The Golden Age of Science Fiction Volume VII: An Anthology of 50 Short Stories

by Various

  Someone in the shipping office? Well, why not Peters, the pilot? And then Braigh had come along, pretending to have been on his way back to Centauri VI and hoping to buy a fast passage on a small vessel for business reasons. He had been free and ready with his money, leading Tremont to consider cutting his own expenses on the charter.

  It seemed, on the face of it, that the three of them had never met until the Annabel lifted.

  "But they had, all right!" Tremont told himself. "That was no chance, anywhere along the line. I've been very neatly highjacked!"

  The girl must have trailed him to make sure they picked up the right man. Braigh had never explained exactly what he was doing on the satellite; he could have arranged for the assignment of the rocket, or perhaps of the pilot, when Tremont called. Then they had gathered around to hitch rides, and had been in control ever since.

  Tremont looked at the slowly progressing constellations and cursed himself. He began to have the feeling that there would be no way out of this. They would regret pitching him into space in such an offhand manner, he reminded himself, when they opened his case. It would be too late as far as he was concerned.

  Come to think of it, he considered, that Braigh looks pretty smart, under that idiot-kid pose. He might just break my code, given time. And the parts made up of model photos or drawings he can sell almost as is.

  When he came to think of it, Tremont was surprised that no one had tried the same racket before. He had laid out a fortune for what the three thieves were stealing from him.

  He drew in his left arm again and raised the wrist to the neck of his helmet. By looking down his nose, he discovered to his surprise that he had been out nearly an hour. He had wasted more time than he thought in reviewing his earlier encounters with Dorothy aboard the starship and the others at the spaceport.

  He raised the water tube to his mouth and sucked in a mouthful. The taste was stale.

  I could do with a beer, if this is the way I'm going out, he thought. They can joke all they want about dying in bed after traveling to the stars; but you could order a beer even if it killed you.

  It gradually dawned upon him that the hazy light he had accepted as being a nebula must be something closer. He watched for it, and discovered after a few moments that it was growing brighter. It continued to do so for half an hour.

  "It might be another ship!" he breathed, then he began to shout, "Mayday! Mayday!" over his radio.

  He kept it up for nearly a quarter of an hour, even after the outline was definitely recognizable as a rocket. He found himself drifting across its course near the bow. It was hard to estimate the distance, but he guessed it to be something like a hundred yards.

  Drifting? he asked himself. It should be going past me like a shooting star! Unless they took exactly the same curve from Centauri VII--

  Then he could read the numbers he feared to see. AC7-4-525. His own ship.

  He had gone out of the air lock mainly on a puff of air, with some fumbling help from Peters. That had been enough to send him out of sight of the ship--in space, not necessarily very far--and now he was back, after two hours.

  A long, flat orbit in relation to the ship, he told himself, remembering in time to avoid speaking aloud that Braigh might be at the ship's radio, but actually weaving back and forth across the rocket's course, just nipping it at this end.

  He edged a hand inside the suit again and turned off his radio. If he found an answer, it would be fatal to be overheard mumbling about it.

  * * * * *

  The ship now seemed to be rushing at him, and Tremont deduced that his orbital speed had increased as he approached the focus represented by the Annabel. He would doubtless pass near the air lock at about his expulsion speed.

  "Here's the chance!" he exulted. "A little air let out to slow down ... or even just to veer close enough to lay hands on something! You launched me, Peters, but you didn't lose me."

  Getting through the airlock should be easy enough. He might be well up the shaft before the others emerged from the control room. In fact, unless Peters were on watch, the air lock operating signal might flash unnoticed on the board.

  "And I'll be cracking skulls before they know what's up!" he growled.

  It struck him with a flash of ironic amusement that he had not felt half so much hate when believing himself doomed. After two hours of sweating out his helplessness, he had discovered a lively resentment of the vicious callousness with which he had been jettisoned.

  He was only about twenty-five yards away now, seemingly circling the ship. Peering closer, he saw that actually he was sweeping in toward it.

  Now, be ready with the air tank valve, just in case! he warned himself.

  The great fins loomed to his right; the hull blotted most of the sky from his view. It looked as if he would curve down to a spot beside the same air lock from which he had been expelled. It seemed to be still open.

  Then he saw the shape of a helmet rise around the curve of the ship. Someone was out on the hull.

  Tremont switched on his radio and listened.

  The spacesuited figure climbed completely into view. There appeared to be a line running from the belt into the air lock, and the figure carried a long pole of some sort.

  "Oh, there you are, Tremont!" came Braigh's voice over the receiver. "I've been waiting for you."

  The chuckle that followed made Tremont curse, which in turn provoked a hearty laugh from the other.

  "You didn't think I'd forget you?" asked Braigh. "We figured out what happened as soon as we heard you putting out those distress calls. After that, it was just a matter of timing. Have you had an amusing trip?"

  "Have you found out you can't make anything of those papers yet?" countered Tremont.

  "Oh, the coding? It might take a little time, but we have plenty ... now, now, Tremont! That kind of abusive language will get you nowhere."

  Tremont had drifted to a point above the other's head, almost within reach. He was kicking out in little motions that betrayed his eagerness to come to grips with Braigh or something solid.

  "Why, Tremont! I do believe that you thought I came out to bargain with you," chuckled the blond man. "Not at all! I told you that you'd be no trouble. I just came out to finish the job Peters bungled."

  Tremont saw the pole jabbing upward at his stomach. Instinctively, he grabbed at the end. Braigh was not disturbed.

  "Take it with you, then!" he laughed, letting go his end with a powerful push. "Let me know if you're alive the next time you come around, so I can come out again."

  Tremont began to swear at him, then got a grip on himself long enough to snap his radio off.

  He had begun pulling himself down the pole when Braigh had shoved. That sapped some of the force, but it was still enough to send him spinning out into the void once more.

  The ship receded slowly. He saw Braigh return to the air lock and enter. A moment later, that light was cut off, and Tremont began to back off into space as he had the first time.

  They know all about it, he realized. They could leave me any time just by burning a little fuel. Peters wouldn't care about wasting it--I paid for it. Maybe he's just too lazy to calculate the course correction.

  If so, he decided, the pilot was right. Tremont might drift back, but two more hours from now, when he would be at his closest, would be too late. He would be too near the end of his air to use it to make sure of the last few feet.

  He looked at the pole in his grip. It was an eight-foot section of aluminum from the cargo racks.

  "Maybe ..." he muttered.

  Whirling the pole around by the end, he managed after considerable trial and error, to slow his wild spin enough to keep the ship in view.

  The only question then was whether he dared to take the chance; and he really had but one choice. The full orbit would be too long a period.

  He estimated as well as he could the direction of his progress, allowed a few degrees which he fondly hoped would curve him in to a closer
approach at the meeting point, and hurled the pole into space with all his strength.

  After that, there was nothing to do but wait and hope that he had cut his speed enough to bring him to the ship ahead of schedule by a shorter orbit.

  * * * * *

  Tremont finally gave up looking at his watch when he found himself peeping every three minutes, on the average. The immensity of space was by now instilling in him a psychological chill, and he drew both arms in from their sleeves to hug an illusion of warmth to him. The air pressure in the sleeves gradually overpowered the springs of the joints, and extended them to make a cross.

  As far as he could tell from the gauges lined in a miniature row along the neckpiece of the suit, his heating system was functioning as designed. The batteries had an excellent chance of lasting longer than he would.

  He began to dwell upon thoughts of squeezing Peters in the steel grip of his gauntlets until the pilot's fat face turned purple and his eyes popped. Another promising activity would be to bang Braigh's head against a bulkhead with one hand and Dorothy's with the other.

  Wonder if they found the gun in my locker? he mused.

  Finally, only a lifetime or two after he hoped to see it, he sighted the ship again. His watch claimed the trip had lasted less than ninety minutes.

  He encountered unexpected trouble approaching the hull. Realizing that he was lucky to come close at all by such a guess, he tried to steer himself with brief jets from his air tank, and wound up on the verge of bashing directly into a fin. He avoided that, but had to use more air to spin back for a more gentle contact.

  The metal felt like solid Earth to him as he seized the edge of a fin and planted the magnets of his boots firmly on the hull.

  It was perhaps twenty minutes later, when Tremont was beginning to worry again about his air supply, that the hatch of the air lock began to open.

  Crystals of frost puffed out as the water vapor left the air. Braigh's helmet appeared, then the whole spacesuited figure floated up before the spot where Tremont was watching. The highjacker dropped the magnet of his life line against the hull and started to turn around.

  Tremont grabbed the edge of the hatch with one hand, yanked the magnet loose with the other, and kicked Braigh in the right area.

  The spacesuited figure shot off, tumbling end over end, into the void. A startled squawk sounded over Tremont's receiver.

  "See how you like it!" he snarled.

  He ignored the begging of the suddenly frightened voice, and dived into the air lock. In seconds, he had the outer hatch shut and was nervously watching the air pressure building up on the gauge.

  If they notice at all, they'll think it's Braigh coming back! he exulted.

  He made it into the central shaft without meeting anyone. Pulling himself forward in the bulky suit was an awkward task, but well worth it for the expression on Peters' face when Tremont burst through the control-room hatch.

  After dealing with the pilot in about two minutes, most of it spent in catching him, Tremont went back along the shaft and found Dorothy in her bunk. Before she could release the netting, he folded the bunk upon her and secured it to the hook. Only then did he allow himself the time to remove his helmet and make free of the ship's air.

  "What are you going to do?" demanded the girl, rather shrilly.

  Tremont realized that she must have seen the unconscious Peters floating outside in the shaft.

  "You won't like it!" he promised.

  "Tremont! I didn't know they'd do anything to you. Can't ... you and I ... make some kind of ... deal?"

  Tremont stared at her levelly.

  "But I'd have to really sleep sometime," he pointed out gently. "How can I trust you...?"

  * * * * *

  He was hardly a million miles out from the satellite system of Centauri VI when the Space Patrol ship he had called managed to put a pilot aboard to land the Annabel for him on the largest moon.

  Tremont returned wearily from helping the man in the air lock--which he did with a practiced efficiency that surprised the pilot--to resume his talk with the patrol-ship captain waiting on the screen.

  "We could have done it sooner, you know," said the latter curiously. "Well, now that I see him beside you, perhaps you'll explain your request to delay, and also what those pips trailing you are."

  "It's all the same story," said Tremont, and explained his difficulties.

  The patrol captain frowned and expressed a wish to lay hands on the highjackers.

  "Well, they're due back in"--Tremont consulted his watch--"about two hours. I wanted them near the ends of their orbits as you approached."

  "You mean there are three bodies out there?"

  "Live ones, in spacesuits," said Tremont. "Experience is a great teacher. As soon as I sighted Braigh coming back, I set up a regular system."

  He explained how he had removed all tools from the three spacesuits, added extra tanks, and stuffed the trio into them, either unconscious or at gunpoint.

  "Then, having fastened the ankles together and wired the wrists to the thighs so they couldn't move at all, I launched them one at a time with enough pressure in the air lock to give four-hour orbits. That gave me sleeping time."

  "And what about them?" asked the captain.

  "Oh, at the end of that period, they'd come drifting in at one-hour intervals. Counting all the necessary operations, each of them got thirty minutes actually out of the suit to eat and so on. Then out he'd go while I fished in the next one. They didn't like it, but they weren't so tough one at a time."

  "Let's see--" mused the captain. "Every four hours, you'd have to spend ... why, only two hours processing them. As a result, you kept complete control and came shooting in here with your own satellite system revolving about you."

  "And your friends? How have they been passing the time?"

  "Well, either figuring out how to take me next time," guessed Tremont, "or wishing they were moving in more honest circles!"

  * * *

  Contents

  BELLY LAUGH

  By Randall Garrett

  You hear a lot of talk these days about secret weapons. If it's not a new wrinkle in nuclear fission, it's a gun to shoot around corners and down winding staircases. Or maybe a nice new strain of bacteria guaranteed to give you radio-active dandruff. Our own suggestion is to pipe a few of our television commercials into Russia and bore the enemy to death.

  Well, it seems that Ivar Jorgensen has hit on the ultimate engine of destruction: a weapon designed to exploit man's greatest weakness. The blueprint can be found in the next few pages; and as the soldier in the story says, our only hope is to keep a sense of humor!

  Me? I'm looking for my outfit. Got cut off in that Holland Tunnel attack. Mind if I sit down with you guys a while? Thanks. Coffee? Damn! This is heaven. Ain't seen a cup of coffee in a year.

  What? You said it! This sure is a hell of a war. Tough on a guy's feet. Yeah, that's right. Holland Tunnel skirmish. Where the Ruskies used that new gun. Uhuh. God! It was awful. Guys popping off all around a guy and him not knowing why. No sense to it. No noise. No wound. Just popping off.

  That's the trouble with this war. It won't settle down to a routine. Always something new. What the hell chance has a guy got to figure things out? And I tell you them Ruskies are coming up with new weapons just as fast as we are. Enough to make your hair stand on end.

  Sugar? Christ, yes! Ain't seen sugar for a year. You see, it's like this: we were bottled up in the pits around the Tunnel for seven damn days. It was like nothing you ever saw before. Oops--sorry. Didn't mean to splash you. I was laughing about something that happened there--to a guy. Maybe you guys would get a kick out of it. After all, we got to keep our sense of humor.

  You see, there was me and a Kentucky kid named Stillwell in this pit--a pretty big pit with lots of room--and we were all alone. This Stillwell was a nice kid--green and lonesome and it's pretty sad, really, but there's a yak in it, and--as I say--we got to keep a sense of h
umor.

  Well, this Stillwell--a really green kid--is unhappy and just plain drooling for his gal back home. He talks about his mother, of course, and his old man, but it's the girl that's really on his mind as you guys can plainly understand.

  He's seeing her every place--like spots in front of his eyes--nice spots doing things to him, when this Ruskie babe shows up.

  My gun came up without any orders from me just as she poked her puss over the edge of the pit, and--huh? Oh, thank you kindly. It sure tastes good but I don't want to short you guys. Thank you kindly.

  Well, as I was saying, this Ruskie babe pokes her nose over the edge of the pit and Stillwell dives and knocks down my gun. He says, "You son-of-a-bitch!" Just like that. Wild and desperate, like you'd say to a guy if the guy was just kicking over the last jug of water on a desert island.

  It would have been long enough for her to kill us if I hadn't had good reflexes. Even then, all I had time to do was knock the pistol out of her hand and drag her into the pit.

  With her play bollixed, she was confused and bewildered. She ain't a fighter, and she sits back against the wall staring at us dead pan with big expressionless eyes. She's a plenty pretty babe and I could see exactly what had happened as far as Stillwell was concerned. His spots had come to life in very adequate form so to speak.

  * * * * *

  Stillwell goes over and sits down beside her and I'm very much on the alert, because I know where his courage comes from. But I decide it's all right, because I see the babe is not belligerent, just confused kind of. And friendly.

  And willing. Kind of a whipped-little-dog willing, and man oh man! She was sure what Stillwell needed.

  They kind of went together like a hand and a glove--natural-like. And it followed--pretty natural--that when Stillwell got up and led her around a wing of the pit, out of sight, she went willing--like that same little dog.

  Uhuh. No, you guys. Two's enough. I wouldn't rob you. Well, okay, and thanks kindly.

  Well, there I was, all alone, but happy for Stillwell, cause I know it's what the kid needs, and in spots like that what difference does it make? Yank--Ruskie--Mongolian--as long as she's willing.