Pete Kapitz shot him neatly in the head, the high velocity rocket slug tearing the top of it away.
Annette Casey was the first to find words. Her eyes went around the shambles. “Holy Mary,” she said. “I’m afraid Venner and Everett have had it.”
Bruce Carter, Ron Rich, and Adam Bloch still sat rooted to their places. Only seconds had transpired since Rick Venner had taken possession of the sergeant’s gun and made his play. Joe Evola was sprawled unconscious on the unkind floor upon which he had shattered his jaw. Pete Kapitz stood shakily, his gun still held as though he was expecting new targets. And then he heard the pounding feet outside and spun in the direction of the door.
Two of the security police Evola had originally left in the reception room came charging in, guns half drawn, their faces incredulous. Pete nailed them both, expertly, without hesitation. Despite his appearance, in action Pete Kapitz proved he had been there before—and survived it. Still aiming his pistol at the doorway, Pete dropped to one knee and checked the unmoving Cris Everett. “Damn! Everett’s dead. How about Venner?”
Annette, uncharacteristically shaken, knelt beside the body of Rick Venner. Hands crimson with Rick’s blood, Annette shook her head. “Losing too much blood to live, I’m afraid. There’s barely a pulse here.” With a flash of anger: “But he might die under a medic’s care if one of you big strong men can carry him.”
Adam Bloch picked up the all-but-lifeless body and staggered toward the doorway. “Clinic’s not far,” he grunted, “unless I get stopped on the way.” Annette and Pete traded headshakes, knowing that Bloch’s bravery had probably come too late.
Then Annette stooped to retrieve two objects that had fallen from Rick Venner’s left hand. She held them toward the others as evidence. “Two coins,” she mused. “One with heads on both sides, the other with tails on both sides.”
Bruce Carter sighed. “Once a scammer, always a scammer to the end. He palmed the one he didn’t want to flip.”
Ignoring her uncle’s body, Annette opened a desk drawer and brought forth a twin to the Gyrojet which had finished the Security Commissioner. “Look, we must rescue Sol now, before this anthill of goons is stirred up! If we can get Sol to the broadcast center, he can crack this thing wide open; his voice means more than anybody’s. If he winds up a casualty, we could have a civil war on our hands.”
Bruce stooped to pick up Mark Donald’s handgun. “I’m no Michener, but I’m with you.”
Pete frowned. “What’s a michener?”
“The Michener. A writer who walked into a no-man’s-land to help refugees.”
“I hope he didn’t shoot himself in the foot as you’re about to do,” Annette said wryly.
Bruce raised the gun barrel and by chance aimed it toward the one person who was still motionless in a chair. Ron Rich saw the barrel sweep toward him and moaned.
Deadpan, Bruce snarled, “I’ve always wanted to shoot a PR flack. Anybody have a better idea?”
“No, no, nonono,” Ron crooned in terror.
“Tear Evola’s clothing into strips and tie Rich up,” said Pete. “Don’t Worry, Rich, we aren’t like your pals.”
Moments later Kapitz, Annette, and Bruce Carter hurried out the door. An ashen-faced Ron Rich lay bound and gagged on the floor and considered the carnage he had helped create with his years of expert flummery.
Aftermath
“The Earth is the cradle of mankind, but one cannot live in the cradle forever.”
—Konstantin Tsiolkovsky
*
The security goon who kept Sol Ryan isolated in his quarters found himself even more isolated when he opened the door for Annette and found himself staring into several gun barrels. He put up no resistance. Neither did the guard at the broadcast center. After all, it was Doctor Solomon Ryan himself who strode into the broadcast booth surrounded by armed assistants.
Ryan spared himself nothing in the broadcast. Distraught, he laid his mistakes on the line. The LFC had degenerated into the biggest racket ever conceived. Ryan could offer no answers to the problems that lay exposed, and he said so. He admitted abject failure, calling himself a cat’s-paw and a deluded fool. He asked no mercy. He could, he said, only leave the project in the hands of more competent people.
Bruce Carter, who’d jotted notes to bring coherence to what he had to impart, spoke next. Bruce gave devastating and checkable proofs. He suggested an immediate meeting of heads of state in the Americas, Common Europe, and the Reunited Nations to face this emergency. He suggested immediate, worldwide prosecution of the Syndicate families on charges ranging from mail fraud to murder. It was with a supreme effort that he finished the broadcast with a lie, but Pete Kapitz had insisted.
“We do not need immediate assistance because the Syndicate leaders here were casualties,” he said. “But our own casualties included men we will sorely miss: Cris Everett; the jewel thief, Rocks Weil, who gave his life in our behalf; and finally, IABI agent Peter Kapitz, who is not expected to survive.”
Sol Ryan then ended the broadcast by promising further bulletins. If neither he nor Carter were party to those bulletins, he said, the world should expect more foul play.
Later they sat in Ryan’s office to review the situation and, if possible, to piece some of their mutual dream back together. It was into one of their dejected silences that Adam Bloch entered.
“Join the wake,” said Bruce, with a wave toward the liquor.
“Not for Venner, I hope,” said the teacher. “And why not? He earned it,” said Annette with heat.
“Because,” said Bloch, pouring a drink with jauntiness, “it looks like he’ll pull through.” He answered several exclamations with, “One slug missed his heart by an inch. Another was deflected by a rib, and a third shattered both bones in his forearm. He won’t be tossing coins for a while. It might’ve been better for him if he had died, once he goes Earthside again.”
“Who says he has to?” Pete shot back. “You could hide him up here. Hell, you could hide me. It’s been a long time since I saw much future in the policies of John Wilson,” he added in an aside to Bruce Carter.
“That’s why you wanted on the casualty list,” Bruce nodded. “Gave you time to make your choice, eh?”
“Right. Speaking of choices, why did the Arab Union choose to keep ponying up five billion a year to the LFC?”
Annette said, tiredness in her voice, “It didn’t go to the corporation, Pete. It went directly to Syndicate families, with no intermediaries.”
Sol Ryan, seemingly aged a full ten years, stared at her in total dejection. “I had no idea. I suppose I should’ve guessed.”
Adam Bloch found a chair—and a lecture topic. “It makes sense. It was to the Arab Union’s advantage to see the whole world enthusiastically plowing much of its resources into solar power stations. They’d probably been tipped off by consultants at New Kingston that effective solar power was not in the cards—not immediately, anyhow. Meanwhile, petroleum is still the mainstay and nobody kicks because it’s only “temporarily” expensive. No wonder the Arabs subsidized the LFC. To them, five billion is only a medium-sized kickback!”
Bruce nursed his drink and scowled. “I’m not sure that’s valid.”
“Sure it is,” Bloch said. “Look: where are all the appropriations for Earth-based alternative power schemes? I’ll give you a hundred dollars, Carter, if you can name one major country that’s still seriously engaged in hvdroelectrics, harnessing wind and tide, alcohol fuels, or any other major competitor to oil. The SPS funding has taken the lifeblood out of research in further developments of fission and fusion reactors, too. Everyone thought the SPSs would be beaming cheap power down soon. It was in the Arab Union’s interest to perpetuate that myth while selling their oil.”
To this, Bruce Carter could only shrug. He was spared further argument by the arrival of the two savants, Koplin and Suvorov. Within minutes, the hardened construction spacer, Freddy Davis, arrived as well. From his exchanges with
Bloch, it was clear that Freddy Davis was an active member of the WITH-AW-DOH club. Surprisingly, Davis seemed willing to help continue with the island’s work.
Davis was gleeful about Venner’s luck and toasted him. But Bruce Carter had trouble understanding the thief. “I wonder what motivated Rick Venner. He’s really Rocks Weil, of course. A lifelong criminal. His lining up with Moore made sense.”
Pete shook his head. “No, it didn’t. We weren’t a very good bet, but we were the best he had. It wasn’t enough that he’s an old pro thief. He’s not a member of the families. No matter how much he might have tried to ingratiate himself, sooner or later he would have become superfluous to them. Besides, from what little I’ve learned about Rocks Weil, over some years of trying to catch up with him, and the little I’ve seen of him since we came up here, he’s a pro of the old school, sometimes known as a gentleman thief. He’s not the sort to approve the deliberate killing of poor old Pavel Meer, nor anyone else for that matter. He’s no gunman; he proved that when he only nicked Al Moore with his first shot. He had to follow it up with another, and that gave Mark Donald his chance. And I rather doubt that Rocks Weil is the type of criminal who would willingly milk the poor by selling them shares in a dream he knows is false. His code might involve stealing a ten-carat diamond from some multi-millionaire, but not a hundred dollars from some schoolkid who’d saved his lunch money for a year to participate in the colonization of space.”
Annette said softly, “Well put, comrade.”
Pete’s eyes went to her. “Which brings you up, Sweetie. What was this Uncle Al stuff? I didn’t exactly expect you to swing into action on the side of the angels.”
“Moore was a distant relative. We’re highly interrelated in the families. For instance, Sol is a second cousin.”
She managed to dredge up a touch of self-deprecating humor. “Possibly I saw which side of my bread the butter was really on.”
“That wasn’t it,” Bruce Carter said softly, without looking at her.
“Maybe not,” she said, taking in the demolished Father of the Lagrange Five Project, Sol Ryan. “Possibly I started off with the dream myself and in my enthusiasm was willing to follow Sol to the ends of…space. And possibly it came to me, bit by bit, that he was being screwed flat.” She snorted cynically. “It’s one of the mistakes the families made when they started to expose their young to a different culture—to education, to selfless ideas. They came up, at least occasionally, with people like Sol Ryan.”
“And Annette Casey,” Bruce said softly.
“Thanks, comrade,” she told him, and didn’t go on with it.
It was then that the door banged open—it seemed a day for precipitate entry—and an indignant Mary Beth Houston barged in, eyes flashing, her fists going in a stereotype adolescent stance to her hips.
She glared at Sol Ryan, who couldn’t bring himself to even register her arrival.
“Right from the first I began to suspect somebody was pulling my leg,” she said with the indignation of the overly put-upon. “I knew I wasn’t being shown the real Island One. And now…now, that broadcast. Why…it’s all been a big joke.”
“Yeah,” Freddy Davis said, speaking for the first time since he had toasted Rick. “And very funny.”
“Well,” she flared. “It isn’t a joke and I’m not going to stand for it.”
In his time, Bruce Carter had often read of someone’s eyes flashing. As a writer himself, he had refrained from using the term. He had never seen eyes flash. Now he reversed himself on the point. He was witnessing flashing eyes.
Leonard Suvorov said, his Slavic voice heavily skeptical, “What are you going to do about it, my dear?”
“I’m going to take it up with the Friends of Lagrange Five! There’re millions of us and not only us, the Spacists, too. We’re not going to let a lot of crooks stop space colonization! You’ll see!”
“There are going to be a lot of people feeling that way,” Adam Bloch said, shaking his head.
Bruce looked at the indignant secretary of the Friends of Lagrange Five thoughtfully, then turned his eyes to Annette Casey, bypassing Sol Ryan who didn’t look as though he heard or cared what was going on.
The freelancer said, “What shape’s the Project in, right now?”
Annette scowled at him. “You mean financially? About the same as it’s always been, maybe a little worse. From the beginning, it’s been a hand-to-mouth affair. It’s always been a matter of issuing new blocks of stock, encouraging investment, getting donations, getting foundation awards. It was a matter of keeping the public enthusiastic, keeping them keyed up, keeping the dream alive. That’s why Ron Rich had to continually escalate the publicity. Success always had to seem right around the corner. Everything was going fine. Now was the time to invest.”
Mary Beth, who had finally sunk into a chair through sheer emotional exhaustion, snapped, “Don’t we know it? Why, down Earthside, we’re shown Tri-Di shows of beaches and lakes and boats having races and all. And orchards of trees all heavy with fruit and.…” She temporarily ran out of indignant breath.
Bruce said, “That should have been a clue for me. Those ultra-pro publicity shots were taken in Saudi Arabia in a mock-up of what Island One was supposed to look like. I should have known then that the Arab Union was a partner in the scam.” He turned his eyes to Rudi Koplin. “In what shape is the Project—given your viewpoint?”
The chubby scientist shrugged hugely. “Time, time. It is a matter of time. All this rush, rush, is impossible. Now we are destroyed. But if we had time…one by one, we solve the problems, eh?”
All present, save Sol Ryan, were now watching Bruce Carter, wondering what he was driving at.
He turned his attention to Freddy Davis, the veteran construction engineer. “If you were in control, what would you do?”
The old-timer snorted at the idea of him being in control, but said, “Most of the basic work’s been done. At fantastic expense, of course, but it’s done. A lot of things, such as the smelting facility and the mass driver on Luna, and the Catcher out in Luna orbit, aren’t working yet, but the plant is largely finished. If it was up to me, I’d send back to Earth at least half of the jokers up here. All the so-called colonists who aren’t actually needed on the job, most of the wives, all the old folks, all the kids. And everybody else who isn’t directly involved in the building of Island One itself.” He shot a look over at Adam Bloch. “Such as teachers.”
“Go on,” Bruce said, as Bloch’s face reddened.
“I’d cut out all the classy horse shit,” said Davis. “Things like this Vegas-type hotel. I’d stop the junkets of VIPs. I’d eliminate such parasites as security goons. I’d stop shipping up fancy grub, guzzle, and clothes for the big shots. Particularly, I’d immediately let everybody who wanted to, go back. If you’ve lost the dream, you’re a lousy worker anyway.”
Pete Kapitz said, “You’d shortly wind up with nobody up here at all.”
The aging construction worker received that negatively. “The hell we would; I’d stay, for instance. It’s a challenge. I think we had more morale, more enthusiasm among the actual workers, including technicians and engineers, back when it was really tough, when we were working out of the Construction Shack, or out of bubble shelters on Luna. Just so you don’t give us this Ron Rich bullshit that Island One is an almost-completed paradise. We’ll eat dehydrated food if we have to, but just don’t give us that crud about fruit dropping off the trees. And don’t feed us any lies about twenty thousand dollars a year bonus. It didn’t take most of us very long to figure out we weren’t ever going to get that bonus. Give us a clear-cut contract and pay us off monthly; the whole amount. If we want to blow the whole thing on guzzle and other luxuries, wizard. We know luxuries are going to be expensive up here, but don’t put us in a position like we’ve had where we watch you big-shots living like gods while we’re brewing jungle juice.”
“Wizard,” Bruce said. “You think that by shipping about
half of the present population back and clearing up some of the mess, you’d still have a valid, working personnel and could continue?”
Davis said sourly, “I’d think so. And at this stage in the game of trial-and-error experimentation, I’d think a couple thousand really dedicated workers would be all we needed.”
They sat and thought for long moments, probably in as many different directions as there were persons present.
Bruce said finally, “Okay. Mary Beth seems to be of the opinion that L5 supporters Earthside can still be rallied around. Possibly she’s right. Al Moore pointed out earlier that the Crusades were one of the biggest operations the world ever embarked upon. They took place over at least two centuries and, in spite of failure after failure, the believers kept coming back. It would seem that man has both resiliency and stubbornness. And Mr. Davis tells us that the basic work has already been done. Given a more realistic approach, the job could go on, at considerably less expense than before.”
The freelancer turned his attention to Koplin, the Polish scientist. “And Professor Koplin thinks that given time, the problems confronting the Project could be solved.”
Koplin grunted agreement.
Bruce now took in Leonard Suvorov. “However, the very basic brick wall still confronts us. Space colonization is simply not practical unless we can achieve a closed ecosystem. Space platforms, such as the Goddard, Earth-supplied and with up to a hundred personnel, yes, but not space cities. And, from what I understand, the science of ecology has not yet reached the point where a closed ecosystem is possible. We simply don’t know enough about bionomics to create one. So the Lagrange Five Project might as well be allowed to go down the drain, without further blood, sweat, and tears, not to speak of wealth.”
The Russian stirred and, as though almost regretfully, demurred. He said slowly, feeling his way along, “I have not said that obtaining a self-sustaining biosphere was impossible. However, along with my colleague, Rudi, I demand time. Given time, yes, such a system will eventually be achieved. It has been pointed out by various biologists that at the present we do not entirely understand the self-sustaining biosphere on Earth, not to speak of creating one in a space colony. However, possibly we do not need complete understanding to achieve one. Down through the ages, man has utilized elements in nature which he did not completely understand. The first telegraphs were in wide use before we had scratched the surface of our understanding of electricity.”
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