Starman Jones

by Robert A. Heinlein; Michael Z. Williamson

  By brutal logic he concluded correctly that he could not hear— “deef as a post”—the shock wave had left him deaf. But there was no way to help it, so he went on; it did not occur to him to return home. At the bottom of this draw, where the stilts were nearly three hundred feet high, the maintenance road crossed a farm road. He turned down hill onto it, having accomplished his first purpose of getting into territory where Montgomery would be less likely to look for him. He was in another watershed now; although still only a few miles from home, nevertheless by going through the ridge he had put himself into a different neighborhood.

  He continued downhill for a couple of hours. The road was hardly more than a cart track but it was easier than the maintenance road. Somewhere below, when the hills gave way to the valley where the “foreigners” lived, he would find the freight highway that paralleled the ring road on the route to Earthport—Earthport being his destination although he had only foggy plans as to what he would do when he got there.

  The Moon was behind him now and he made good time. A rabbit hopped onto the road ahead, sat up and stared, then skittered away. Seeing it, he regretted not having brought along his squirrel gun. Sure, it was worn out and not worth much and lately it had gotten harder and harder to buy the slugs thrown by the obsolete little weapon—but rabbit in the pot right now would go mighty nice, mighty nice! He realized that he was not only weary but terribly hungry. He had just picked at his supper and it looked like he’d breakfast on his upper lip.

  Shortly, his attention was distracted from hunger to a ringing in his ears, a ringing that got distressingly worse. He shook his head and pounded his ears but it did not help; he had to make up his mind to ignore it. After another half mile or so he suddenly noticed that he could hear himself walking. He stopped dead, then clapped his hands together. He could hear them smack, cutting through the phantom ringing. With a lighter heart he went on.

  At last, he came out on a shoulder that overlooked the broad valley. In the moonlight, he could make out the sweep of the freight highway leading southwest and could detect, he thought, its fluorescent traffic guide lines. He hurried on down.

  He was nearing the highway and could hear the rush of passing freighters when he spotted a light ahead. He approached it cautiously, determined that it was neither vehicle nor farm house. Closer approach showed it to be a small open fire, visible from uphill but shielded from the highway by a shoulder of limestone. A man was squatting over it, stirring the contents of a can resting on rocks over the fire.

  Max crept nearer until he was looking down into the hobo jungle. He got a whiff of the stew and his mouth watered. Caught between hunger and a hill-man’s ingrown distrust of “foreigners,” he lay still and stared.

  Presently, the man set the can off the fire and called out, “Well, don’t hide there! Come on down.” Max was too startled to answer. The man added, “Come on down into the light. I won’t fetch it up to you.” Max got to his feet and shuffled down into the circle of firelight. The man looked up. “Howdy. Draw up a chair.”

  “Howdy.” Max sat down across the fire from the tramp. He was not even as well dressed as Max and he needed a shave. Nevertheless, he wore his rags with a jaunty air and handled himself with a sparrow’s cockiness.

  The man continued to stir the mess in the can then spooned out a sample, blew on it, and tasted it. “About right,” he announced. “Four-day mulligan, just getting ripe. Find yourself a dish.” He got up and picked over a pile of smaller cans behind him, selected one. Max hesitated, then did the same, settling on one that had once contained coffee and appeared not to have been used since. His host served him a liberal portion of stew, then handed him a spoon. Max looked at it.

  “If you don’t trust the last man who used it,” the man said reasonably, “hold it in the fire, then wipe it. Me, I don’t worry. If a bug bites me, he dies horribly.” Max took the advice, holding the spoon in the flames until the handle became too hot, then wiped it on his shirt.

  The stew was good and his hunger made it superlative. The gravy was thick, there were vegetables and unidentified meat. Max didn’t bother his head about the pedigrees of the materials; he simply enjoyed it. After a while his host said, “Seconds?”

  “Huh? Sure. Thanks!”

  The second can of stew filled him up and spread through his tissues a warm glow of well-being. He stretched lazily, enjoying his fatigue. “Feel better?” the man asked.

  “Gee, yes. Thanks.”

  “By the way, you can call me Sam.”

  “Oh, my name is Max.”

  “Glad to know you, Max.”

  Max waited before raising a point that had been bothering him. “Uh, Sam? How did you know I was there? Did you hear me?”

  Sam grinned. “No. But you were silhouetted against the sky. Don’t ever do that, lad, or it may be the last thing you do.”

  Max twisted around and looked up at where he had lurked. Sure enough, Sam was right. He’d be dogged!

  Sam added, “Traveled far?”

  “Huh? Yeah, quite a piece.”

  “Going far?”

  “Uh, pretty far, I guess.”

  Sam waited, then said, “Think your folks’ll miss you?”

  “Huh? How did you know?”

  “That you had run away from home? Well, you have, haven’t you?”

  “Yeah. Yeah, I guess I have.”

  “You looked beat when you dragged in here. Maybe it’s not too late to kill the goose before your bridges are burned. Think about it, kid. It’s rough on the road. I know.”

  “Go back? I won’t ever go back!”

  “As bad as that?”

  Max stared into the fire. He needed badly to get his thoughts straight, even if it meant telling a foreigner his private affairs—and this soft-spoken stranger was easy to talk to. “See here, Sam, did you ever have a stepmother?”

  “Eh? Can’t remember that I ever had any. The Central Jersey Development Center for State Children used to kiss me good night.”

  “Oh.” Max blurted out his story with an occasional sympathetic question from Sam to straighten out its confusion. “So I lit out,” he concluded. “There wasn’t anything else to do. Was there?”

  Sam pursed his lips. “I reckon not. This double stepfather of yours—he sounds like a mouse studying to be a rat. You’re well shut of him.”

  “You don’t think they’ll try to find me and haul me back, do you?”

  Sam stopped to put a piece of wood on the fire. “I am not sure about that.”

  “Huh? Why not? I’m no use to him. He doesn’t like me. And Maw won’t care, not really. She may whine a bit, but she won’t turn her hand.”

  “Well, there’s the farm.”

  “The farm? I don’t care about that, not with Dad gone. Truthfully, it ain’t much. You break your back trying to make a crop. If the Food Conservation Act hadn’t forbidden owners to let farm land fall out of use, Dad would have quit farming long ago. It would take something like this government condemnation to make it possible to find anybody to take it off your hands.”

  “That’s what I mean. This joker got your mother to sell it. Now my brand of law may not be much good, but it looks as if that money ought to come to you.”

  “What? Oh, I don’t care about the money. I just want to get away from them.”

  “Don’t talk that way about money; the powers-that-be will have you shut up for blasphemy. But it probably doesn’t matter how you feel, as I think Citizen Montgomery is going to want to see you awful bad.”

  “Why?”

  “Did your father leave a will?”

  “No. Why? He didn’t have anything to leave but the farm.”

  “I don’t know the ins and outs of your state laws, but it’s a sure thing that at least half of that farm belongs to you. Possibly your stepmother has only lifetime tenure in her half, with reversion to you when she dies. But it’s a certainty that she can’t grant a good deed without your signature. Along about time your county cour
thouse opens up tomorrow morning, the buyers are going to find that out. Then they’ll come high-tailing up, looking for her—and you. And ten minutes later this Montgomery hombre will start looking for you, if he hasn’t already.”

  “Oh, me! If they find me, can they make me go back?”

  “Don’t let them find you. You’ve made a good start.”

  Max picked up his rucksack. “I guess I had better get moving. Thanks a lot, Sam. Maybe I can help you someday.”

  “Sit down.”

  “Look, I had better get as far away as I can.”

  “Kid, you’re tired out and your judgment has slipped. How far can you walk tonight, the shape you’re in? Tomorrow morning, bright and early, well go down to the highway, follow it about a mile to the freighters’ restaurant south of here and catch the haulers as they come out from breakfast, feeling good. We’ll promote a ride and you’ll go farther in ten minutes than you could make all night.”

  Max had to admit that he was tired, exhausted really, and Sam certainly knew more about these wrinkles than he did. Sam added, “Got a blanket in your bindle?”

  “No. Just a shirt . . . and some books.”

  “Books, eh? Read quite a bit myself, when I get a chance. May I see them?”

  Somewhat reluctantly, Max got them out. Sam held them close to the fire and examined them. “Well, I’ll be a three-eyed Martian! Kid, do you know what you’ve got here?”

  “Sure.”

  “But you ought not to have these. You’re not a member of the Astrogators’ Guild.”

  “No, but my uncle was. He was on the first trip to Beta Hydrae,” he added proudly.

  “No foolin’!”

  “Sure as taxes.”

  “But you’ve never been in space yourself? No, of course not.”

  “But I’m going to be!” Max admitted something that he had never told anyone, his ambition to emulate his uncle and go out to the stars. Sam listened thoughtfully. When Max stopped, he said slowly, “So you want to be an astrogator?”

  “I certainly do.”

  Sam scratched his nose. “Look, kid, I don’t want to throw cold water, but you know how the world wags. Getting to be an astrogator is almost as difficult as getting into the Plumbers’ Guild. The soup is thin these days and there isn’t enough to go around. The guild won’t welcome you just because you are anxious to be apprenticed. Membership is hereditary, just like all the other high-pay guilds.”

  “But my uncle was a member.”

  “Your uncle isn’t your father.”

  “No, but a member who hasn’t any sons gets to nominate someone else. Uncle Chet explained it to me. He always told me he was going to register my nomination.”

  “And did he?”

  Max was silent. At the time his uncle had died he had been too young to know how to go about finding out. When his father had followed his uncle events had closed in on him—he had never checked up, subconsciously preferring to nurse the dream rather than test it. “I don’t know,” he said at last. “I’m going to the Mother Chapter at Earthport and find out.”

  “Hmmm—I wish you luck, kid.” He stared into the fire, sadly it seemed to Max. “Well, I’m going to grab some shut-eye, and you had better do the same. If you’re chilly, you’ll find some truck back under that rock shelf—burlap and packing materials and such. It’ll keep you warm, if you don’t mind risking a flea or two.”

  Max crawled into the dark hole indicated, found a half-way cave in the limestone. Groping, he located the primitive bedding. He had expected to be wakeful, but he was asleep before Sam finished covering the fire.

  He was awakened by sunlight blazing outside. He crawled out, stood up and stretched the stiffness out of his limbs. By the sun, he judged it to be about seven o’clock in the morning. Sam was not in sight. He looked around and shouted, not too loudly, and guessed that Sam had gone down to the creek for a drink and a cold wash. Max went back into the shelter and hauled out his rucksack, intending to change his socks.

  His uncle’s books were missing.

  There was a note on top of his spare shirt: “Dear Max,” it said, “There is more stew in the can. You can warm it up for breakfast. So long—Sam P.S. Sorry.”

  Further search disclosed that his identification card was missing, but Sam had not bothered with his other pitiful possessions. Max did not touch the stew but set out down the road, his mind filled with bitter thoughts.

  3

  EARTHPORT

  The farm road crossed under the freight highway; Max came up on the far side and headed south beside the highway. The route was marked by “no trespass” signs, but the path was well-worn. The highway widened to make room for a deceleration strip. At the end of its smooth reach, a mile away, Max could see the restaurant Sam had mentioned.

  He shinnied over the fence enclosing the restaurant and parking grounds and went to the parking stalls where a dozen of the big land ships were lined up. One was quivering for departure, its flat bottom a few inches clear of the metallic pavement. Max went to its front end and looked up at the driver’s compartment The door was open and he could see the driver at his instrument board. Max called out, “Hey, Mister!”

  The driver stuck his head out. “What’s itching you?”

  “How are the chances of a lift south?”

  “Beat it, kid.” The door slammed.

  None of the other freighters was raised off the pavement; their control compartments were empty. Max was about to turn away when another giant scooted down the braking strip, reached the parking space, crawled slowly into a stall, and settled to the ground. He considered approaching its driver, but decided to wait until the man had eaten. He went back toward the restaurant building and was looking through the door, watching hungry men demolish food while his mouth watered, when he heard a pleasant voice at his shoulder.

  “Excuse me, but you’re blocking the door.”

  Max jumped aside. “Oh! Sorry.”

  “Go ahead. You were first.” The speaker was a man about ten years older than Max. He was profusely freckled and had a one-sided grin. Max saw on his cap the pin of the Teamsters’ Guild. “Go on in,” the man repeated, “before you get trampled in the rush.”

  Max had been telling himself that he might catch Sam inside—and, after all, they couldn’t charge him just for coming in, if he didn’t actually eat anything. Underlying was the thought of asking to work for a meal, if the manager looked friendly. The freckled-faced man’s urging tipped the scales; he followed his nose toward the source of the heavenly odors pouring out the door.

  The restaurant was crowded; there was one vacant table, for two. The man slid into a chair and said, “Sit down.” When Max hesitated, he added, “Go ahead, put it down. Never like to eat alone.” Max could feel the manager’s eyes on him, he sat down. A waitress handed them each a menu and the hauler looked her over appreciatively. When she left he said, “This dump used to have automatic service—and it went broke. The trade went to the Tivoli, eighty miles down the stretch. Then the new owner threw away the machinery and hired girls and business picked up. Nothing makes food taste better than having a pretty girl put it in front of you. Right?”

  “Uh, I guess so. Sure.” Max had not heard what was said. He had seldom been in a restaurant and then only in the lunch counter at Clyde’s Corners. The prices he read frightened him; he wanted to crawl under the table.

  His companion looked at him. “What’s the trouble, chum?”

  “Trouble? Uh, nothing.”

  “You broke?” Max’s miserable expression answered him. “Shucks, I’ve been there myself. Relax.” The man waggled his fingers at the waitress. “Come here, honey chile. My partner and I will each have a breakfast steak with a fried egg sitting on top and this and that on the side. I want that egg to be just barely dead. If it is cooked solid, I’ll nail it to the wall as a warning to others. Understand me?”

  “I doubt if you’ll be able to get a nail through it,” she retorted and walked away, s
waying gently. The hauler kept his eyes on her until she disappeared into the kitchen. “See what I mean? How can machinery compete?”

  The steak was good and the egg was not congealed. The hauler told Max to call him “Red” and Max gave his name in exchange. Max was pursuing the last of the yolk with a bit of toast and was considering whether it was time to broach the subject of a ride when Red leaned forward and spoke softly. “Max—you got anything pushing you? Free to take a job?”

  “What? Why, maybe. What is it?”

  “Mind taking a little run southwest?”

  “Southwest? Matter of fact, I was headin’ that way.”

  “Good. Here’s the deal. The Man says we have to have two teamsters to each rig—or else break for eight hours after driving eight. I can’t; I’ve got a penalty time to meet—and my partner washed out. The flathead got taken drunk and I had to put him down to cool. Now I’ve got a check-point to pass a hundred thirty miles down the stretch. They’ll make me lay over if I can’t show another driver.”

  “Gee! But I don’t know how to drive, Red. I’m awful sorry.”

  Red gestured with his cup. “You won’t have to. You’ll always be the off-watch driver. I wouldn’t trust little Molly Malone to somebody who didn’t know her ways, I’ll keep myself awake with Pep pills and catch up on sleep at Earthport.”

  “You’re going all the way to Earthport?”

  “Right.”

  “It’s a deal!”

  “Okay, here’s the lash up. Every time we hit a check-point, you’re in the bunk, asleep. You help me load and unload—I’ve got a partial and a pick-up at Oke City—and I’ll feed you. Right?”

  “Right!”

  “Then let’s go. I want to scoot before these other dust jumpers get underway. Never can tell, there might be a spotter.” Red flipped a bill down and did not wait for change.

  The Molly Malone was two hundred feet long and streamlined such that she had negative lift when cruising. This came to Max’s attention from watching the instruments; when she first quivered and raised, the dial marked “road clearance” showed nine inches, but as they gathered speed down the acceleration strip it decreased to six.