by Earl
“But you can’t trust the reading—” And he actually tried to pull over on the wheel.
I jerked his arm away pretty roughly.
“Now look, Jim. I’m driving. I’m going by the Bolideometer. It says four minutes. I’m turning after two minutes, so as not to waste a lot of gas in a big, clumsy turn. Now sit down and bank your rockets!”
The kid obeyed, but bit his nails till I made the turn. Two minutes later, on schedule, the meteor sailed by.
“See?” I said. “This Bolideometer is as accurate as they make ’em.”
“Yes, this time,” the kid muttered. “But the next time, or the next, it’ll slip. And you’ll pile up.”
“Dongee,” I pleaded, “did you ever hear such rot? Tell me why, Jim? What have you got against the Clarkson Bolideometer, model ’97?”
The kid looked like he was going to freeze up again, but suddenly he talked, his eyes going wild.
“Remember the crack-up of the Earth-Saturn liner, Star-Clipper, three months ago?”
“Yeah,” I said. “Terrible. Meteor drilled right through. Half the passengers and most of the crew killed. Worst wreck in ten years. What about it?”
The kid swallowed. “It was equipped with a Clarkson Bolideometer, model ’97.”
“So what? The investigation proved that the chief pilot on duty at the time was negligent.”
“Proved?” the kid blazed. “The meteor wrecked every instrument aboard. There was no proof that its reading was right. And the reading was wrong. The chief pilot, James Ellory, said so!”
I waved a hand. “Of course he said so. So would I, to get out of a jail sentence for falling asleep at the switch. He was sent to Phobos prison for life, wasn’t he, with his piloting license taken away?” The kid nodded.
“But he’s innocent. I was studying Bolideometers at the time, in school. I took a Clarkson model ’97 apart. It has one little flaw in it. The beryllium-alloy spring for the dial is subject to cosmic-ray hardening. After five years no Clarkson ’97 is trustworthy.”
Was the kid whacky, or did he have something?
“You mean,” I said kind of nastily, “that Solar Incorporation doesn’t know about this flaw? The leading space instrument makers for fifty years, and they put a dud Bolideometer on the market so as to put themselves out of business, eh?”
The kid didn’t get sore.
“This is 2102,” he said. “The Clarkson ’97 was put on the market five years ago!”
And he looked at me.
“Say,” I said, when it suddenly soaked in. “You mean the Clarkson’s are just beginning to slip, after these five years? You mean—say, what do you mean anyway?”
He came right out with it.
“I mean that starting soon, ships are going to crack up all over. Those with Clarkson ’97’s. The Star-Clipper was only the first. Any ship with a Clarkson ’97 is a flying coffin!”
“Uh!” Dongee grunted, turning over and going to sleep.
I couldn’t swallow it, either. The kid was space batty, or something. I’d get him to Mars and see that he was put in good hands.
“Okay, Jim,” I soothed. “Now take it easy. When we get to Mars, we’ll check on all that.”
“If we get to Mars,” he said, and darned if chills didn’t climb down my back.
“No one believes me,” he finished. “No one.”
I turned back to my driving, thinking the whole thing over. The more I went over what the kid said, the crazier it sounded. What was he going to Mars for? To try to reopen the Star-Clipper case, and get a hearing?
I LOOKED at the chronometer, One hour to go. I’d soon find out, when we arrived at Mars. If we arrived at Mars! The kid’s words kept bothering me. I looked at him. He sat stiff as a board, hawking space ahead like he had all the way, not trusting that Bolideometer one little bit.
Suddenly it clacked, and I jumped a mile. Then I quieted myself. Jim was a foolish kid, soft in the head, and I’d go by that instrument. After all, the thing had been perfected by the System’s best scientific mechanics.
“Three minutes, it reads,” I said for Jim’s benefit. “I’m turning in two minutes.”
But suddenly, with a gasp, he grabbed the wheel and yanked it over before I could get a grip to stop him. The side pressure from the sharp swing banged Dongee against the wall, and me against him.
“Uh!” Dongee grunted in surprise, waking up.
I was more than surprised. I was mad. “You crazy little fool!” I growled. “For two cents I’d toss you right out in space on your ear—ulp!”
Yeah, you’d make a sound like “ulp” too if you suddenly saw a one-hundred foot meteor ballooning up in your face. Jim was still yanking the wheel over. And I helped him. I think we skidded around that patch of space in a forty-five degree angle. The meteor got as big as a mountain and shot by, with maybe ten feet to spare. Not a blessed foot more. When you get closer than a mile to a meteor, you’re close!
I straightened the truck out, and then just sat there, gasping like a fish. Anybody says I’m a coward, I’ll pummel him to Saturn and back. But believe me, that was one time in my life I was scared green.
Then I looked at the Bolideometer, and let out a yell that made the walls ring.
“Look at the damned, rotten thing!” I roared. “It says one minute to go! One minute to go—and the meteor’s past!”
I turned to the kid.
“Thanks, Jim,” I said. “If you hadn’t kept your eyes open, we’d be mince-meat right now. And they’d put us down in the records as driving while drunk or something.”
The kid was limp, too, and didn’t say anything.
“Uh!” Dongee said. “Nice shot!”
Yeah, it must have been! The closest shot of a meteor ever taken, if you ask me. Can you imagine that nerveless Martian snapping a shot of the meteor that for all he knew at the moment was going to smear him along five million miles of space?
“Jim,” I said, “the Bolideometer flopped.”
“Yes, it did,” he agreed.
“Jim,” I said, “the Clarkson ’97 isn’t worth a plugged Venusian nickel!”
“No.”
“Jim,” I said, “when we get to Mars, I’m going to raise sixteen kinds of hell—”
MARS loomed up now like a big red moon. We didn’t have to worry about meteors any more, thank heaven. We were close enough to be within the zone where the meteor-sweeper crews clear out all hazards around a planet.
Space ferries appeared here and there, on their short round trip with sight-seeing passengers. Way off to one side a swanky space yacht was anchored outside the million-mile limit. Probably some wild party going on aboard, with plenty of Martian cactus wine spilling over the sides. Traffic got thick, and I cruised in on low blasts.
We slanted down on Phobos, where all foreign traffic is checked in and out. We dropped into the aerated dome through the automatic photo-electric locks. I plunked my trailer truck down in the Customs pit. It felt good to step out and stretch our legs, breathing good clean air.
“How long to check us in?” I asked the Martian Customs agent.
“About three hours.”
Any other time I would have raised hell, like I always do over them pokey Martians.
“Take your time,” I said, pulling Jim and Dongee along by the arms. “We have business to do. Solar Incorporation has a big office here on Phobos. We’re going to raise a little hell. You too, Dongee. You’re a witness.”
I was even too burned up to suggest eating. We walked right to the business section. Solar Incorporation had a big, humming office in an loan glowstone building. I didn’t bother asking to see someone. I just pushed clerks out of the way and stormed to the manager’s office.
John Thomas, Manager, was lettered on the door.
Thomas wiped off a silly grin and leaned away from his pretty secretary as we barged in.
“What is the meaning of this intrusion?” he barked, standing up indignantly. “Who are you?”
“I don’t understand,” Thomas said.
“You’ll understand.” I told the story. When I finished, I said, “Your ’97 Clarkson isn’t worth a plugged Venusian nickel, see?”
“Sit down,” Thomas invited. He sat down himself. “You’re making a very serious charge, Mr. Walsh.”
“Right,” I said. “The Star-Clipper was equipped with a Clarkson ’97 too.
It wasn’t the chief pilot, James Ellory, who failed in duty. It was your rotten Bolideometer!”
“That’s ridiculous!” Thomas snapped. “Chief Pilot James Ellory is serving a life sentence now for negligence of duty.”
“Says you. What about our experience?”
Thomas smiled a little.
“You have no proof, have you?”
“Proof? I have two witnesses, haven’t I?”
“Meaningless,” Thomas said. “Don’t you realize your claims, upheld by court, would cost us heavily? We would have to make restitution on all the Star-Clipper’s death-list, and its cost. Naturally we’ll fight your fantastic accusation through every court in the System. We stick by our instruments. They’re infallible. If this is some sort of racket, gentlemen—”
“Racket?” It was Jim who spoke up now, his eyes flaming. “Thousands of lives are in danger at this moment, in hundreds of ships equipped with the Clarkson ’97. One by one they’ll have the experience we did—with more disastrous results! You’ve got to believe me!”
“I don’t,” Thomas said. “You have no proof. It’s silly. You’re wasting my time.”
Jim spoke tonelessly.
“That’s the trouble—no proof. That’s why James Ellory went to prison, a broken man. And there never will be proof. Just as with the Star-Clipper, all the instruments will be ground to shreds.”
“Yeah, guess we’re licked,” I muttered.
“Uh,” Dongee grunted.
“Good day, gentlemen,” Thomas hinted impatiently.
“Uh,” Dongee grunted.
I turned on him before leaving, “For Saturn’s sake, stop it, Dongee! Stop grunting all over the place.”
Dongee was fumbling with his camera and suddenly handed me a print. That dumb Martian had one of the latest kind that develops the picture right in the camera. I took the print.
“What’s this, Dongee? Yes, it’s pretty, so what! Don’t bother me—nip!”
That’s the kind of sound you make when something wallops you like a ton of neutronium. I stared at the print for about two minutes. Then I walked over to Thomas’s desk and handed it to him.
He stared at it five minutes.
“The ’97 Clarkson isn’t worth a—a plugged Venusian nickel,” he said.
Suddenly he was yelling into his desk annunciator.
“Get me Earth! Get me Venus! Get me every office we have. Call the Space police and have them put a warning through the whole System. Any ship with a ’97 Clarkson Bolideometer is to pull to the nearest port at low-blast. Do you hear me? Yank every Clarkson ’97 and smash them to bits.”
The picture? I don’t know how Dongee did it. Plain dumb Martian luck. When he snapped the meteor that nearly clipped us, he got half the instrument panel in the picture. The Bolideometer reading was one minute. And the meteor was already there, caught on film.
THE next day, Thomas promised that Solar Incorporated would take full blame for the Star-Clipper catastrophe.
“How about the chief pilot of the Star-Clipper?” the kid asked.
“James Ellory will be exonerated, of course,” Thomas said. “And reinstated in full pilot rating. Now, if you will, come with me to Phobos Penitentiary to visit him—”
A gray-haired man was brought to the warden’s office. I took one look.
“Kid!” I asked. “What’s your last name?”
“Ellory,” the kid said. “James, Junior.”
“Gosh, kid,” I said, “I should have known.”
Then I pulled Dongee and Thomas out. “Thomas,” I said, “don’t waste your time offering Jim a position in your firm. He’s going to be a space pilot, like his father.”
I grabbed Dongee’s arm.
“Come on, Dongee. Back to space trucking for us. It’s monotonous as hell, like I always told you, but what the hell—maybe we can pick up another hitchhiker.”
DOUBLE OR NOTHING
Joe Lake Gets Into Hot Water, Keeping a Cold-Blooded Space Pirate From Robbing Two Places at the Same Time!
A SPACE cabby runs into some funny things, especially when he hawks fares around the asteroids. Take me, for instance, Joe Lake, that night of August tenth, 1997. I say “night” because even in those days the Solar Time Board set up twenty-four Earth hours as the standard there. Everyone slept during the official night—if they didn’t have other business, legit or otherwise.
Carl Mallow had other business. He came traipsing out of his Starshine Apartments, collecting rent, no doubt. He owned half the real estate on Ceres, and a dozen asteroids outright. He had raked up in the Asteroid Rush of ’77.
I didn’t like his face. Mean and thin it was, like Scrooge’s. I used to see him quite a bit in the business section of Ceres. That guy never did anything but scowl and look like he hated the whole Universe.
“Taxi?” I said reluctantly, wishing anyone else had come along except that frown on two legs, but a cabby’s got to make a living. “Anywhere in the asteroids.”
“Yeah,” he growled, stepping in. “Asteroid W-Forty-three. What’re your rates?”
He would ask that, the skinflint! I looked at the orbit chart to see how far W-Forty-three was from Ceres at the moment. Some cabbies forget to look and make a price for half the distance, as though asteroids always stay in one place.
“Ten thallahs,” I said, slamming the door and shifting into first. “Get you there in two hours.”
“Ten thallahs?” he howled. “That’s robbery! A taxi took me there the other day for eight!”
“Yeah,” I snapped back, “at the risk of your life. I’m an A-one driver. See my license?”
He kind of winced, probably remembering a couple narrow squeaks with that scab driver.
“All right, all right,” he said. “Get going. You talk too much.”
For a minute I thought of taking him out to the Milky Way and dumping him for nothing. But then I remembered that business was slow and a fare was a fare.
I zoomed over Earthlane Boulevard to Outlet Five. During the rush hours, there was generally a line of cabs and cars waiting to get out into space, but it was late and we went right through, the photo-electric locks clicking and swinging ahead and behind. I pressed the buttons that sealed my cab and started the aero-heat unit. We were in space.
BEHIND us, Ceres and its domed city looked like a big, twinkling moon. A few minutes later, when I shot my cab into high, Ceres was just a bright point, like all the other points choking up the ether.
I steered for W-43 through the Jupiter-Mars Gap, passing a big liner with its blasts shooting out for ten miles behind it. Then I took the short-cut around Pivot Asteroid, which my A-l license allowed me to do without getting picked up for reckless driving. Officer O’Leary waved at me from his station. I’d had many a drink with him at Spaceman’s Rest.
Mallow was a clam for the whole trip, sitting there in the back with his face screwed up worse than the Pluto Badlands. Some poor client was probably overdue on rent or interest payments. I wondered who it was.
I soon found out. W-43 was new to me, a small asteroid about 500 yards in diameter.
“There’s about forty thousand of those midgets,” I told Mallow. “Too small to be seen from Earth in any telescope, so nobody knew they existed before space-travel.”
“Yeah, I pick up little bits of i
nformation like that to entertain my fares. They like it.”
“Mind your driving and deliver me at the door,” this fare cracked.
“Okay!” I said nastily, swooping down like a comet and then jamming on the reverse blast brakes. When we slid through the automatic locks and plunked down in the landing yard, Mr. Carl Mallow was a nice, speechless green.
“You did that on purpose!” he accused when he had swallowed his heart.
“You know,” I said, “if all the asteroids were stretched end to end, they’d reach from the Earth to the Moon. Think of that!”
Mallow glared, stepping out, but forgot about me as he turned to the house. Like most asteroid estates, it was a big, rambling, stone house with the seal-dome extending the aerated grounds about two hundred yards. The rest of the asteroid was bare rocks, in which you could amble around in a space-suit if you wanted.
“Wait here,” Mallow said to me as the front door opened.
When a ship comes through the automatic lock, it rings a bell inside the house on most of the asteroid estates.
She was as pretty as a picture, framed in the doorway. Long, wavy, blond hair and eyes so blue that it made you think of summer skies on Earth. Right now her eyes were wide and worried.
“Oh!” she gasped. “Mr. Mallow. But father is so busy—”
Mallow fastened his snake eyes on her.
“No stalling, Miss Petrie. I’m here for the payment and I won’t leave without it.”
He began pushing past her. I don’t know how I got there so quick, but I managed to grab his arm.
“Take it easy, pal,” I warned. “I was middleweight champ in the Interplanetary Golden Gloves once. I don’t like to see ladies pushed around.”
“You keep out of this!” Mallow said, but he didn’t push again. “I own this asteroid and everything on it. I want to see Dr. Petrie.”
The girl made a helpless gesture. “Come in, then. Father is in the laboratory.”
THE door closed behind them. I stuck my hands in my pockets and ambled over to the edge of the dome, looking out at the asteroid’s rock fields. The stars were clear as beacons through the transparent metal of the half-shell that arched over the house and grounds. I was thinking of the girl and landlord Mallow when I saw something move under the stars, out there among the rocks.
