a good thing.

  "May I have a word with you, Dudley?" Kathi asked, coming across the corridor while her young men waited with shifting feet and displeased looks.

  Dudley glanced helplessly at Eileen, wondering about an introduction. He had never bothered to learn her last name, and he had no idea of what name Kathi was using. The redhead had pity on him.

  "My door's only a few yards down," she said. "I'll wait."

  She swept Kathi with a glance of amused confidence and walked away. It seemed to Dudley that she made sure the three young men followed her with their eyes; but then he was kicking off for Mars within twenty-four hours, so he could hardly object to that.

  "Have you changed your mind?" demanded Kathi with a fierce eagerness.

  "Not so loud!" hushed Dudley. "About what? And how did you get that rig?"

  Had he been less dismayed at her presence, he might have remarked that the tight dress only emphasized her immaturity, but she gave him no time to say more.

  "About Mars, Dudley. Can't you take me? I'm afraid those illegitimate blood-suckers are going to send after me. They could sniff out which way a nickel rolled in a coal-bin."

  "Aren't you just a shade young for that kind of talk?"

  "I guess I'm a little frightened," she admitted.

  "You frighten me, too," he retorted. "How are you ... I mean, what do you—?"

  She tossed her blonde hair.

  "There are ways to get along here, I found out. I didn't get arrested this time, did I? So why can't you take a chance with me to Mars?"

  "Take an eclipse on that," said Dudley with a flat sweep of his hand. "It's just out of the question. For one thing, there are four of us going, and you can't hide for the whole trip without somebody catching on."

  "All right," she said quietly. "Why not?"

  "What do you mean, 'Why not?'"

  "I'm willing to earn my passage. What if there are four of you?"

  For a long moment, Dudley discovered things about himself, with the sudden realization that the idea appealed to some suppressed part of his mind. He had never kidded himself about being a saint. The thing had possibilities. Maybe one of the others can be talked into restraint into her.

  He snapped out of it. "Don't be a little fool!" he grated. "If you want my advice, you'll—."

  "Well, I don't want your goddam advice! If you're too yellow to try it, I'll find somebody else. There'll be another rocket after yours, you know. Maybe they'll have a man on it!"

  He felt his face go white and then flush as he stared at her. He did not know what to say. She looked like a child, but the outburst was more than a mere tantrum.

  Sounds as if she's never been crossed before, he thought. I ought to haul off and slap a little self-restraint into her.

  Instead, he beckoned to the three men, who had been edging closer with aggrieved expressions.

  "How about taking your girl friend along?" he said flatly.

  One of them took her by the elbow and tried to murmur something in her ear, but Kathi shook him off.

  "If you are afraid for your license, Dudley, I'll say I hid without your knowing it. I'll say one of the others let me in. Please, Dudley. I'm sorry I talked to you like that."

  She was making a fool of him, and of herself, he decided. And in another minute, she would spill the whole thing, the way she was sounding off. And her friends were beginning to look hostile as it was.

  "What's the trouble?" asked one of them.

  "Nothing that won't clear up if you pour a couple of drinks into her," said Dudley disgustedly.

  He walked away, and they held her from following.

  "Dudley!" she yelled after him. "They'll send me back! Please, Dudley. I won't go. You remember what I said about going back—."

  Her voice was getting too shrill. Someone in the group must have put his hand over her mouth, for when Dudley looked back, they were rounding a corner of the corridor more or less silently.

  Eileen waited in the half-open door, watching him quizzically. "Friend of yours?" she drawled.

  "After a fashion," admitted Dudley, pulling out a handkerchief to wipe his forehead. "Spoiled brat!"

  He fumbled in a pocket of his jacket, and withdrew a small package. "Here's the bracelet that matches that necklace," he said. "I knew I had it in my locker somewhere."

  Her thanks were very adequate.

  "Aren't you coming in?" Eileen asked after the pause.

  "No ... I don't ... I have to get a good night's sleep, you know. We kick off tomorrow."

  She pursed her lips in a small pout, but shrugged. "Then look me up when you get back, Pete."

  "Yeah. Sure."

  He kissed her quickly and walked away, drumming the fingers of his right hand against his thigh.

  Except for the tenseness of blasting off and landing, the round trip to Mars was as boring as he expected. Campiglia won too many chess games at one move per watch, and the deck of cards wore out. For a few days, Wells had a slightly infected finger after cutting himself, but it was a small crisis. The layover on Mars was short, and the thrill was no longer new.

  Dudley was glad to step out of the big rocket on Luna.

  They had come in during the sleeping period at Ericsson, so the four of them had gone to their quarters for a few hours of sleep after the first babble of welcome from those on duty when they landed. Dudley was awakened by Jack Fisher.

  "So early?" he grunted, squinting at his watch. "What brings you around?"

  Fisher settled his bulk in the only chair of the bedroom that was to be Dudley's until his next Terra-bound rocket.

  "Liable to be busy today," he said easily, "so I thought I'd have breakfast with you."

  "Fine!" said Dudley. "Wait'll I shave and I'll be with you."

  When he returned from the bathroom, he thought that he had perfect control of his features. There might not be anything wrong, but it seemed odd that Jack should be around so soon. He wondered if the Kathi Foster affair was in the background.

  They went up a few levels to a minor eating place and had scrambled eggs that almost tasted natural. Over the coffee, Fisher opened up.

  "Had a little excitement while you were gone," he said.

  "Yeah? What?"

  Fisher let him wait while he carefully unwrapped the half-smoked remains of a cigar. Tobacco in any form was strictly rationed in all Lunar settlements.

  "Ever hear of old Robert Forgeron?" he asked.

  "The one they used to call 'Robber' Forgeron?"

  "That's right. He had so many patents on airlock mechanisms and space-suit gadget
s and rocket control instruments that he made the goddamnedest fortune ever heard of out of space exploration. Died a few years ago."

  Dudley maintained a puzzled silence.

  "Seems the old man had strong ideas about that fortune," continued Fisher. "Left the bulk of it to his only granddaughter."

  "That must have made headlines," Dudley commented.

  "Sure did." Fisher had the cigar going, now, and he puffed economically upon it. "Especially when she ran away from home."

  "Oh?" Dudley felt it coming. "Where to?"

  "Here!"

  Fisher held his cigar between thumb and forefinger and examined it fondly.

  "Said her name was Kathi Foster instead of Kathi Forgeron. After they got around to guessing she was on Luna, and sent descriptions, we picked her up, of course. Shortly after you kicked off for Mars, in fact."

  Dudley was silent. The other's shrewd little eyes glinted bluely at him through the cigar smoke.

  "How about it, Pete? I've been trying to figure how she got here. If it was you, you needn't worry about the regulations. There was some sort of litigation going on, and all kinds of relatives came boiling up here to get her. All the hullabaloo is over by now."

  Dudley took a deep breath, and told his side of the story. Fisher listened quietly, nodding occasionally with the satisfaction of one who had guessed the answer.

  "So you see how it was, Jack. I didn't really believe the kid's story. And she was so wild about it!"

  Fisher put out his cigar with loving care.

  "Got to save the rest of this for dinner," he said. "Yes, she was wild, in a way. You should hear—well, that's in the files. Before we were sure who she was, Snowdon put her on as a secretary in his section."

  "She didn't look to me like a typist," objected Dudley.

  "Oh, she wasn't," said Fisher, without elaborating. "I suppose if she was a little nuts, she was just a victim of the times. If it hadn't been for the sudden plunge into space, old Forgeron wouldn't have made such a pile of quick money. Then his granddaughter might have grown up in a normal home, instead of feeling she was just a target. If she'd been born a generation earlier or later, she might have been okay."

  Dudley thought of the girl's pleading, her frenzy to escape her environment.

  "So I suppose they dragged her back," he said. "Which loving relative won custody of the money?"

  "That's still going on," Fisher told him. "It's tougher than ever, I hear, because she didn't go down with them. She talked somebody into letting her have a space-suit and walked out to the other side of the ringwall. All the way to the foothills on the other side."

  Dudley stared at him in mounting horror. Fisher seemed undisturbed, but the pilot knew his friend better than that. It could only mean that the other had had three months to become accustomed to the idea. He was tenderly tucking away the stub of his cigar.

  "Wasn't so bad, I guess," he answered Dudley's unspoken question. "She took a pill and sat down. Couple of rock-tappers looking for ore found her. Frozen stiff, of course, when her batteries ran down."

  Dudley planted his elbows on the table and leaned his head in his hands.

  "I should have taken her to Mars!" he groaned.

  "She tried that on you, too?" Fisher was unsurprised. "No, Pete, it wouldn't have done any good. Would've lost you your job, probably. Like I said, she was born the wrong time. They won't have room for the likes of her on Mars for a good many years yet."

  "So they hauled her back to Terra, I suppose."

  "Oh, no. The relatives are fighting that out, too. So, until the judges get their injunctions shuffled and dealt, little Kathi is sitting out there viewing the Rockies and the stars."

  He looked up at Dudley's stifled exclamation.

  "Well, it's good and cold out there," he said defensively. "We don't have any spare space around here to store delayed shipments, you know. We're waitin' to see who gets possession."

  Dudley rose, his face white. He was abruptly conscious once more of other conversations around them, as he stalked toward the exit.

  "Hey," Fisher called after him, "that redhead, Eileen, told me to ask if you're taking her out tonight."

  Dudley paused. He ran a hand over his face. "Yeah, I guess so," he said.

  He went out, thinking, I should have taken her. The hell with regulations and Jack's theories about her being born too soon to be useful on Mars. She might have straightened out.

  He headed for the tunnel that led to the loading domes.

  Ericsson was a large crater, over a hundred miles across and with a beautifully intact ringwall, so it took him some hours, even with the tractor he borrowed, to go as far as the edge of the crater. Jack Fisher was waiting for him in the surface dome when he returned hours later.

  "Welcome back," he said, chewing nervously on his cigar. "I was wondering if we'd have to go looking for you." He looked relieved.

  "How did she look?" he asked casually, as Dudley climbed out of his space suit in the locker room.

  Dudley peeled off the one-piece suit he had worn under the heating pads. He sniffed.

  "Chee-rist, I need a shower after that.... She looked all right. Pretty cute, in a way. Like she was happy here on Luna."

  He picked up towel and soap. "So I fixed it so she could stay," he added.

  "What do you mean?"

  He looked at Fisher. "Are you asking as a friend or as a cop?"

  "What difference does it make?" asked Fisher.

  "Well, I don't think you could have tracked me with your radar past the ringwall, so maybe I just went for a ride and a little stroll, huh? You didn't see me bring back a shovel, did you?"

  "No," said Fisher, "I didn't see you bring it back. But some people are going to get excited about this, Pete. Where did you bury her?"

  "Blood-suckers!" said Dudley. "Let them get excited! Luna is full of mysteries."

  "All right," said Fisher. "For my own curiosity, then, I'm asking as a friend."

  "I found a good place," said Dudley. "I kind of forget where, in the middle of all those cliffs and rills, but it had a nice view of the stars. They'll never find her to take her back! I think I owed her that much."

  "Ummm," grunted Fisher.

  As Dudley entered the shower, the other began to unwrap a new cigar, a not-displeased expression settling over his square, pudgy face.

  Under the slow-falling streams of warm water, Dudley gradually began to relax. He felt the stiffness ease out of his jaw muscles. He turned off the bubbling water before he could begin imagining he was hearing a scared voice pleading again for passage to Mars....

  * * *

  Contents

  MANNERS OF THE AGE

  By H. B. Fyfe

  With everyone gone elsewhere, Earth was perfect for gracious living--only there was nothing gracious about it!

  The red tennis robot scooted desperately across the court, its four wide-set wheels squealing. For a moment, Robert's hard-hit passing shot seemed to have scored. Then, at the last instant, the robot whipped around its single racket-equipped arm. Robert sprawled headlong in a futile lunge at the return.

  "Game and set to Red Three," announced the referee box from its high station above the net.

  "Ah, shut up!" growled Robert, and flung down his racket for one of the white serving robots to retrieve.

  "Yes, Robert," agreed the voice. "Will Robert continue to play?" Interpreting the man's savage mumble as a negative, it told his opponent, "Return to your stall, Red Three!"

  Robert strode off wordlessly toward the house. Reaching the hundred-foot-square swimming pool, he hesitated uncertainly.

  "Weather's so damned hot," he muttered. "Why didn't the old-time scientists find out how to do something about that while there were still enough people on Earth to manage it?"

  He stripped off his damp clothing and dropped it on the "beach" of white sand. Behind him sounded the steps of a humanoid serving robot, hastening to pick it up. Robert plunged deep into the cooling water and
let himself float lazily to the surface.

  Maybe they did, he thought. I could send a robot over to the old city library for information. Still, actually doing anything would probably take the resources of a good many persons--and it isn't so easy to find people now that Earth is practically deserted.

  He rolled sideward for a breath and began to swim slowly for the opposite side of the pool, reflecting upon the curious culture of the planet. Although he had accepted this all his life, it really was remarkable how the original home of the human race had been forsaken for fresher worlds among the stars. Or was it more remarkable that a few individuals had asserted their independence by remaining?

  Robert was aware that the decision involved few difficulties, considering the wealth of robots and other automatic machines. He regretted knowing so few humans, though they were really not necessary. If not for his hobby of televising, he would probably not know any at all.

  "Wonder how far past the old city I'd have to go to meet someone in person," he murmured as he pulled himself from the pool. "Maybe I ought to try accepting that televised invitation of the other night."

  * * * * *

  Several dark usuform robots were smoothing the sand on this beach under the direction of a blue humanoid supervisor. Watching them idly, Robert estimated that it must be ten years since he had seen another human face to face. His parents were dim memories. He got along very well, however, with robots to serve him or to obtain occasional information from the automatic scanners of the city library that had long ago been equipped to serve such a purpose.

  "Much better than things were in the old days," he told himself as he crossed the lawn to his sprawling white mansion. "Must have been awful before the population declined. Imagine having people all around you, having to listen to them, see them, and argue to make them do what you wanted!"

  The heel of his bare right foot came down heavily on a pebble, and he swore without awareness of the precise meaning of the ancient phrases. He limped into the baths and beckoned a waiting robot as he stretched out on a rubbing table.