Starman Jones

by Robert A. Heinlein; Michael Z. Williamson

  Max felt sensations almost identical with those he had experienced when Montgomery had announced that the farm was sold. Despite his menial position, he liked it aboard ship, he had had no intention of ever doing anything else. He got along with his boss, he was making friends, he was as cozy as a bird in its nest. Now the nest was suddenly torn down. Worse, he was in a trap.

  He turned white. Sam put a hand on his shoulder. “Stop spinning, kid! You’re not in a jam.”

  “Jail—”

  “Jail my aunt’s Sunday hat! You’re safe as dirt until we get back. You can walk away from the Asgard at Earthport with your wages in your pocket and have days at least, maybe weeks or months, before anyone will notice, either at the guild mother hall or at New Washington. You can lose yourself among four billion people. You won’t be any worse off than you were when you first ran into me—you were trying to get lost then, remember?—and you’ll have one star trip under your belt to tell your lads about. Or they may never look for you; some clerk may chuck your trip record into the file basket and leave it there until it gets lost rather than bother. Or you might be able to persuade a clerk in Mr. Kuiper’s office to lose the duplicates, not mail them in. Nelson, for example; he’s got a hungry look.” Sam eyed him carefully, then added, “Or you might do what I’m going to do.”

  Only part of what Sam had said had sunk in. Max let the record play back and gradually calmed down as he began to understand that his situation was not entirely desperate. He was inclined to agree about Nelson, as Nelson had already suggested indirectly that sometimes the efficiency marks on the ship’s books were not necessarily the ones that found their way into the permanent records—under certain circumstances. He put the idea aside, not liking it and having no notion anyhow of how to go about offering a bribe.

  When he came, in his mental play back, to Sam’s last remark, it brought him to attention. “What are you going to do?”

  Sam eyed the end of his cigar stub. “I’m not going back.”

  This required no diagram to be understood. But, under Imperial decrees, the suggested offense carried even heavier punishment than faking membership in a guild. Deserting was almost treason. “Keep talking,” Max said gruffly.

  “Let’s run over where we touch this cruise. Garson’s Planet—domed colonies, like Luna and Mars. In a domed colony, you do exactly what the powers-that-be say, or you stop breathing. You might hide out and have a new identity grafted on, but you would still be in the domes. No good, there’s more freedom even back on Terra. Nu Pegasi VI, Halcyon—not bad though pretty cold at aphelion. But it is still importing more than it exports which means that the Imperials run the show and the locals will help dig out a wanted man. Now we come to Nova Terra, Beta Aquarii X—and that, old son, is what the doctor ordered and why the preacher danced.”

  “You’ve been there?”

  “Once. I should have stayed. Max, imagine a place like Earth, but sweeter than Terra ever was. Better weather, broader richer lands . . . forests aching to be cut, game that practically jumps into the stew pot. If you don’t like settlements, you move on until you’ve got no neighbors, poke a seed in the ground, then jump back before it sprouts. No obnoxious insects. Practically no terrestrial diseases and no native diseases that like the flavor of our breed. Gushing rivers. Placid oceans. Man, I’m telling you!”

  “But wouldn’t they haul us back from there?”

  “Too big. The colonists want more people and they won’t help the Imperials. The Imperial Council has a deuce of a time just collecting taxes. They don’t even try to arrest a deserter outside the bigger towns.” Sam grinned. “You know why?”

  “Why?”

  “Because it didn’t pay. An Imperial would be sent to Back-and-Beyond to pick up someone; while he was looking he would find some golden-haired daughter of a rancher eyeing him—they run to eight or nine kids, per family and there are always lots of eligible fillies, husband-high and eager. So pretty quick he is a rancher with a beard and a new name and a wife. He was a bachelor and he hasn’t been home lately—or maybe he’s married back on Terra and doesn’t want to go home. Either way, even the Imperial Council can’t fight human nature.”

  “I don’t want to get married.”

  “That’s your problem. But best of all, the place still has a comfortable looseness about it. No property taxes, outside the towns. Nobody would pay one; they’d just move on, if they didn’t shoot the tax collector instead. No guilds—you can plow a furrow, saw a board, drive a truck, or thread a pipe, all the same day and never ask permission. A man can do anything and there’s no one to stop him, no one to tell him he wasn’t born into the trade, or didn’t start young enough, or hasn’t paid his contribution. There’s more work than there are men to do it and the colonists just don’t care.”

  Max tried to imagine such anarchy and could not, he had never experienced it. “But don’t the guilds object?”

  “What guilds? Oh, the mother lodges back earthside squawked when they heard, but not even the Imperial Council backed them up. They’re not fools—and you don’t shovel back the ocean with a fork.”

  “And that’s where you mean to go. It sounds lovely,” Max said wistfully.

  “I do. It is. There was a girl—oh, she’ll be married now; they marry young—but she had sisters. Now here is what I figure on—and you, too, if you want to tag along. First time I hit dirt, I’ll make contacts. The last time I rate liberty, which will be the night before the ship raises if possible, I’ll go dirtside, then in a front door and out the back and over the horizon so fast I won’t even be a speck. By the time I’m marked ‘late returning,’ I’ll be hundreds of miles away, lying beside a chuckling stream in a virgin wilderness, letting my beard grow and memorizing my new name. Say the word and you’ll be on the bank, fishing.”

  Max stirred uneasily. The picture aroused in him a hillbilly homesickness he had hardly been aware of. But he could not shuffle off his proud persona as a spaceman so quickly. I’ll think about it.”

  “Do that. It’s a good many weeks yet, anyhow.” Sam got to his feet. “I’d better hurry back before Ole Massa Dumont wonders what’s keeping me. Be seeing you, kid—and remember: it’s an ill wind that has no turning.”

  7

  ELDRETH

  Max’s duties did not take him above “C” deck except to service the cats’ sand boxes and he usually did that before the passengers were up. He wanted to visit the control room but he had no opportunity, it being still higher than passengers’ quarters. Often, an owner of one of the seven dogs and three cats in Max’s custody would come down to visit his pet. This sometimes resulted in a tip. At first, his cross-grained hillbilly pride caused him to refuse, but when Sam heard about it, he swore at him dispassionately. “Don’t be a fool! They can afford it. What’s the sense?”

  “But I would exercise their mutts anyhow. It’s my job.” He might have remained unconvinced had it not been that Mr. Gee asked him about it at the end of his first week, seemed to have a shrewd idea of the usual take, and expected a percentage—“for the welfare fund.”

  Max asked Sam about the fund, was laughed at. “That’s a very interesting question. Are there any more questions?”

  “I suppose not.”

  “Max, I like you. But you haven’t learned yet that when in Rome, you shoot Roman candles. Every tribe has its customs and what is moral one place is immoral somewhere else. There are races where a son’s first duty is to loll off his old man and serve him up as a feast as soon as he is old enough to swing it— civilized races, too. Races the Council recognizes diplomatically. What’s your moral judgment on that?”

  Max had read of such cultures—the gentle and unwarlike Bnathors, or the wealthy elephantine amphibians of Paldron who were anything but gentle, probably others. He did not feel disposed to pass judgment on nonhumans. Sam went on, “I’ve known stewards who would make Jelly Belly look like a philanthropist. Look at it from his point of view. He regards these things as prerogati
ves of his position, as rightful a part of his income as his wages. Custom says so. It’s taken him years to get to where he is; he expects his reward.”

  Sam, Max reflected, could always out-talk him.

  But he could not concede that Sam’s thesis was valid; there were things that were right and others that were wrong and it was not just a matter of where you were. He felt this with an inner conviction too deep to be influenced by Sam’s cheerful cynicism. It worried Max that he was where he was as the result of chicanery, he sometimes lay awake and fretted about it.

  But it worried him still more that his deception might come to light. What to do about Sam’s proposal was a problem always on his mind.

  The only extra-terrestrial among Max’s charges was a spider puppy from the terrestrian planet Hespera. On beginning his duties in the Asgard Max found the creature in one of the cages intended for cats; Max looked into it and a sad, little, rather simian face looked back at him. “Hello, Man.”

  Max knew that some spider puppies had been taught human speech, after a fashion, but it startled him; he jumped back. He then recovered and looked more closely. “Hello yourself,” he answered. “My, but you are a fancy little fellow.” The creature’s fur was a deep, rich green on its back, giving way to orange on the sides and blending to warm cream color on its little round belly.

  “Want out,” stated the spider puppy.

  “I can’t let you out. I’ve got work to do.” He read the card affixed to the cage: “Mr. Chips” it stated, Pseudocanis hexapoda hesperae, Owner: Miss E. Coburn, A-092; there followed a detailed instruction as to diet and care. Mr. Chips ate grubs, a supply of which was to be found in freezer compartment H-118, fresh fruits and vegetables, cooked or uncooked, and should receive iodine if neither seaweed nor artichokes was available. Max thumbed through his mind, went over what he had read about the creatures, decided the instructions were reasonable.

  “Please out!” Mr. Chips insisted.

  It was an appeal hard to resist. No maiden fayre crying from a dungeon tower had ever put it more movingly. The compartment in which the cats were located was small and the door could be fastened; possibly Mr. Chips could be allowed a little run—but later; just now he had to take care of other animals.

  When Max left, Mr. Chips was holding onto the bars and sobbing gently. Max looked back and saw that it was crying real tears; a drop trembled on the tip of its ridiculous little nose; it was hard to walk out on it. He had finished with the stables before tackling the kennel; once the dogs and cats were fed and their cages policed, he was free to give attention to his new friend. He had fed it first off, which had stopped the crying. When he returned, however, the demand to be let out resumed.

  “If I let you out, will you get back in later?”

  The spider puppy considered this. A conditional proposition seemed beyond its semantic attainments, for it repeated, “Want out.” Max took a chance.

  Mr. Chips landed on his shoulder and started going through his pockets. “Candy,” it demanded. “Candy?”

  Max stroked it. “Sorry, chum. I didn’t know.”

  “Candy?”

  “No candy.” Mr. Chips investigated personally, then settled in the crook of Max’s arm, prepared to spend a week or more. It wasn’t, Max decided, much like a puppy and certainly not like a spider, except that six legs seemed excessive. The two front ones had little hands; the middle legs served double duty. It was more like a monkey, but felt like a cat. It had a slightly spicy fragrance and seemed quite clean.

  Max tried talking to it, but found its intellectual attainments quite limited. Certainly, it used human words meaningfully, but its vocabulary was not richer than that which might be expected of a not-too-bright toddler.

  When Max tried to return it to its cage, there ensued twenty minutes of brisk exercise, broken by stalemates. Mr. Chips swarmed over the cages, causing hysterics among the cats. When at last the spider puppy allowed itself to be caught, it still resisted imprisonment, clinging to Max and sobbing. He ended by walking it like a baby until it fell asleep.

  This was a mistake. A precedent had been set and thereafter Max was not permitted to leave the kennel without walking the baby.

  He wondered about the “Miss Coburn” described on the tag as Mr. Chips’ owner. All of the owners of cats and dogs had shown up to visit their pets, but Mr. Chips remained unvisited. He visualized her as a sour and hatchet-faced spinster who had received the pet as a going-away present and did not appreciate it. As his friendship with the spider puppy grew, his mental picture of Miss E. Coburn became even less attractive.

  The Asgard was over a week out and only days from its first spatial transition before Max had a chance to compare conception with fact. He was cleaning the stables, with Mr. Chips riding his shoulder and offering advice, when Max heard a shrill voice from the kennel compartment “Mr. Chips! Chipsie! Where are you?”

  The spider puppy sat up suddenly and turned its head. Almost immediately a young female appeared in the door; Mr. Chips squealed, “Ellie!” and jumped to her arms. While they were nuzzling each other Max looked her over. Sixteen, he judged, or seventeen. Or maybe even eighteen—shucks, how was a fellow to tell when womenfolk did such funny things to their faces? Anyhow, she was no beauty and the expression on her face didn’t help it any.

  She looked up at him and scowled. “What were you doing with Chipsie? Answer me that!”

  It got his back fur up. “Nothing,” he said stiffly. “If you will excuse me, ma’am, I’ll get on with my work.”

  He turned his back and bent over his broom.

  She grabbed his arm and swung him around. “Answer me! Or . . . or—I’ll tell the Captain, that’s what I’ll do!”

  Max counted ten, then just to be sure, recalled the first dozen 7-place natural logarithms. “That’s your privilege, ma’am,” he said with studied calmness, “but first, what’s your name and what is your business here? I’m in charge of these compartments and responsible for these animals—as the Captain’s representative.” This he knew to be good space law, although the concatenation was long.

  She looked startled. “Why, I’m Eldreth Coburn,” she blurted as if anyone should know.

  “And your business?”

  “I came to see Mr. Chips—of course!”

  “Very well, ma’am. You may visit your pet for a reasonable period,” he added, quoting verbatim from his station instruction sheet. “Then he goes back in his cage. Don’t disturb the other animals and don’t feed them. That’s orders.”

  She started to speak, decided not to and bit her lip. The spider puppy had been looking from face to face and listening to a conversation far beyond its powers, although it may have sensed the emotions involved. Now it reached out and plucked Max’s sleeve. “Max,” Mr. Chips announced brightly. “Max!”

  Miss Coburn again looked startled. “Is that your name?”

  “Yes, ma’am. Max Jones. I guess he was trying to introduce me. Is that it, old fellow?”

  “Max,” Mr. Chips repeated firmly. “Ellie.”

  Eldreth Coburn looked down, then looked up at Max with a sheepish smile. “You two seem to be friends. I guess I spoke out of turn. Me and my mouth.”

  “No offense meant I’m sure, ma’am.”

  Max had continued to speak stiffly; she answered quickly, “Oh, but I was rude! I’m sorry—I’m always sorry afterwards. But I got panicky when I saw the cage open and empty and I thought I had lost Chipsie.”

  Max grinned grudgingly. “Sure. Don’t blame you a bit. You were scared.”

  “That’s it—I was scared.” She glanced at him. “Chipsie calls you Max. May I call you Max?”

  “Why not? Everybody does—and it’s my name.”

  “And you call me Eldreth, Max. Or Ellie.”

  She stayed on, playing with the spider puppy, until Max had finished with the cattle. She then said reluctantly, “I guess I had better go, or they’ll be missing me.”

  “Are you coming back?”<
br />
  “Oh, of course!”

  “Ummm . . . Miss Eldreth . . .”

  “Ellie.”

  “—May I ask a question?” He hurried on, “Maybe it’s none of my business, but what took you so long? That little fellow has been awful lonesome. He thought you had deserted him.”

  “Not ‘he’—‘she’.”

  “Huh?”

  “Mr. Chips is a girl,” she said apologetically. “It was a mistake anyone could make. Then it was too late, because it would confuse her to change her name.”

  The spider puppy looked up brightly and repeated, “‘Mr. Chips is a girl.’ Candy, Ellie?”

  “Next time, honey bun.”

  Max doubted if the name was important, with the nearest other spider puppy light-years away. “You didn’t answer my question?”

  “Oh. I was so mad about that, I wanted to bite. They wouldn’t let me.”

  “Who’s ‘they’? Your folks?”

  “Oh, no! The Captain and Mrs. Dumont.” Max decided that it was almost as hard to extract information from her as it was from Mr. Chips. “You see, I came aboard in a stretcher—some silly fever, food poisoning probably. It couldn’t be much because I’m tough. But they kept me in bed and when the Surgeon did let me get up, Mrs. Dumont said I mustn’t go below ‘C’ deck. She had some insipid notion that it wasn’t proper.”

  Max understood the stewardess’s objection; he had already discovered that some of his shipmates were a rough lot—though he doubted that any of them would risk annoying a girl passenger. Why, Captain Blaine would probably space a man for that.