“True,” Father Marco agreed, “but this man had no reason for loyalty to our little band—and every reason for loyalty to the government, and its Solar Patrol.”
“If you can call blind faith ‘reason,’ ” Whitey grunted. “But I guess you would. Father.”
“Sir!” Father Marco stiffened. “I'll remind you that I'm an engineer as well as a priest! . . . But I am able to look at the situation from his viewpoint.”
A gleam came into Whitey's eyes. “Well, then—why not let him see things from our viewpoint? The one we had an hour ago.”
“You wouldn't!” The miner blanched.
“Oh, don't worry.” Whitey's lip curled. “They'll pick you up way before your supplies run out. What's he got on his claim, Fess?”
“A bubble-cabin ten feet down inside the asteroid,” the computer replied, “with complete life-support systems and a month's rations.”
“With a two-way radio?”
“No; he had mine, and didn't see the need for the expense. I do, however, have a spare emergency beacon.”
“Perfect!” Whitey grinned. “He can call for help, but he can't rat on us. Oh, don't give me that terrified look, you old crawler! The patrol'll have you safe in Ceres City inside of a week!”
“Will that give us enough of a start?” Lona growled.
Whitey's lips pressed into a thin line. “It'll have to.”
“Come back here, consarn you!” The voice echoed tinnily from the console's grid. “Come back here with my burro-boat, you blasted pirates! I'll have the law on you!”
“Damn!” Whitey snapped his fingers into a fist. “I should've made him sign a bill of sale! Now he'll have the Patrol hunting us down for piracy, on top of everything else.”
Dar shrugged. “What does it matter? They'll chase us anyway, as soon as they pick him up and he tells them his story.”
“I know, I know. But this'll give 'em a legal pretext for holding us.”
“I think not,” Fess demurred. “Since the transaction was a verbal contract, I recorded it as standard operating procedure.”
Whitey's scowl dissolved into a grin. “Old Iron, I think you may have your uses.”
“A lot of them; he wasn't really designed to pilot a boat, or even just to compute,” said Lona. “He was designed as the brain of a humanoid robot.”
“True, but my motor functions are adaptable to almost any sort of mechanical body,” Fess explained. “I'm really quite generalized.”
“And, therefore, versatile,” Whitey concluded. “Well, what we need you to do most, just now, is to get us to Luna undetected.”
“Why Luna?” Dar frowned. “We want to get to Terra.”
“They don't allow spacers to land there,” Sam explained. “Population's too dense; too much chance of a minor accident killing thousands of people. Spacers have to land on the moon, and take a shuttle down to Earth.”
“Besides, we're running a little high on notoriety at the moment,” Whitey added. “We need some sort of cover to let us travel—and I have a few friends on Luna.”
Dar shrugged. “Why not? You have friends everywhere.”
“Since you wish to avoid attention,” Fess suggested, “it might be best if we wait for a large vessel to pass near, and match orbits, staying as close to it as possible, so that we're inside its sensor-range, and blend into its silhouette on any Patrol ship's screens.”
Dar frowned. “Isn't that a little chancy?”
“Not for the two of us.” Lona patted the console.
Dar felt a hot stab of jealousy. “What do you think that circuit-stack is—the boy next door?”
Lona gave him a look veiled by long lashes above a cat-smile. “Why not?” She turned to the console grid. “Where'd you grow up, electron-pusher?”
“I was manufactured on Maxima.”
“Not exactly my home territory.” Lona's eyes gleamed. “But I've heard of it. All they do there is make computers and robots, right?”
“That is their sole industry, yes. Their sole occupation of any sort, in fact.”
“Sloggers,” the girl translated. “A bunch of technological monks. They don't care anything about creature comforts; all they want to do is build robots.”
“Not quite true,” Fess corrected. “The few humans on Maxima have every conceivable luxury known—including a few unknown anywhere else, which they invented themselves. In fact, they live like kings.”
“Oh, really!” Lona smiled, amused. “When're they planning to join the aristocracy?”
“Some have already begun buying patents of nobility from the Terran College of Heralds.”
Lona lost her smile. “That takes real money! Where do they get it from?”
“From the sale of computers and robots.” The computer added modestly, “Their products are already acknowledged to be the finest in any of the human-occupied worlds.”
“So they sell for a small fortune each, of course. But the biggest luxury of all is servants—which they can't have, if there're only a few humans.”
“True,” Fess admitted, “but there are three robots to every human, on the average. They do not lack for servitors.”
“Sounds like a great life,” Whitey sighed, “if you don't mind settling down.”
“And don't mind being stuck out in the middle of nowhere,” Sam added.
“The planetoid is rather bleak,” Fess admitted.
“ ‘Planetoid'?” Lona frowned. “I thought Maxima was a world.”
“It would be counted a small moon if it orbited a planet,” Fess demurred. “But since it is located in Sinus's asteroid belt, it can only be counted as one of the larger of those asteroids.”
Whitey frowned. “No atmosphere.”
“No trees or grass,” mused Sam.
“Only rocks and dust,” murmured Dar.
“Only eight point seven light-years from Terra!” caroled Lona.
Dar stared. “You like the sound of the place?”
“It's practically heaven!” Lona squealed. “Nothing to do but design and build computers, laze around luxury, and hop around the corner to the fleshpots of Terra for the weekend! Where do I sign up?”
“Immigration is completely open,” Fess said slowly, “but very few people choose to go there. It would be miserable for anyone who was poor—and only excellent cyberneticists can make money.”
“I'll take it!” Lona crowed. “How do I get there?”
“That,” Fess agreed, “is the rub. They will accept you—if you can get there.”
“Grandpa!” Lona whirled around to Whitey. “Got a few royalty checks coming in?”
Whitey shrugged. “You can have the burro-boat when we're done with it, sweetheart—but first there's a little matter of saving democracy.”
“Well, let's get it over with!” Lona whirled back to the console. “I want to get on with the really important things! Found a big liner yet, electro-eyes?”
“I have been tracking the SASE San Martin while we have been conversing,” Fess answered. “It approaches above the plane of the ecliptic, inbound from Ganymede, and will pass us only one hundred thirty-seven kilometers away.”
“Then let's go!” Lona grabbed her webbing and stretched it across her. “Web in, everybody!”
A chorus of clicks answered her. She grinned down at her console, then frowned at a blinking red light and looked back over her shoulder at Father Marco. “Look, Father, I know you trust in St. Christopher, and all that—but would you please buckle in?”
The monolith of a liner hurtled into eternal morning, its aft hull lost in the total black shadow of its bulging bridge. A tiny speck danced up to it from the asteroid belt, glinting in the sunlight. It swooped up to disappear in shadow under the monster's belly, where it clung like a pilot fish to a shark by the bulldog magnetic fields of the solenoids in its nose.
Inside, Dar asked, “Couldn't they spot us by the magnetic fields on their hull?”
“They could.” Lona shrugged. “But why wo
uld they look for them?” She switched off the engines.
“It doesn't quite seem ethical,” Father Marco mused, “hitching a free ride this way.”
“Don't let it worry you, Father,” Whitey assured him. “I own stock in this shipline.”
10
The SASE San Martin drifted down toward its berth in the Mare Serenitatis. As it passed over Darkside, a mite dropped off its belly, falling toward the surface at no higher acceleration than lunar gravity could account for. No glint of light reflected from it to any watching eye in the shadows; and if anyone thought to glance at it on a sensor screen, they would surely think it nothing but another meteorite caught by the moon's gravity, coming to add one more crater to the ancient, pockmarked satellite.
It fell almost to the surface, so low that it was beneath the sensor-nets, and barreled over the jagged landscape.
Inside the cabin, Lona asked. “Is this what you'd call a ‘stress situation'?”
“Not at all,” Fess assured her. “It is simply a matter of adjusting our trajectory with the attitude jets, according to the irregularities in the landscape indicated by the sensors. At this low a speed, I always have several milliseconds to react.”
“Piece of cake, huh? I think you'd better keep the con for this one.”
“As mademoiselle wishes,” Fess murmured.
He finally brought them to rest when the glittering lights of a spaceport appeared over the horizon. The burro-boat sank to the dust in the shadow of a huge crag, with the weary, thankful groan of engines idling down.
“I detected an airlock hatch in this outcrop,” Fess informed them. “There is an electronics kit in the cabinet below the console; can any of you bypass the telltale on the hatchway, so that Spaceport Security will not know the lock has been opened?”
“Duck soup,” Lona affirmed, “the instant kind. Where'll you be while we're gone?”
“In the shadow of a ring-wall, in a remote crater,” Fess answered. “I will move as the shadows move. Next to the electronics kit, you will find a small transmitter of convenient size for a pocket. Press the button on it, and it will send a coded pulse to me. When I receive it, I will determine your location from its vector and amplitude, and bring the boat to you.”
Lona opened the cabinet, pulled out the electronics kit, and flipped the recall unit to Whitey. He caught it and slipped it into a pocket inside his belt. “What's its range?”
“A thousand kilometers,” Fess answered. “If you call from Serenitatis Spaceport, I will hear you.”
“How about if we have to call you from Terra?”
“You will have to feed the signal through a stronger transmitter.”
“We can't ask for a complete guarantee.” Father Marco rose and turned toward the companion way. “I think I can remember where I left my pressure suit.”
“There are ten air bottles in the locker with them,” Fess noted.
“Well, thanks for all the help.” Lona shooed the rest of the crew aft. “If anyone knocks while we're gone. . . .”
“I will not let them in,” Fess assured her.
The airlock hatch had a panel with a button inset beside it. Lona pulled out a screwdriver, tightened in the appropriate blade, and set it into the screw. It whined twice, and she lifted the panel away, handing it to Dar. Dar watched her clip a couple of leads in.
Above them, a twelve-foot parabolic dish moaned as it rotated a few degrees, and stopped.
Lona leaped back as though she'd been stabbed. Dar didn't blame her; it was all he could do to keep from dropping the plate. He wished he had; then he couldn't have heard the antenna's moan, since the sound conducted into his suit through the wires holding the plate.
Whitey leaned over, touching his helmet against Lona's. After a minute, she nodded, then stepped grimly back to the airlock. She took the plate from Dar and replaced it. Then she pressed the button, and the hatch slowly swung open. She gestured to Dar, and he stepped in. The others followed, Lona last. Whitey pressed a plate in the wall, and the hatch swung shut. Dar waited, fidgeting. Finally, the inner hatch opened. He stepped through into darkness, cracked his helmet seal, and tilted it back. He turned as a glow-light lit in Whitey's hand, saw Lona tilting her helmet back as Father Marco closed the airlock.
“What're we gonna do about the bypass?” Dar asked.
“Leave it there.” Lona shrugged. “Can't be helped.”
“Security patrols all the locks regularly,” supplied Sam the bureaucrat. “They'll find it within a few days.”
“Not exactly what I'd call a cheery thought, but it lightens the conscience. What'd you do to make that microwave dish swing around, Lona?”
“Nothing,” Whitey answered. “That dish was beaming commercial 3DT programming down to the Terran satellites. When it gets done feeding its schedule to one satellite, it rotates to lock onto another one, and starts the whole feed all over again.”
“3DT?” Dar frowned. “Why do they feed it from the moon?”
“Because that's where they make the programs, innocent!” Sam snorted.
Whitey nodded. “It takes a lot of room for enough 3DT sound stages to make new programming for a hundred twenty channels each, for twenty-six main cultures—and they have to make new stuff constantly. There just wasn't enough room for it in the major cities. So, bit by bit, the production companies shifted up here to Luna, where real estate was very cheap. The whole entertainment industry for the entire I.D.E. is in the moon now.”
“Some say it belonged there all along, anyway,” Lona muttered.
“Oh.” Dar mulled it over. “So your publisher's offices are up here, too?”
“No, the print industry stayed Earthbound.”
“Oh.” Dar looked around at the rough-hewn tunnel walls scored with the screw-tracks of a laser-borer. “Well, not much we can do here, is there? I suppose our next step is to hop a shuttle to Terra.”
“Wrong.” Whitey shook his head. “That asteroid miner has probably sung the Solar Patrol a whole opera by now. Every security guard on the moon will have memorized little sketches of us. We've got to establish some kind of cover identities first, not to mention something by way of disguises.”
Dar felt his stomach sink. “I should've known it couldn't be something straightforward and simple.”
“Not on Terra,” Sam agreed, “and the moon's just as bad.” She turned to Whitey. “What kind of cover did you have in mind?”
“I didn't.” Whitey started climbing out of his gear. “I recommend we rack these suits and find some place to hole up while we think about it.”
Whitey had indeed emptied out his purse for the old miner—but he had another one hidden inside his belt. A brief stop at a department store turned up a coiffured wig and translucent dress for Sam, some hair dye and baggy tunic-and-trousers for Lona, some more hair dye and business outfits for the men. A somewhat longer stop at a comfort station produced remarkable changes in their appearance.
Whitey lined them up in the hallway, looked them over, and nodded. “You'll do. Just barely, maybe, but you'll do. Now, the odds are that your prints are on file somewhere—oh, you're sure of it, Dar? Well, the rest of you don't take chances, either. Don't put your thumbprint to anything. Don't look into anything that might want to scan your retinas, either—no peekholes in amusement galleries, eyepiece 3DT viewers, or lens-fitting scopes. Understand? Good. Because you're in the Big Sapphire's computer net now, folks, and every step you take is liable to monitoring by a computer tied into Terra Central.”
“Is it really that bad?” Dar asked.
“Worse,” Sam confirmed.
Whitey nodded again. “Have no illusions, folks. Our chances of getting away free, back to the colony planets, are slightly worse than a dinosaur's caught in a glacier. I can only hope the gamble's worth the share-time. Okay—from now on, we're a free-lance production crew, looking for work. Anything I say about you, just confirm it, and don't look surprised. That includes your names; I'll be thinking up new on
es for you as we go along. Ready? March!”
The “march” took them to a twenty-foot-high facade sheared out of the lunar rock, decorated with the modest gleam that comes of vast wealth, and the words “Occidental Productions, Inc.” carved over the doorway and sheathed in platinum.
“This's just the production house,” Whitey explained. “Manufactures most of the entertainment for one of the anglophone channels.”
As they passed through the door, Dar found himself somehow totally certain that each person's height, weight, build, and coloring was registering in a computer somewhere deep inside the complex, which was trying to correlate it with the descriptions of all known criminals who might have a grudge against OCI. It was almost enough to make him turn right around and try to hijack the next outgoing spacer.
That didn't quite do it, but the foyer nearly did. Oh, the carpet was thick and the decoration superb; that wasn't the problem. It was the three uniformed guards, two androids, and five cameras, every one of which seemed to be looking directly at him. He stopped in his tracks, swallowing something that he hoped wasn't his heart.
But Whitey strolled ahead, confident and nonchalant, looking totally like your ordinary, everyday plutocrat.
“Service, citizen?” the lead guard asked with perfect, impersonal politeness.
“Gratitude, citizen. Mr. Tambourin, to see Mr. Stroganoff.”
“Do you have an appoi . . .” the guard began, out of habit. But he closed his mouth, and gazed up at Whitey for a moment. Then he said, “Of course, Mr. Tambourin.” He turned to murmur into a shielded com unit, waited, then murmured again. A delighted yelp sounded faintly from the unit. The guard listened, nodded, and turned back to Whitey. “He will be up in a few minutes, Mr. Tambourin. I regret the delay, but . . .”
“Of course.” Whitey smiled indulgently. “He didn't know I was coming—but then, neither did I. Old friends, you understand.”
“Perfectly.” The guard was a good liar, anyway. “If you'll step into the lobby, Mr. Tambourin . . . ?”
Whitey smiled with a gracious, affable nod, and turned back to the “team.”
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