Trojan Orbit

by Mack Reynolds

  Rick was thinking it over. He said, musingly, “What’s your source of the stuff you peddle? You surely can’t depend on characters like that Arab who just left, very often.”

  “No, he’s an exception, but not too rare,” the other told him. “He’s probably been on the Prince’s staff for some time, jetting around between countries Earthside. The Prince has a diplomatic passport, so his stuff is never searched, and old Ahmud has probably been smuggling hard drugs for years. When he got to New Albuquerque he greased a palm or two to find out who to contact in the black market up here. Somebody evidently knew my name and told him and also tipped him off to the best things to bring.”

  “But where does most of your stuff come from?”

  “A hundred different sources. For one thing, I work in Supply and I’ve figured out various ways to rip things off. Then I’ve got some buddies who work in the L5 Commissary at the Hilton and some in the Luxury PX. They’ve all got sticky fingers and funnel things through to me. Then there’re crew members on the passenger freighters coming up from Earth. They tuck things away here and there on the spaceships and since they don’t have any way of peddling it themselves, they use me as a middleman.

  “Hombre, you have no idea how many ways there are to smuggle. Some tuck stuff away in pipes and machinery. Some get it into the dehydrated food that’s shipped up. Some package black market items to look like tools, or chemicals, or fertilizer, or whatever. Oh, never fear, Rick, the smuggler is always one jump ahead of those out to stop the traffic.”

  “Yeah,” Rick said. “But Security must intercept one hell of a lot of it.”

  The other grinned his rodent-like smile that was already rubbing Rick Venner the wrong way. “Sure. And then what do you think happens to it?”

  Rick gave him the eye.

  Tony Black made a gesture with his two hands. “They’re all on the take, too. I don’t know one of those Security bastards who doesn’t have his hand out. Oh, the hotel grabs some of it, the better stuff, and the big shots use it there, like you know, they all do all right for themselves in the hotel. But most of it they intercept goes in the front door of the Security offices and what they don’t take for themselves goes out the back. They can’t usually peddle it on their own, very easily, so they pass it on to me and the other cloddies in my racket.”

  Rick thought about it for a while. He said finally, “And what was my end to be?”

  The other nodded. “I see you as a top-notch front man. Get yourself organized over at the hotel. You won’t be able to get a room; they’d go on the records and they’d spot you. But with your style you should be able to make your way around, acting like you belong, until the Security men and the waiters and bartenders and all accept you. Then you play it the way it comes. Try to get next to somebody who counts. Maybe some mopsy working in Commissary on a high level. Maybe some guy with an itchy hand working in logistics. We need contacts who can deliver. Say, be able to divert guzzle by the case into our hands. I used to have a source working in the hotel kitchens, a junior chef. Christ, he ripped off so much expensive grub, you’d think the guests would have starved to death.”

  “What happened to him when they finally caught up with his stealing?”

  “They never did. He was a smart bastard. But he had the bad luck to be transferred over to the moon base. From what I hear, he’s head chef out there. I’ll bet he’s robbing them blind. The black market’s even worse over there than it is here. The poor fucking moon colonists are even more desperate than they are here.”

  Rick said slowly, “I’ll think about it, Tony. Sure as hell, I don’t want to spend the next five years eating, drinking, and sleeping the way most of these dizzards do. On the other hand, I’ve got too much to risk sticking my neck out in a penny-ante game. I’ve got a date with a girl at the hotel tonight. I’ll probably stay the night and talk to you in the morning again.”

  Tony Black stood. “Lucky stiff,” he said. “Wizard, Rick. I went over to Housing this morning and recorded the fact that you were staying here with me. How long’s it going to be before you’re out from under with Freddy Davis and his construction work?”

  “Maybe a week. I’ve got to prove to him a couple of more times that I get space sick every time I get two feet out of a pressure lock.”

  His housemate nodded, making with his furtive grin. “At that time, I’ll see if I can’t make a deal to get you in with me working in Supply. With two of us on the scene, we ought to be able to take higher scores than just me working alone.”

  He snapped shut the suitcase the Arab smuggler had brought, took it up, and ascended the stairs to his room. Shortly he came down, waved at Rick, and said, “I’ve got some deals I have to see about.”

  “Yeah, but just a minute, Tony,” Rick said. “I wanted to ask you something.”

  The other halted on his way to the door. “What?”

  “Where’re all the other guys Pavel Meer arranged to have come up here? There must’ve been quite a few of them to make the racket worthwhile for the Penman, Monk Ravelle at New Albuquerque, and you at this end.”

  The other shifted his eyes. “They’re around.”

  “Am I going to meet any of them? It’s just possible some of them might know me, being in the game themselves. That might be awkward over the next five years.”

  Tony Black said, “Well, actually, I usually make arrangements to send them over to the Luna base. There’s less chance there of anybody making them. Not so many people there and visitors to the project never go to the moon. No facilities for them, like the hotel here. I’ll be seeing you, Rick.” He turned to go again.

  Rick looked after him thoughtfully. For some reason he couldn’t put his finger on, he had his doubts about the other’s answer.

  When he was gone, Rick Venner thought his words over in detail. In actuality, with his gold stashed safely away in India, he didn’t particularly need the black market money. On the other hand, he had no taste for living the average space colonist’s life for the next half decade. Not by a damn sight. He was used to better things. There were some three or four hundred persons, he estimated, either living in the Lagrange Five Hilton or working there with above-average quarters on the outside, almost all of them in Earthside dress. There must be considerable coming and going—newcomers from Earth, visitors, scientists on short-term special jobs, upper-echelon officials and technicians going back and forth to the Luna base. Could he merge with them, unnoticed? He had a sneaking suspicion that he could. He sighed. Rick Venner had aristocratic tastes. Most certainly, he preferred Dover sole, washed down with Riesling, to dehydrated slop washed down with sterile-tasting, recycled water.

  Without so much as a knock upon it, the front door opened and two brawny men entered. Both of them wore the green coveralls of Security. Rick looked up, startled.

  The first one said, without inflection, “Rick Venner?”

  “That’s right,” he said. “What’s…”

  The Security man said, “You’re wanted over at headquarters.”

  Damn it, he didn’t know what this was all about. Probably just routine. Something to do with his being a newcomer. But they’d caught him in Tony Black’s Earthside suit. What would they think about that?

  “Wizard,” he said, standing. “What’s it all about?”

  Neither of them bothered to answer. One held open the door and they let him precede them out into the narrow street. And they held their peace, walking one on each side of him, in the direction of the hotel.

  They marched in the front entrance and headed across the lobby to the stairways. On the way, they passed Bruce Carter, who raised his eyebrows at them. Rick lifted and dropped his shoulders, indicating that he didn’t know what it was all about. Which he didn’t.

  They took the stairs all the way to the top floor. There was a guard posted there who took them in without particular interest.

  One of the two said, “Hi, Dean. What spins? The chief wants to see this guy.”

&nb
sp; Dean nodded without changing his position, leaning against the wall.

  They made their way down the corridor. They stopped before a door with an identity screen and one of the two muttered into it. The door opened. Inside was a reception room office. Neither of the two girls there bothered to look up as they crossed to another door. It would seem that they were expected, since neither bothered to knock. One of the two police opened the door and motioned for Rick to go on through. When he did, the Security men didn’t follow, but closed the door behind him.

  Inside was as lavish an office as Rick Venner had ever seen, even in the Tri-Di shows. He doubted that even the Oval Office of President Corcoran was as ostentatiously rich as this. There were two men present, one behind the half-acre of desk, the other seated in a leather comfort chair to one side. They looked at him curiously.

  The one behind the desk said, his voice brusque, “Sit down.” While Rick was doing so, on a straight chair immediately before the desk, the other took up a paper before him and scanned it. He said, “I’m Al Moore, Lagrange Five Commissioner of Security.” He nodded at the other man present. “And this is Lieutenant Mark Donald.”

  Rick said politely, “Pleased to meet you.”

  Moore read from the paper, “Rick Venner, electrical engineer on five-year contract.”

  “That’s right,” Rick said.

  “I noticed you last night at the party given for Prince Abou ben Abel. You fill out evening clothes very nicely, as though you were born to them. You were talking with Ms. Mary Beth Houston. Later you went with her to her room and threw a screw into her. You work fast, Rocks.”

  Rick started to reply, then thought better of it.

  Al Moore put the paper down and smiled wolfishly. He said, “We’re not a bunch of cloddies up here, Rocks.”

  “I can see that,” Rick said, his voice bitter.

  “The thing is,” the Security Commissioner told him, “that we don’t particularly mind your going to ground here, other things remaining equal. There’s no way you could operate here. No way you could hurt us.”

  Rick goggled at him, not able to believe what he had just heard.

  Moore sighed. “As a matter of fact, under ordinary circumstances, we might even be able to use a man who can think on his feet the way you’ve proven you can. This is a big operation, Rocks. Bigger than you can imagine. It’s not a small-time-peanuts deal, like heisting a few stones.”

  Rick was still gaping at the other.

  Moore said slowly, “The trouble is, these are not ordinary circumstances. You’ve got an IABI man bird-dogging you. Did you know that?”

  “Kapitz?” Rick got out. “Yeah. I met him at the Goddard, coming up.”

  “We got a rundown on Peter Kapitz. He doesn’t look like much, but he’s one of their top manhunters.”

  “I know,” Rick said. “He’s been on my tail before. But he’s never seen me. Has no description—and no matter what he says, no fingerprints or retinals. He didn’t make me on the Goddard, or later when we crossed in the Tsiolkowsky. There’s supposed to be some ten thousand people up here, most of them men. He won’t be able to pinpoint me.”

  “Don’t be too sure,” Moore said sarcastically. “He obviously has something in mind. Possibly, plain ordinary elimination. You’ve been operating quite recently Earthside. More than half the men up here have been in Lagrange Five for years. He undoubtedly knows you can’t be one of them.”

  “I don’t get all this,” Rick said. “Why don’t you just turn me over to him?”

  The Security head shifted one shoulder in response to that and sighed. “Because we have reason to believe that Pete Kapitz has another job besides latching onto you, Rocks. He’s snooping around. And we don’t like snoopers. He could start a lot of waves up when he goes back Earthside and reports.”

  “I see,” Rick said, uneasiness inside. “Where do I come in?”

  “You hit him for us.”

  Rick Venner was staring again. He got out, “I’m no hit man, Moore. I’ve never killed anybody in my life.”

  “There’s always a first time,” the otherwise silent Mark Donald murmured.

  “Shut up, Mark,” his chief said. He brought his eyes back to Rick Venner. “Well, it’s your ass or his.”

  Rick said, “Why don’t you get one of your own boys to take him? Most of them look as though it wouldn’t be the first time.”

  Moore sighed again. “Can’t you see? If Rocks Weil shoots a cop trying to put the arm on him, it sounds perfectly natural. But suppose one of my Security men does it. A howl would go up. And a couple damn more IABI men would be on the scene as quick as they could be shuttled in. They’d dig up things that we simply don’t want dug into. Use your head, Rocks.”

  “I’m trying to, while I still have it,” Rick said. “Wizard. I hit Pete Kapitz and then his boss, John Wilson, has me hauled back Earthside and I wind up in one of those brand-new euthanasia suites.”

  Mark Donald chuckled softly, but Al Moore was shaking his head. “Don’t be a cloddy, Rocks. There are no extradition laws in Lagrange Five. We’re not subject to Earthside laws of any country, not even the Reunited Nations. We fake a trial for you and sentence you to twenty years hard labor on Luna. But what we actually do is stash you off in a comfortable hideaway, complete with as good food as you’d get here at the hotel, all the guzzle you want, a mopsy or two to keep your bed warm. Then, when you decide it’s safe to go back, we smuggle you down to Earth again. No strain. Everybody happy.”

  Rick pretended to be thinking about it.

  Al Moore said to his underling, “Issue Rocks a shooter, Mark.”

  The other stood, brought a 7.63 caliber Gyrojet pistol from an inner pocket, and presented it to Rick Venner.

  Rick took it hesitantly and put it away in his inner coat pocket. They even knew his taste in hand guns though, as he had truthfully told them, he’d never used one on a job.

  He said, “I’ll think about it, Moore.”

  “Don’t take too long,” the Security chief said flatly. “This Kapitz is breathing down our necks. We suspect he’s already reporting some of his findings. We’ll keep in contact, Rocks. Hold yourself ready until we make arrangements to finger him for you.”

  Rick stood, looked from one of them to the other, wearily, then turned and left.

  When he was gone, Mark Donald gave his superior the eye and said, “Where in the hell do you figure on stashing him while he’s supposedly serving this twenty years of hard labor?”

  Al Moore grunted cynically. “Don’t be silly, Mark. We’ll stage it this way. When Rocks gives it to Pete Kapitz, we’ll be sure that this damned freelance writer, Bruce Carter, is in the vicinity to see it. One of our boys, maybe you or Nat Luke, get into the act and gun down Rocks after he’s shot Kapitz. That’ll give Carter the story of his life and he’ll hustle back to Earth to write and peddle it. Nobody will doubt the story, if somebody as big as Bruce Carter tells it the way he saw it. So that way we kill two birds with one stone. We get rid of both this IABI snoop and the freelancer, too.”

  Mark Donald shook his head in admiration. “Jesus, I’m glad I’m on your side. I’d hate to be on your shit list.”

  Moore growled, “We’ve got to have at least six more months before we’re ready to let anybody blow the whistle on us. Then we’ll be ready and not give a damn. In fact, if nobody else blows it, we’ll see to it ourselves.” His underling said, “Oh, there’s just one other new development, Al. Joe Evola and Dean picked up that Alvar Saarinen guy. We twisted his arm a little and it turned out he wasn’t from the KGB like we thought. He was from that top-secret outfit of theirs, the Cheka. He broke easier than we expected. It turns out that this new scientist, Suvorov, was sent up by that outfit. That defection bit was a lot of shit.”

  “I’ll be damned,” Al Moore said, truly surprised.

  “Should we pick him up, too?”

  The Security Commissioner thought about it. “Hell no,” he said. “Leave him alone.
They undoubtedly sent him to try and fuck up the closed-cycle ecology system, but it’s so fucked up already there’s nothing worse he could do.” He thought about it some more. “Don’t let Sol Ryan in on this development. It won’t do him any good to know and he’s running confused as it is.”

  Chapter Fourteen

  “When control is necessarily extensive, power accumulates, and thus the danger of usurping this power. If scores of people have hijacked airplanes, how about hijacking a little world out there in space?”

  —Brother David Steindl-Rast,

  founder of House of Prayer Movement.

  *

  Bruce Carter and Pete Kapitz met by chance in the lobby of the L5 Hilton. Both wore Earthside suits. They’d already found that wearing the standard space coveralls made them conspicuous in the hotel. Carl Gatena had supplied Bruce with more suitable outfits and Mark Donald had come up with the equivalent for Pete. They paused for a minute to chat.

  The freelancer said, “How goes the search for Rocks Weil?”

  Pete viewed him sourly. “You know damn well how much interest I really have in that.”

  Bruce said, “Well, maybe your excuse for being in L5 is about to go down the drain. I saw a couple of Security men with Rick Venner in tow. It looked as though they were taking him to see Al Moore.”

  “Damn,” Pete said. “You’re right. If they turn him over to me, I’ll no longer have an excuse for staying. By the way, it would seem that Rocks isn’t the only one on the lam up here. Not only that girl I told you about, but I spotted a Syndicate member, guy named Natale Lucchese who’s holding down a job as a Security officer.”

  “I’ll be a sonofabitch,” Bruce said, interested. “But then, I guess, with ten thousand people up here, you’re bound to find just about every type of person on Earth, from small-time crooks to Nobel Laureates. How’s your assignment going otherwise, Pete?”

  The IABI agent scowled. “Actually, more successfully then I’d expected. There’s a hell of a lot brewing that the average investor in LFC stock down Earthside doesn’t know about. And I suspect that if he did know, he wouldn’t be so quick to tie up his money. In fact, when I get back, I’m going to sell mine. Take a loss if I have to.”