The Menace From Earth ssc

by Robert A. Heinlein

  The man on the floor stirred again, sat up. Wilson knew that the time had come when he must insure his past. He was not worried; he felt the sure confidence of the gambler who is "hot," who knows what the next roll of the dice will show.

  He bent over his alter ego. "Are you all right?" he asked.

  "I guess so," the younger man mumbled. He put his hand to his bloody face. "My head hurts."

  "I should think it would," Wilson agreed. "You came through head over heels. I think you hit your head when you landed."

  His younger self did not appear fully to comprehend the words at first. He looked around dazedly, as if to get his bearings. Presently he said, "Came through? Came through what?"

  "The Gate, of course," Wilson told him. He nodded his head toward the Gate, feeling that the sight of it would orient the still groggy younger Bob.

  Young Wilson looked over his shoulder in the direction indicated, sat up with a jerk, shuddered and closed his eyes. He opened them again after what seemed to be a short period of prayer, looked again, and said, "Did I come through that?"

  "Yes," Wilson assured him.

  "Where am I?"

  "In the Hall of the Gate in the High Palace of Norkaal. But what is more important," Wilson added, "is when you are. You have gone forward a little more than thirty thousand years."

  The knowledge did not seem to reassure him. He got up and stumbled toward the Gate. Wilson put a restraining hand on his shoulder. "Where are you going?"

  "Back!"

  "Not so fast." He did not dare let him go back yet, not until the Gate had been reset. Besides he was still drunk — his breath was staggering. "You will go back all right — I give you my word on that. But let me dress your wounds first. And you should rest. I have some explanations to make to you, and there is an errand you can do for me when you get back — to our mutual advantage. There is a great future in store for you and me, my boy — a great future!"

  A great future!

  Columbus Was a Dope

  "I do like to wet down a sale," the fat man said happily, raising his voice above the sighing of the air-conditioner. "Drink up, Professor, I'm two ahead of you."

  He glanced up from their table as the elevator door opposite them opened. A man stepped out into the cool dark of the bar and stood blinking, as if he had just come from the desert glare outside.

  "Hey, Fred — Fred Nolan," the fat man called out. "Come over!" He turned to his guest. "Man I met on the hop from New York. Siddown, Fred. Shake hands with Professor Appleby, Chief Engineer of the. Starship Pegasus — or will be when she's built. I just sold the Professor an order of bum steel for his crate. Have a drink on it."

  "Glad to, Mr. Barnes," Nolan agreed. "I've met Dr. Appleby. On business — Climax Instrument Company."

  "Huh?"

  "Climax is supplying us with precision equipment," offered Appleby.

  Barnes looked surprised, then grinned. "That's one on me. I took Fred for a government man, or one of your scientific johnnies. What'll it be, Fred? Old-fashioned? The same, Professor?"

  "Right. But please don't call me ‘Professor.' I'm not one and it ages me. I'm still young."

  "I'll say you are, uh — Doc, Pete! Two old-fashioneds and another double Manhattan! I guess I expected a comic book scientist, with a long white beard. But now that I've met you, I can't figure out one thing."

  "Which is?"

  "Well, at your age you bury yourself in this, god-forsaken place —"

  "We couldn't build the Pegasus on Long Island," Appleby pointed out, "and this is the ideal spot for the take-off."

  "Yeah, sure, but that's not it. It's — well, mind you, I sell steel. You want special alloys for a starship; I sell it to you. But just the same, now that business is out of the way, why do you want to do it? Why try to go to Proxima Centauri, or any other star?"

  Appleby looked amused. "It can't be explained. Why do men try to climb Mount Everest? What took Perry to the North Pole? Why did Columbus get the Queen to hock her jewels? Nobody has ever been to Proxima Centauri — so we're going."

  Barnes turned to Nolan. "Do you get it, Fred?"

  Nolan shrugged. "I sell precision instruments. Some people raise chrysanthemums; some build starships. I sell instruments."

  Barnes' friendly face looked puzzled. "Well —" The bartender put down their drinks. "Say, Pete, tell me something. Would you go along on the Pegasus expedition if you could?"

  "Nope."

  "Why not?"

  "I like it here."

  Dr. Appleby nodded. "There's your answer, Barnes, in reverse. Some have the Columbus spirit and some haven't."

  "It's all very well to talk about Columbus," Barnes persisted, "but he expected to come back. You guys don't expect to. Sixty years — you told me it would take sixty years Why, you may not even live to get there."

  "No, but our children will. And our grandchildren will come back."

  "But — Say, you're not married?"

  "Certainly, I am. Family men only oh the expedition. It's a two-to-three generation job. You know that." He hauled out a wallet. "There's Mrs. Appleby with Diane. Diane is three and a half."

  "She's a pretty baby," Barnes said soberly and passed it on to Nolan, who smiled at it and handed it back to Appleby. Barnes went on. "What happens to her?"

  "She goes with us, naturally. You wouldn't want her put in an orphanage, would you?"

  "No, but —" Barnes tossed off the rest of his drink, "I don't get it," he admitted. "Who'll have another drink?"

  "Not for me, thanks," Appleby declined, finishing his more slowly and standing up. "I'm due home. Family man, you know." He smiled.

  Barnes did not try to stop him. He said goodnight and watched Appleby leave.

  "My round," said Nolan. "The same?"

  "Huh? Yeah, sure." Barnes stood up. "Let's get up to the bar, Fred, where we can drink properly. I need about six."

  "Okay," Nolan agreed, standing up. "What's the trouble?"

  "Trouble? Did you see that picture?"

  "Well?"

  "Well, how do you feel about it? I'm a salesman too, Fred. I sell steel. It don't matter what the customer want to use it for; I sell it to him. I'd sell a man a rope to hang himself. But I do love kids. I can't stand to think of that cute little kid going along on that — that crazy expedition!

  "Why not? She's better off with her parents. She'll get as used to steel decks as most kids are to sidewalks."

  "But look, Fred. You don't have any silly idea they'll make it, do you?"

  "They might."

  "Well, they won't. They don't stand a chance. I know. I talked it over with our technical staff before I left the home office. Nine chances out of ten they'll burn up on the take-off. That's the best that can happen to them. If they get out of the solar system, which ain't likely, they'll still never make it. They'll never reach the stars."

  Pete put another drink down in front of Barnes. He drained it and said: "Set up another one, Pete. They can't. It's a theoretical impossibility. They'll freeze — or they'll roast — or they'll starve. But they'll never get there."

  "Maybe so."

  "No maybe about it. They're crazy. Hurry up with that drink, Pete. Have one yourself."

  "Coming up. Don't mind if I do, thanks." Pete mixed the cocktail, drew a glass of beer, and joined them.

  "Pete, here, is a wise man," Barnes said confidentially. "You don't catch him monkeying around with any trips to the stars. Columbus — Pfui! Columbus was a dope. He shoulda stood in bed."

  The bartender shook his head. "You got me wrong, Mr. Barnes. If it wasn't for men like Columbus, we wouldn't be here today — now, would we? I'm just not the explorer type. But I'm a believer. I got nothing against the Pegasus expedition."

  "You don't approve of them taking kids on it, do you?"

  "Well . . . there were kids on the Mayflower, so they tell me."'

  "It's not the same thing." Barnes looked at Nolan, then back to the bartender. "If the Lord had intende
d us to go to the stars, he would have equipped us with jet propulsion. Fix me another drink, Pete."

  "You've had about enough for a while, Mr. Barnes."

  The troubled fat man seemed about to argue, thought better of it. "I'm going up to the Sky Room and find somebody that'll dance with me," he announced. "G'night." He swayed softly toward the elevator.

  Nolan watched him leave. "Poor old Barnes." He shrugged. "I guess you and I are hard-hearted, Pete."

  "No. I believe in progress, that's all. I remember my old man wanted a law passed about flying machines, keep ‘em from breaking their fool necks. Claimed nobody ever could fly, and the government should put a stop to it. He was wrong. I'm not the adventurous type myself but I've seen enough people to know they'll try anything once, and that's how progress is made."

  "You don't look old enough to remember when men couldn't fly."

  "I've been around a long time. Ten years in this one spot."

  "Ten years, eh? Don't you ever get a hankering for a job that'll let you breathe a little fresh air?"

  "Nope. I didn't get any fresh air when I served drinks on Forty-second Street and I don't miss it now. I like it here. Always something new going on here, first the atom laboratories and then the big observatory and now the Starship. But that's not the real reason. I like it here. It's my home. Watch this."

  He picked up a brandy inhaler, a great fragile crystal globe, spun it and threw it, straight up, toward the ceiling. It rose slowly and gracefully, paused for a long reluctant wait at the top of its rise, then settled slowly, slowly, like a diver in a slow-motion movie. Pete watched it float past his nose, then reached out with thumb and forefinger, nipped it easily by the stem, and returned it to the rack.

  "See that," he said. "One-sixth gravity. When I was tending bar on earth my bunions gave me the dickens all the time. Here I weigh only thirty-five pounds. I like it on the Moon."

  The Menace from Earth

  My name is Holly Jones and I'm fifteen. I'm very intelligent but it doesn't show, because I look like an underdone angel. Insipid.

  I was born right here in Luna City, which seems to surprise Earthside types. Actually, I'm third generation; my grandparents pioneered in Site One, where the Memorial is. I live with my parents in Artemis Apartments, the new co-op in Pressure Five, eight hundred feet down near City Hall. But I'm not there much; I'm too busy.

  Mornings I attend Tech High and afternoons I study or go flying with Jeff Hardesty — he's my partner — or whenever a tourist ship is in I guide groundhogs. This day the Gripsholm grounded at noon so I went straight from school to American Express.

  The first gaggle of tourists was trickling in from Quarantine but I didn't push forward as Mr. Dorcas, the manager, knows I'm the best. Guiding is just temporary (I'm really a spaceship designer), but if you're doing a job you ought to do it well.

  Mr. Dorcas spotted me. "Holly! Here, please. Miss Brentwood, Holly Jones will be your guide."

  " 'Holly'," she repeated. "What a quaint name. Are you really a guide, dear?"

  I'm tolerant of groundhogs — some of my best friends are from Earth. As Daddy says, being born on Luna is luck, not judgment, and most people Earthside are stuck there. After all, Jesus and Gautama Buddha and Dr. Einstein were all groundhogs.

  But they can be irritating. If high school kids weren't guides, whom could they hire? "My license says so," I said briskly and looked her over the way she was looking me over.

  Her face was sort of familiar and I thought perhaps I had seen her picture in those society things you see in Earthside magazines — one of the rich playgirls we get too many of. She was almost loathsomely lovely ... nylon skin, soft, wavy, silver-blond hair, basic specs about 35-24-34 and enough this and that to make me feel like a matchstick drawing, a low intimate voice and everything necessary to make plainer females think about pacts with the Devil. But I did not feel apprehensive; she was a groundhog and groundhogs don't count.

  "All city guides are girls," Mr. Dorcas explained. "Holly is very competent."

  "Oh, I'm sure," she answered quickly and went into tourist routine number one: surprise that a guide was needed just to find her hotel, amazement at no taxicabs, same for no porters, and raised eyebrows at the prospect of two girls walking alone through "an underground city."

  Mr. Dorcas was patient, ending with: "Miss Brentwood, Luna City is the only metropolis in the Solar System where a woman is really safe — no dark alleys, no deserted neighborhoods, no criminal element."

  I didn't listen; I just held out my tariff card for Mr. Dorcas to stamp and picked up her bags. Guides shouldn't carry bags and most tourists are delighted to experience the fact that their thirty-pound allowance weighs only five pounds. But I wanted to get her moving.

  We were in the tunnel outside and me with a foot on the slidebelt when she stopped. "I forgot! I want a city map."

  "None available."

  "Really?"

  "There's only one. That's why you need a guide."

  "But why don't they supply them? Or would that throw you guides out of work?"

  See? "You think guiding is makework? Miss Brentwood, labor is so scarce they'd hire monkeys if they could."

  "Then why not print maps?"

  "Because Luna City isn't flat like —" I almost said, "— groundhog cities," but I caught myself.

  "— like Earthside cities," I went on. "All you saw from space was the meteor shield. Underneath it spreads out and goes down for miles in a dozen pressure zones."

  "Yes, I know, but why not a map for each level?"

  Groundhogs always say, "Yes, I know, but —"

  "I can show you the one city map. It's a stereo tank twenty feet high and even so all you see clearly are big things like the Hall of the Mountain King and hydroponics farms and the Bats' Cave."

  " 'The Bats' Cave'," she repeated. "That's where they fly, isn't it?"

  "Yes, that's where we fly."

  "Oh, I want to see it!"

  "OK. It first ... or the city map?"

  She decided to go to her hotel first. The regular route to the Zurich is to slide up the west through Gray's Tunnel past the Martian Embassy, get off at the Mormon Temple, and take a pressure lock down to Diana Boulevard. But I know all the shortcuts; we got off at Macy-Gimbel Upper to go down their personnel hoist. I thought she would enjoy it.

  But when I told her to grab a hand grip as it dropped past her, she peered down the shaft and edged back. "You're joking."

  I was about to take her back the regular way when a neighbor of ours came down the hoist. I said, "Hello, Mrs. Greenberg," and she called back, "Hi, Holly. How are your folks?"

  Susie Greenberg is more than plump. She was hanging by one hand with young David tucked in her other arm and holding the Daily Lunatic, reading as she dropped. Miss Brentwood stared, bit her lip, and said, "How do I do it?"

  I said, "Oh, use both hands; I'll take the bags." I tied the handles together with my hanky and went first.

  She was shaking when we got to the bottom. "Goodness, Holly, how do you stand it? Don't you get homesick?"

  Tourist question number six ... I said, "I've been to Earth," and let it drop. Two years ago Mother made me visit my aunt in Omaha and I was miserable — hot and cold and dirty and beset by creepy-crawlies. I weighed a ton and I ached and my aunt was always chivvying me to go outdoors and exercise when all I wanted was to crawl into a tub and be quietly wretched. And I had hay fever. Probably you've never heard of hay fever — you don't die but you wish you could.

  I was supposed to go to a girls' boarding school but I phoned Daddy and told him I was desperate and he let me come home. What groundhogs can't understand is that they live in savagery. But groundhogs are groundhogs and loonies are loonies and never the twain shall meet.

  Like all the best hotels the Zurich is in Pressure One on the west side so that it can have a view of Earth. I helped Miss Brentwood register with the roboclerk and found her room; it had its own port. She went straight to it, b
egan staring at Earth and going ooh! and ahh!

  I glanced past her and saw that it was a few minutes past thirteen; sunset sliced straight down the tip of India — early enough to snag another client. "Will that be all, Miss Brentwood?"

  Instead of answering she said in an awed voice, "Holly, isn't that the most beautiful sight you ever saw?"

  "It's nice," I agreed. The view on that side is monotonous except for Earth hanging in the sky — but Earth is what tourists always look at even though they've just left it. Still, Earth is pretty. The changing weather is interesting if you don't have to be in it. Did you ever endure a summer in Omaha?

  "It's gorgeous," she whispered.

  "Sure," I agreed. "Do you want to go somewhere? Or will you sign my card?"

  "What? Excuse me, I was daydreaming. No, not right now — yes, I do! Holly, I want to go out there! I must! Is there time? How much longer will it be light?"

  "Huh? It's two days to sunset."

  She looked startled. "How quaint. Holly, can you get us space suits? I've got to go outside."

  I didn't wince — I'm used to tourist talk. I suppose a pressure suit looked like a space suit to them. I simply said, "We girls aren't licensed outside. But I can phone a friend."

  Jeff Hardesty is my partner in spaceship designing, so I throw business his way. Jeff is eighteen and already in Goddard Institute, but I'm pushing hard to catch up so that we can set up offices for our firm: "Jones & Hardesty, Spaceship Engineers." I'm very bright in mathematics, which is everything in space engineering, so I'll get my degree pretty fast. Meanwhile we design ships anyhow.

  I didn't tell Miss Brentwood this, as tourists think that a girl my age can't possibly be a spaceship designer.

  Jeff has arranged his class to let him guide on Tuesdays and Thursdays; he waits at West City Lock and studies between clients. I reached him on the lockmaster's phone. Jeff grinned and said, "Hi, Scale Model."