“Drop dead, Joe.”
Novotny stared after them until they disappeared through the lock. He glanced back at Lije. Henderson was in a grinning beatific trance. The pusher shrugged and left him lying there, still wearing his pressure suit in the open cabin. The pusher trotted after his men toward the ship.
Before he was halfway there, a voice broke into his headsets. “Where the devil are you going, Novotny? I want a talk with you!”
He stopped to glance back. The voice belonged to Brodanovitch, and it sounded sore. The engineer’s runabout had nosed in beside Novotny’s; Suds sat in the cab and beckoned at him angrily. Joe trudged on back and climbed in through the vehicle’s coffin-sized airlock. Brodanovitch glared at him while the pusher removed his helmet.
“What the devil’s going on over there?”
“At the ship?” Joe paused. Suds was livid. “I don’t know exactly.”
“I’ve been calling Safety and Rescue for an hour and a half. Where are they?”
“In the ship, I guess.”
“You guess!”
“Hell, chief, take it easy. We just got here. I don’t know what’s going on.”
“Where are your men?”
Novotny jerked his thumb at the other runabout. “Henderson’s in there. Relke and Brax went to the ship.”
“And that’s where you were going just now, I take it,” Suds snarled.
“Take that tone of voice and shove it, Suds! You, know where you told me to go. I went. Now I’m off. We’re on our own time unless you tell us different.”
The engineer spent a few seconds swallowing his fury. “All right,” he grunted. “But every man on that rescue squad is going to face a Space Court, and if I have any say about it, they’ll get decomped.”
Novotny’s jaw dropped. “Slow down, Suds. Explosive decompression is for mutiny or murder. What’re you talking about?”
“Murder.”
“Wha-a-at?”
“That’s what I call it. A demolition man—Hardin, it was—had a blowout. With only one man standing by on the rescue gear.”
“Meteor dust?”
“Yeah.”
“Would it have made any difference if Safety and Rescue had been on the job?”
Suds glowered. “Maybe, maybe not. An inspector might have spotted the bulge in his suit before it blew.” He shook an angry finger toward the abandoned Safety & Rescue vehicles. “Those men are going to stand trial for negligent homicide. It’s the principle, damn it!”
“Sure, Suds. I guess you’re right. I’ll be right back.”
Henderson was sleeping in his pressure suit when Novotny climbed back into his own runabout. The cab was still a vacuum. He got the hatch closed, turned on the air pumps, then woke Henderson.
“Lije, you been with a woman?”
“Nnnnnngg-nnnng! I hope to tell!” He shot a quick glance toward the rocket as if to reassure himself as to its reality. “And man, was she a little—”
Joe shook him again. “Listen. Brodanovitch is in the next car. Bull mad. I’ll ask you again. You been with a woman?”
“Woman? You muss of lost yoah mine, Joe. Lass time I saw a woman was up at Atlanta.” He rolled his eyes up toward the Earth crescent in the heavens. “Sure been a long ole time. Atlanta… man!”
“That’s better.”
Lije jerked his head toward Brodanovitch’s jeep. “What’s ole wet blanket gonna do? Chase those gals out of here, I ’spect?”
“I don’t know. That’s not what he’s frothing about, Lije. Hardin got killed while the S&R boys were shacking up over there. Suds doesn’t even know what’s in that ship. He acts like he’s got about a dozen troubles running loose at once, and he doesn’t know which way to grab.”
“He don’t even know? How we evah gonna keep him from findin’ out?” Lije shot another glance at the ship and jumped. “Uh-oh! Looka theah! Yonder they come. Clamberin’ down the ladies’ ladduh. Theah’s Joyce and Lander and Petzel—other one looks like Crump. Half the Safety team, Joe. Hoo-eee! They got that freshly bred look. You can evum tell it from heah. Uh-oh!”
Brodanovitch had climbed out of his runabout. Bellowing at his mic, he charged toward the ship. The S&R men took a few lopes toward their vehicles, saw Brodanovitch, and stopped. One man turned tail and bolted for the ladder again. Gesturing furiously, the engineer bore down on them.
“Leave the radio off, Joe. Sure glad we don’ have to listen to that bull bellow.”
They sat watching the safety men, who managed some-how to look stark naked despite their bulgey pressure suits. Suds stalked toward them like an amok runner, beating a gloved fist into his palm and working his jaw at them.
“Suds don’ know how to get along with men when he want to get along with ’em, and he don’ know how to fuss at ’em when he don’t want to get along. Man, look how he rave!”
“Yeah. Suds is a smart engineer, but he’s a rotten overseer.”
The ship’s airlock opened again and another man started out. He stopped with one foot on the top rung of the ladder. He looked down at Brodanovitch and the S&R men. He pulled his leg back inside and closed the hatch. Novotny chuckled.
“That was Relke, the damn fool.”
Lije smote his forehead. “Look at Suds! They tole him! They went an tole him, Joe. We’ll nevah get back in that ship now.”
The pusher watched the four figures on the plain. They were just standing there. Brodanovitch had stopped gesticulating. For a few seconds he seemed frozen. His head turned slowly as he looked up at the rocket. He took three steps toward it, then stopped.
“He gonna have apoplexy, thass what he gonna have.” Brodanovitch turned slowly. He gave the S&R men a blank look, then broke into a run toward his tractor. “I’d better climb out,” Joe said.
He met the engineer beside the command runabout. Suds’s face was a livid mask behind the faceplate. “Get in,” he snapped at the pusher.
As soon as they were inside, he barked, “Drive us to Crater City.”
“Slow down, Suds.”
“Joe. That ship. Damn brothel. Out to fleece the camp.”
“So what’re you going to do in Crater City?”
“Tell Parkeson, what else?”
“And what’s the camp going to be doing while you’re gone?”
That one made him pause. Finally he shook his head. “Drive, Joe.”
Novotny flipped the switch and glanced at the gauges. “You haven’t got enough oxygen in this bug to last out the trip.”
“Then we’ll get another one.”
“Better take a minute to think it over, Suds. You’re all revved up. What the hell can Parkeson do?”
“What can he do? What can—migawd, Joe!” Suds choked.
“Well?”
“He can get that ship out of here, he can have those women interned.”
“How? Suppose they refuse to budge. Who appointed Parkeson king of creation? Hell, he’s only our boss, Suds. The moon’s open to any nation that wants to send a ship, or to any corporation that can get a clearance. The W.P. decided that a long time ago.”
“But it’s illegal—those women, I mean!”
“How do you know? Maybe their racket’s legal in Algiers. That’s where you told me they had clearance from, didn’t you? And if you’re thinking about the Schneider-Volkov Act, it just applies to the Integrated Projects, not wildcat teams.”
Brodanovitch sat silent for a few moments, his throat working. He passed a shaky hand over his eyes. “Joe, we’ve got to keep discipline. Why can’t I ever make the men understand that? On a moon project, it’s discipline or die. You know that, Joe.”
“Sure I know it. You know it. Parkeson knows it. The First Minister of the Space Ministry knows it. But the men don’t know it, and they never will. They don’t know what the word ‘discipline’ means, and it’s no good trying to tell them. It’s an overseer’s word. It means your outfit’s working for you like your own arms and legs. One brain and one body. When it c
racks, you’ve just got a loose handful of stray men. No coordination. You can see it, but they can’t see it. ‘Discipline’ is just a dirty word in the ranks, Suds.”
“Joe, what’ll I do?”
“It’s your baby, not mine. Give it first aid. Then talk to Parkeson later, if you want to.”
Suds sat silent for half a minute, then: “Drive back to the main wagon.”
Novotny started the motors. “What are you going to do?”
“Announce Code Red, place the ship off limits, put an armed guard on it, and hope the Crater City crew gets that telephone circuit patched up quick. That’s all I can do.”
“Then let me get a safe distance away from you before you do it.”
“You think it’ll cause trouble?”
“Good Lord, Suds, use your head. You’ve got a campful of men who haven’t been close to a dame in months and years, even to talk to. They’re sick, they’re scared, they’re fed-up, they want to go home. The Party’s got them bitter, agitated. I’d hate to be the guy who puts those women off limits.”
“What would you do?”
“I’d put the screws on the shift that’s on duty. I’d work hell out of the crews that are supposed to be on the job. I’d make a horrible example out of the first man to goof off. But first I’d tell the off-duty team-pushers they can take their crews over to that ship, one crew at a time, and in an orderly manner.”
“What? And be an accomplice? Hell, no!”
“Then do it your own way. Don’t ask me.”
Novotny parked the runabout next to the boss-wagon. “Mind if I use your buggy for awhile, Suds?” he asked. “I left mine back there, and I’ve got to pick up my men.”
“Go ahead, but get them back here—fast.”
“Sure, Suds.”
He backed the runabout out again and drove down to B-shift’s sleep-wagon. He parked again and used the air-lock phone. “Beasley, Benet, the rest of you—come on outside.”
Five minutes later they trooped out through the lock. “What’s the score, Joe?”
“The red belts are ahead, that’s all I know.”
“Come on, you’ll find out.”
“Sleep! I haven’t had no sleep since— Say! You takin’ us over to that ship, Joe?”
“That’s the idea.”
“YAYHOO!” Beasley danced up and down. “Joe, we love ya!”
“Cut it. This is once-and-once-only. You’re going once, and you’re not going again.”
“Who says?”
“Novotny says.”
“But why?” Benet wailed.
“What did you say?”
“I said ‘why!’”
“OK. I’ll tell you why. Brodanovitch is going to put the ship off limits. If I get you guys in under the wire, you’ve got no gripe later on—when Suds hangs out the big No.”
“Joe, that’s chicken.”
Novotny put on the brakes. “Get out and walk back, Benet.”
“Joe—!”
“Benet!”
“Look, I didn’t mean anything—”
Novotny paused. If Brodanovitch was going to try to do things the hard way, he’d lose control of his own men unless he gave them loose rein for a while first—keeping them reminded that he still had the reins. But Benet was getting out of hand lately. He had to decide. Now.
“Look at me, Benet.”
Benet looked up. Joe smacked him. Benet sat back, looking surprised. He wiped his nose on the back of a glove and looked at the red smear. He wiped it again. The smear was bigger.
“You can stay, Benet, but if you do, I’ll bust your hump after we get back. You want it that way?”
Benet looked at the rocket; he looked at Joe; he looked at the rocket. “Yeah. We’ll see who does the busting. Let’s go.”
“All right, but do you see any other guys taking their teams over?”
“No.”
“But you think you’re getting a chicken deal.”
“Yeah.”
The pusher drove on, humming to himself. As long as he could keep them alternately loving him and hating him, everything was secure. Then he was Mother. Then they didn’t stop to think or rationalize. They just reacted to Mother. It was easy to handle men reacting, but it wasn’t so easy to handle men thinking. Novotny liked it the easy way, especially during a heavy meteor fall.
“It is of no importance to me,” said Madame d’Annecy, “if you are the commandant of the whole of space, M’sieur. You wish entrance, I must ask you to contribute thees small fee. It is not in my nature to become unpleasant like thees, but you have bawl in my face, M’sieur.”
“Look,” said Brodanovitch, “I didn’t come over here for… for what you think I came over here for.” His ears reddened. “I don’t want a girl, that is.”
The madame’s prim mouth made a small pink O of sudden understanding. “Ah, M’sieur, I begin to see. You are one of those. But in that I cannot help you. I have only girls.”
The engineer choked. He started toward the hatch. A man with a gun slid into his path.
“Permit yourself to be restrained, M’sieur.”
“There are four men in there that are supposed to be on the job, and I intend to get them. And the others too, while I’m at it.”
“Is it that you have lost your boy friend, perhaps?”
Brodanovitch croaked incomprehensibly for a moment, then collapsed onto a seat beside the radar table that Madame d’Annecy was using for an accounting desk. “I’m no fairy,” he said.
“I am pleased to hear it, M’sieur. I was beginning to pity you. Now if you will please sign the sight draft, so that we may telecast it—”
“I am not paying twelve hundred dollars just to get my men out of there!”
“I do not haggle, M’sieur. The price is fixed.”
“Call them down here!”
“It cannot be done. They pay for two hours, for two hours they stay. Undisturbed.”
“All right, let’s see the draft.”
Madame d’Annecy produced a set of forms from the map case and a small gold fountain pen from her ample bosom. “Your next of kin, M’sieur?” She handed him a blank draft.
“Wait a minute! How did you know where my ac-count—”
“Is it not the correct firm?”
“Yes, but how did you know?” He looked at the serial number on the form, then looked up accusingly. “This is a telecopy form. You have a teletransmitter on board?”
“But of course! We could not risk having payment stopped after services rendered. The funds will be transferred to our account before you leave this ship. I assure you, we are well protected.”
“I assure you, you are all going to jail.”
Madame d’Annecy threw back her head and laughed heartily. She said something in French to the man at the door, then smiled at the unhappy engineer. “What law prevails here, M’sieur?”
“UCOJE does. Uniform Code of Justice, Extraterrestrial. It’s a semi-military—“
“U.N.-based, I believe?”
“Certainly.”
“Now I know little of thees matters, but my attorneys would be delighted, I am certain, if you can tell me: which articles of thees UCOJE is to be used for inducing us to be incarcerated?”
“Why… Uh…” Suds scratched nervously at one corner of his moustache. He glanced at the man with the gun. He gazed forlornly at the sight draft.
“Exactly!” Mme. d’Annecy said brightly. “There have been no women to speak of on the moon since the unfortunate predicament of les enfants perdus. The moon-born grotesque ones. How could they think to pass laws against thees—thees ancien establishment, thees maison intime—when there are no women, eh M’sieur?”
“But you falsified your papers to get clearance. You must have.”
“But no. Our clearance is ‘free nation,’ not ‘world federal.’ We are an entertainment troupe, and my government’s officials are most lenient in defining ‘entertainment.’ Chacun a son gout, eh?”
&n
bsp; Suds sat breathing heavily. “I can place this ship off limits.”
“If you can do dat, if the men do not come”—she shrugged eloquently and spread her hands—“then we will simply move on to another project. There are plenty of others. But do you think thees putting us off limits will make you very popular with your men?”
“I’m not trying to win a popularity contest,” Suds wheezed. “I’m trying to finish the last twelve miles of this line before sundown. You’ve got to get out of here before there’s a complete work stoppage.”
“Thees project. It is important? Of an urgent nature?”
“There’s a new uranium mine in the crater we’re building toward. There’s a colony there without an independent ecology. It has to be supplied from Copernicus. Right now, they’re shooting supplies to them by rocket missile. It’s too far to run surface freight without trolley service—or reactor-powered vehicles the size of battleships and expensive. We don’t have the facilities to run a fleet of self-powered wagons that far.”
“Can they not run on diesel, perhaps?”
“If they carry the oxygen to burn the diesel with, and if everybody in Copernicus agrees to stop breathing the stuff.”
“Embarras de choix. I see.”
“It’s essential that the line be finished before nightfall. If it isn’t, that mine colony will have to be shipped back to Copernicus. They can’t keep on supplying it by bird. And they can’t move out any ore until the trolley is ready to run.”
Mme. d’Annecy nodded thoughtfully. “We wish to make the cordial entente with the lunar workers,” she murmured. “We do not wish to cause the bouleversement—the disruption. Let us then negotiate, M’sieur.”
“I’m not making any deals with you, lady.”
“Ah, but such a hard position you take! I was but intending to suggest that you furnish us a copy of your camp’s duty roster. If you will do that, Henri will not permit anyone to visit us if he is—how you say?—goofing off. Is it not that simple?”
“I will not be a party to robbery!”
“How is it robbery?”
“Twelve hundred dollars! Pay for two day-hitches. Lunar days. Nearly two months. And you’re probably planning to fleece them more than once.”
“A bon marche! Our expenses are terrific. Believe me, we expect no profit from this first trip.”
Dark Benediction Page 47