by John Burke
Well, what, the hell; I wasn’t ever going to be given the chance. Not now. It was over. Too big an expenditure for too uncertain a dividend: that’s how they looked at exploration. The only progress the big combines understood was the progress of a profit curve on a graph.
“So maybe I go broke”—it was Joe, working himself up into a salesman’s frenzy—“does it matter? Compared with what you did, Captain? Look, I want you to have those engines. I want it. Call it stupid sentiment. I mean, would I cheat you?”
“Of course.”
Caught off balance, he spluttered: “Well, so I might, maybe. I mean, I’m not on the Moon for my health. But... no, not this time, Captain. Not this time. Five thousand I’ll take. Not a Moon cent more. Five thousand an engine.”
That was the price he’d agreed with Otto, anyway, so we weren’t exactly losing ground. I nodded. “Okay. Five thousand each. Except for Number Four.”
Joe peered past me at the chipped plates on the engines. “That was a jinx?” said Dmitri.
“She was a bitch’s kitten,” I recalled. “They never got the start-up circuits right. Give her a bump and she’d light off early. If you didn’t bump her she wouldn’t light at all.” Oh, I remembered it all too well. Mars was easy: that engine was the difficult bit.
Dmitri said: “But we’ll need all four.”
“I tell you what,” I said to Joe Mercer. “For that engine I’ll swap you the satellite.”
He was horrified. “Now, Captain, would I chea—I mean, not now. Look, I’m being honest, but...” He looked soulful and sorrowful, and I knew he was doing a lightning calculation inside his greasy head. “All right. I’ll do it For you, not for nobody else. Fifteen thousand I’ll take, and the satellite. I’ll starve, they won’t get their Moon taxes, they’ll deport me to Earth...” Then something even more appalling hit him. “Captain, you haven’t got fifteen thousand anyway.”
I took out the draft on the Bank of the Moon and flapped it under his goggling eyes.
“This is for twenty thousand,” I said, “so I want five thousand change.”
I caught the flicker of Dmitri Karminski’s grin. That little bit of profiteering would give us a nice reserve. We’d be able to afford a few luxuries, while it lasted.
Joe Mercer took the draft and studied it.
I said: “You can take an extra two hundred if they’re loaded on my ship by this afternoon.”
He rooted around in a drawer and produced a wad of grubby notes. Some of them must have come straight out of the oil sump of a Moonbug. With a sigh, as though parting reluctantly with some dear old pals, he began to count out what he owed me.
“Captain,” he said, “I’ll have them cleaned up and aboard. By this afternoon, like you say. You’ll never know they were in here.”
“Joe,” I said as seriously as I knew how, so he’d get the message good and clear, “they weren’t in here. Not ever.”
4
THAT AFTERNOON we got out to the spaceport early, just to check that Joe Mercer hadn’t talked himself out of cooperating. But he was there all right. When he got down to something, he got down to it. Two forklift Moonbugs scurried to and fro like busy beetles, and the engines went up into Zero Two in a matter of minutes. It was just as well. We didn’t want them lying around outside too long in the Earthglare: it would take only one awkward question to ground us indefinitely.
It was scorching out there, inside our space suits. We made sure the engines were safely stowed, and then Dmitri and I beat it toward the dome.
When I’d got my helmet off, I said: “I could do with a—”
“No, you couldn’t Section sixteen-A, paragraph five: No alcoholic stimulants within eight hours before a flight.”
I thought of the number of times I’d had to pour him aboard, but I didn’t suppose he’d remember them. He was too good at forgetting things he didn’t want to remember.
“So I just want a coffee,” I said. “Where’s the law against that?”
He seemed unconvinced. “This is a big job.”
“It’s an illegal one. I could just as soon have a couple of beers as well.”
All the same, I fed a coin into the automatic coffee machine. It had a different taste from the stuff you got back in the Moon Hilton. This batch must have been processed from pulverized sewage pipes.
Dmitri said softly: “Watch it. The space cavalry’s here.”
Liz was approaching. She looked very trim this morning. Not tousled and tangled, the way I’d seen her some mornings. A clear conscience, a good night’s sleep, and a keen sense of duty could work wonders for a girl.
I could get along fine without her fine sense of duty.
She said: “Hello, Bill.”
Affable but incorruptible. Agent Murphy, daring you to try and pull a fast one.
“Hello,” I said.
We looked at each other. She said: “You’re going off again pretty quick.”
“Us unsalaried workers have to keep working.”
She gave me another look, and then turned away toward the window. Moon Zero Two looked very lonely and very conspicuous out there on the pad. I was glad to note that the hatchway was just swinging closed, and the Bugs were nipping away.
“Hear they’ve been loading you pretty heavy,” said Liz. “What was it?”
I floundered. There ought to be some glib nothingness to say; but right at that moment, beyond her, I saw a group moving to the viewing window. My benefactor, Mr. Hubbard—with his three shadows. A great one to talk about secrecy! And Whitsun and Harry were all geared up in space suits. Where did they think they were going?
For a moment I thought Liz was reading my mind. She made the faintest movement as though to turn and have a look for herself. Quickly I said:
“It’s... er... some experimental propulsion equipment I want to try in space. I think we may really have something big here.”
“How big?”
“You’re always saying I’ve got to modernize, got to clean the old craft up. Okay, okay. I’m working on it. We’re... er...”
“Section forty-seven-C, paragraph one,” Dmitri chimed in, in his best space-law counsel’s voice: “No information about commercial or industrial research need be disclosed without authority of a Moon court warrant.”
Liz switched her looks from me to him. It was as bad as being on the receiving end of a rocket pistol.
“So,” she said, “I have to ask around.” She tried a smile—a curt one. “Look after yourself, Bill.”
Dmitri watched her stride away. “You may have to marry that girl, Bill.”
“What d’you mean, have to?”
“It might be better than having her throw you in jail.”
“Look, I didn't tell her a single lie then.”
“If you’ve got to that stage, you’d better marry her anyway.”
I turned my attention to the Hubbard huddle. We walked over to them, and I said: “You aren’t exactly helping to keep this quiet, are you?”
Hubbard’s complacent grin hardly tugged at his face muscles. “Just came down to watch the landing of the Mars Express, Mr. Kemp. I understand it’s a sight no tourist should miss.” He let me think that over for a few seconds, then asked: “When will you be ready to take off?”
“Now,” I said.
Hubbard nodded. Whitsun and Harry took a pace forward. Very well drilled, all of them.
Whitsun had a small case under his arm. He looked at me with gray, chill confidence. I’d no idea what he was being so confident about.
Dmitri said: “Hey—we got passengers?”
“You have,” said Whitsun.
I said: “We don’t need—”
“You are taking Mr. Whitsun,” said Hubbard, “and Harry. Mr. Whitsun has a computer, which will simplify your navigation and the controlled firing of the asteroid. Harry can help with the heavy work.”
“You’ve got it all figured out,” I said.
Hubbard bobbed his head in acknowledgment.
“You don’t trust us,” I said.
He shrugged. “I merely want to ensure that you get there—and back—safely.”
“Considerate of you.”
Dmitri said: “I’ll get out there. If we’re carrying four, I’ll need to shift some of the junk around.”
Hubbard’s eyes followed him. “That was your Mr. Karminski? What nationality is he?”
“Born on Earth,” I said.
“That wasn’t quite what I asked.”
“Everyone’s a foreigner up here.”
I gave Dmitri five minutes, then tried to see whether Liz or any other cute busybody was keeping watch on the launching pad. We had to risk it. There was no way of dodging out there under cover.
“Ready to go?” I said. And then I noticed the bulge at Harry’s side. “Without the pistol, please.”
“You don’t take this off me twice, chum.”
I said to Hubbard: “The trip’s off, then. If that thing goes off inside the ship we may never get back to explain why.”
He considered this. He wasn’t happy, but he was no stubborn fool. “Give it to Jeff, Harry,” he ordered. Then he patted me on the shoulder, like some benevolent uncle seeing me off on a vacation trip. “I hope you... we all have a profitable voyage.”
“Let you know in about four days,” I said, and led the way out.
We moved fast. Whitsun looked a bit dubious at the foot of the spindly ladder—he was used to the plushy big liners and their entrance corridors and the reception committee of stewards and hostesses—but after a brief hesitation he went up. Harry went in after him, and he was a bit doubtful, too: doubtful about me being behind him, as though I might decide to clobber him one.
The cargo deck was jammed with the four engines. I wished there had been time to test them, but the only place we could have fixed a bench run was out at the spaceship yards—and they’d have wanted to know an awful lot of things about the hows and whys and what-fors. We just had to hope. Hope, for one thing, that Joe Mercer hadn’t let any old scrap fall into the guts of the engines.
Harry and Whitsun shinned up to the passenger deck. I checked the hatch, carried out the leak test, and waited for the green light. Then I went up.
There wasn’t a lot of room on the passenger deck. No stewards, no hostesses, no full-time food and booze service. A circle ten feet in diameter, with just enough head clearance for a six-footer, provided he didn’t want to jump up and down—and most of the space taken up by the four acceleration couches, which had seen better days. I waved a generous hand. Whitsun and Harry could take their pick. I didn’t see it was my job to tell them that the end couch had a nastily dislocated spring or that the nearer one tended to pummel your shoulder blades at takeoff. I left them to it, and went on up to the control deck.
This was strictly for midgets. Once you were settled into position, it was easier to stay that way and not try wandering about.
Dmitri was already wriggling into his acceleration chair and going through the routine check. What would happen if we ever found anything seriously wrong, I didn’t know. The liner captains simply summoned a team of worker ants to swarm through the guts of the ship with ammeters and voltmeters and circuit analyzers and pulse counters, signed a chit, and blasted off. Looking around the flaking control panels and the murky dials of old Zero Two, you saw that for the likes of me there was no substitute for the good old-fashioned scientific cure-all: sticky tape.
I squeezed into my chair. Dmitri gave me a quick thumbs-up sign. I scanned the gauges quickly. All set. I took a glance down, tilting the chair at an angle so I could be sure Whitsun and Harry were strapped in and not trying any funny business.
“Okay, we’re pressurized. You can take off your helmets.”
There was a crackling and sputtering in my ears. All kinds of harmonics, interference, plus a few loose connections were blasting the earpieces. I lifted the faceplate of my helmet, swung over the open hatchway to the passenger deck, and waved at the two below. They stayed where they were, like patients waiting to be operated on. I prodded my faceplate, indicating they should raise theirs. Harry was the first to react. He slid his free, and nudged Whitsun.
I said: “That computer of yours... want to set us a course and see how it works?”
Dmitri shifted uneasily. He might not have any more confidence than I had in the responses of Zero Two, but he’d sooner rely on our familiarity with its ailments than on someone else’s prescriptions.
Whitsun said acidly: “I’m relying on you following me exactly.”
He opened the case that lay across his chest, and propped himself up so that he could punch a sequence of buttons.
“Main course ninety seconds after blast-off,” I said. “Right?”
“Right.”
Dmitri and I swung back into position. I set warm-up procedure.
“You’re really going to let him navigate?”
“That’s a nice new computer he’s got there. The best that credit can buy.”
“Yes, but can he apply it—to our ship, I mean?”
“Counting miles an hour is probably not all that different from dollars a minute.”
“Mm. Long as he remembers you don’t always get the chance to insert missing miles and strike a new balance.”
I flicked the microphone switch. “Moon Control, Zero Two. Zero Two requesting takeoff clearance. Round trip, no landing away. As usual.”
Dmitri’s left eyebrow lifted. I answered it with my right. We waited for Control to swallow the lie.
“Zero Two, you’re clear. Remember Mars Express is due in twenty minutes.”
“We’ll try to miss him.” I switched off. “Are you ready for a daring venture into the great unknown, Mr. Karminski?”
Dmitri made a flourish that nearly demolished a bank of switches. “With you to lead me, Captain, even I can be brave.”
It was part of an old ritual which probably didn’t make much sense to our friends on the floor below. It wasn’t meant to make sense.
I leaned toward the hatchway. “Firing in twenty seconds.”
I saw Whitsun settle himself back. He looked pale. But then, he was a very pale man at the best of times.
Main tank pressures... prime... throttles... coordinates...
I pressed home the ignition bar, and the ship began to quiver like a cat sighting a pigeon.
Dmitri did a last, swift, dial check. “All firing,” he confirmed, “at minimum.”
“Well, maybe she’ll actually fly.”
I slammed the throttles full up.
The ship howled. It roared and rattled to itself and within itself and right inside our heads, too. Then we lifted. I felt the ship sag, wobbling on its legs of flame like an old drunk ready to topple over and give up the struggle. One cutout now, one engine pausing for breath, and we’d be spinning out of control, over and down and nothing but a cloud of Moondust.
Suddenly we were away. Off in a long trajectory, over the hills and far away, off to keep an appointment out in space.
Pressure pinned us back for sixty aching seconds and then gradually eased off. When I could lean over the edge of my chair I called down:
“Got that course yet?”
The machine on Whitsun’s chest hiccuped and then chattered to itself.
He punched a final button and said: “Relative to the ecliptic, we want a course of Alpha three-five-one, Beta one-seven-nine. Speed 17,500 miles an hour.”
Dmitri looked at me. I looked at the control panel. Grudgingly he said: “He sounds as if he knows.”
“He does, doesn’t he?”
“D’you think he means”—Dmitri clowned it, waggling a finger vaguely at one corner of the cabin—“sort of over there?”
“More or less, I suppose.”
Abruptly Whitsun hauled himself up beside us, his head through the hatchway opening like a ghoulish jack-in-the-box without much impetus behind him. “I hope it isn’t too difficult for you?” he said.
�
��Not at all, Mr. Whitsun.”
He came on up without an invitation. “If you have an orbitograph, I hope I can make the situation clear to you.”
Sure we had an orbitograph. Not that I’d have advertised it as a feature of the Kemp transportation service. It wasn’t new, and it wasn’t infallible. In fact, it worked so erratically that we didn’t use it unless we got tired of each other’s conversation. But I indicated the screen, and Whitsun helped himself to a couple of knobs.
They were a bit dusty, and every time you turned the scanner it let out a piercing squeak. Whitsun winced. He must have sensitive hearing; or else he was allergic to dust.
A blur filled the screen, like the Milky Way gone sour. Whitsun clicked his tongue and wrenched the knob again. No technique at all. No idea. I leaned back, past him, and clouted the screen mounting.
The Earth came neatly into focus, with the bright blob of the Moon way off to the right.
Whitsun scowled.
“I suppose fine tuning is out of the question?”
“I wouldn’t lay any bets,” I said, “but why not try your luck?”
“Gaming machines beyond the Heaviside Layer are subject to a duty of twenty percent,” intoned Dmitri. “Paragraph—”
“Let the gentleman have his fun,” I said.
Whitsun stabbed at the little keyboard between the knobs. He was delicate and precise in all his movements—sharp, pecking like a hen. And he succeeded. A fine tracer of light curved across between the Earth and the Moon.
“Yes,” he said. “Yes. Just so. There we are—asteroid on course, making its closest approach since 1998. And our interception point will be...” He waited, fingers poised. “Here,” he said sharply.
I tried to match my coordinates with those at the foot of his screen, but the memory bank in Zero Two’s autosetter was getting a bit slow on the uptake and didn’t respond. Getting downright amnesiac, in fact.
“Forty-five hours from now,” said Whitsun. He didn’t raise his voice, but he made it quite clear that he was effectively in charge of this expedition. “You can maintain speed?”