The Billion Dollar Boy

by Charles Sheffield

"We're in luck, Shel," she cried, while he was still struggling to understand how the Harvest Moon could pop up right in front of them. "It's the Southern Cross. They've seen us. They'll take us back home."

  The other harvester was matching their course and steadily coming nearer. Shelby saw a suited figure in one of the main hatches, waving to them.

  "They're telling us to come aboard." Grace was busy again at the corry controls. "Wave back, Shel, and show them that we understand."

  If there was a special harvester signal that carried such a message, Shelby didn't know it. He simply waved both arms and kept on waving until the corry slid in through the port and he lost sight of the other figure. As the hatch slid shut behind them he saw the familiar white fog as jets of air entered the cold chamber. He and Grace waited impatiently through the two minutes needed to achieve a breathable atmosphere. They stepped together onto the catwalk.

  "Our collection cable broke." Grace started to gabble at top speed even before her helmet was fully open. "Thank heaven you were close by to help us. I was wondering if we would be able to make it back home on our own, because this is closer to a reef than I've ever been in my whole life. I didn't even think we'd be able to send a message back to say what happened to us, because we're in a communications blind spot here."

  The man facing them was nodding slowly. Shelby recognized him. It was the thickset individual who had been with Pearl Mossman that first night at Confluence Center. Knute Crispin. He had an oddly wary expression on his face—not at all the satisfaction that a man ought to feel on saving someone from a tricky situation in space.

  Grace didn't seem to notice. "I suppose it's just as bad a blind spot for you," she went on. "So the quicker you can take us home, the better. As soon as they get the broken cable under control Muv will start going out of her mind with worry, wondering what's happened to us, and wondering—"

  "Grace," Shelby placed his hand on her arm. He had been watching the other man's eyes. "Wait just a minute."

  "Why shouldn't I—"

  "Try listening to your boyfriend, Grace." Knute Crispin had come closer, but he remained a good four steps away from them. He studied Shelby's face. "You've got damn good instincts, Cheever, I'll say that. I can see I'm going to have to be careful with you."

  Grace glanced quickly from one to the other. "What's going on here? Do you know, Shel?"

  "Not really." Shelby did not take his eyes away from Knute. "But ever since the accident happened I've been asking myself how a collection cable could possibly break in two places at once, when it's supposedly made of the toughest material available. I don't think it could break like that by accident. But it could be cut—on purpose."

  "Now, that's really rather paranoid." Knute Crispin had a little half-smile on his face. "Why would anyone ever think to do such a thing?"

  "I don't know." Shelby hesitated. "To slow the Harvest Moon down for a day or two, because you are close to full holds and want to be first to go Sol-side? But that doesn't make sense. If you were near full holds you wouldn't wait to pick up our corry."

  "Quite right. If we had full holds we'd have been out of here before this." Knute Crispin seemed to be enjoying himself. "Any other suggestions?"

  Shelby shook his head.

  "Then I guess I'll have to tell you, won't I? Before that, though, and just so you won't get any ideas . . ." Knute reached out and picked up a long cylindrical pipe that had been hanging on the wall of the hold. "Do you know that this is?"

  It was strange to Shelby, but Grace said at once, "It's a patching gun."

  "It is indeed. You've probably never seen one used, Cheever, because it's only for emergency fixes. But Grace has. She can tell you what it does. It drives a rivet through a pair of hull plates and holds them together until they can be properly welded or cold-sealed. Isn't that right, Grace?"

  Grace nodded slowly.

  "Of course," Knute went on, "it doesn't have to be hull plates, or internal ship partitions. It could just as well be a rib cage, or maybe a skull." He raised the pipe. "This is already charged, of course. Twenty rivets. People will tell you there's no weapons in the Cloud, but that's nonsense. Anything can be a weapon, including teeth and fists. And just to be sure there's nothing on you that might serve . . ." He waved the rivet gun at Grace and Shelby. "Take off your suits. Don't worry, it will only be for a minute. I want to be sure there's no surprises inside them."

  Shelby stood, stubborn and scowling, until Grace said, "Do it, Shel. He's telling the truth about what a rivet gun can do. It would make a hole right through you." She removed her helmet completely and began to ease her way out of the rest of her suit. Shelby did the same, until he was halted by a barked command from Knute Crispin: "Hold it right there!"

  Shelby froze, wondering what he had done now. But the other man's attention was on Grace. Knute walked forward, still covering them with the rivet gun, and gestured toward her midriff. "Is that what I think it might be? I've heard rumors. Whatever's in there, bring it out—slowly."

  Reluctantly, Grace put her hand into the pouch that hung from her belt. She withdrew it holding the starfire. Even in the dim light of the hold, the fist-size jewel glowed with its own inner light.

  "Very nice indeed. Just toss it this way, and gently." Knute caught the starfire as it came toward him, but the rivet gun's aim did not waver.

  "So that's it!" Grace burst out. "You did all this to get your thieving hands on our starfire!"

  "Wrong. This is just a nice little bonus." Knute thrust the starfire out of sight into one of his own suit pockets. He studied his captives for another half-minute while they removed the rest of their suits. "All right," he said at last. "You both seem to be clean. You can put your suits back on now. You're going to need them." As they silently sealed the suits, and placed their helmets again in position, he added, "You still don't get it, do you? You still don't know why you're here."

  "If it's not to delay the Harvest Moon," Shelby said slowly, "and it's not for the starfire, then . . ."

  "Then? Keep going."

  "Then it's something else that you want. Something that you think is valuable." Shelby looked at Grace and back at Knute. He took a long, deep breath. "You didn't need to take Grace at all, you know. You can let her go."

  "No way to get one of you without the other. We thought about that." Knute shrugged. "Anyway, that's an academic point. It's too late now. You're both here."

  "Will one of you tell me what the devil you are talking about!" Grace had been watching the other two with increasing confusion. "Something else valuable—what?"

  "Me," Shel said quietly. "To hold for ransom. They want me so they can demand a ransom from my family. I'm an idiot. I've spent my whole life back on Earth being guarded night and day, so nobody could ever have a chance to kidnap me. Then I come out here and forget every warning that I was ever given. Why was I stupid enough to think things would be different in the Cloud?" He glared at Knute Crispin. "You don't know what trouble you're getting yourselves into. For one thing, you daren't use that rivet gun. I'm no use to you unless I'm alive."

  "Quite true, Cheever. We need you alive. But I can still use the gun if I have to." Knute reached out and pressed the pipe to Grace's chest. His finger was tight against the rivet gun's trigger. "If you want to keep Grace alive, too, you'll do exactly as I say. She's expendable, you see. We don't need her around to get a big ransom for you."

  Grace stood frozen, afraid to breathe. Finally Shelby nodded. "Take it away. Don't touch her. I'll do whatever you tell me to do."

  "Now you're being sensible." Knute took a couple of steps backward. "Let me explain what's going to happen next. And let me give you my word: If you do your part right for a few more weeks, you'll both come out of this alive and well and without a mark on you.

  "First—and obviously—the Southern Cross won't be taking you back to your harvester. We're going the other way, right along the line between the Portland and Lizard Reefs. That keeps us nicely in the communic
ations dead spot so far as the Harvest Moon is concerned, so even if you found a way to call for help it wouldn't get through.

  "After that it's very simple. While we're still between the reefs the three of us will leave the Southern Cross. We'll take this ship's pinnace and head back to the Confluence Center. It will be deserted at this time of the season, so we'll have a nice restful time there—you can think of it as a little vacation, with nothing to do but take it easy and use the recreational facilities. I imagine you'll be able to fill in the rest of the story for yourselves."

  "It's pretty obvious," Shelby said bitterly. "We go to the Confluence Center, and nobody except Captain Mossman knows we are there. She takes the Southern Cross Sol-side, heads for Earth, and tells my family that if they want to see me alive again they'd better pay whatever she asks."

  "And will they pay, do you think?"

  "Of course they will." Shelby sighed. "I'm Shel Cheever—Shelby Crawford Jerome Prescott Cheever, the only son of J. P. Cheever, head of Cheever Consolidated Enterprises. Damn it."

  "No need to curse your good fortune—and ours. But there you have it. Neat, clean, and foolproof." Knute waved the rivet gun. "So let's get on with it. The pinnace is in the next chamber. Lead the way. And remember, I'll be watching every step that you take."

  Shelby went first, thinking furiously and hopelessly. Since they were now going through an airlock, presumably the pinnace was held in a chamber containing a vacuum. It was almost certainly exposed to space. He and Grace were both in their suits. The moment that they emerged from the lock into the other chamber, they could jet away from Knute and head toward the outside.

  And then what?

  Knute might shoot one or both of them with the rivet gun. Or he might follow them at his leisure in a corry or a pinnace, find them, and capture them again. Or he might not find them at all. In which case they would die floating in open space in their suits, as their air supply ran out.

  "It won't work, Shel," Grace said. She had guessed the direction of his thoughts. "None of it will work."

  "Quite right," Knute added from behind them. "Listen to the lady, Cheever. The smart thing to do is exactly what I tell you. As a first move, you will help to free the pinnace from its moorings. Pearl Mossman is waiting for us to give a go-ahead before the Southern Cross turns on its drive. I don't have to tell you we'd better be well away before that happens."

  Obeying Knute's careful instructions, Shelby and Grace moved together to cancel the electromagnetic moorings that held the pinnace. As the little ship edged toward open space, they followed close behind. Knute did not allow them to get more than a couple of meters apart from each other, and there was never a moment when he did not have them both in full view.

  With just two moorings left to free, Grace was ahead of Shelby and reached the outer hull of the Southern Cross first. There she halted.

  "What's wrong?" Knute was three or four meters behind. "Keep going, Grace. Don't get ideas."

  She pointed, but she did not move. "Look. Can't you see it?"

  Shelby followed the line of her arm. For a moment he saw nothing. Then he noticed the tiny sparks of light, twinkling against the blue backdrop of the Messina Cloud. As he watched, the flecks of light strengthened and became more numerous. When they finally dwindled and faded, the space they left behind seemed oddly clear and empty.

  "It's nothing." Knute had moved to where he could see it too, and he sounded unimpressed. "It's just a sounder. We're in the channel right between the Portland and Lizard Reefs. It's well known as a sounder alley. I expected we might see one."

  Expected, just as Shelby had hoped that he might see one—but not in such circumstances. Knute nudged them forward, urging them to continue working. But Shelby could not resist pausing to watch when the sounder itself appeared, and even Knute did not try to force them. Again there was that strange and high-pitched shreep-shreep-shreep on the suit communications channels. Again there was the long, tapering body, a kilometer and more of near-perfect blackness. Again there was a great octagonal maw, with its eight blue-white tendrils that like the body distorted the background star field beyond them.

  Grace backed up a couple of meters. "It's coming this way. And it's getting awful close."

  "We're safe enough." Knute used the barrel of the rivet gun to push her forward again. "You know it's harmless. Get back to work."

  "They never come this close. And look at the mouth. It's dilating. And it's getting huge!" Grace backed up farther, bumping into Shelby. "Knute, you have to tell Captain Mossman to get us out of here."

  "Are you crazy? I told you, it won't hurt us. Get those moorings free!"

  Shelby, standing next to Grace, could see along the full length of the sounder. With a thrill of recognition he saw on the sounder's side a familiar pattern of white dots, in the shape of a running stick-figure man.

  "Grace, look at its left side! The markings."

  She gasped. "It's the same one! They're all supposed to look different. Shel, it's the same one. It's come after us. "

  The sounder was closing in, heading directly toward them. The maw was stretching, wider and wider. Now it was easily big enough to engulf the whole pinnace. Still it was growing. Shelby felt strange forces twisting his insides, pulling and squeezing with sensations that he had not felt since his passage through the node network.

  "What the devil!" Knute Crispin was sharing the experience of internal body tides, and he did not like it. He began to back up toward the rear of the hold. The rivet gun would be as useless as a packet of pins on a creature the size of the sounder, and Knute knew it. He pointed the gun instead at Shelby and Grace. "Both of you, back inside the main hull. You're right, it's too damn close. I'll tell Pearl to get us the hell out of here."

  Grace turned to follow, but Shelby held her arm. She tried to shake herself free. "Shel, let me go." She was close to hysterics. "It's come for us, it's come to get us. It wants us. Let me go!"

  "No!" Shelby held on, ignoring her cry and her struggle. "Why would it come for us! A sounder doesn't even know what humans are. It hasn't come for you or me. It's come for that." He pointed toward Knute Crispin, who had lost all interest in Grace and Shelby and was blundering toward a passage that led to the harvester's interior. "It came for the starfire—for its own starfire, the one that we took. That's what it's hunting for. We wouldn't be safe in the ship—not anywhere in the ship. Come on!"

  While Grace screamed and struggled in his grip he launched himself outward, dragging her with him away from the harvester's hull. There was a moment when they seemed to be heading right into the sounder's gaping mouth, but Shelby fired his suit jets laterally at maximum impulse while new and stronger forces tore at his body. He and Grace flew sideways, bare meters from the octagonal mouth. They passed by the glowing fringe of deep red and right through the blue-white waving tendrils that surrounded it.

  And then they were clear, sliding past the side of the sounder's great body and turning slowly together in space. They both saw what happened next.

  The Southern Cross had switched on its drive. The high-temperature fusion products of its exhaust flamed directly into the sounder's maw. The monstrous black body shuddered along all its kilometers of length, but the sounder advanced steadily toward the harvester. The mouth opened wider and wider. And instead of flying away at high acceleration, the harvester remained fixed in position, the thrust of its drive somehow neutralized. It did not move as the maw of the sounder slowly engulfed it.

  As the Southern Cross disappeared, the space around Grace and Shelby became thick-flecked with luminous sparks, filling again with a glittering blue fog.

  Grace's despairing cry came over the suit radio. "Shel, it's going to sound! We're too close!"

  The great body beside them was beginning to shimmer, a vibrating wall of jet black. The sound came again on the suit radios, impossibly loud.

  SHREEP-SHREEP-SHREEP-SHREEP.

  It burned into Shelby's brain. "Use your suit jets!" He
screamed at Grace, sure she would not hear him. "Get away from the body!"

  But he could not perform himself what he was telling her to do. The tidal forces so close to the sounder were too strong, they destroyed brain as well as body functions. Shelby struggled to operate his suit controls, to give the command to use suit jets at their last-resort emergency settings.

  He did not do it. He could not do it. The knowledge of that failure filled his mind. As his world dissolved into its own sea of sparks that faded quickly to blackness, his last thought was a hope that Grace would somehow manage to escape.

  Chapter Fourteen

  IT WAS the repetition of a nightmare, and the second time was no less unpleasant than the first. The return of sound before sight; the nausea, the dry throat, the ache in every cell of the body; the hot spikes of pain through the head.

  Shelby opened his swollen eyes. The nightmare continued. Again he lay on the floor of a corry. Again a gentle force was pressing him onto something soft. But here at last was a difference. This time he was face-up, staring at the lattice of support struts that met at the corry's apex.