Planetary Agent X

by Mack Reynolds

  Billy got to his feet and stepped over to the next table, which was occupied by a single customer, obviously deep in his cups. He couldn’t have been much more than in his early twenties himself, surly faced, soft in spite of his age, a trickle of drink-induced saliva at the side of his mouth. He was sloppy drunk.

  “Ay,” Billy said, grinning, “ain’t you Steve Osterman, met at a party last week?”

  The other glowered up at him. “No, I ain’t no Steve whatever. And we never met at no party.”

  Billy shook his head in wonder and slid into a chair at the other’s table. “Well, we sure as hell met somewheres. I never forget a face.”

  The other grunted. “Name’s Barry. Horace Barrymore. Ev’body calls me Barry.”

  Billy snapped his fingers. “That’s it. Barry. Now I remember. It was a great party.”

  The other scowled at him. “You from Detroit too?”

  “Sure? Of course. That’s where the party was. What you doing in Greater Washington, Barry?”

  The other squinted at him slyly. “Gotcha that time. I never been in Detroit. I’m from Miami-Havana, see? And I got you figured out, Buster.”

  Billy’s hand dropped into his lap. “Oh, you have, eh?”

  “Yeah. I know you, Buster.” The other chuckled to himself and picked up his glass. It was empty.

  From the side of his eyes, Billy Antrim could see the usher making his way in their direction.

  The self-named Barry grinned. “Yep. You’re a drink cadger. Thas what. You just kinda pretend you know a guy and get talkin’ to him, hopin’ he’ll spring for a drink. Well, Buster, let me tell you somethin’…” He hesitated for a long moment, as though having dropped his trend of thought. “Let me tell you somethin’.” He burped. “Let me tell you, you picked the right man, Buster. I’ll buy you a drink. Fact, I’ll buy you a whole flock of drinks.”

  Billy let air out of his lungs, silently.

  The other punched the auto-controls. “Pseudo-whisky and wasser, eh? Man’s drink. And where I’m goin’ there’s nothin’ but men needed.”

  The drinks appeared and the usher sheered off and headed elsewhere.

  Billy said, cautiously, hiding his face behind the glass. “You celebrating somethun’, Barry?”

  “Damn right. I’m killing two birds with one stone, see? Two birds.” For a moment he seemed to have lost his trend again. But then he said, “Spending my credit, see? No good where I’m going. And same time, celebratin’ leavin’ this damn Earth.”

  Billy said, keeping the conversation going, “You a spaceman?” He was wondering how best to approach his heaven-sent gift about ordering some food instead of more drink. The man might even have a hotel room he could be coaxed into sharing for the night.

  “Spaceman!” the other sneered. “Do I look like a space rat? I’m a colonist. Par… part… participatin’ in foundin’ of a new worl’. Unnerstan’? Like the brochures said. Out into the glor… glorious far beyon’. Leave this stinkin’ Earth behine. A man don’t hava chance here. Never get anywhere. That right… whus your name? Have ‘nother drink. I know you’re nothin’ but… spunger. But thas all right. Havanother drink.”

  “Make mine light ale, this time,” Billy said softly. “Look Barry, you interest me, like. How you go around gettin’ to be a colonist?” He ran his tongue over the bottom of his upper teeth.

  The other grunted surly amusement, and rubbed thumb and forefinger together. “You inherit some ol’ family art objects and convert ‘em to credit. Thas how. Then you join up.”

  “Join up what?” Billy said softly. His blue eyes were only slits now.

  The other was impatient at his stupidity. “Join up one of the companies, course. Put up your share. Join company. Pioneers. Out inta glorious far beyon’. Start up new worl’. Plenty chances for everybody. Live glorious natural life of frontiersmen of old. Get rich, exploitin’ new worl’.”

  Billy Antrim said the next very softly. “Teamed up with a lot of your friends, eh?”

  “Frens, hell. None of my frens ever had ‘nough credit to make colonist. I just bough inta one of the new formin’ companies. You gotta belong to a company, with lotta pull. Get permission to leave stinkin’ ol’ Earth. Gotta have pull ina high place. New Arizona Company. Hire a spaceship from Space Freightways. Land on New Arizona. Stake out claims. Live glorious natural life. Chance for everybody getta head. Not like stinkin’ Earth—everybody down on you, less you benta lots school an’ all.”

  The man was drooling drunk, Billy realized. Drunk beyond the point of memory tomorrow. He said, urging in his voice. “So you don’t know anybody else among the colonists, ay? When do you check in with them?”

  Barry eyed him owlishly, and for a moment Billy Antrim was afraid the other was going to fall forward, passed out. But with a dull shake of the head, he evidently regained enough clarity to get out, “Big party tonight. Spend all last Earth credits. Tomorrow, ev’thing set. Take shuttle rocket, local spaceport, shuttle out New Albuquerque. Got alla tickets. Get aboard S/S Ley. An’ we burn off for New Arizona. Burn off. Thas space talk for…”

  A voice from behind him said, “Friend, your buddy here seems to have had enough. In fact, I should’ve noticed him earlier. How about getting him on home?”

  Billy, keeping his face averted, said, “Yeah. Suppose you’re right, Mac.”

  The usher said, “Here, I’ll help you with him. Cheese, he’s really got a load on.”

  “Hey,” Barry protested feebly. “I ain’t drunk. I been drunker’n this. Big blowout. Gotta celebrate.”

  “Sure, sure,” Billy soothed him. “Come on, let’s get on home.”

  “Hey, wait up just a minute, friend. Somebody trot out his credit card. You got a man-sized bill here.”

  Billy moistened his lips. “The drinks were on him.”

  “Yeah. Well, by the looks of your pal, he’s passed out. How about that? Hey, haven’t I seen you someplace before?”

  Billy said quickly, “I’ll take care of it.” He fished his purloined credit card from his wallet and pressed it against the payment screen. “Come on, help me to a cab with him. I wouldn’t want him to puke all over your floor.”

  “Cheese,” the other said. “Let’s get going.”

  XXII

  Ronny Bronston took the message in the police floater in which he was prowling the Norfolk waterfront entertainment area.

  Credit Card 78Y-7634-L991-Division GW has been utilized to pay a nightclub bill at the Pleasure Palace…

  Ronny snapped to his driver, “You know where the Pleasure Palace is?”

  “We passed it not five minutes ago. There on…”

  “Get there! Fast!”

  While the floater spun, ignoring traffic, narrowly averting disaster three times in thirty seconds, Ronny grabbed the hand mike.

  “He’s on the run! Pleasure Palace nightclub, Norfolk Waterfront. All floaters zero in! Something important happened. He’s had to use the credit card. Zero in!”

  Billy Antrim was as near to being in a funk as Billy Antrim ever allowed himself to get. He could hear the whining of the sirens from afar, a multitude of sirens. It brought to mind a faintest memory of youth when he had still been with his mother and their way of life had involved planet jumping with the troupe with which she had performed. It had been a planet in the Aldeberan group, he couldn’t remember exactly which one. He’d been too young, but the planetwide holiday had been celebrated in a fantastic blowing of whistles and sirens. Thousands and thousands of sirens. On business buildings, on official cars, on factories, on ships, seemingly everywhere. It had been ear piercing, nerve racking…

  He tore his mind from such nonessentials. He was in the clutch now. It was no time to be thinking of Ruth Antrim, and childhood. He had to get out of here, but fast!

  He had dialed the cab more or less at random. He hadn’t the vaguest idea where this Horace Barrymore might be staying. Some hotel, undoubtedly, but which was a mystery.

  A floater was s
creaming down the street at them. Billy dropped to the cab’s floor, leaving his semi-conscious companion propped against the glass of the door, eyes bleary but open. A light flashed, lingered a moment on the other’s face, then the police vehicle was past.

  Billy Antrim muttered, “One chance in a million,” and regained his seat.

  Even as they sped, he went through the other’s things. Ticket on the rocket shuttle to New Alburquerque. A small sheaf of papers identifying Horace Barrymore as a member of the New Arizona Company. A spaceport pass, signed by an official of the company and the first officer of the Spaceship Ley. And the credit card which would halve made so much difference, had Billy been able to utilize it earlier to pay the bar bill at the Pleasure Palace.

  But things were still looking up better than they had ever since the debacle that had taken place on the shooting of Giorgio Schiavoni. If he could only get out of this immediate tight spot.

  Another floater was screaming up the sub-freeway toward them, its lights blazing. Billy ducked to the floor again. It was past.

  His lips, white, thinned back over his prominent teeth in his wolf grin. As long as the fuzz-yokes were heading in the direction of the Pleasure Palace, he was comparatively safe. But as soon as the usher there revealed that Billy had left in a cab with a companion who was dead drunk, then the fat would be in the fire. They’d know what they were looking for.

  Suddenly inspiration came. He grabbed up a directory, thumbed through it. Then quickly redialed the cab.

  The auto-motel was only a few hundred yards away. The cab pulled up. As usual, there was but one clerk.

  Billy got out and said, “Ay Mac, my buddy here took on too big a load. Gotta room?”

  The clerk had seen drunks before. In his time he had seen literally thousands of drunks. Drunks no longer interested him in the slightest. “He got a credit card to register with?”

  “Sure, here it is.”

  “You registering too?”

  “Naw, just my buddy. Wait’ll I dismiss this here cab.” Billy manhandled Barry from the floater-cab, turned him over to the clerk to balance waveringly for the moment necessary to press the Horace Barrymore credit card to the payment screen, then turned back.

  Between them, they managed to usher, push, half carry the flopping drunk to a room. Billy let him drop to a bed. He grinned at the clerk.

  “I’ll see he gets into the bed, and all. How about lettin’ me have a bottle of pseudo?”

  The other looked at him. “Ain’t you guys had enough liquor?”

  Billy chuckled deprecation. “Ernie here has, but not me. I only had one or two. Besides, when he wakes up tomorrow, he’s gonna need a couple quick ones to keep him from dying. That’s the way he handles it. Hair of the dog.”

  The clerk shrugged. “Each man can go to hell in his own way, I always say. I’ll get the pseudo.”

  Billy began taking off the drunken Horace Barrymore’s shoes. His mind, behind his poker mask, was racing. He had to handle this exactly right. He couldn’t afford any mistakes now. On the road outside he could hear the floaters screaming by.

  It was one chance in a million. Whoever was in overall command would expect—Billy was gambling—for the quarry to put as much distance between himself and the Pleasure Palace as possible. Instead, Billy had gone into hiding less than half a mile from the alleged palace of pleasure.

  The pseudo-whisky came, the clerk gave another listless look at the drunk sprawled on the bed, grunted and left.

  Billy Antrim had already taken the vital papers of the other. Now he stared down at him.

  The spaceship left tomorrow.

  Once spaceborne, he would be outside the jurisdiction of Earth. The ship wasn’t even scheduled to set down on a United Planets world. It was colonizing a new planet. Billy Antrim would be answerable only to whatever authorities the colonists would set up. And Billy was going to be an invaluable citizen, so far as such authority was concerned. A new world, a frontier world, could use citizens with Billy’s qualifications.

  He turned his right hand over so that it was palm upward and gave it a flick. A double edged fighting knife slid into his grip.

  He could put a sign, on the door requesting that the room not be disturbed. He could leave a call with the auto-service to the same effect. It would be well into tomorrow afternoon before Horace Barrymore was discovered.

  By that time Billy Antrim would be well on his way to the stars. And who knew what he would find out there? Perhaps the chance at a new life. A different life than the one Luigi Agrigento had decreed for him when he’d been a boy of eleven. A life not composed of gun and stiletto. A life with meaning, such as his mother and he had once dreamed of for him.

  The thought went through his mind. Perhaps he might even meet Ruth Antrim out there, once again. It was only seven or eight years, after all. But then he sneered self-deprecation, even as he stepped toward the unconscious Barrymore, the knife blade gleaming. Seven years, but look what he had managed to become. Would Ruth Antrim want to see what he was today, or would he want her to?

  There was a line slowly trailing into the huge passenger-freighter—reminiscent, somewhat, of Noah’s animals trailing into the Ark. Indeed, most were filing along two by two. Billy Antrim was one of the few who were single. That was just as well, he told himself. Married couples were conservative, lacking aggressiveness, compared to a single man. Billy would be able to make his place in this New Arizona.

  They gave you a shot here. A little bit further on, they asked some questions. Further on they checked your papers, and still later, you had to sign some things. Then you shuffled along again.

  Toward the end, there were two burly ship’s officers. Before Billy realized what they were about, they had touched him here, there, the places a man carries a gun. A quick frisk.

  He started to protest, but the senior of the two grinned at him and whipped the gun from his belt.

  “Sonny,” he said, “in spite of all you’ve heard about adventure in space, it’s not like that at all. Sorry. Captain’s orders. No weapons among the passengers so long as we’re spaceborne. You’ll get this oversized cannon back when you land.” He looked at it and grunted. “Where’d you get this thing, anyway?”

  “It usta belong to my old man,” Billy said sourly. “He usta be a gun crank, like.”

  “He must have been,” the other chuckled. “Hey, Bob, look at this. Front sight filed away, and all.”

  But his companion had taken on the next colonist in the line.

  Billy shuffled on toward the ship. He had carried the last hurdle.

  There had been some crucial moments during the past twelve hours, but he had cleared every obstacle. He had crossed Greater Washington in another cab, using Horace Barrymore’s credit card. He had got through the press of people at the shuttle-spaceport, without exposure, hiding his face in a handkerchief and sneezing time after time, just as he’d passed the ticket gate. He had sat in the back of the shuttle rocket, hiding his head in his arm and pretending sleep every time someone had come near.

  Once outside Greater Washington, he felt some relief. He assumed they had circulated the inadequate drawing of him throughout the globe. Most likely. He didn’t know. But at least people weren’t expecting to run into him out here.

  His papers had been cleared without difficulty. He had, on the rocket shuttle, practiced Horace Barrymore’s shaky signature a few times. It wasn’t difficult. A scribble.

  It had carried him past, easily enough.

  And now he was actually entering the ship.

  At the entry level stood another ship’s officer, sheaf of papers in hand.

  “Name?”

  “Horace Barrymore.”

  “Horace Barrymore. Here it is. Berth 33, Compartment Twelve. Down that way, son.”

  Billy Antrim went as indicated. He had no baggage, but on the other hand, neither did most of the others. The baggage had been checked earlier. Billy, of course, had none to check. After they were spacebo
rne he would put up a big howl, to cover. He could claim that they’d lost his things. It shouldn’t be difficult. He might even get some sort of reimbursement.

  Compartment Twelve was but a hundred feet or so down the corridor along which he walked. The door was closed. He opened it and stepped in.

  Billy Antrim scowled. It didn’t look to be the type of compartment devoted to passengers. On the far side of the room was a desk at which was seated an easy-going looking young man, his face tired and his clothing rumpled and dirty—like Billy himself.

  He looked up quizzically. “Hello, Billy,” he said, his hand reaching for the automatic which lay on the desk.

  Billy Antrim blurred into motion. He crouched, his right hand flicked and the knife was there magically. He threw the hand back for the cast.

  Ronny Bronston’s eyes blinked in surprised alarm—his fingers were still inches from the gun.

  Then there was something in the wild blue eyes of Billy Antrim. He threw the knife—

  His throw was not quite true. It missed Ronny Bronston’s head by scant millimeters and broke its point in a clang on the steel bulkhead beyond.

  The gun was trained on Billy’s stomach.

  The Section G agent took a deep breath, swallowed, then managed to say, “You missed, Billy. I didn’t expect you to miss.”

  Billy Antrim sneered. “It’s all luck,” he said. “Everything’s luck, I had one chance in a million, and didn’t make it.”

  The gun was steady.

  “Sit down over there, Billy. I set this whole thing up only minutes ago. I didn’t expect you quite yet. But shortly there’ll be some local agents of my department showing up. Then we’ll get about our business.”

  Billy sat, his strained juvenile face still in sneer. “You ain’t got a jug could hold me, yoke.”

  Ronny Bronston looked at him meditatively. Evidently the other didn’t know that there were no prisons for such as him on presentday Earth. Criminals of Billy Antrim’s ilk were turned over to medical science for rehabilitation.

  Ronny said, “It’s been a long trek, Billy. I don’t mind admitting you almost made it. You know what your big mistake was?”