by John Bowers
“This the new kid?” one of them asked. He was younger than Milligan, but not by much. He looked at least fifty, closer to fifty-five. Like most of the men Nick had seen so far, he had a hard look about him; he was about six feet three and a few pounds heavier than Nick, and wore an old fashioned gun belt strapped around his waist, the holster hanging low so his hand didn’t have to reach far for the laser pistol tucked inside. His most prominent feature was a beak-like nose.
Milligan cleared his throat.
“Russ Murray, meet Nick Walker. “
Nick smiled and extended his hand. Murray shook it, but didn’t smile.
“I hear you’re fresh out of the Academy,” Murray said, making it sound like an accusation.
“That’s what they tell me.” Nick was fully prepared to accept a little hazing, even expected it, but it was still annoying to be called the “new kid”. He kept the smile in place as a gesture of good will…no point making enemies until he had to, especially if they were wearing a badge.
Murray was looking him up and down.
“You seem physically fit.”
“I try to be.”
Milligan interrupted by gesturing to the fourth man in the room, a sturdy specimen who looked like a solarball lineman, all chest and shoulders and shaven head. He looked about thirty.
“And this is Sandy Beech.”
Nick’s grin widened as Beech reached to shake hands. “Sandy Beech? As in—”
“Don’t even think about it,” Beech said, his white teeth gleaming in his black face, “or I’ll have to break your jaw.”
Nick shook hands and laughed. “I wouldn’t blame you.”
“Welcome to Ceres, Walker.”
“Thanks.”
But Murray wasn’t finished with him. Leaning back against a desk, he crossed his arms and peered narrowly at him.
“Ever killed a man, Walker?”
Nick stared at him for just a moment, feeling his throat turn dry and adrenaline surge into his blood. The smile died on his lips and he regarded Murray for a moment. A feeling of despair flooded him briefly, and he took a deep breath to fight it off—but he couldn’t stop the faint tremble in his hands.
“Yes.”
Murray’s eyebrows tilted in surprise.
“Really! Tell us about it! Somebody try to steal your ice cream?”
Nick’s annoyance faded, replaced by real anger. Good-natured hazing was one thing, but outright hostility was quite another. He glanced at Beech, but Beech appeared neutral; he turned to Milligan, but the old Marshal merely raised his eyebrows, as if to say, You must have known this was coming, so deal with it.
He looked at Murray again, whose expression had changed from feigned surprise to contempt—he clearly thought Nick was lying.
“No,” Nick said finally. “It wasn’t my ice cream. It was a little mountain town called Trimmer Springs.”
“What?” Murray frowned in confusion.
Nick shrugged, his jaws clenched. “It’s not important.”
“Go ahead,” Marshal Milligan urged. “Tell him. I’d like to hear it, too.”
Nick stared at the old man for a moment, then lowered his head, feeling suddenly cold. He didn’t speak for nearly thirty seconds; they all stared at him, waiting.
But he shook his head again.
“I don’t like to talk about it.”
Milligan nodded knowingly. He cleared his throat and spoke to the others.
“Walker’s unit was bottled up in that little town, surrounded, outnumbered, and under bombardment. Most of the outfit was killed or wounded by artillery, but when the rebels tried to move in, Walker got up in a church tower with a sniper rifle and killed fifty-one men. The rebel attack stalled long enough for help to arrive. Walker sustained multiple wounds and was awarded the Crimson Cross and the Galaxy Cross. Federation Star Marines, Battle of Trimmer Springs, Alpha Centauri, November 19, 0436, Colonial Calendar.”
Nick glanced at Milligan in surprise—none of that was in his U.F. Marshal packet.
“I looked you up,” Milligan said. “I like to do my own background checks.”
Murray stood up straight and stared at his feet, then turned to face Milligan.
“Maybe you should send Walker on that little errand we were talking about,” he said. “A man with his background should be able to handle a couple of kidnappers, don’t you think?”
Milligan smiled. “I have a better idea…why don’t you both go.”
Nick used his porta-phone to call Misery Allen and cancel their dinner date. She accepted his apology graciously but he felt bad about it— he had no intention of becoming involved with her, but canceling a first date was bad form. Unfortunately, he had no choice; Murray had told him they would be leaving Ceres and when they might return was anyone’s guess.
“Where exactly is this place?” Nick asked as Murray piloted the E-car toward one of the A-terminals, which accessed surface transportation and the spaceport.
“Place called Caribou Lake.”
“What?” Nick stared at him. Murray grimaced, possibly intending it as a smile.
“Out here in the ‘roids, people get positively stupid when it comes to naming their rocks. They come up with all kinds of poetic shit, usually something nostalgic about where they came from. The place we’re going is an empty rock with a few hundred people stuck to it, everybody living in pressure cubicles and garbage all over the fucking place, but hey, it’s Caribou Lake.” He shook his head grimly. “Sentimental fools.”
Nick didn’t reply. He was finding Murray’s cynicism a bit unsettling.
“I’ve seen places called Mystic River, Shifting Sands, Rudolph’s Rainbow, and Thundercloud City. There’s a thousand more just like that, stretched all the way around the sun. The only ones that make any sense are the whorehouse ‘roids—Sally’s Secret, Rosie’s Hideout, Jackson’s Hole…when you hear a name like that you know what to expect. The rest of those fancy handles are just sad.”
They passed through the Colonial Waters industrial habitat and arrived at the same A-terminal where Nick had arrived the night before. Murray parked the E-car and began hauling gear out of the back.
“How far is it?” Nick asked.
“’Bout thirty thousand miles. We’ll be there in four or five hours.”
Nick grabbed his space bag with his toothbrush and a change of clothes and followed Murray to the lift. Two minutes later they arrived at the surface station and Nick gazed through heavy solarglas at the barren wasteland outside. The station was a sturdy starcrete building, reinforced against meteoroid strikes, and stretched a hundred yards in each direction. At one end was the access tunnel to the spaceport, at the other a terminus for surface transportation. He followed Murray toward the latter. As they walked he saw a coffee shop, souvenir stand, and a row of sleeping cubicles for rent. There was also a lounge with video entertainment and comm equipment for anyone who wanted to chat with the universe.
“Does anyone actually live up here?”
“Not many. I think some of the maintenance people have quarters here.”
“I don’t think I’d care for it. That solarglas looks pretty thick, but if there was an astral impact…”
“We usually get plenty of warning when that happens,” Murray said. “There’s a couple of scientific stations on the surface and they track the other asteroids in the area. You can see them coming for days before they hit.”
“Ever have any real disasters?”
“Occasionally.”
Murray didn’t elaborate but it didn’t matter—they had reached their destination.
Murray handled the paperwork and within minutes they were ushered into a chamber similar to an airlock where a long, torpedo-like vehicle sat waiting. Nick had seen similar vehicles in the military, but never at a civilian installation. It was about six feet wide and sixty feet long; the rounded nose was festooned with maneuvering jets. The last ten feet of the tail was a rocket engine, and two fuel tanks hung on either
side. It had no wings because it wasn’t designed for atmosphere.
“This is called a jalopy,” Murray told him. “Ever used one before?”
“No. I’ve never even seen one this small. How far will it go?”
“Depends on your fuel. I ordered enough to get us there and back, with a little to spare.”
Murray opened a cargo hatch and tossed his gear inside. Nick added his space bag and Murray closed the compartment. The passenger cabin was immediately in front of the cargo space and quite a bit larger. Murray opened the hatch and crawled inside, Nick following.
“Shouldn’t we be wearing pressure suits?”
“Don’t need ‘em.”
It was tight. The passenger space was about ten or twelve feet long, with three fairly comfortable seats on each side separated by a narrow aisle. Except for the two forward seats, the cabin was covered, a small window port beside each seat. Murray took the left-hand seat forward and Nick sat across from him. The solarglas canopy extended above the vehicle body, giving them a good view outside; Murray went to work powering things up, checking airtight integrity and life support, then activated the radio. He talked briefly to the controller, and outside the jalopy red lights began to flash.
After a thirty-second warning the chamber was depressurized and the outer door began to spiral open. Nick felt his stomach squirm just a little—he could see straight out into space. He sat silent while Murray activated the controls; the jalopy lifted a couple of feet to clear its cradle and Murray applied a tiny amount of power, nudging the thing through the airlock door until they were clear of the station.
“It may look complicated,” Murray told him, “but it’s about as hard as driving a boat. Once you get the feel of it, the rest becomes instinct.”
Nick nodded and watched as Murray piloted the craft. He applied a little more power and Nick felt a nudge of acceleration that started the jalopy moving. Nick expected him to rotate the nose upward and climb, but instead he kept it level and gradually increased the thrust. The horizon was so close it appeared only a few hundred yards away, and gravity was so light that escape velocity was virtually nil. Within minutes the jalopy was moving away from the asteroid, leaving the surface of Ceres behind.
“That looked easy,” Nick said. “I can’t wait to see how you land it.”
Murray gave him a blank stare.
“Who said I know how to land it?”
Chapter 8
In transit - The Asteroid Belt
Nick wasn’t sure how fast they were traveling, but he could at least tell they were moving. No matter which way he looked he saw chunks of rock, none of them very close, but close enough to be visible. They seemed stationary, just hanging in space, and ranged in size from small boulders to several thousand feet across. He had always thought of the Asteroid Belt as being thick enough to walk on, but the pieces he could see were often several miles apart.
There were smaller asteroids, too, small enough to be invisible until one was right on top of them, and these constituted the real danger to travel. Fortunately the jalopy’s radar detected them in time to avoid collision, using the maneuvering jets in the nose. From time to time Nick heard a tick as a bit of gravel struck the jalopy, but the little rocket was tough and none of them penetrated.
It was hard to believe that people actually lived out here; for most of the trip he saw nothing but black space, distant stars, and the floating debris of what might have once been the makings of a planet that never formed. Once, on a larger rock in the distance, he thought he saw artificial lights flashing red and blue. He pointed it out to Murray.
“Dick’s Drive In,” Murray grunted.
“What?”
“It’s a whorehouse.”
Nick left it at that.
“What’s this about a kidnapping? Maybe you’d better brief me before we get there.”
Murray grimaced. “I wondered when you were gonna ask.”
Nick glanced sharply at him. “I wondered when you were gonna tell me.”
Their eyes locked for a moment; Nick saw suspicion and mistrust, though he couldn’t imagine why. But Murray looked away with another grimace.
“Seems this missionary team ran into some trouble,” he said.
“Missionary!”
Murray nodded. “Some preacher named Reverend Sledge. Has a church on Mars. I guess the Jesus business isn’t doing too well on the Red Planet, so he decided to come out here and scare up some extra cash. He’s been going from one mining ‘roid to another preaching the Word, holding revivals, stuff like that.”
“Did he know what he was getting into?”
“Apparently not. He brought his two daughters with him. Seventeen and nineteen.”
Nick frowned. “Don’t tell me—someone took one of the girls?”
“Both of ‘em.”
“When did this happen?”
“The call came in last night. The girls have been missing for a couple of weeks.”
“Two weeks! And we’re just now hearing about it?”
Murray shrugged. “That’s not so unusual out here. People are used to solving their own problems if they can, and a lot of them don’t want anything to do with law enforcement under any circumstances. So they might delay for quite a while before reporting something. In this case, the reverend called the local security cops first, since they have an office at Caribou Lake.”
“And the security guys—”
“Aren’t real cops,” Murray finished for him. “A lot of them are no better than the people they arrest. Some take their job seriously, but others just get off on the prestige they think it gives them.”
“So who called us? The reverend or the security company?”
“The security boys, at the reverend’s insistence. I guess he finally realized they weren’t gonna get his girls back, so he dug in his heels.”
Nick felt a knot in the pit of his stomach. If the girls had been missing for two weeks, it might be impossible to locate them. In that time they could have been moved anywhere within the Belt, or even to a different world.
“Does this sort of thing happen often?”
“What, kidnapping?”
“Kidnapping women.”
“Not all that often. First of all, there aren’t very many women around to steal, and second of all, most of the women out here can be had for a price. It’s not a nice thing to say, but it’s true—as a general rule, what you might call ‘proper’ women just don’t come out here.”
“But a missionary’s daughters might be an exception?”
“One would think so.”
Nick fell silent, thinking. Finally he glanced at Murray.
“What you said about the security cops…”
“What about it?”
“How many security companies are there around here?”
“Half a dozen. Each of the major mining companies has its own cops—Astral Fountains, Colonial Waters, System Springs…and Farrington. Then you have a couple of independent security firms. They provide personal protection for individuals and security for businesses—”
“Earlier today I saw a couple of women on the street with armed escorts.”
“That would be one of the independents. Certain ladies are afraid to venture out too far without guards, to prevent the very thing we’re talking about.”
“So that’s six security firms on Ceres. What about the outlying rocks?”
Murray nodded. “Farrington is the biggest outfit for a billion miles. They not only mine water, they also run a casino and a string of whorehouses.” He nodded over his shoulder. “Dick’s Drive In is one of theirs. And…” Murray dipped his head to make his point. “…they provide security on most of the smaller settlements. They have a small army scattered around the Belt.”
“Including Caribou Lake?”
“Yep.”
Nick glanced at him. “How would you rate their personnel?”
“Are you kidding? Like I said, a few of them take their job se
riously—but only a few. Most of those I’ve seen are just thugs. If the U.F. Marshal ran background checks on them and arrested the felons, Farrington Security wouldn’t have enough men left to guard a birthday party.”
Nick was dozing when he felt the jalopy lurch suddenly. He jerked awake as he felt himself pressed into his seat under mild acceleration. It took him a moment to realize the jalopy had rotated and was traveling backward; the rocket burn was actually deceleration.
“We there already?” he asked with a yawn.
“Just about.”
Murray was watching his cockpit display, and Nick could see the asteroid in the schematic. Glancing over his shoulder and looking out, he could see part of the rock looming just a few miles away.
“The trickiest part of conning one of these things is slowing down. The nose jets aren’t nearly powerful enough, so you have to fly backwards for a while.”
Fifteen minutes later Murray rotated again, and Nick saw the asteroid dead ahead, like a mountain peak with lights. Dead in the center of the asteroid sat what looked like a cavern surrounded by flashing amber beacons. A ripple of lighted arrows pointed the way in, and an automated voice from the cockpit speakers began issuing landing instructions, including trajectory and speed limitations. Murray began firing the nose jets to decelerate further, and soon the jalopy was barely moving as it drifted into the landing tunnel. At the end of the tunnel a large sign flashed CAUTION – SLOW in rapid succession.
Then the sign flashed, in large red letters, the word STOP.
Murray fired a final braking thrust and the jalopy came to a halt, hanging three feet above a landing cradle. Nick wondered how they would get out—they weren’t wearing pressure suits and the tunnel was still open to space. Then he realized they were sinking slowly, and a moment later felt a jolt as the vehicle settled onto the cradle.
“What happens now?” Nick asked. “How do we get out?”
“Watch and learn.”