Escape Velocity

by Christopher Stasheff

  “To us,” said the captain, “it's vital. But what brings you to Falstaff, gentlefolk?”

  “ ‘Falstaff'?” Dar frowned, puzzled.

  “It's the local name for Haldane IV,” Sam explained. “Just here to make a connection, Captain. We're inbound from Wolmar.”

  The captain still sat comfortably leaning back, fingers laced across his butterbelly, but suddenly he was all vigilance. “Wolmar? Really! How interesting. By the way, could I see your papers?”

  “Hm? Oh, sure!” Dar slid his passport and ID out of his jacket pocket and laid them on the desk; Sam followed suit. “Sorry; we should have thought of that right off.”

  “Well, you were a little flustered.” The captain picked up their passports and suddenly, illogically, Dar had the insane conviction that the captain had a jewler's loupe in his eye.

  “Everything in order—of course.” The last part lacked conviction. The captain slid their papers back to them. “We don't get many coming from Wolmar.”

  “The traffic does seem to run the other way,” Dar agreed. “But our pharmaceutical materials company's getting itchy to expand, and we're heading back to the inner planets to sound out possible investors.” Sam twitched; Dar reflected that he really should have told her about the cover story he was dreaming up.

  “Didn't realize it was getting to be that big a business.” The captain seemed genuinely interested.

  Dar grinned. “It may not be—but we're sure going to find out. By the way, I was mightily relieved when you noticed our boat so quickly. Were you on the lookout for us?”

  “No, not particularly.” The captain frowned. “Should we have been?”

  Dar sat still for a moment, letting the shock wash through him.

  “Well,” he said carefully, “I would've thought our courier ship would've told you we were missing.”

  “That is strange, now that you mention it.” The captain scratched his head, then looked up. “Maybe the pilot didn't notice you'd abandoned ship.”

  “Uh . . . could be.” Dar thought of how much of a lurch the lifeboat must've given the courier ship when it blasted free. “Of course—now that I think about it, that must be it. After all, how could the pilot have noticed we were gone?”

  “How couldn't he've noticed?” Dar raged. “When that lifeboat blasted free, it must've kicked the ship like a foundation anomaly!”

  “Maybe he thought it was a blaster bolt,” Sam offered. “It was a little hectic just then.”

  “And he wouldn't've checked the passengers when the action was over?” Dar shook his head. “No. It washes about as well as baked-on grease.”

  They were strolling through the downtown section of Haskerville, the capital of Falstaff. The street was wide, but all the buildings had a second story that projected out over the sidewalk—convenient in rainy weather, Dar was sure, but a little depressing on a sunny day. Also, it was a little strange that all the buildings were half-timbered and stuccoed.

  “Well, it's a frontier planet, I guess,” he said aloud.

  “Not really—it's a third of the way back to Terra, and it's been colonized for four hundred years. What makes you think so?”

  “The architecture.” Dar pointed to the wooden beams. “Don't they know how to make steel?”

  “Oh, they know how, well enough.” Sam smiled. “I asked about it on my way out here. Seems there's very little free metal on Falstaff. Even the iron's all locked up in rust, in the soil.”

  “Oh.” Dar pursed his lips. “So what do I use for money here—nails?”

  Sam started, surprised. “How'd you guess?”

  “You're kidding!”

  “Think so, do you? Well, just try to pay for something with an I.D.E. BTU credit here.”

  “I'll take your word for it.” Dar stopped by a storefront, looking up at the sign. “I think this is the place we're looking for. Maybe they do money-changing here.”

  “Makes sense,” Sam agreed, “so probably they don't.”

  They went into the ticket office of Outworld Interstellar Starship Enterprises, Unltd.

  “Help you?” the clerk grunted around his sausage, his eyes on the newsfax. He was grossly fat, and jowly, like all the Falstavians they'd seen. In fact, Dar was beginning to feel like a freak—he was slim.

  “Uh, yeah. We'd like to book passage to Terra.”

  “Sure thing.” The man pulled out two tickets without even looking. “That'll be two hundred pounds. Next ship lifts at fourteen hundred hours, May third.”

  Dar froze with his hand on his wallet. “May third!? But it's only April fifth!”

  “Too bad, isn't it?” the clerk commiserated. “You just missed the last boat—two days ago.”

  “But we can't wait! We've got to get to Terra fast!”

  The clerk shrugged. “I just sell the tickets, buddy—I don't schedule the ships. Y' want 'em, or not?”

  “Uh, not just yet, thanks.” Dar turned to Sam, looking helpless.

  “Do you change money here?” she said briskly.

  The clerk looked up. “Money? Yeah, sure! Whacha got?”

  “I.D.E. therms—ten of them,” Sam said with a meaningful stare at Dar.

  “Oh.” The clerk seemed disappointed. “Well, we'll take anything, I guess. Put 'em up here.” He pulled out a small cloth sack and set it on the counter; it clanked.

  Dar paused with his cash halfway to the counter “What's that?”

  “Money,” the clerk looked up, frowning. “For ten I.D.E. therms, you get two pounds.”

  “Two pounds?” Dar bleated, aghast. “You must think your pound's worth an awful lot!”

  “A pound of ten-penny nails?” The clerk eyed Dar as if doubting his sanity. “Buddy, around here, that's worth a hell of a lot!”

  “Oh.” Dar glanced at Sam out of the corner of his eye; she nodded. He sighed and laid his bills down on the counter “Okay, here you are. Say, uh—is there any connection to Terra sooner than next month?”

  “Well, if y' really wanna know . . .” The clerk leaned forward confidentially. “I got this buddy, see, an' he's got an inside track on this nice, used space yacht. . . .”

  “Uh, thanks anyway.” Dar took a step back. “I, uh, haven't done all that much piloting lately.”

  Sam bit the inside of her cheek.

  “Oh.” The clerk leaned back with a look of disgust. “No high-grade, huh? Well, suit yourself.” He turned back to the newsfax.

  “Uh, yeah.” Dar scooped up the moneybag. “We'll, uh, get back to you.”

  “You an' what miner?” But the clerk lifted an affable hand anyway. “Good luck, chum.”

  “Well, he tried to sound friendly, I suppose,” Dar said as they came out of the office.

  “Not really. Around here, ‘chum' doesn't mean ‘friend'—it means ‘fishbait.' The garbage kind.”

  “Oh.” Dar frowned. “What was all that stuff about ‘high-grade'? And why would we come back with a miner?”

  “The kind who digs up ore,” Sam explained. “High-grade ore.”

  Dar glanced at her, but she wasn't smiling. He shrugged. “Really serious about this iron thing, aren't they?”

  A ground car went past, hissing steam from its turbine. The body was wooden; the boltheads were plastic.

  “Very,” Sam agreed.

  Dar's head swiveled, tracking the ground car. “What do they make the engine out of?”

  “A very high-temperature plastic,” Sam answered. “But I understand they're short on radios.”

  Dar turned back to her, frowning. “That does require metal, doesn't it? But how does the newsfax work?”

  “Optical-fiber cables; they've got no shortage of silicon. And it can print by heat-transfer.”

  Dar shook his head, flabbergasted. “Well, at least they don't have traffic jams.”

  “Sausage, sir?” inquired a rotund pushcart proprietor.

  Dar stopped, suddenly realizing that darn near every passerby had a sausage in his mouth, chewing placidly. “
Well, I guess I shouldn't look out of place. Yeah, we'll take two.” He fished in his moneybag, and brought out . . .

  . . . a large nail.

  He looked up at Sam, horrified.

  She frowned, and nodded toward the peddler, who was holding out two sausages on a scrap of plastic. Dar stared from her to the hotdogs and back. Then he shrugged, took the sausages, and dropped the spike in the peddler's palm. He turned away, with two three-penny nails and a brad for change. “What do they do around here when the Revenue Service comes calling?”

  “They pay their tacks, like honest citizens. What's the matter? Culture shock?”

  Dar shook his head. “Couldn't be; I can't find the conductor.”

  “Around here,” Sam said slowly, “I think that's some kind of political office. You need a drink.”

  “Good idea.” Dar nodded numbly. “I used to favor a cocktail called a ‘rusty nail.’ ”

  “On this planet, that's an obscenity.” Sam steered him through a swinging door. “I think you'd better have an old-fashioned.”

  “I think I already have,” Dar muttered.

  The tavern was dim, in the best tradition of alcohol stations. They stepped up to the bar.

  “Orderzh? Orderzh?” the bartender slurred, blinking.

  “Uh, an old-fashioned and a martinus.” Sam seemed fascinated by the blinking.

  “Two bitsh.” The bartender pushed buttons.

  Dar laid down a ten-penny nail.

  “Two from a ten-pin,” the bartender muttered. Its hand sucked up the nail; a door in its chest slid open, and ejected two glasses of clear liquid and one glass of amber. It rolled away down the bar to the next customer, leaving two flat-head screws and a drill behind it.

  “I'd count your change, if I were you,” the patron two stools down advised. He wore a dark brown robe belted with a length of coaxial cable; the crown of his head was shaved in a neat circle. The yellow handle of a small screwdriver peeked from his breast pocket. “That bartender isn't too reliable today.”

  “I thought his lights weren't blinking in the right pattern!” Sam said triumphantly. “What's the matter with him?”

  “You'd have to say he's drunk, I suppose,” the shave-pate answered. “You see, the tavernkeeper couldn't afford wire for his conductors, so he had to use tubes of saline solution. Well, that means the bartender has to have a little fluid added every morning, and it seems someone spiced his morning pickup with metallic salts today. That increased conductivity, of course, and threw all his circuits off.”

  “Which is why I got two when I only ordered one. Oh, well.” Sam shrugged and took a sip. “I should gripe?”

  “Sounds like an expensive prank, for this neck of the woods,” Dar commented.

  “No, not really. It's free metal that's in short supply on Falstaff. Compounds are plentiful.”

  “You seem to know quite a bit about it.” Dar held up his glass and peered through it warily. “From your clothing, I would've thought you were a friar—but you talk like an engineer.”

  “I'm both, really.” The stranger grinned and held out a hand. “Father Marco Ricci, O.S.V., at your service.”

  “Dar Mandra.” Dar shook his hand. “And this is Sam Bine. What's ‘O.S.V.'?”

  “The ‘Order of Saint Vidicon of Cathode,’ ” the friar answered. “We're a society of Roman Catholic engineers and scientists.”

  “Oh, yeah. I should have recognized it. The chaplain on our transport was one of your boys.”

  “They frequently are.” Father Marco nodded. “The Church tends to assign Cathodeans who specialize in astronautics to such jobs—it's one more protection in case of a malfunction.”

  “Yeah, makes sense.” Dar nodded, and his training in Cholly's bar took over. “If you'll pardon me, though—isn't that something of a paradox?”

  “What, having a priest who's a scientist? Not really. Any conflict between science and religion is simply the result of clergy who don't understand science, and scientists who don't understand religion.”

  “Wouldn't a scientist-religious tend to be a bit skeptical about both?”

  “Indeed he would.” The priest grinned. “The Vatican's habitually annoyed with us—we tend to keep asking new questions.”

  “Then, why do they let you keep going?”

  “Because they need us.” Father Marco shrugged. “Even the Vatican has plumbing.”

  “Well, I can see that.” Dar sipped. “But why would the church ever declare a maverick like one of you a saint?”

  “Oh, you're thinking of our founder.” Father Marco nodded. “Well, they hadn't much choice, there. It was very clearly a case of martyrdom.”

  “That gives you quite a record to live up to,” Sam noted.

  “Oh, we don't plan to be martyrs,” Father Marco assured them, “and I'm sure our founder would approve. After all, he was the practical sort—and a live priest can usually accomplish far more than a dead one.”

  Dar wondered about the “usually.”

  “Well, we have a bit of a practical problem ourselves, at the moment, Father—and you seem to be familiar with the planet.”

  “But not native—as I'm sure you could tell by my size.” Father Marco was only a little on the stout side.

  “Yes, and that's our problem—we're not native, and we would like to get on with our trip.”

  “And the last freighter left orbit a few days ago.” Father Marco nodded. “Well, I'm afraid there's not much you can do just now—especially with the I.D.E. police sealing off the planet.”

  “Doing what?”

  “Sealing off the planet,” Father Marco said mildly. “You hadn't heard? It was on the newsfax just a few minutes ago. The Interstels had a reliable tip that a telepath came in on the last ship, so they've forbidden anyone to leave the planet while they search for him.”

  “Well,” Sam said slowly, “that does kind of delay us, doesn't it?”

  Dar frowned. “What's this telepath done?”

  Father Marco shrugged. “Nothing, so far as I know. At least, nothing was said about it.”

  “Then, why are they searching for him?”

  “You don't know?” Father Marco asked in mild surprise. “Why, telepaths are a menace to everything any right-thinking citizen holds sacred—haven't you heard?”

  “Something of the sort, yes,” Sam admitted. “We didn't know it was exactly a widely held belief.”

  “Oh, it's been all the rage for at least a month! Telepaths invade other people's privacy, you see—you can never tell when one might be reading your mind. You could make laws against that, but there'd be no way to enforce them—unless you had telepathic police; and if you did, they'd probably side with their fellows. Those telepaths stick together, you know.”

  “No, I didn't,” said Dar. “In fact, I didn't know there were any—well, almost.” He remembered the Wolman shaman.

  “Ah, you see?” Father Marco wagged a forefinger at him. “You've known at least one person who always seemed to know what you were thinking. So has everyone, of course.”

  “Of course! Who doesn't have someone who knows them really well?”

  “It could be that,” the priest said judiciously. “But when that person always seems to be one jump ahead of you—well, you naturally tend to wonder. Because telepaths use what you're thinking against you, you see—they have an unfair advantage in the competition of life. They always know what you're going to do, so they always know how to head you off.”

  “That's horrible!”

  “Isn't it just? But it gets worse. The I.D.E. police are reasonably sure that telepaths all over the Terran Sphere are getting in touch with one another, forming a society of their own, conspiring to overthrow the government and take over.”

  “But how?” Sam frowned. “Couldn't the police intercept their messages?”

  “Intercept a message from one mind reader to another? Hardly. Besides, rumor has it that these telepaths don't even need to get on a starship to get a message
from one planet to another.”

  “What?”

  “That's the word.” Father Marco nodded. “Their thoughts travel from star to star almost instantaneously. You can see that would give their conspiracy a bit of an advantage over the forces of society.”

  “Yes, I certainly can.” Dar leaned a little closer and lowered his voice. “And do I gather from your tone, Father, that you don't quite believe all this?”

  Father Marco leaned over. “Frankly, I think it's the biggest pot of rotten incense I've ever smelled!”

  “What I can't figure out,” Sam put in, “is why people would get so worked up about something that probably doesn't even exist.”

  “Well, it's been known to happen before,” Father Marco said judiciously. “Mass hysteria is never that far beneath the skin, I suppose. A human being is a thinking animal, but crowds don't seem to be. So I suppose it's just as well that the police are taking action, even though they're probably acting only on the strength of a rumor.”

  “Rumor?” Dar frowned. “How so?”

  “Tips are usually hearsay, I gather. Nonetheless, better to act on a rumor than to risk a riot.”

  “Riot?” Sam protested. “You've got to be joking.”

  “Unfortunately, I'm not. If the people didn't know the authorities were on the lookout, they might try to do something on their own—then all it'd take would be one whisper that so-and-so was a telepath, and you'd have a full-scale witch-hunt to deal with. No, it's better that . . .”

  “Do you mind?”

  A portly gentleman had huffed up from a nearby table.

  “Am I in your way?” Father Marco said politely.

  “No, but you're upsetting my party quite a bit! If you must insist on discussing politics, would you please have the courtesy to do it in your own quarters? It's in frightfully poor taste, and it's ruining my digestion!”

  “Oh!” Dar exchanged a look with Father Marco. “My apologies, citizen. Of course, if we're offending . . .”

  “You'll keep right on!” A skinny hand clapped Dar's shoulder like a pincers. “Ay, give offense! Bother the lazy hogs out of their trough! Goad them into doing something—into living, for Lord's sake!” He was a short, lean, aging man, who looked to be as hard as a meteorite and as merry as a comet. And next to him . . .