Carrying iridium. Speed was essential; therefore the agreement was on a strictly competitive basis; any or all salvage companies registered could try for it simultaneously. The owner of the ship agreed to buy back the cargo falling to the salvager at market quotations out of hand.
First scow to get a grapple on, had her. Laufer and Burke had filed intention claims, and were starting off in a couple of hours; so had Bluebell.
"Who? What master?"
"Er …Adams. Holy smokes! Alice Adams!"
Jerry swore. "You'll have to stop that kid. She doesn't know how to fly."
"You'd better come down, then. You seem to know more about this mess than I do. Hurry up if you want a crack at the Carpathia—that's the bullion ship."
"Expect me in twenty minutes or less." Hastily he dressed, his hangover forgotten, muttering to himself things about slap-happy blondes.
Schopenhauer, he decided, had approximately the right idea.
For the second or third time in his life he was not late for an appointment; twenty minutes saw him bursting through to the office of the commissioner.
"Well?" he demanded violently. "Are you going to let her fly? In a race like this is going to be, she'll not only smash up herself and her crew but any of the rest of us who get in what she seems to think is her way."
The body wrapped around the telephone voice answered heavily,
"There's nothing to be done about it. For some obscure reason the 'sons or other issue of the deceased licensee shall retain the towage and salvage permits of the deceased, and all appurtenances thereof,'
according to regulations.
"The license for towage, etc., includes an operator's card; therefore we discovered that a crack-brained female who has never flown before inherits a flying permit without physical examination or experience.
I'm going to write my congressman; that seems to be all that anyone can do about it just now. Shall I fill out an intention for you on that Carpathia?"
"Yeah. I won't be back," he snapped, half way through the door.
He found Sven in a cheap rooming-house near the port.
"You round up the rest of the crew!" he yelled, "and be at the field by twelve noon or you're all fired and busted." He tore away and jumped into a taxi. "To the salvage field, buddy, in a helluva rush!"
He was oiling the space lock when the others arrived, led by Big Sven.
He stared at them. "Often," he said, "I have wondered what happens to space lice when they crawl off the ship. I now perceive that I should have known." Each and every man of them had at least one black eye; each had cuts and bruises about the temples. "Well—forget the good times. There's iridium drifting free between Mercury and Venus, and we're going to snag it. And if we don't sink our grapples into that hulk before any other space-tramp, you worms go hungry. Clear? Now get to stations; in ninety seconds we take off. I said ninety!'
The men filed into the stubby ship holding their heads. A hangover is nothing to take with you on a spaceflight. If they could have left their heads behind they would have done it. With creakings of abused muscles and battered bones, they strapped themselves into hammocks and pads.
The crew of Leigh Salvage, Incorporated was in a bad way.
The takeoff was uneventful as such things go; Jerry mentally noted that he had blown away a small corner of the salvage-table, just another item to subtract from the profit, if any.
Once again in space, the captain was at the look-out plate, eyes and hands and brain bent five hundred kilos out into the vacuum. "Particle sighted ahead," he droned, "in our third quadrant. Salvage scow Bluebell. Full speed ahead to pass her." His fingers played over the master's board, and the blunt ship roared ahead. They were near—
dangerously near—the Bluebell. A blast from the steering fins and the scow jolted into a new course. Jerry never took chances—hardly ever.
They slowed acceleration far in advance of the other vessel; that was another contract tied up and in the bag. The captain relaxed—That Adams girl …of course she couldn't handle a ship. Anybody could make a not too disastrous takeoff, but she'd smear hell for leather when she tried to land.
A signal light flashed on his board, and he snapped on his communication beam. There was a long pause while the power built up, then a voice from the grid
"Scow Bluebell calling scow Leigh Salvage, Incorporated. Give way.
We're going to pass you in your first quadrant. That's all."
Jerry gaped. Unheard of? "Scow Leigh to Bluebell!' he snapped. "Listen, insane female; you're not driving a French taxi. There are ethics and rules in this game we're playing. Do you want to be blackballed and become an outlaw tug?" There was another reason than need of that cargo for his anger—maybe, just maybe, she could get back onto the field without busting herself wide open if she were alone, but with a cargo as big as the Carpathia she wouldn't have a chance in a million.
He thought of what a short towing line could do, and grimaced.
"We're passing, Scow Leigh. That's all." The light on his board died.
That was all. Well for her sake …and for his own—
"Full speed ahead, and then some more, Sven. It's a race."
But it wasn't much of a race; the Bluebells port fin exploded, and her acceleration stopped. Jerry grinned. "We'll pick her up on the way back and leave her ship there. The farther apart those two are, the safer for both of them …Hey! Stations! Hulk Carpathia ahead!" And the salvage ship jockeyed for position, drew alongside of the bullion transport and clamped on with a clash of metal against metal. The crew prepared to board.
3 Crime in Space
Jerry reached for the phone, his brow grooved. "Broadway three thousand," he said. The voice with the smile answered, "One moment, please," giving him time to reflect on the superfluity of machinery. Less efficient than a dial-phone, maybe, but that touch of warmth and humanity— "Here's your party, sir."
"Central Office, Interplanetary Police."
"This is Captain Leigh, of Leigh Salvage, Incorporated. I wanted to see you about—"
"About the peculiar state of the Carpathia. Come on up."
"Yeah," said Jerry, baffled. "That's what I wanted to see you about."
How did they know? And maybe they had a lead on the vanished Miss Alice Adams? He hoped so.
He was received in the offices of the Interplanetary Police by a very old man who introduced himself as Major Skeane. Jerry took a seat and opened the valise he had brought. "I don't know how much you know about the business of the Carpathia," he said, "so I'll begin at the beginning. Please examine these—exhibit A."
"These" were the contents of his valise—small, heavy chunks of metal.
Skeane grunted. "Once spheres," he said, "apparently cast in a shot tower; then sandblasted to suggest natural formations. Some filed by hand, even. These, I take it, were the particles that wrecked the bullion ship?"
Jerry wet his lips. "Yes," he said. "It looks like a put-up job for sure. And Alice—that's Master Adams, of the scow Bluebell—she's disappeared.
We were racing her for the Carpathia and she broke down about half a million kilos from the hulk. I meant to pick her up on the way out to Mars and maybe tow her ship in, too, but when we got grapples on her we found her scow deserted—not a man left on her! Have you people got any dope on that business?"
Major Skeane scratched his head. "Captain," he said, "I'm sorry to inform you that while you do not jump to false conclusions, neither do you shine in the formulation of true ones. Do you see no logical relationship between the two events?"
Jerry considered, and paled. "None," he said angrily. "And instead of antilogising, you might be out hunting down the swine that would try to profit by the deaths of two score men."
"The rebuke is undeserved," smiled the old man. "We have the wrecker of the bullion ship—or a least we know who did it, and how."
"Anybody I know?" asked Jerry.
"I believe so. The saboteur is Miss Adams, of Bluebell."
/>
The younger man stiffened in his chair. "No!" he cried. And then persuasively, "she might be crazy as a flea, but wrecking—never!"
"You do us an injustice. We were warned to watch her the moment she landed on Mars. Our agents assured us that she was a girl with ambitions; they kept track of her, reporting to us for the customary considerations. One man in particular—LeMouchard—has kept us posted, and he's as much to be trusted as anyone these days. To my mind—and I am the officer in charge of this case—the alleged disappearance of Miss Adams is conclusive proof of her guilt. She failed to cash in on the particularly rich opportunity that she created for herself and thus destroy the evidence, and so was picked up by a confederate, with her presumably equally guilty crew. I expect her now to continue her career from another base; possibly another planet, until she makes a slip. Then we shall trace her and deliver her to the execution cell."
"I see," said Jerry, fighting to keep calm. But he didn't see and somewhere there was a horrible mistake which had cost the lives of a score of men and would yet cost the life of that girl with the blue-grey eyes who had tried to pass him and had nearly wrecked her ship and his own, he thought.
Skeane broke in. "Will you leave that valise of junk here? We need some material evidence. And I want you to swear to a description of the girl."
"Sure," said Jerry vaguely. "Anything you say."
"Right. Hair, blonde; shade thirty-three plus on the I.P. scale. Eyes, blue-grey—shade nine. Weight—Captain! Come—"
Jerry was walking slowly through the outer office, his mind in a state of terrible confusion. He didn't know what to do for himself or her. Attack it with logic, he decided fuzzily. For effects there are causes. Assuming flaws in the line of Skeane's logic, discover the points of specific strain and test them. Hah—he had mentioned "agents"—those, he supposed, were informers. And—what was his name?—LeMouchard. Weak link number one: now to test it. He walked into a store. "A bottle of olive oil, please. A big one." That was the first step.
In Mars there are many hidden ways. For every city there is a shadow-city twisting its tunnels and warrens beneath the sunlight and air. It was through these dark passages that Jerry wandered—to check, as he thought, on official deduction, of course.
Reeking with oil and dressed in the rags of an outlaw space-tug's crew, he passed into the dismal underworld as one of its own creatures. In not many hours he was to be found in a low dive swilling the needled ethyl that passes as potable among the scum of a solar system. It was easy to make friends of a sort there—the price of a drink took care of it.
Jerry wasn't drunk, in spite of the terrible cargo of rot-gut he had been stowing away, but he was just a bit ill, for his stomach was well lined with olive oil, sovereign remedy and anti-intoxicant. He was buying liquor for a slimy little man through no altruistic motives; for this was LeMouchard, informer to the police. Gently he questioned him. Of course, he was strictly on the legit, but he hadn't always been, no? And those camels of the gendarmerie that made themselves the great ones, a good man—like our comrade here, yes?—could wrap them around his finger, no?
And surely he was not such a fool as to play with only one master when the pay from two was twice as great? He thought not. Oh, yes—that clever business of the Bluebell girl! He, Jerry, would give a pretty penny to know in whose dazzling intellect that task had been conceived and brought to fruition. Was it—could it be—that he; Jerry, was standing in the presence of the man? But no! But yes! Then surely that was worth another drink of the so gentle ethyl. And so the great LeMouchard was in the pay of the police and one other. Might he, Jerry, be permitted to inquire as to who had availed himself of the services of so great a man?
LeMouchard looked owlishly over a drink. "Oui," he croaked. "It is permitted." His face flushed abnormally, and he shook his head like a dazed fighter. "The English, I forget how you call him …Le bon petit roi d'Yvetot—the king with the little orchestra. It is …" he bowed forward, his eyes bulging. "Carbon?" he said. "Sa Majesty' Carbon." His ratty face hit the tabletop. Out cold.
King Carbon—coal. King—Cole? Old King Cole? That seemed to be the idea. But what was a merry old soul with a small orchestra doing on Mars with a stool-pigeon? He returned to his hotel room and phoned the Interplanetary Police.
"Major? What do you know about Old King Cole?"
There was a pause. "I believe," said the thin grey voice of Major Skeane,
"that he died just fifteen years ago. A bit before your time."
"As I understand it he never lived. What are you talking about?"
"Early space pirate. Good man, too. Crashed on Pluto two days after I was assigned to his case. I was a terror in those days; he must have been afraid of my rep. They all were, then. Did I ever tell you about Ironface Finkle, the Mercurian Menace? I brought him down …"
"Very interesting; very—this King Cole—I want to know more about him. I suppose you found his remains?"
"On Pluto? Don't be silly. When they crash there they stay crashed. This Ironface had had a better position than I did, naturally; I made it a point never to be unfair to the men I was assigned to, since my name alone struck terror—"
"Naturally, Major. How did King Cole work?"
"The usual way: ramming and boarding. Now Finkle had a tricky twist to his technique and had me baffled for a time—"
"That's too bad," said Jerry tiredly. "How old was Old King Cole when he—ah—crashed?"
"Rather young. In fact, he had just graduated from a tech school on Venus when he took up his career and ended it in about a year. But the Mercurian Menace was older and more experienced. He knew how to handle a ship. I was hard-pressed, but soon—"
Jerry hung up. It was fantastic! How many men had been to Pluto and returned? If his hunch was right—and it sometimes was—at least one more than the records showed. He phoned room service for the Marsport Herald.
"Yes, sir. Morning or afternoon edition?"
"Both. Oh, yes—I want them as of this date fifteen years ago. Better get me the year's file."
Room service turned to linen and said, "That man is mad as a hatter."
Then hastened to the Herald building for the files.
In due course the files reached Jerry, who had been calculating the location of the Bluebell.
He flipped the pages to January and read a report of the King's first appearance. He had struck like a demon at an excursion ship, gassing it and gutting it with thermite bombs, leaving a message pinned on the chest of the mutilated captain:
Old King Cole was a merry old soul,
And a pirate, too was he;
He wiggled his toes, and he thumbed his nose,
And said: 'You can't catch me!'
From that and subsequent clues his identity had been traced. He had been Chester Cole, honors student at Venusport Tech and had led his class at the Academy of Astronavigationbut was just a little cracked, it seemed. He had, as a student, fought a "duel" with another boy, crippling him. All that had saved him from prison then had been the loyal lies of his classmates. His crew, in the days of his career of crime, seemed also to have been made up of like contemporaries. It was a strange and striking picture, this mad boy roaming space in a ship of his own, striking out at will at women and children.
Now to the end of the files, to investigate his death 4 Pursuit Between the Planets
Approximately on the line which Jerry had calculated, a ship of strange design was speeding for Pluto. Like every spaceship, it was highly specialized. The super-powerful motors and grapples of the salvage scows were not hers, nor the size and luxury of the passenger liners.
This was no huge freighter, jammed to the blister and built for a maximum of space to store to a minimum of crew. Yet she had a purpose, and that purpose screamed from every line. This rocket was a killer, from bow to stern. Her prow was a great, solid mass of metal toughened and triply re-enforced for ramming; a terrible beak of death.
Above her rear rockets protruded a s
tern-chaser that scattered explosive pellets behind her in an open pattern of destruction.
But this very efficient machine was not entirely lacking in comfort, for Alice Adams rested easily in a chamber that might have graced—and once, perhaps did—the costliest luxury liner. She had awakened there after that peculiar odor through the Bluebell had laid her out and her crew. Then a courteous knock sounded on her door. "Come in," she said, baffled by the anomalous situation.
A man entered. "I welcome you," he said, "to my vessel. I trust that you will find—" Alice looked at his face, and screamed.
The man recoiled and muffled his features in a scarf. "I can hardly blame you," he said savagely. "It is the wind of Pluto. You will find that my entire crew is like that, I warn you. Skin grey and dead, the scars of the Plutonian sleet over all the face. For five years we lived unsheltered in that hell—five years that might have been a thousand. Can you know what that means?"
"But who are you?" asked the girl. "And I'm—I'm sorry about …"
"I was once known," said the man, "as King Cole. Bright boy of the space-lanes; pirate par excellence. The whimsical butcher—that was me. Fifteen years ago I died on Pluto, they think. Maybe I did; it's hard to say for sure these days. We lived in the broken open hull of our ship where it fell, breathing in helmets, feeding from crates and cans of food. One kid thought he could melt the snow outside and drink it. He was very thirsty, and he went mad when he saw the snow boil up into yellow-green gas. It was chlorine. It's cold out there where we're going.
"Many years it was, and then another ship crashed, and we took off our helmets and lived in that and sang songs with the men of it who survived. They were technicians, and tried to fix their rocket, but one of my boys killed them. He thought he liked it there; he must have been crazy.
"A long time later a first class pirate ship landed. We crawled across the snow to her—two hundred kilos. They took us in because they hadn't a mechanic worth the name, and all of us were fine tech men. I said I could fix her, and I could. Then one night my men killed all the crew of this new ship and I patched it with stuff from the other two rockets so we took off and sneaked into Mars.
His Share of Glory The Complete Short Science Fiction Page 89
