Walt & Leigh Richmond

by Phoenix Ship

  "Should be easier than running into the walls of a tube all the time," Stan answered, "as long as you're sure one of those outsize bees out there won't try to eat me for a rose."

  "You haven't got enough oil for that kind of bee to worry about." Paulsen dove gracefully from the tube and Stan followed. They'd barely cleared its mouth when the big strut-car, with a final angry buzz dove in and accelerated off in the direction from which they'd come.

  The fact of flying this time seemed almost familiar; and to Stan's surprise he managed it with fair ease. Was this one of the familiarities of the molecular training? he wondered. Surely it hadn't been an intentional part—or just possibly it had.

  Ahead of him, Paulsen had come to a hovering stop over one of the dark tunnel mouths that led into the city, identifiable only by its code name; he now settled gracefully onto the very hp of the tunnel and divested himself of his wings and tail. As he was deflating them Stan shucked his own wings and settled himself precariously; there wasn't enough G-pull to feel safe.

  The cavern in which he sat was dim, lighted only by the reflected red light of the transparent tubes through which they had come, and by the faint glow of the signal lamps lighting the various tunnel entrances on all sides of him, up and down.

  It's unsettling, he thought. You have to become accustomed to thinking in odd directions.

  The strut-car traffic above him and to his side seemed to be sorting itself out in a haphazard manner, each vehicle searching slowly for the pattern of lights that would satisfy its own equations, then diving into the tunnel that matched its code. The freighters were large and awkward in this space, moving very slowly; and since it would be quite impossible for any one of them to pass another freighter in a tunnel, one of the code signals must indicate, Stan decided, whether the tunnel was occupied or not

  Following Paulsen's lead, Stan folded his deflated wings and tail assembly into a small packet that fitted into a pocket, and fastened it to his belt

  "Why don't we just fly on in?" he asked.

  "Ever try flying in a G-field?"

  "Well, no. I guess it can't be done. Leonardo da Vinci even failed at that, didn't he?"

  "Oh, it has been done. On Mars. Even on Earth. But you need bigger wings and a lot more room to maneuver in. These wings wouldn't hold us up in a tenth of a G. Right here"—Paulsen patted the floor on which he was sitting and almost dislodged himself—"we've got less than a thousandth of a G. But it picks up as you go down—or rather, across. And from here on we get heavier. I think that's our ride coming now," he added.

  Stan looked up at an angry buzzing overhead to see a freighter hovering there, waiting for them to get out of its way.

  "This part is tricky. We have to stay in its way until we get in position to jump after it right after it goes by. But don't grab any struts that might pinch you into the wall. These walls aren't plastic. Incidentally, this thing has no sensor circuits on its backside."

  Carefully Stan worked his way back in the very light gravity field to just beyond the edge of the tunnel. Paulsen was doing likewise, holding only one hand in front of the big buzzing freighter to bar its passage.

  "Let it go all the way in—itll be downward from here— then fall in after it. We'll catch up quick enough." Paulsen pulled his hand out of the way and with a snort of fans the freighter surged forward and dived into the hole. As soon as it had cleared the mouth, Paulsen slipped in behind it feet first, and Stan followed.

  Sliding out over the emptiness was like sliding into a soft pillow. He was moving downward, but slowly.

  It was pitch dark in the tunnel, and for a minute Stan wished that the Belt City Corp. had used the translucent plastic tunnels on the surface, at least until the tubes reached the built-up areas and went inside. Then his eyes began to adjust, and he could see the faint emergency glow from his buttons—the spacemen's last protection against utter darkness in enclosed spaces.

  He looked down and could see tiny glows that meant that Paulsen was there ahead of him in the pitch black; and beyond Paulsen—near or far, he couldn't tell—the code lights of the freighter. If the freighter had accelerated, as it was quite capable of doing, it would be far ahead of them. Could they catch up? But it would be moving at a steady pace, possibly fairly slowly, and they were accelerating.

  By the faint illumination from his buttons he could see the wall of the tube moving gently toward him, and he reached out and pushed himself away. By the feel, he was moving fairly rapidly now. The next time, it was his back that was scraping the tunnel wall, and as he pushed away again, to fall free, he found his speed quite impressive.

  "Look out Don't land on me."

  Stan looked quickly down. The glows that were Paulsen were moving beneath the code lights on the back of the freighter, and those lights were rising beneath his feet Slowly at first then faster; and the illumination they provided gave him a true sense of falling for the first time. Then he was down and onto a package of freight at the back of the strut-car.

  "From here on in things get heavier," Paulsen said. "We're still on the surface, but we're coming away from the axis into the gravity areas. It's about a half-G at the surface at the equator. Then the car will dive on out to whatever level it's dialed to. Well change to a car for the area we want when we hit the equator shift-space.

  "Find a comfortable seat on this side," he went on. "The tubes tilt gradually, so the side of the freighter that drags is the side that has the ground-effect air support; and that's the side that will be dragged by gravity to the bottom when the tube flattens out into a cross-G slant. These cars are designed to go almost anywhere—up, down or across G. They stay in the tubes mostly, but they can go out of the tubes for unloading, in half-barrel shaped runs."

  Just when the freighter shifted from fighting the force that caused it to cling to one wall of the long down-tube, to the fight against the centrifugal force that substituted for gravity here in Belt City, would have been hard for Stan to say; but now it seemed to be gliding down a less and less steep slope, and slowing as it came to a shift-space between tunnels. This shift-space was different, Stan realized. It was dimlv lighted, and there was a definite gravity. The cars hugged the floor. They criss-crossed their way about the low-ceilinged cavern, searching out new codes, but always gliding only a few inches from the floor.

  Paulsen was examining a card attached to a package beside him.

  "Do we chnnge here?" Stan asked.

  "Nope. We're in luck. This one is headed for a shopping area."

  The hunting neriod for their own freighter was brief, and it dived into another tunnel. But this time they weren't falling. The tunnel felt level, and for a while it continued that way. Then they were going downhill again—a sensation, Stan realized, rather than a fact. Actually, they were slanting up-level toward the rim. Now the walls were lighted, and numbers began to flash past; numbers that were blocked out both in the binary code that the strut-cars could read, and in common decimal figures. But it was still code as far as Stan could tell, and he felt no familiarity with it.

  Occasionallv and briefly there would be a widening of the tunnel as the freighter passed a platform level with its own floor, each such dock area causing a thwop of changing air pressure as they passed it.

  And then thev began passing an occasional terminus of a different type; a place in which the car could be halted to shunt sidewise and pass through a lock. Stan was about to ask the advantage of this configuration when a surge of deceleration thrust him forcefully against one of the packages ahead of him, and the freighter came to a halt next to Just such a system, moved slowly sidewise, and passed nose-first through a lock.

  Immediately beyond the door was a lighted area, with freighter-troughs leading out between unloading docks. There were two men on one of the docks unloading a freighter, but most of the docks were empty.

  Their freighter nosed its way into the empty dock next to the one being unloaded. The men from the crew straightened and one called over, "Hey,
there."

  "Hi," Paulsen answered laconically. "We hopped a ride in. Our freighter was too loaded and we didn't want to wait for a yellow-belly. This is twelve-thirty-two, forty-seven south fifth, isn't it?"

  "Yep. Area one, seventy-five, sixty-third."

  Stan felt his stomach wrench. As the man had straightened to accost them, one had shown himself to be long and willowy, arms hanging out of proportion to his height; the other to be short and stubby, out of proportion the opposite way. He kept from averting his eyes.

  "Which way to the walks?" Paulsen was asking.

  "Through that door.Shops."

  "Thanks."

  They went through the door into a walkway, mall-centered, shop-lined, its ceiling perhaps sixty feet above them, and five levels of walkway between their own and the ceiling. The flowered and shrubbed mall served as the well to the multileveled walkways of the shopping area; and Stan could see stairs leading from one level to another at intervals.

  His first impression was of color—a riot of color. There was color in the luminescence that flooded from the far ceiling; from below the walkway above his own; from every partition between the shop windows along the walks. There was color in the flowered and shrubbed mall; color in the display windows of the shops; color in the costumes the people on the mall were wearing.

  There was an air of gaiety to the scatterings of people around, and the gaiety and color were infectious.

  It was several minutes, as they strolled along the mall, before Stan could sort out individual impressions; and then it was with an empty feeling at the pit of his stomach that he realized that under the color, under the gaiety, something was very wrong. The Mutt and Jeff of the freight dock were not isolated cases, if the people he was seeing were any sample. The willowy, gangling form was predominant, the shorter, squat form less in evidence; but almost everyone, male and female, presented some grotes-querie.

  There were bums and scars to be seen. That you would expect of a pioneer society, he thought. But the differences in build and structure of the majority from the norm he was used to ... It was like a hydroponics farm not properly tended, missing some of the essential elements, or grown without proper light, or with poor G considerations, Stan decided, and knew he had the answer.

  There were a few normally formed persons like himself and Paulsen; but they were so far in the minority that he knew himself to be quite conspicuous.

  Paulsen was leading them into a restaurant, and as they sat down he didn't wait to be asked. His voice was gruff, held a bitter note of defiance.

  "Space is unforgiving," he said, "and the sins of the parents are visited upon the children unto the third and fourth generations. Sins of omission, and sins of commission," he added. "And ismorance is no defense."

  He paused for a minute while his eyes sought through the people at the tables around them and then returned to Stan, who sat silent.

  "As a matter of fact, ignorance not only isn't a defense, it's the one unforgivable sin out here. Unforgivable by space, that is. Ignorance kills, and it kills right now. Or it maims. Ignorance and stupidity.

  "You're seeing the small ignorances and stupidities when you look at the people here at Belt City. Not enough provision for this; not enough attention to that . . . little errors. The big errors—their results are death. Even so, this is a protected environment, here at Belt City. A freak can still stay alive. Outside Belt City, a small error in judgment is sure death.

  "You can't be just an average joe, and survive in the Belt. You can't let anybody else do your thinking for you, and expect to survive. We each live our own lives and do our own thinking out here—and we each pay our own price for our own inabilities. We don't do it because we figure it's a good way to live, to be independent and stay on your toes; but because if you don't you don't live.

  "And any one of the joes you see out there—the ones who got metabolically unbalanced and grew beyond their strengths, or the squat ones who got G-squashed, maybe before they were bom, or the burned or the deformed—any one of them is still brighter and more able to take care of himself under any circumstances—any single one of them is a better man than any molly-coddled puppy dog of an over-protected Earthie, and don't you forget it. If they weren't brighter and more able, they'd be already dead; and the death rate's high. Because space hits you where you hurt if you act ignorant or stupid even for a little while; but it hits to kill if you stay that way. "Space doesn't forgive," he ended.

  Then he changed—expression, manner and voice—and Stan knew that this subject was dropped, now and forever, as far as Paulsen was concerned.

  Looking around the room in a casual manner, Paulsen said lightly, "There's a telescreen over there. You go screen Dr. Lang. Ill order us up some rose-hip tea. Then we'll see what gives from here."

  The screen was normal Earth-style, and Stan had no trouble with the controls. He kept the screen dark while he dialed computer info for the code for his old friend. Then, as he was about to dial Dr. Lang's number, the screen before him suddenly cleared, and he found himself looking at a heavy face with tiny, porcine features. The small, alert eyes riveted his gaze, and the man spoke without preamble:

  "Mr. Dustin, I am Jonathan Weed of Astro Technology. Your activities since the Sassy Lassie docked have been reported to me from no less than five different sources. Your current position is pinpointed as twelve-thirty-two, forty-seven south fifth; area one, seventy-five, the restaurant at fifty-eighth.

  "Tour call to Dr. Lang will not be accepted. Since AT is only one of several parties interested in your current activities, and since you must know that your interests lie with AT, I suggest that it would be to your advantage to report to my office immediately, before your life becomes unduly complicated by others. You are, as I hope I have impressed you, easily monitored in our society.

  "I am at thirteen-oh-two, eighty-one north sixth, and any of the area directors will bring you to me. Your friend Paulsen can get you to the area."

  Stan started to speak, then changed his mind. As his mouth closed, the man on the screen rose slowly, so that the intricately woven gold belt he wore dominated the screen. His hands went to the belt, and framed it from the sides.

  "In the name of the Belt," he said in a voice of authority, "I command you to come. Immediately. Unobtrusively but rapidly."

  Abruptly, Stan cut the connection^ rising from the seat in the same motion. He turned to see Paulsen standing behind him, evidently having heard the conversation.

  Paulsen was smiling gently.

  VI

  THEY'VE SPOTTED US," Stan said furiously. "Let's jet."

  Paulsen nodded, still smiling, and turned toward the walkway, taking long strides that would appear unhurried but would cover a lot of territory fast.

  Stan fell into step with him and continued talking: The guy said he was Weed of AT, and that he'd had a tracer on us since we left the Lassie, but I doubt that last. They simply spotted us when I tried to call Lang. Must have his phone monitored. That Weed character! He was trying to give me some sort of hypnotic command or other, to get the hell up to his office. What a dullie!"

  Paulsen was leading them back to the freight loading area behind the shopping center through which they had come, apparently thinking to take the same freightways.

  "You going to double back on the same trail?" Stan asked, worried. "Now they've spotted us, it should be easier to tracer us. Maybe . . ."

  "Doesn't matter. Mr. Weed just said to be unobtrusive. I don't think any of the others have spotted us yet."

  "Any of the others?"

  "He warned you that others were looking for you too," said Paulsen impatiently. "We're to be unobtrusive about getting to his office, but I don't think we have to hide exactly. It will be just as well if AT can tracer us. Then if anybody else stops us, they can get to us to help."

  Stan came to an abrupt stop, and Paulsen, of necessity, turned to see what had occurred. It was then that Stan got a good look at Paulsen's eyes. They held a str
ange blank-ness.

  "Where are you taking me?" Stan asked.

  "To Weed's office, of course. We're to hurry."

  Stan stood stock still, estimating his chances. Without Paulsen he was indeed a stranger in a strange land. But with Paulsen?

  Why hadn't it occurred to him that the AT school was a molecular memory training school? Katsu Lang had headed each; and each had turned out—robots. If he had needed any demonstration of what Mallard had been talking about, he had it now before him.

  But why wasn't he, himself, reacting in the same manner as Paulsen? The command had been "in the name of the Belt." And it was quite obviously a phrase that keyed in a hypnotic condition. But there'd be another command phrase for use on Earth; and that hadn't been used. Okay, he was safe until somebody started using whatever phrase had been selected to key in his own robotic responses. He shivered violently, knowing his own vulnerability to be as great as the one he was witnessing; then, with an effort, he pulled himself back to the immediate problem.

  He and Paulsen were facing each other just inside the door to the unloading area. From the corner of his eye, Stan could see the Mutt and Jeff freight loaders straightening, beginning to pay attention to what must seem a disagreement—a disagreement in which they would take the part of the Belter against an Earthie.

  Idly he let his fingers go to his belt, then glanced down at it. Paulsen's eyes followed his own. When he was sure that Paulsen was looking directly at his belt, he said softly, "Wait here." He started to use the command phrase that Porky had used, but stopped. If he got it wrong, he'd trigger the wrong reaction. Anyhow, it was not a phrase he could bring himself to utter.

  Paulsen was looking confused. "We are to hurry," he said.

  "Wait here. Then well hurry."

  Not daring to pause any longer, Stan turned on his heel and went back through the door onto the walk. Turning a-way from the direction of the restaurant, he lengthened his stride toward the nearest byway.