Look Out For Space (Seven For Space)

by William F. Nolan

  "Very well. At least my conscience is clear." He consulted a file by the vidphone. "I happen to know that my contact often visits a private asteroid in the Lowenkopf sector. I was warned not to go there. It's not a functional point of contact."

  "Just give me the directional coordinates."

  "You must promise not to …"" … reveal my source of information," I finished for him. "Relax. I don't finger stoolies."

  He gave me the data and I rang off.

  Ole Sam was back in business.

  Six

  "Joe Hopper?"

  "Right."

  "You for hire?"

  "Depends."

  "On what?"

  "On how far I have to haul."

  "How far is far?"

  "You tell me where you want to go. Then I tell you if I go that far."

  So I told him.

  "Yeah, I know the Luani system. It's within my jump range."

  "What's your price?"

  He named one.

  I named another.

  We hassled, adjusted, hassled more, agreed. There's a special technique in hiring a space cabbie. You never pay the first price a cabbie names. Only suckers do that. Cabbies love to bargain; it's a natural part of their lives. I know, because I was one myself, and when I told Joe Hopper this he beamed. Joe was a homeplanet boy from Earth.

  "So you're an ex-cabbie, eh?"

  "Right."

  "Where'd you run?"

  "Venus mostly," I said. "Drove swamp cans. Local stuff. I never hacked outside the System."

  "How long ago was that?"

  "Six, nearly seven Earthyears."

  Joe scratched his chin. He was big and square and needed a shave."They used the ole Z-grav junkies then, didn't they?"

  I said they did.

  "Drove me a Z once, on a Moonrun." He shook his head. "Too slow to suit me. How'd you make out as a cabbie?"

  "Lousy," I told him. "But I was on the booze in those days and you can't booze and hack. A losing combo. When I bent up one of the company swampers, they dropped the ax on me."

  "Tough," he said. "Lost your permit, I guess."

  I nodded, shrugging.

  "And you never went back?"

  "Nope. Took me a while to get off the booze. By then I was into other things."

  We walked over to Hopper's spacecab. Long, low, sleek — one the new thrustfin Twin-X jobs. He saw the shine in my eyes as we climbed through the lock.

  "Like her?"

  "Sure beats the old Z," I said, checking the ship's neatly arranged control grid. "How fast is she?"

  "Zero to sixteen thousand in six," Joe said in a flat tone, masking his pride. "She'll out-drag anything in her power-weight class." He coughed, scrubbed at one side of his stubbled jaw. "Course I've done a little tinkering with her, you understand."

  "Sure beats the old Z," I repeated.

  "I've almost got her paid for," Hopper said. "Two more cred periods and she's all mine."

  We webbed up and Joe thumbed the flashpin. The twin-thrust unit cut in and the pocked planet surface whipped away beneath us as we flamed skyward.

  Topside, we exchanged grins. I liked Joe Hopper and I liked his ship.

  I'd made a good choice for my run.

  "Are you sure this is the right asteroid?"

  "This is it," I said.

  We drifted at quarter-power over the twisted ruins of an empty city. There was no sign of moving life below us. The area seemed totally devastated.

  "The coordinates check out," I said. "This is the one, Joe. Take me down."

  "Down to what?"

  "To whatever's there. Can't be sure yet."

  Hopper looked skeptical. "That's a dead rock, Sam," he said flatly. "Whoever you're lookin' for sure ain't down there."

  "Maybe. Maybe not. But I want to poke around."

  Joe gave up his argument and began easing the Twin-X down to the surface. When we'd unwebbed and the jets were quiet I said, "Wait here for me. I'll need you again."

  "I'll keep the meter running," he said.

  We had landed just beyond the ruins of the city. I stretched, taking in a deep breath. No facemask needed. The air was okay, with the oxygen level on the thin side. But then I didn't plan on doing any running.

  I figured the best place to begin looking for my contact was in the middle of the city. Once there, I'd do some plain old fashioned yelling. In the dead silence of the ruins my voice would carry for a hell of a distance.

  The twisted ped belts were inoperative, so I had a bit of walking to do in order to reach the city's heart. Most of the buildings I passed were tumbled in on themselves like so many card houses. I had to avoid shards of glassite and sharp edged chunks of plastorock on the ruptured street surface.

  The needle shape of the Twin-X dwindled behind me. Joe counted me nuts to be doing what I was doing, but he just didn't understand the detective business. Things often prove to be quite different than what they seem and a smart op can't take anything at face value. Sure, this looked like a shattered, totally abandoned asteroid, but I'd been fooled plenty of times before. Better to keep an open mind. And, of course, a ready gun.

  The ruins gave way to a wide city square. Broken statues. A giant fountain, split open. Dead-limbed nearoak trees.

  I stepped into the middle of the square and stopped. No sounds. No movement. "Hey, anybody home?" I yelled. And waited. No response.

  I tried again. More yelling. And waiting. And yelling.

  I was beginning to feel like a prize chump. Maybe Joe was right. Maybe I was nuts, yelling my head off to nobody in the middle of a dead city.

  Then someone touched my shoulder. I spun around like a startled mooncat, snapping out my .38 as I turned.

  "Hello, Mr. Space," said a sad-eyed, solemn-faced humanoid standing in front of me. He was middle-aged. Basic earth-type body construction. Wearing dirt-streaked, ragged clothing. Frayed sandals. Scabs on his knees.

  "Who the hell are you?" I asked him.

  "The one you came to see," he told me in a soft voice. "I'm McKabe."

  Which stoned me. "You mean — you're Iberia's gray market contact?"

  "Yes. I do business with him, among many others."

  I gave him a slow lookover. But I understood that you were loaded. That you'd built your own pleasure world out here in the Lowenkopf sector."

  "All perfectly true," he nodded. "Furnishing this asteroid cost me several million credits."

  "I don't get you, McKabe."

  The sad-eyed humanoid walked over to a fallen, headless statue. He tapped the statue's chipped torso. "I paid to have all this done," he said. "Paid to have this whole city built here, and then paid to have it destroyed." He looked down at himself. "Even my clothing is custom destroyed. Good ragged, dirt streaked clothes don't come cheap. And where do you find the right size in frayed sandals these days?"

  "But why build a city and then have it destroyed?"

  "Sit down on this chipped torso and listen to a sad story," he said. I sat down, stowing my .38 in its holster.

  "I'm married. I love my wife and she loves me. But, like many marriages, ours had gone stale. Sex had become boring. Predictable. So I got the idea for this place. I considered it an inspiration."

  I still didn't follow him, and said so.

  "My wife and I had often speculated on what it would be like to be the last male and the last female in the world. The idea excited us. Two passionate, love-starved creatures grappling and grunting out their sexual release amid chipped torsos and tumbled buildings."

  "Love among the ruins, eh?"

  "Quite so," he nodded. "I got my world and paid to have it ruined. Everything seemed perfect. Here was I, the last male, stumbling aimlessly and numbly through the broken, empty streets. And there she was, the last surviving female."

  "Did you grapple and grunt out your release?"

  "We tried to," he said. "But my wife got sand in her mouth and a small stone lodged itself in her navel as we were rolling about. She
found it all quite depressing. Now she's gone. Left me here. When I heard your ship I thought she might be returning for me."

  "You mean she left just before I got here?"

  "Correct. I suddenly found that I was the last male in the world, and it's no damn fun, let me tell you."

  "I've got a cab waiting outside town. You can get a ride back home with me."

  "That's most kind of you, Mr. Space," he said. "Makes me regret trying to have you killed back on Antar."

  "So that was your doing?"

  "Afraid so," he admitted. "I work hard. I try to do a good job. Sure, I'm in the gray market game, but you have to work just as hard being crooked as you do being honest. People like you don't understand a thing like that. You come along and want to take my money away from me."

  "You're full of beans," I told him. "I don't give a damn what you do with your money."

  His eyes widened. "You don't?"

  "No, I don't."

  "But … aren't you a federation snooper nosing into our gray market activities?"

  "Nope."

  "But that's why I tried to have you killed in Antar. We gray marketeers always kill federation snoopers. When you left Iberia's and booked passage for Antar we assumed you were a professional investigator."

  "I am, but I'm private. I don't work for the federation. Right now I'm on a missing asteroid trace for a client. It seemed to me that you market boys might be able to help me find the asteroid."

  McKabe chuckled. "Amazing how we turn simple things into complex ones by assuming that which is not always truly assumable."

  "Sorry I had to stiff your hairy friend," I told him.

  He shrugged. "Sonny was expendable. Spider wrestlers are fairly easy to come by. And, after all, he was working under instructions to break every bone in your body."

  "Now that things are clear between us," I said, "will you help me on the trace?"

  "Be happy to," he said.

  On the way back to Joe's cab I showed him the map the planet preach had given me. No, he didn't have any direct knowledge of this particular asteroid, but he could send me to someone who might be able to finger it for me.

  As we flamed away from his ruined world he blinked his sad eyes and sighed. "I'll have it all done over," he said. "Import some thick green custom made wilderness. Robosnakes. Automated rhinos. Plastoelephants. Vines to swing on. I'll even design my own loincloth!"

  "What about your wife?" I wanted to know.

  "She can be the frustrated ape mother who adopts me," he said. "I just know that playing a gorilla will sexually ignite her."

  "Yeah, jungle incest ought to do the trick," I said. McKabe relaxed into his webbing.

  "If you want to know the truth," said Joe Hopper, "I'm glad I ain't married."

  Seven

  I'd hit pay dirt with McKabe. Thanks to him, I had a strong lead. In fact, with a pinch of luck, I could break this case early.

  He told me that the gray market bought a lot of their bootleg asteroids from a roving gang of young rustlers of mixed body types who ranged through various systems picking up "stray rocks" (as they termed them) which were then herded into areas, or space corrals, well off the beaten paths of the planetary patrol cruisers.

  "These babes are always one step ahead of the law," McKabe had told me. "They're sharp and tough and they know their way around the universe. Their leader is the one you want to see. They call him 'Halfcat' — and he's usually on High-L when he can get it. Ten to one he can show you where to find your asteroid. If he can't, nobody can."

  McKabe had told me how to reach the gang's headquarters on the planet Bailey and what pass-poem to use in order to identify myself as a friend. He also gave me a warning. "Don't get Halfcat sore at you. I saw him chew up an Earthcop once and swallow him, bones and all. He can be kind of mean."

  I said that I'd try real hard not to get Halfcat sore at me.

  * * *

  Bailey was on a commercial dropline, so I didn't have any problem in getting there. The planet was one of the larger bodies in the Wilton System, and was extremely rugged and mountainous. A prime source of ionite ore, it was honeycombed with mines. According to McKabe, Halfcat's gang had appropriated one of the small domed mining towns as headquarters. Once they'd killed every miner in the area, no one objected to their being there.

  Antigrav transport was impossible over the mountains due to sucking downdrafts, which would crush an aircab like an Earthegg between canyon walls. Which was one of the major reasons the gang had picked this location: a sneak attack was out of the question. You came in by fuggback or you didn't come in at all — and a posted lookout could spot any moving thing within a mile of the town.

  Now a fugg is one sour son of a bitch. In Earth terms, it looks like a cross between a camel with six legs and a giraffe with two heads. Except that one head is in front and one is in back, each attached to a long furry neck. You're supposed to hang on to the front neck and keep yelling "Fugg! Hup. Hup. Fugg!" to get the bastard moving. Plus punching it with your fist whenever it slows down.

  The rented fugg I rode kept trying to bite me from behind with its big square teeth whenever I punched it, and this put me in a lousy moody the time I finally reached the outlaw mining town.

  "Hop off that fugg, mister! And no funny moves while you're doin' it."

  I glared down at the raw young space rustler who faced me with an upraised .40-76 Koppler-Babish double-lock side-load stun rifle.

  "Listen, kid," I said coolly. "I'm hungry, saddle sore and fugg bit. I suggest you say 'please' when you ask me anything."

  "What you doin' here?" he demanded. "This town's closed to miners."

  "I'm no stoop-assed miner," I snapped, climbing down from the fugg's humped back. "I'm here to see your boss, the one they call Half-cat. Where is he?"

  "First, the passpoem," the raw kid said.

  I sighed, and began spieling: "Suns will fade and moons will die, "I said, "but love like ours stays ever new. In the vaulting arc of sky … there's none else here but just us two."

  The kid tipped up the rifle. "Second verse," he prompted. I gave him a hard look.

  "Lovers through the breadth of time, yearning for a fairy's kiss; Yea, this simple bit of rhyme, binds us in eternal bliss."

  "I'm embarrassed," the kid confessed with a sheepish smile as he lowered the stun rifle. "The thing is, our boss is nuts for 'fairy kisses. 'This one's the third passpoem in a row that has lovers in it who yearn for a fairy's kiss. Sometimes I think the boss is kind of spooky — if you know what I mean."

  "Yeah," I said. "I know what you mean."

  "But don't tell him I said so," whispered the young rustler. "Nobody kids the boss about his fairy kisses."

  "My lips are sealed," I assured him. "Now, where do I find your boss?"

  The raw kid grinned at me. "You don't find Halfcat," he said. "Halfcat finds you."

  * * *

  Which is why I ended up sitting alone and bored at the mouth of anion mine watching my tethered fugg nibble Baileyweed with one head and glare at me with the other.

  There was no love lost between us.

  A scuffle of rocks behind me. I swung around, staring into the dark cave mouth, as a shape materialized there. All I could really see at this point was a pair of slanted yellow eyes shining out of the tunnel. Cat's eyes.

  "Name?" barked a snarling voice attached to the eyes.

  "Samuel Temperance Space," I said. "I'm a private investigator."

  "What do you want with me?"

  "I was told you could possibly aid me in locating a —"

  "I don't aid people; I eat people," said the shape.

  That shook me a little, but I bulled on. "As I understand it, that's not your usual pattern." The yellow eyes were closer. "Admittedly, I was told that you once ate an Earth policeperson, bones and all, but I assumed that this was as extreme case, brought on by —"

  "You assume too much, peeper!"

  I backed slowly toward my fugg. "Well, then
, I'll just be heading home. I can see you're in no mood to trade."

  "Trade?" The yellow eyes narrowed.

  "I brought in some prime grade High-L. Hard to come by these days. Thought I could maybe swap it for the info I need."

  Halfcat emerged into the waning light of day — and I could see where he got his nickname. Below the waist he was a common biped, but his head was furry, with long, pointed ears; his mouth stretched back over curved fangs and his slanted yellow eyes were indeed catlike. Now, at the mention of High-L, those eyes were glowing.

  "How come a squiff like you carries High-L?"

  "I've got my contacts," I said. "Do we deal or don't we?"

  "What you want, shamus?"

  I was amused by his subtle use of the ancient slang term for a private detective.

  "Like I said — info."

  "About what?"

  "A missing asteroid. I know you … deal in them. If you took it, I want to buy it back; no questions asked. And I'll pay a fair price on behalf of my client."

  "Describe the rock."

  I gave him the specs.

  "Too small," Halfcat snorted. "We don't pick up pebbles. No percentage in it."

  "Who could I talk to? You must know who handles the smaller stuff."

  "Maybe I do. But first …"

  "A jolt of L, right?"

  "Don't play smart with me, peeper. I'm doing you a big favor just talking to you, when I could snort the L and have you for dessert!"

  I remembered McKabe's advice about not getting Halfcat sore and fished out a plasflask of L, tossed it to him. I was impressed with the fact that he caught it in his teeth.

  He split open the flask with a central fang, dumping the colorless powder onto his long, pink cat's tongue. Then he threw back his furry head and snorted.

  I watched the High-L take him into Limbo, that wacko mental state instantly induced by the drug. I didn't have to snort L to know it was plenty potent. These days, since I'd quit the booze, a Moonrim Fizz or a shot of Martian Monkweed was enough to frazzle my brainpan; I was never dumb enough to get into any hard stuff. That was for cheap rock rustlers like Halfcat who needed a prime jolt to operate at anything above a moron's level.