The Space Opera Novella

by Frank Belknap Long

  Shannon’s jaw hardened.

  “Oh, he’ll hit back, all right, and hit back hard and dirty,” he agreed. “I’m waiting for that. I want him to. Because when he does, then I’ve a legitimate excuse to turn the wolves loose and take off the kid gloves. So far, I’m only sparring. Wait till we start to fight!”

  * * * * *

  Shannon stayed in his office through the lunch hour, scrawling endless rows of figures or staring fixedly at the dingy walls. Twice he got up to pace the floor, beating his fists together, whistling softly to himself. He was drunk—intoxicated by the first heady draft of success. He had met Titus Conway and had matched his ruthlessness with a cunning that promised success.

  Presently Shannon was sitting behind his desk again, adding columns of figures, when his office door bounced open. Two men came through. One of them glanced casually at him and flipped a beefy hand.

  “Hi, friend. Pardon the intrusion. We’ll be out of your way in a couple of minutes.”

  Turning his back, the man led his companion to the inner corner of the office, brought out a flexilite tape measure and began to stretch it along the wall.

  “Now, you tear this old partition out,” he said to his companion, “and you can—”

  “Hey, hey!” Shannon came around his desk, fists doubled. “What’s the big idea of barging in here? This is a private office. What are you doing, anyhow?”

  “Doing?” The red-faced man turned around, shoved his hat back off a bald head. “Why, measurin’ the joint up for some improvements the boss wants made before he moves in.”

  “Moves in?” Shannon gaped. “What’s the gag? Who are you?”

  “Me?” It was the smaller man who answered. “I’m Ben Carlson, of Moon-Tour Lines. I leased this property an hour ago from the guy who owns it—Titus Conway.”

  He rocked on his heels, grinning at Shannon around the frayed stump of a cigar.

  “You’ll be cleared out by the first of the week, of course. I’m putting a crew of decorators in Monday morning.”

  CHAPTER VI

  Tooth and Nail

  The words stopped Shannon cold. “Say—that—again!”

  “Sure. I said I leased this property from Titus Conway an hour ago. The lease is air-tight, in case you got ideas, fellow. But all I know is, I’ve been wanting bigger quarters. About an hour ago, Conway’s agent called and offered me this place at a bargain, so grabbed it. If there’s any gripe, see Conway.”

  “There’s plenty gripe,” Shannon said through his teeth. “I happen to hold a lease on this property myself. You’re trespassing. Get out!”

  “I’ll handle this, Ben,” the beefy man said, nudging his smaller companion aside.

  He faced Shannon, holding up fists the size and color of boiled hams, and grinned.

  “So we’re trespassing, friend. Put us off.”

  He was about an inch over Shannon’s six feet, with at least thirty pounds more beef and bone than Shannon’s lean one-seventy. He was also fast for so big a man. But not quite fast enough.

  Shannon slid under a sizzling haymaker, buried his left fist in a paunch that hadn’t had time to set itself, used his right to mash an already shapeless nose. The big man rocked back, trying to get breath enough to roar. When the roar came, Shannon was there to drive it back down his throat, along with a couple of teeth.

  The big man went away from Shannon, walking on his heels, shaking his head with bewilderment. No one had ever told him what a couple of years of fighting for life on Pluto does to a man’s muscles and reflexes.

  He tried filling the air with aimless fists. A few connected but Shannon rolled with the worst ones, robbing them of a satisfyingly solid impact, though his face gradually began to change shape and color under the blows. The big man could have smashed him any time if he could only have caught his breath. What little he did get, whistled like a carboned tube. It wasn’t much, because Shannon concentrated on his middle.

  Drawn by the commotion, Al Spaine and Mike Killmer came barging through the door, in time to see the smaller man, Ben Carlson, gripping a chair and maneuvering for the back of Shannon’s head.

  Al Spaine, being nearest, hit him first. The smaller man went down and his companion fell on him. Neither one showed any great eagerness to get up and resume hostilities. At a gesture from Shannon, they got as far as hands and knees and made a distinctly ungraceful exit.

  Shannon fell against his desk, panting.

  “Thanks,” he told the little communications man.

  “Go to the devil!” Spaine said coldly. “I’m just not like you. I don’t want to see everybody I dislike mopped off the earth.”

  He turned and stalked out. Mike Killmer, following, stopped in the doorway long enough to eye Shannon critically.

  “You better go over to the field hospital and let Doc Seitz shove that face of yours in the de-coagulator for twenty minutes. If I’ve got to work here another two weeks, I’d like outsiders to think you’re human.”

  Shannon snorted, sank into his chair behind the desk, got his clothing straightened, his cut face mopped somewhat and his hair combed. Then he rang for Marla Wylie. She came in, her attitude still impersonal.

  “I think we lost a trick,” Shannon told her. “Who’s the landlord of this property?”

  “The Henry Welsh Estates, managed by Ernst and Kummer.”

  “Not any more, I’m certain of that. How much back rent does Venus owe?”

  “Why, none.” She looked startled. “Mr. Leverance always managed to meet the rent within the current period. This current month hasn’t been paid yet, but this is only the eighth of the month and—”

  “I knew it,” Shannon groaned. “Bring me the lease—fast!”

  He motioned for her to wait while he read the document. At last he slapped it down on the desk disgustedly.

  “Tubby warned me to be sure my own back fences were tight. We’re stuck. A joker in the lease gives the landlord the right to evict a tenant whose rent is more than seven days past due. Ours was due on the first. This is the eighth.”

  He stared at the wall, thinking furiously.

  “Know of any property for rent around the field?”

  Marla Wylie shook her head.

  “I’ll check on it, if you like.”

  “Go ahead. But there won’t be. Dollars to mush, Conway’s grabbed every available space. And it would take us months and cost a fortune to build and equip a private field somewhere else.”

  “Then—then that means you’re through? With no base of operations, you can’t operate ships.”

  “No, it doesn’t mean I’m through!” Shannon said violently. “It means I’ve got to think fast, that’s all. There’s a way out somewhere. There’s always a way out if you can find it—”

  “Mr. Shannon,” Marla interrupted. She had risen, stood facing him tensely across the desk. “Why don’t you give up?”

  “What?” Shannon exclaimed. “Let Venus go smash now, when the fight is just beginning?”

  “Not that.” Marla shook her head. “I mean, give up this bitter, inhuman purpose behind your fighting. Tubby Martin told us how you outguessed and outmaneuvered Titus Conway this afternoon. You’ll do it again after this setback, I know. You have brains and courage, qualities that would earn you a loyalty you’ll never buy.” Shannon leaned his bruised chin on his fists and stared at her.

  “All right. You tell me what I should do.”

  “Keep on fighting, but fight for an ideal,” Marla told him. “John Leverance had one. He saw the Solar System as one big utopian unit, with mankind spreading out among the nine worlds to share the products of the System with one another. “He used to look on every ton of freight that blasted off, not as so many dollars’ profit in his pocket or from someone else’s pocket, but as one more foothold carved out of a rich wilderness.

 
“You may not believe this, Mr. Shannon, when I tell you that those men out there, Allen Spaine and Mike Killmer and the pilots, don’t want to leave. Set up a goal and let them share in it and I’m almost certain—”

  “How about you?” Shannon asked flatly.

  Marla’s eyes shifted away. She started to speak, stopped and looked up over Shannon’s head, toward the portrait of old John Leverance who had had a noble vision.

  Shannon got up suddenly, so abruptly that his chair slammed over backward.

  “Never mind. I get it.” He faced the girl, letting the bitterness slip out onto his battered face. “You think John Leverance had any copyright on that dream? I had a future once, too. But I lost it. It’s up on Venus, somewhere under the fog and the wind, tangled up in a pile of rusty metal and broken bones.

  “Go find that lost future, if you want me to believe in Santa Claus. Get me back the right to fly again, if you want me to care whether other men fly.”

  He stopped, drew in a deep breath. The flames died out of his eyes.

  “I’m going over to the field hospital,” he said huskily, “to get these bruises rayed out. When I come back, I’ll have a way figured out to beat this eviction.”

  He went out slamming the door. He did not look back again at Marla’s white, strained face. Lane Shannon knew that if he looked at her again, just then, he might weaken.

  Returning from the hospital, his face almost normal from the de-coagulator lamps that had dissolved and floated away the dark blood from bruised veins and capillaries, Shannon saw that something was wrong the moment he entered the building.

  Tubby Martin had returned and, with the other men and Marla Wylie, was crowded into the tiny Communications Room. They were watching the televisor screen over Al Spaine’s shoulder. Shannon could see a sort of dull horror reflected on their faces.

  Cold fingers clawed at his nerves. He slammed through the railing, drove into the little room with desperate fury.

  “What’s wrong? What happened?”

  Al Spaine told him, without looking around.

  “Your lovely little war kicked back on you, heel. It’s getting ready to murder Billy Anderson, the finest spaceman who ever pushed a Bolton bar.”

  CHAPTER VII

  Change of Heart

  Beyond Spaine’s stiff, angry shoulders, Shannon could see the glowing screen. It held a face that was strange to him, the face of a youngster, blond and pink-cheeked. He must have been about twenty, alive with the laughter and buoyancy of youth.

  But there was no laughter on his face now. It was pale, strained, dotted with glittering droplets of perspiration. Haunted eyes lifted, focused on Lane Shannon.

  “You’re the new chief, aren’t you?” he said huskily. “Then for God’s sake, throw your weight around down there. Get the field dispatcher quick and tell him to cut me off the beam.”

  “Off the beam?” Shannon gasped. “I don’t get it. What’s—”

  “Hurry up!” Billy Anderson choked. “I’m heading for Earth under constant acceleration. Both my braking tubes and steering jets are dead. I can’t slow, stop or steer and that beam is pulling me straight down toward the Field Headquarters Building. If I hit it at this speed, I’ll smash everything and everybody to bits.”

  “If the beam lets go,” Mike Killmer raged, “you’ll fly off at a tangent and never see Earth again. The sun’ll pull, you in before we can catch up with a grappling crew and that’ll be the end.”

  “So what?” Anderson shouted, half in tears. “What’s one old ship and one bum pilot against a crackup that would tie up interplanetary commerce for months? Cut-off—that—beam!” Allen Spaine twisted around, glaring at Shannon. There were tears on his cheeks.

  “Go ahead, cut him off. Throw him to the wolves. What’s one life more or less when you wipe ’em out wholesale! I hope you’re enjoying your war, Shannon. Those tubes blew out because somebody monkeyed with them. You asked for sabotage—and you got it! What do you care who gets killed? You won’t be exposing your yellow spine to any real danger!”

  Shannon was cold, rigid, barely hearing the furious tirade. His mind was painting pictures, sickening visions. Tons of steel and explosive fuel would smash down, at thousands of miles per hour, on the huge Headquarters structure.

  The three or four hundred persons working in the building could be out in time, of course. But nothing could save the priceless records, the nerve centers of control and communication that had taken interplanetary traffic out of the by-guess-and-by-gosh groove and standardized it.

  As long as the Lunar beam stayed on, the runaway ship would be inexorably drawn down to the center of the building. The crash might even wreck surrounding structures, the entire field.

  But none of these factors loomed as achingly monstrous in Shannon’s mind as the white face of Billy Anderson.

  Something snapped in Shannon’s brain, brought a flame into his cold eyes.

  “Get out of that chair!” he roared. When Al Spaine gaped without moving, Shannon caught him in a furious grip, lifted his slender body and literally hurled it back against Killmer and Tubby Martin. Before anyone could move, Shannon was in Spaine’s chair, leaning toward the transmitter.

  “Anderson!” he barked. “Get this and get it the first time. How far out are you now?”

  “Four hours. But kill that beam, you fool! Another half hour and it’ll be too late for me to miss Earth. I’ll smash into some city, maybe slaughter a hundred people.”

  “Shut up and listen! The beam is staying on and you’re coming into this field—alive. Are your stern tubes cool?”

  “Yes, but—”

  * * * *

  Shannon gestured impatiently. “Then grab your emergency tool kit and climb back into the housing,” he ordered. “You’ve got to work fast on this or you’re licked. I know the tube, assembly on those Heavy Six jobs. Each tube is separately mounted and supported by short V-braces leading to a tube saddle. This saddle is made up of a stack of thin metallite shims, so that if a tube gets out of alignment, it can be shimmed, back to true without tearing down the whole assembly. Got that?”

  “Yes, but—”

  “Shut up! Squirm back there and start knocking shims out of the saddles on one side and wedging them in on the other. Do that with every individual tube on the inner three rings. Let the outer rings alone, but shim every one of the tubes in the inner three as far out of line as you can—but all in the same direction.”

  “I get it, but—Wait! You mean maybe I can use the inner rings as steering tubes?” Anderson exclaimed.

  “Of course. Even if they’re only a sixteenth out of line, if they all fire in the same direction and keep firing long enough, you’ll turn your ship completely around. It’s only a question of having time enough to make the swing. Get going!”

  A tight grin eased the strain of Anderson’s face.

  “I’ve gone! Stand by for a report.”

  The screen cleared. Shannon let out his breath in a long whistling sigh, conscious for the first time that he had been holding it until his lungs ached. He sat numbly, staring with dull curiosity at half moons, of crimson blood where his fists had clenched, driving nails into the palms of his hands. He was seeing the face of Billy Anderson, turning from agony to hope.

  But he was hearing, over and over again, the words of Allen Spaine. You asked for sabotage and you got it. What do you care who gets killed? He cleared his brain of the bitter words by sheer force of will, drove himself to concentrate on the one slim hope.

  Thank God this wasn’t one of the older G-class crates, with rigid tube-mounts permanently attached to the tubes by intermolecular lacing. For the first time, Shannon found a reason to be glad that circumstances had made him learn rocket ships the hard way.

  Lacking the capital to finance his training, he had earned his way to a pilot’s license by working part
time in the Ranger Factory, afterward builders of the Heavy Six freighters. He knew the tube-mounting principle on which Ranger success had been founded. But neither he nor the manufacturers had ever envisioned this use of the construction feature.

  It was such a desperate gamble. Suppose the blast couldn’t be turned far enough to swing the ship in the remaining time. They wouldn’t know until it was too late to try anything else.

  Suppose the uneven blast pressure burned out the tubes. Suppose, even if the ship could be turned, that setting it down on its tail jets without the aid of steering rockets might prove impossible. Shannon groaned land tore his mind away from the nagging doubts.

  “How did this happen?” he demanded. “I thought Anderson blasted off for Venus hours ago.”

  “He was supposed to,” Killmer said. “But Conway cut his freight rate in half this morning and stole every load. There was no sense in going on empty, so I told Billy to come home. He blasted out to mid-point, tried to decelerate and discovered his whole bow ignition had been deliberately smashed. Sabotage—”

  “Hi, Chief!” Anderson appeared in the televisor, grinning through a mask of carbon and grease. “I did it. Gained almost an eighth-inch misalignment. I should be able to waltz this crate with a sideblast like that.”

  Lane Shannon swallowed the tightness in his throat.

  “Good boy,” he said. “Now start blasting those rings, but watch tube temperature every second. You’ve got to find the point of highest possible acceleration the tubes will stand, and then use it. Every second counts, because you’ll be fighting both inertia and the pull of the beam.”

  “I get you, Chief.”

  “And give us fifteen-minute readings on a couple of fixed stars, so we can figure your rate of turn.”

  Anderson saluted and vanished. After a moment, the receiver brought the growing thunder of the tubes. The sound rose and fell for a time and finally settled to a dull rumble.

  “A shade over three-quarter throttle,” Anderson reported shortly. “I may have to pull it a time or two to keep the heat down, but I’ll keep all I can. Now stand by while I watch stars shift.”